Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.
"It was a completely unique situation," said Alexander Gruzdev, director of the Wrangel Island nature reserve where the encounter in September happened. "We were all gobsmacked, to be honest."
The bears had come to feast on the carcass of a bowhead whale that washed ashore, later resting around the food source. The crowd included many families, including two mothers trailed by a rare four cubs each, Gruzdev told AFP.
Climate change means ice, where polar bears are most at home, is melting earlier in the year and so polar bears have to spend longer on land, scientists say.
This might wow tourists but means the bears, more crammed together on coasts and islands, will eventually face greater competition for the little food there is on land.
Locals are also at risk from hungry animals venturing into villages.
Wrangel Island, off the coast of Russia's Chukotka in the northeast, is where polar bears rest after ice melts in early-August until November, when they can leave land to hunt for seals.
It is also considered the birthing centre for the species, with the highest density of maternity dens in the entire Arctic, Gruzdev said.
"A whale is a real gift for them," he said. "An adult whale is several tens of tonnes" that many bears can feed on for several months.
Studies have shown that, compared with 20 years ago, polar bears now spend on average a month longer on Wrangel Island because "ice is melting earlier and the ice-free period is longer," said Eric Regehr, from the University of Washington, the lead American scientist on the US-Russian collaborative study of Wrangel Island polar bears.
Changing ice conditions could also be responsible for the increasing number of bears flocking there, Regehr said.
This autumn, the number of bears observed was 589, far exceeding previous estimates of 200-300, he said, calling it "anomalously high".
[...] "We cannot stop climate change, but we can sort out the situation on the shore and make life easier for the bears," he said, referring to measures such as bear patrols to minimise conflict with humans.
"With changes in nature, that has to be attended to."
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Entropy on Friday November 24 2017, @07:12PM (34 children)
Of course, too much ice is a sure sign of climate change too:
"I'm sure some researchers can find a possible explanation where humans are causing both Arctic ice melting and Antarctic ice growth"
..when their research ship was unexpectedly frozen in records levels of ice and observing colder than expected temperatures. (http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/20/global-warming-expedition-stopped-in-its-tracks-by-arctic-sea-ice/)
Of course, when both high ice, and low ice are "proof" of their supposed global warming theories that's a pretty sure sign the entire research method is deeply flawed. Clearly any experimental result will prove global warming if you allow that to be your assumptions, as the results will only occasionally be perfectly average.
One solution: Just make up the data entirely(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html) when the narrative doesn't fit what you need for the Paris climate accord meeting. That way hopefully you can get the laws that royally screw the united states pushed through and funnel money to other countries in the name of global warming.
Climate change is a real thing, and has been going on for ends of thousands of years. In theory we're trying to determine what part, if any, man made climate change has in this--But it seems when the research doesn't fit what they want it to they just fake, exaggerate, or fake news it into what they think it should be rather than act responsibly about it. Just like the fake war on drugs research (reefer madness anyone?) people just don't believe the fake news anymore.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @08:22PM (6 children)
I'm about as "anti-manmade climate change" as a westerner can get, and I'd still love to see humans stop using the atmosphere as the new Love Canal. This is why I have a glowing red coal of hatred for the criminal thugs at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who have made themselves massive roadblocks (enforced at gunpoint) to pursuit of zero-emission electrical power production, including and especially thorium molten salt reactors. The LFTR flavor is in particular very low waste, gravity-powered fail-safe, and has the useful side-effect of producing high heat which could be used to transform carbon into synfuel so that we can not only use thorium MSRs as an electrical bridge technology until something even better (fusion?) is ready, but also an economic bridge since there happens to be a lot of thorium in US-mined coal which currently is just blown out coal-fired plants' smokestacks into the air.
MSR tech was pioneered and test-run for over a year in the 1960s, and the Fischer-Tropsch synfuel process was developed in the 1920s.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 24 2017, @08:51PM (5 children)
I'm against climate change because for some reason governments like to use it as an excuse to let filthy hordes of third-world immigrants into their borders.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @09:50PM
I'm against you because you ARE the filthy horde we'd love to see gone from the digital frontier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @09:51PM (2 children)
I'm against climate change because I have the "dad remote detection of thermostat change" gene. But climate change happens regardless of whether I like it or not.
Now the concept of climate change due to human activity is so completely saturated in fraud that even if there's truth in that concept somewhere, it's proven impossible for me to find under the mountain of lies and data manipulation. Anyone wanting to use "man-made climate change" as an excuse to force me to do or not do something can insert themselves up their own rectums.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @11:55PM (1 child)
Turn off Faux News and you won't have that problem. It's kind of hard to find the truth in the bullshit when you've hooked up a pipe spewing bullshit at 500 gallons per minute.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @09:05AM
If you believe Fox News is the sole source of manipulated mainstream news, then I've got a bridge to sell you, buddy.
If you believe ANYthing you hear in the mainstream news because you heard it from the mainstream news, I still think you'd be interested in buying my bridge. If CNN/MSNBC/Faux/NYT/ad nauseum said the sun would rise in the east tomorrow, I'd go double-check it on principle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:01AM
[citation needed]
Um, it's been 3 hours (if my UTC conversions are correct) since the parent comment was posted. What's a fair time to wait? Four hours? A day? Seven and a half million years? Or is it because SoylentNews is running out of someone's basement on a Trash-80 and can't handle more than 2 simultaneous posters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @09:09PM (6 children)
Who exactly claimed it as "proof"?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Entropy on Friday November 24 2017, @10:25PM (5 children)
This article claims that less ice is a sign of global warming. The linked article claims that more ice is a sign of global warming. It's a skillfully designed argument--assuming people believe that every possible outcome is proof.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:01AM (1 child)
More hair is a sign of aging.
Less hair is also a sign of aging.
WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW, ATHEISTS?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:11AM
For the hard of thinking, the point made by this AC was that, yes, more ice and less ice can both be signs of warming, depending on where those measurements are made:
For example: if there's less ice in your freezer, but more sloshing about on the kitchen floor, it's more likely to be due to your freezer warming, than your kitchen floor cooling.
(Score: 5, Informative) by dry on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:08AM (1 child)
At 40 below, you get very little actual precipitation, Antarctica for example is mostly desert. Warm that place up to a couple of degrees below zero (Celsius) and you get a lot more precipitation, still in the form of snow, which doesn't melt due to it still being below freezing, ice increases even though it has warmed up by over 30 degrees Celsius. Warm it up a few more degrees to above freezing and the ice starts decreasing.
Once the ice starts decreasing, there is more fresh water flowing downhill until it eventually reaches the ocean, decreasing the salinity, temperature drops a few degrees and that water freezes easier then the salty water used to.
What we learn is that not only is the temperature important in the case of how much ice there is, but also precipitation, salinity of the ocean and then there's whether we're talking about old ice that has been around for years and is usually thick, and new ice that is thin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:21PM
This is why a science education is important. No wonder deniers are so confused, they're used to "common sense" being more useful than it is today.
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Sunday November 26 2017, @09:57PM
Hmm. More heat in the atmosphere leads to more extreme events occurring. Who knew?
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Friday November 24 2017, @09:09PM
It looks like ice, it's not ice. It's polar bears. Very dangerous!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @11:01PM (8 children)
Citing daily-fail, the pinnacle [dailymail.co.uk] of rationalism [dailymail.co.uk] and impartiality [dailymail.co.uk], as evidence.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 24 2017, @11:54PM (5 children)
I got a short video on the "impartiality" link about Planet Nine where they said computer simulations showed it was around 20 times further from the Sun than Earth. Yes... closer than Neptune. Sigh.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:11AM (4 children)
Well, just a few years back, perhaps a couple of decades, Pluto was planet 9 and it was closer then Neptune.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:21AM (3 children)
<pedantic>Pluto's perihelion is 29.658 AU, not ~20 AU.</pedantic>
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:40AM (2 children)
Good point, though to be pedantic, you would have been better to have said that it was around the orbit of Uranus. Aphelion 20.11 AU
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 25 2017, @07:51AM (1 child)
But Uranus is planet 9.
Where planet 8 is? There is no planet 8. God forgot to create it. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 25 2017, @08:56AM
#MakeCeresPlanetFive [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:01AM
Yeah. C'mon, folks. We can do better than that.
Another thing about that rag (besides their lack of veracity) is the incredible bloat of their pages.
356kB for their page of hypertext--and that's before adding in the gob of useless graphics that they push with each page.
What a completely ridiculous piece of shit.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:46PM
Well, there are other sources. (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/arctic-could-become-ice-free-for-first-time-in-more-than-100000-years-claims-leading-scientist-a7065781.html) .. Are you trying to say the global warming research ship heading there to prove there was less ice wasn't stuck in the ice? Google Akademik Shokalskiy if you like, and find a source to your liking.
Obviously the one I found wasn't the best..Oops. :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BK on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:40AM (6 children)
This has long been the problem in the space where climate 'science' begins to inform and interface with policy. People don't really understand climate. But they understand weather. Kind of. So we talk about weather as climate.
When this year's big weather happened around the USA, anyone who asked the question 'Is this, or some of this, due to climate change?' is one who doesn't understand climate. (You're welcome. I just identified the idiots for you.) It's an incredibly stupid question. And anyone who answered such a question with more than an *eyeroll* should not be credited as a climate scientist, no matter how many PHDs they have. They're weathermen chasing grant money. Even the females.
Climate is a thing that happens over decades and longer. Any given 'El Niño' (Spanish for, the Niño) cycle is basically weather. A 'typical' cycle is climate. A trend in the 'typical' cycle might be climate change. With a cycle length of 3-6 years, window if 12-18 years is needed to say anything meaningful. At the risk of offending a Scotsman someplace, real climate scientists know this...
Atmospheric warming due to the CO2 mix is an obvious fact to anyone who understands why the atmospheric gas mix matters... which is almost nobody. But the 'evidence' or 'effects' presented to us are so fundamentally flawed that it really is tempting to take the other side. It's clear that the typical AGW believer understands science a little bit less well than Mike Pence. Think about that.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:53AM
And blame climate for weather, because it's easy propaganda. No one sees the mostly insignificant effects of sea level rise and changes in region temperatures over many decades, but they do see extreme weather. And the difference between that and what extreme weather would look in the absence of said climate change is conveniently invisible.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday November 25 2017, @06:23AM (4 children)
Aren't you the cocky idiot. Do you think that Niño is a name or is untranslatable?
Niño means boy. 'El Niño' is Spanish for 'the boy'.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by BK on Saturday November 25 2017, @06:32AM (3 children)
You goddamn fucking retard. And I mean that in the literal clinical and religious sense. It's a famous Chris Farley SNL quote. Google before you comment or mod.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday November 25 2017, @07:05AM
Vaffanculo.
Not everyone spent their youth watching SNL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:25PM (1 child)
No oneshouldbe expected to do a Google search for a vague TV reference. You should have apologized at the beginning of your response, not insulted.
(Score: 2) by BK on Saturday November 25 2017, @09:45PM
If you trace the comments, you'll see that I was not the first to lead with the personally directed bull. Not that should excuse it... but I will not apologize for the ignorance of another.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:59AM
Accidentally or not, you missed out an important word. The Antarctic ice which has grown is SEA ice.
The source of Antarctic sea ice is the packed ice which slides off of Antarctic landmasses. Now ask yourself why ice might slide off a surface? Why might it now do it at a greater rate than any other time in recorded history?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday November 25 2017, @06:14AM
You know that there is a reason they call it the "Daily Fail", don't you?
The Daily Mail isn't credible. Wikipedia warns against its use because it has a history of being unreliable.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Whoever on Saturday November 25 2017, @06:56AM
And, just when you need it, the Daily Mail proves, once again why you should not trust it:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/daily-mail-london-shooting-tweet_us_5a18715ce4b0d4906caeabda [huffingtonpost.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday November 24 2017, @07:21PM (1 child)
And rocks for sale...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @08:12PM
Finally cleaning out that stockpile between your ears, eh?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday November 24 2017, @08:55PM (2 children)
I don’t approve of killing animals. But what else can you do to stop these types of things from happening?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @03:40AM (1 child)
Grab'em by the pussy, idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:53AM
Yeah. Bear Pussy.
We ain't fucking with no Russians.
We fucking a whole lotta tough ursids tho.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @12:49AM (8 children)
Sure, it might be polar bears starving due to global warming. BUT given that there were almost 600 bears present, maybe global warming is good for the bears rather than the other way around.
(Score: 1) by Some call me Tim on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:24AM (1 child)
Or they could have showed up for the free gourmet buffet. Set up a free steak and lobster buffet in any city in the US and watch the scavengers gather from far and wide.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:37AM
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:48AM (5 children)
Not seeing the [problem]
Of course -you- don't. A scientific aliterate wouldn't.
With your Reactionary focus on the short term, one wonders where you got your MBA.
Earth Temperature Timeline [xkcd.com]
...for those claiming that Earth has seen global warming before.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:18AM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @08:23AM (3 children)
Ice cores, Tree rings, Fossil leaves, Boreholes, Corals, Pollen grains, Dinoflagellate cysts, Lake and ocean sediments, Water isotopes
climate proxies [wikipedia.org]
I stand by my evaluation of your scientific literacy.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:12PM (2 children)
I agree that there is global warming today. I don't agree that we have evidence that we need to do enormously costly things about it right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:28PM (1 child)
Well then your scientific literacy is still bad, and your approach to the topic is incredibly biased. Sounds more like you got called out, can't refute the massive evidence just cited, so you're turning tail like a little bitch but snarling back a last word. Sad.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @04:13PM
Not much point to it. Once again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not fallacies as far as the eye can see. I don't mind being called out. If there's someone out there with serious evidence, feel free to share. But I do mind being called out by bullshit.
Even basic stuff is hard to get right. But it doesn't help, for example, to pull out a graph as OriginalOwner did, without understanding the problems of the graph or the glaring biases it has (such as not mention errors in those estimates). xkcd is usually pretty good, but that was some fail there.
Nor do we even know that global warming is bad for polar bears. Just look at the premise of the story. A massive number of polar bears are found and this is support for the claim that the polar bears are under stress because they're allegedly spending more time on land than sea where they hypothetically are more at home. This whole story is presented out of context.
Maybe polar bears are even more at home on land than ice (particularly, when there's a large whale carcass to be eaten)? Maybe there's a population surge of polar bears because there's been a number of good years? It's all spun as bad for the bear. This is classic confirmation bias at work.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Saturday November 25 2017, @07:29AM (4 children)
Of course, the alarmists ignore any inconvenient facts, like the increase in the polar bear population over the past 15 years [polarbearscience.com].
As for how "crowded" the poor polar bears are: There are around 30,000 of them, in all of the arctic (Greenland + Russia + Canada + ice cap). The amazing thing is that 200 of them manage to gather to eat a whale corpse.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday November 25 2017, @01:11PM (1 child)
Yeah, bears are one of the last species I'd worry about, as long as hunting is kept in check and ample environment is set aside. They're some of the most intelligent, adaptable, and tough animals on the planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @02:56PM
To pick a nit, "bear" (Ursus) isn't a species; it's a genus.
(Think: black bear, brown bear, grizzly bear, polar bear.)
FTFS: two mothers trailed by a rare four cubs each
I recently read something by a grizzly bear conservationist:
The main part of the article [counterpunch.org] is about how amazing bear physiology is, with them not peeing or pooping for months.
There is no "waste"; EVERYTHING gets recycled.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2017, @03:24PM (1 child)
Global population of polar bears has increased by 2,650 - 5,700 since 2001
That defies logic.
Melting Ice Threatens Polar Bears' Survival -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution [whoi.edu]
Maybe more are being counted because there are more near where humans are--instead of being out on sea ice where they're supposed to be (where the seals are).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday November 25 2017, @04:14PM
When reality defies the logic, then the logic is wrong.