Why are computer modeled polar bears in danger but the real ones aren't?

Question

A five fold increase in population?? Wow!!!! They are really in danger...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2852551.ece

Answer 1

It's called 'Marketing'.  The 'man-did-it' global warming scammers use cutesy animals like polar bears, penquins and seals to sell their lies.  It sells better than showing videos of snakes or pigs!

Answer 2

Did you ever notice that alarmists don't have a sense of humor. The obvious joke of the polar bear and penguin doesn't mean that he doesn't know polar bears and penguins don't live together.  The only thing the alarmist have are computer models.  Computer models are easily manipulated.  You can tinker with them till you get what you want.  When you let leftists decide if something is endangered, everything will be.  The endangered species act is just one of many government legislation that leftist use to have their way.  They have abused that law in ways it was never intended.  They would never get their way by ballot so they get it through courts and extortion.  I can't walk on my favorite trail in So California because I might interfere with the mating habits of the Southwest Arroyan Toad as if I would.  If you want to go the park for the weekend, you got to fork over 15 bucks.  They invent endangered species so that they can stop development.  If some Mexican bird happens to wander up here, it will be declared endangered even if it isn't endangered in Mexico.  They simply invent a subspecies and declare it endangered.  I am not exaggerating.  I wish we would go back to putting the wackos on ignore but they run things here in the Peoples Republic of California.  I wish idiots would stop enacting feel good laws that just provide avenues of unintended consequences for ambulance chasing leftists.

Answer 3

of course the real ones are in danger....

even if some people are alarmists... they have the correct attitude,  and even if you argue about the accuracy of the climate models, you can't argue about the massive amount of evidence collected showing that warming has already started and is accelerating faster, than at any previous recorded time in history.

Last year an area the size of california plus oregon cracked up and broke away from the northern ice sheet.

Recorded global air and sea temperatures have risen.

So has the concentration of carbon di-oxide in the atmosphere. Every scientist, even the sceptics cannot deny that more co2 = more greenhouse effect.

Species are going extinct faster than ever before.

(species are not being invented just so they can be called endangered. Again, it is plain sense.... we are destroying their habitats... So obviously we are also wiping out the species that live there)

bio-diversity is being destroyed.

Forests that generate and replenish our atmosphere (and store away CO2) are also being destroyed.

The great barrier reefs are dying

Sea levels are rising

Global temperatures are rising

These are all undisputed FACTS, not a computer model, not opinion or conjecture.

Our impact on earth is not natural. We are creating an imbalance that cannot go on forever. Its just plain sense. you dont need a climate model....

If you have something... and you keep burning it, while at the same time destroying all of the trees that filter, and replenish it.... it doesn;t take a rocket scientist to know that you will still soon be screwed.

If the possibility exists that we are s******g up the earth, then we should be doing something about it.

We only have one. Better to be safe than sorry.

Only ignorant people, governments and auto-industry people would have you think otherwise.

The general scientific community has come to a consensus.

There is a danger, is has already started.

We should all be helping out.

The computer modelled polar bears aren't in danger... we can make more anytime

Answer 4

Because the alarmists want you to believe a flawed computer model over that of real, actual scientific data and observations.

Answer 5

then why is the population of real polar bares declining? some sub populations have increased but that's more because we are no longer hunting them.

the 5 fold increase in population is only achieved by using old data that was guestamated from sightings and more modden data that used tracking to work out the population.

this link explains it well

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/a...

Answer 6

A 5-fold increase since 1950.  That doesn't tell us anything, since the polar ice hasn't been dramatically melting until recent years.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), World Wildlife Fund, and soon the US government, polar bears are an endangered species.

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/...

http://www.worldwildlife.org/polarbears/

But I'm sure you and James Delingpole (whoever that is) know better.

Answer 7

The BUSH ADMINISTRATION disagrees with you, proposing to list polar bears as endangered.

That pretty much says it all.

Answer 8

I guess computer generated polar bears can't swim!

Bob- I didn't think Bush could do ANYTHING right in Lib eyes. That's just proof that he's wrong there, too!

Answer 9

Polar Bears are cute, so they make a nice spokesperson for endangered animals.

Answer 10

While some polar bear populations are increasing because of restrictions on hunting,[1] almost everyone agrees that the overwhelming threat to polar bear populations is the loss of sea ice.[2][3] The Arctic is expected to be ice free during summer months by mid century. By some accounts this will happen as early as 2013.

Polar bears are considered marine animals because of their integral link to the sea and to sea ice. They live much of their lives on the sea ice; it serves as a moving platform from which they hunt seals – the mainstay of their diet.[4][5]

Because of loss of arctic sea ice, the US Government, Department of the Interior, predicts that Alaska's entire population of polar bears, along with 2/3 of the world's polar bears will be gone by the middle of the century.[6]

Edit

Eric C: Who’s cherry picking information here? By ALL accounts, only TWO polar bear populations are increasing. Two populations are decreasing. The exact population status of the other populations are unknown, but the balance of evidence points to the fact that as the arctic sea ice melts, then the polar bears lose their hunting grounds.

Answer 11

the global warming n***s use computer models to "prove" whatever agenda they might have.

Like any model, if you write the model, you have full control over the output.

Just play with the initial conditions, the assumptions, and even the algorithm until your wonderful computer spits out the results you like.

Pretty nice racket they have going ...

Answer 12

A few years ago I went to Sea World down in FL and I saw a Polar Bear. The people there told us that they themselves the handlers could not go into the cage with the Polar Bear because the bear would think that they are the prey!

Answer 13

Polar bear experts we have now...

This is a hoot

"  Why don’t polar bears eat penguins?  "

Answer 14

Global warming nuts dont like to look at the facts, facts have never helped there "cause". It has been one of the coldest winters on record, thats a fact.  But you never hear anything about that.  I love coming in here and reading some good fact based articles, you never get them in the real media.

Answer 15

Yeah, despite the truth, the environmentalists have a lot of money and a lot of power and they're going to have polar bears put on the endangered list even though they are increasing in numbers.

Helps the alarmists with more fake ammo.

Answer 16

you think 25 000 is a healthy population? in 1950 the bears had almost been hunted to the point of extinction.

since then the various populations have recovered somewhat, some are still increasing, but the overall numbers are now estimated to be declining again.

Answer 17

The articles first sentence indicates that the author doesn't even know that polar bears and penguins live on opposite ends of the planet. lol

A little context is always helpful (especially when you're trying to get "science" from an op-ed piece by a non-scientist with a known political agenda).  The claimed population increase has a sliver of truth, but it doesn't tell the whole story.  

Polar bears were hunted without limit until almost to the point of extinction.  30 years ago international agreements were made to tightly limit hunting.  That, fortunately, had a positive effect on the population.  Then along comes another danger to their survival, the shrinking Arctic ice.  As their average body weight decreases (due to shorter hunting seasons) their ability to reproduce drops.  It only takes 1 generation that can't reproduce before a species is gone.

If anyone is interested in learning the truth about Polar Bears, rather than reading an op-ed piece, I'd suggest going here:

http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/p...

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_schlieb...

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/p...

Answer 18

All the projections that show polar bears should be listed as endangered ignore observed data and the fact that polar bears survived the last interglacial period when it was much warmer than it is today. They're descended from brown bears and can move inland to hunt if the ice does all melt, which is unlikely. Nearly all polar bear populations are going up and far more of them are lost to hunting than to anything related to warming. Like all fur-bearing mammals, they can shed their coat if it gets warm and they're adaptable enough to find new food sources. Why do environmentalists value animals over humans and at the same time act as if they're too stupid to find food?

Why do all their models show they're endangered? Because declaring polar bears an endangered species will make it even harder to prove oil reserves or drill for oil in ANWR in Alaska. We wouldn't want to hurt something so cuddly and cute would we? Then again, a 1200-pound meat-eating predator with large claws and teeth isn't so cute in real life.

Answer 19

Just because a phenomenon is entirely fictional doesn't stop Al Gore and his faithful followers getting outraged about it.

Answer 20

I read through most of the links provided by the believers.  All they contained were the opinions people without any concrete evidence to back up their claims.  

The end to polar bear huntings was in the seventies.  There was no data that showed that polar bear populations have declined in recent years.

But that is the way believers act.  They tend to believe hypothetical situations rather than real data.

The real data is that in most of the  polar bear populations in the world are increasing.

"Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present. " - Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist, Department of the Environment

So what do the believers do, they focus on the two of the 13 populations that are not increasing.  Another example of cherry picking their data.