Secret population of polar bears found living in seemingly impossible habitat

[admin]

A new study has revealed a secret subpopulation of polar bears living in an unusual habitat in southeast Greenland. The new group lives in conditions similar to those predicted for the rest of the Arctic at the end of the 21st century, suggesting the species may have a refuge to survive climate change.

Secret population of polar bears found living in seemingly impossible habitat : Read more

 

[Hayseed]

All life has to live this way, adaptation. It's a living requirement. And those bears have been doing it a lot longer than man has.

 

[Hartmann352]

Although the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) contends that melting sea ice, caused by global warming, is causing the polar bear population to decrease which has been bolstered by Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", a new report by evolutionary biologist Dr. Susan Crockford reveals that the global population of polar bears is thriving.

In the Feb. 27 report, Crockford “clarifies that the IUCN’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date,” according to a statement from the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London. “New and compelling evidence shows that bears in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.”

Far from the 2007 predictions of a 67% decline in global polar bear numbers, the new report reveals that numbers have risen to the highest levels in decades.

The US Geological Survey estimated the global population of polar bears at 24,500 in 2005. In 2015, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group estimated the population at 26,000 (range 22,000–31,000)7 but additional surveys published 2015–2017 brought the total to near 28,500. However, data published in 2018 brought that number to almost 29,5009 with a relatively wide margin of error. This is the highest global estimate since the bears were protected by international treaty in 1973.

In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2020, published February 27 on International Polar Bear Day by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the climate change narrative insists that polar bear populations are declining due to reduced sea ice, the scientific literature doesn’t support such a conclusion.

Crockford clarifies that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows that bears in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.

Included in that evidence are survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest of the polar bear populations were either stable or increasing, and some despite major reductions in sea ice. As of 2020, the global polar bear population size is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015.

Dr. Crockford points out that in 2020, even though summer sea ice, which in some dire predictions was supposed to have disappeared by 2013, declined to the second-lowest levels since 1979, there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of bear on bear cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the reduced-ice season.

As Crockford’s report reveals, plankton growth – the single most critical health measure of positive marine life in the Arctic – reached record highs in August 2020. More plankton* (‘primary productivity’) due to less summer ice means more fodder for the entire food chain, including polar bears. This explains why bears are thriving in areas such as the Barents Sea, which have experienced reduced levels of sea ice.

Dr. Crockford notes that, ironically, polar bears in western Hudson Bay experienced excellent ice conditions for the fourth year in a row in 2020. Bears were fat and healthy when they arrived on shore for the summer.
It seems that polar bears are more flexible in their habitat requirements than experts assumed and less summer ice has so far been beneficial rather than detrimental, despite “expert” claims that sea ice loss will hurt them.

Crockford explains, “Polar bears continue to be described as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for the effects of human-caused climate change, but the evidence shows they are far from being a highly-sensitive indicator species. It’s not a myth: 2020 appears to have been another good year for polar bears.”

Some Key Findings Of The Report

• Results of three new polar bear population surveys were published in 2020 and all populations were found to be either stable or increasing.
• Southern Beaufort polar bear numbers were found to have been stable since 2010, not reduced as assumed, and the official estimate remains about 907.
• M’Clintock Channel polar bear numbers more than doubled from 284 in 2000 to 716 in 2016, due to reduced hunting and improved habitat quality (less multi-year ice).
• At present, the official IUCN Red List global population estimate, completed in 2015, is 22,000-31,000 (average about 26,000) but surveys conducted since then, including those made public in 2020, would raise that average to almost 30,000. There has been no sustained statistically significant decline in any subpopulation.
• Contrary to expectations, a new study has shown that polar bear females in the Svalbard area of the Barents Sea were in better condition (i.e. fatter) in 2015 than they had been in the 1990s and early 2000s, despite contending with the greatest decline in sea ice habitat of all Arctic regions.
• Primary ocean food source productivity in the Arctic has increased since 2002 because of longer ice-free periods and hit records highs in 2020. More fodder for the entire Arctic food chain explains why polar bears, ringed and bearded seals, and walruses are thriving despite sea ice loss.

See: https://polarbearscience.files.word...ckford-polar-bears-2020-final-26-feb-2021.pdf

See: https://www.climatedepot.com/2019/0...n-increases-to-the-highest-levels-in-decades/

* Plankton, specifically phytoplankton - live on the warm, light-filled surface, and suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for food. They also need nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen from colder, heavier, saltier water that upwells into warmer layers. When phytoplankton die, they sink, storing in or near the ocean floor some of the carbon dioxide nutrients they consumed in their skeletons.

The key to this circular process, known as the ocean’s biological carbon pump, is the vertical mixing of the surface and deeper water layers, which occurs through mechanisms such as currents, winds, and tides. Higher ocean temperatures slow the cycling of water from the depths to the surface, so climate models have tended to predict that as the planet warms phytoplankton will cease to thrive, resulting in the ocean storing less carbon dioxide.

Two new studies suggest the climate models are wrong about this, EOS reports. One study found evidence that, like plants, phytoplankton may become more efficient as the ocean warms. The other reported the discovery of a new, widespread ocean microbe species that may be able to sequester carbon dioxide.

"We often view the response of ocean carbon cycling to global warming as an on-off switch, but these results show it’s a dimmer switch and has some flexibility to take care of itself," said Mike Lomas, a senior research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine and lead author of the first study, published in Nature Communications.

Lomas and his colleagues analyzed 30 years of data from the Sargasso Sea, where scientists have taken monthly ocean samples since 1988 to examine nutrients, carbon, salinity, temperature, and other properties of ocean water. Even though nutrient cycling has diminished, phytoplankton continue removing CO2 from the atmosphere, the scientists found. They suggest this indicates the distribution of phytoplankton changes in ways that favor species that can thrive with fewer nutrients from the ocean’s depths.

SOURCE: Eos

See: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261004298

Lomas and his colleagues analyzed 30 years of Sargasso Sea data through the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study, in which scientists have been taking monthly ocean samples since 1988 to examine nutrients, carbon, salinity, temperature, and other properties of ocean water. Lomas and his coauthors found that even though fewer nutrients are traveling up from the ocean’s depths, phytoplankton are still taking up carbon from the atmosphere. One reason for this phenomenon, they suggested, may be that distributions of phytoplankton favor those species that need fewer nutrients from the ocean’s depths.

Some species “can actually keep fixing carbon at a ratio that is now 2 or 3 times higher than the Redfield ratio, which basically translates to, they’re still able to take up carbon dioxide, even when there [are] reduced inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus.”

One of the key points of the paper, Lomas said, is the idea that the ratio of carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus in phytoplankton (known as the Redfield ratio) used by traditional climate change models may not apply to certain phytoplankton species. Some species, Lomas said, “can actually keep fixing carbon at a ratio that is now 2 or 3 times higher than the Redfield ratio, which basically translates to, they’re still able to take up carbon dioxide, even when there [are] reduced inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus because the ratio with which they combine them is much higher.”

Steven Emerson, professor emeritus of chemical oceanography at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, said data collection from the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study was remarkable and important. However, he said, the station uses an older technique known as the sediment trap method to measure carbon particle flux (the rate at which carbon sinks to the deep ocean). “This particular method (sediment trap) is known not to make sense for determining this flux when you compare it with other methods,” Emerson said.

There are newer, more reliable methods for measuring the ocean’s carbon particle flux, Emerson said, using high-powered optical instruments that are put on floats and can measure particles with greater sensitivity as often as once every 5 days. The floats are “going to be all over the ocean very soon,” he said. “And they and the data from [them] will test whether or not this sediment trap flux (in Lomas’s paper) is really right.… So it’s, you know, to be continued.”

“It takes this straw-like appendage and sucks the insides out of these microbes that it’s trapped. And then it lets the whole thing go.”

See: https://eos.org/articles/the-ocean-is-still-sucking-up-carbon-maybe-more-than-we-think?utm_source=EosBuzz&mkt_tok=OTg3LUlHVC01NzIAAAGEN8w2HVqWkVWOO-lA61d__Wti8IYvcwtHbwHS4-Dm7jRCRP7vxDhVWAr4BFRdQyqVqaeRpAYSERLR6SMEOYfPi11si2PbpBtDx31ozrg&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Climate+Change+Weekly+#436:+Woke+Investing+Gets+Well-Deserved+Pushback?utm_campaign=CCW+436+(4)

Data from both conservation groups and the government show that the polar bear population is roughly five times what it was in the 1950s and three or four times what it was in the 1970s when polar bears became protected under international treaty. At the same tim,e the phytoplankton, which indicates the ecological health of the ocean system, has also increased dramatically in the Arctic Ocean.

Though polar bears were placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act in 2008 over concerns that its Arctic hunting grounds were being reduced by a warming climate, the polar bear population has been steadily increasing over the last three decades.
Hartmann352

 

[Hayseed]

Isn't it amazing how the results are opposite of all these predictions? This warming cycle will give us more animals, more sea life and more plant life. But they still insist the planet is dying. It will take 20 more painful years for this hysteria to die. By then the CO2 will be much higher, from China and the other countries. It should go up more than ever before from fossil emissions. This is reality. There is no possible way for man to prevent it. These fossil burners are/will be built. So the future will show the truth of this matter.

 

[Hayseed]

A few years ago they also found a huge colony of penguins on a deserted S Atlantic island that they were un-aware of. This surprised many researchers.

 

[Hartmann352]

I always hark back to the warmth experienced during the Age of the Dinosaurs.

Note the following article:

Hot-house climate during the Triassic/Jurassic transition: The evidence of climate change from the southern hemisphere (Salt Range, Pakistan)

by ShahidIqbalab, MichaelWagreich, JanIrfan Uc, Wolfram MichaelKuerschner, SusanneGierb and MehwishBibi

The Triassic–Jurassic boundary interval was characterised by the change from warm, semiarid–arid to a hot and humid climate in the Tethyan domain linked to input of greenhouse gases from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) activity and Pangaea breakup. This study provides the very first outcrop evidences of palaeoclimatic evolution during the Triassic–Jurassic boundary interval in the then southern hemisphere, along the eastern margin of Gondwana facing the western Tethys. In the Tethyan Salt Range of Pakistan a succession of Upper Triassic dolomites, green-black shales (Kingriali Formation) to overlying Lower Jurassic quartzose sandstones, shales, laterites and conglomerates (Datta Formation) represents the sedimentary archives of this critical time interval. Bulk and clay mineralogy of the Upper Triassic shales indicate the presence of mainly illite while kaolinite is a minor component. The kaolinite content, a reflection of the mature stage of chemical weathering and hence hot–humid conditions, increases up-section in the overlying shales and sandstone–shale succession. The following laterite–bauxite horizons lack illite and are entirely composed of kaolinite, boehmite and haematite. The bulk rock geochemistry of the succession confirms a similar trend. The Chemical Index of Alteration (CIAmolar) displays an increasing trend from the Upper Triassic (CIA 68–80) to the overlying Lower Jurassic strata (CIA 90–97). The overall results for the succession reveal an increasing chemical maturity trend from Rhaetian to Hettangian thereby supporting a change from warm-arid to a hot and humid palaeoclimate, probably extreme greenhouse conditions. Similar changes in the clay mineralogy and sediment geochemistry across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary have been reported from basins across Europe. Thus the Salt Range provides sections from the southern hemisphere for correlations across the Triassic–Jurassic boundary.

See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921818118301000

The Triassic-Jurassic extinction event was the fourth major global extinction of the Phanerozoic eon. The event occurred around 201 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period (a period that lasted from 252-201 million years ago). The extinction event was a combination of smaller global extinction events that occurred over the last 18 million years of the Triassic period. Over this period, life on both land and ocean was affected. It is estimated that about 50% of the known living species during this period completely disappeared. In total 76% of terrestrial and marine species and 20% of all taxonomic families were wiped out. It is believed that the Triassic-Jurassic extinction allowed the dinosaurs to thrive and dominate the niches left by extinct animals.

Many scientists believe that the events may have resulted from rising sea levels and climate change. The rise in sea levels may have been as a result of the sudden release of carbon dioxide from the volcanic activities as the supercontinent Pangea was rifting. During the rifting of the supercontinent, the global greenhouse effect may have been strengthened, raising the air temperature across the globe.

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See: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-triassic-jurassic-extinction.html

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The age of the dinosaurs was about 250 MYA to 65 MYA,As you can see from the graph, it was generally about 10 deg. C. warmer over that interval than it is today. In fact, today is historically as cold as it has ever been on the planet. So is global warming going to kill us?
John Doner
PH.D in Mathematics (operations research), University of Michigan (Graduated 1972)

There is no “normal temperature.” The Earth’s climate has been through all kinds of changes. It’s been hotter, it’s been colder, and for quite some time when the planet was formed, it didn’t even have an oxygen atmosphere.
Matt Riggsby
MA Archaeology, Boston University

Nd isotope constraints on ocean circulation, paleoclimate, and continental drainage during the Jurassic breakup of Pangea
by GuillaumeDeraa, JonathanPruniera, Paul L.Smith, James W.Haggart, EvgenyPopov, AlexanderGuzhove, MikhailRogov, DominiqueDelsateg, DetlevThies, GillesCuny, EmmanuellePucéat, GuillaumeCharbonnier, GermainBayon

The breakup of Pangea and onset of growth of the Pacific plate led to several paleoenvironmental feedbacks, which radically affected paleoclimate and ocean chemistry during the Jurassic. Overall, this period was characterized by intense volcanic degassing from large igneous provinces and circum-Panthalassan arcs, new oceanic circulation patterns, and changes in heat and humidity transports affecting continental weathering. Few studies, however, have attempted to unravel the global interactions linking these processes over the long-term. In this paper, we address this question by documenting the global changes in continental drainage and surface oceanic circulation for the whole Jurassic period. For this purpose, we present 53 new neodymium* isotope values (εNd(t)) measured on well-dated fossil fish teeth, ichthyosaur bones, phosphatized nodules, phosphatized ooids, and clastic sediments from Europe, western Russia, and North America.

Combined with an extensive compilation of published εNd(t) data, our results show that the continental sources of Nd were very heterogeneous across the world. Volcanic inputs from a Jurassic equivalent of the modern Pacific Ring of Fire contributed to radiogenic εNd(t) values (− 4 ε-units) in the Panthalassa Ocean. For the Tethyan Ocean, the average surface seawater signal was less radiogenic in the equatorial region (− 6.3), and gradually lower toward the epicontinental peri-Tethyan (− 7.4), western Russian (− 7.4) and Euro-Boreal seas (− 8.6). Different Nd sources contributed to this disparity, with radiogenic Nd influxes from westward Panthalassan currents or juvenile volcanic arcs in open oceanic domains, and substantial unradiogenic inputs from old Laurasian and Gondwanan shields for the NW Tethyan platforms. Overall, the εNd(t) values of Euro-Boreal, peri-Tethyan, and western Russian waters varied quite similarly through time, in response to regional changes in oceanic circulation, paleoclimate, continental drainage, and volcanism. Three positive shifts in εNd(t) values occurred successively in these epicontinental seas during the Pliensbachian, in the Aalenian–Bathonian interval, and in the mid-Oxfordian.

The first and third events are interpreted as regional incursions of warm surface radiogenic currents from low latitudes. The Aalenian–Bathonian shift seems linked to volcanic outbursts in the NW Tethys and/or circulation of deep currents resulting from extensional events in the Hispanic Corridor and reduced influences of boreal currents crossing the Viking Corridor. In contrast, the εNd(t) signals decreased and remained very low (< − 8) during the global warming events of the Toarcian and Late Oxfordian–Early Tithonian intervals. In these greenhouse contexts, a latitudinal expansion of humid belts could have extended the drainage pathways toward boreal Nd sources of Precambrian age and increased the supply of very unradiogenic crustal-derived inputs to seawater. Finally, a brief negative εNd(t)excursion recorded in parallel with regional drops in seawater temperature suggests that southward circulation of cold unradiogenic Arctic waters occurred in the NW Tethys in the Callovian–Early Oxfordian. All these results show that changes in surface oceanic circulation resulting from the Pangean breakup could have regionally impacted the evolution of seawater temperatures in the NW Tethys.

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* Neodymium - The most important use for neodymium is in an alloy with iron and boron to make very strong permanent magnets. This discovery, in 1983, made it possible to miniaturise many electronic devices, including mobile phones, microphones, loudspeakers and electronic musical instruments. These magnets are also used in car windscreen wipers and wind turbines.

Neodymium is a component, along with praseodymium, of didymium glass. This is a special glass for goggles used during glass blowing and welding. The element colours glass delicate shades of violet, wine-red and grey. Neodymium is also used in the glass for tanning booths, since it transmits the tanning UV rays but not the heating infrared rays.

Neodymium glass is used to make lasers. These are used as laser pointers, as well as in eye surgery, cosmetic surgery and for the treatment of skin cancers.

Neodymium oxide and nitrate are used as catalysts in polymerisation reactions.

Neodymium was discovered in Vienna in 1885 by Karl Auer. Its story began with the discovery of cerium, from which Carl Gustav Mosander extracted didymium in 1839. This turned out to be a mixture of lanthanoid elements, and in 1879, samarium was extracted from didymium, followed a year later by gadolinium. In 1885, Auer obtained neodymium and praseodymium from didymium, their existence revealed by atomic spectroscopy. Didymium had been studied by Bohuslav Brauner at Prague in 1882 and was shown to vary according to the mineral from which it came. At the time he made his discovery, Auer was a research student of the great German chemist, Robert Bunsen who was the world expert on didymium, but he accepted Auer's discovery immediately, whereas other chemists were to remain sceptical for several years.

A sample of the pure metal was first produced in 1925.

See: https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/60/neodymium

From the above, it can be readily seen that the Earth has been decidedly warmer in prehistoric times for a myriad of reasons. And it also appears, in defense of the statements by Matt Riggsby of Boston University, that the Earth has no "normal" temperature. We, inhabiting the current epoch, need to realize that we are living in the coolest period in the Earth's history. We also need to remember that the few extra degrees of warmth found in the oceans has resulted in a greater beneficial CO2 uptake by phytoplankton.

Every relief system, every fossil and every earthquake results in additions to our informational base, about what we are and where we're going. As believers in science and the scientific method, we need to bear a lot of facts in mind and not to be swayed by junk science and to understand the so called "facts" designed to enable governments to exert greater control over us.

The Earth's temperature, continental drift, plate tectonics, ocean currents and the smallest inhabitants of our water world, all have a part to play in climate. We, as star children, have an insatiable need to explore our Earth and the surrounding space in order to understand the processes which hold sway over our collective futures.
Hartmann352

 

[Hayseed]

Common sense is rare and very refreshing, thank you.