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Subscribe to RSSA recent voyage by the National Geographic Explorer ship to the Arctic captured a female polar bear fighting a male for food. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports on the trip, which allowed experts to evaluate the environmental changes in the Arctic.
Wildlife biologist Ian Bullock is a seasoned visitor to the Arctic, but even he was surprised by what he saw last month: a thin female polar bear, shadowed by her cub, trying to challenge a much bigger, stronger male for food.
It wasn't much of a challenge, but it showed just how desperate she was, Bullock told NBC News on returning from his 10th straight summer cruise to the Arctic.
That desperation, he feels, stems from the fact that the Arctic's summer sea ice — which polar bears using as floating stations from which to hunt seals — has been shrinking over the last few decades due to a warming Arctic, forcing polar bears into smaller areas and more intense competition.
"She was the thinnest female with cub I have ever seen," he said. "She had a single cub which implies she has already lost one other cub this year.
"If she cannot feed, she cannot suckle her cub; with a hungry cub it is even harder for her to hunt effectively, so from what I saw her last cub is at risk and ultimately so is she," he added. "This is why she was challenging a big male with food. She was hungry enough to take a big risk."
In a video filmed during the National Geographic Explorer cruise to the Arctic's Svalbard region, Bullock said it looks like that reduced ice is "really putting the bears under stress."
"The worst thing is when we've encountered bears, we've found them really packed in tight, in the last little areas of fast ice attached to land, or the last little patches of pack ice at sea," said Bullock, who served as a guide on the cruise ship. "And there they've been in competition."
Polar bears are listed as "vulnerable" and in decline by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which estimates the population at no more than 25,000 across the Arctic.
The U.S., which has two Arctic regions where polar bears live, in 2008 listed its population as "threatened".
Last year, researchers cited three incidents where polar bears might even have resorted to cannibalism due to warming and reduced sea ice.
The diminished sea ice also got the attention of the National Geographic Explorer's skipper.
Captain Leif Skog told NBC News that he had e-mailed his boss, Sven Lindblad of Lindblad Expeditions, to describe "a shocking escalation of the reduction of sea ice."
One data graph he monitored daily, showing the total volume of Arctic sea ice, "could be called the death spiral of the Arctic sea ice," he said in his e-mail to Lindblad.
Because of the reduced sea ice, he added, the cruise was able to visit northeast Greenland "a month earlier than what was normal in the past."
"We expected to face some sea ice but everything was gone in the fjords upon our arrival," he added. "The sea water temperature in the fjords was also unbelievably high."
Another expert on the cruise called the outside temperature "surprisingly warm."
"It was T-shirt weather," Paul Berkman, an environmental science professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, told NBC News. Berkman noted two other major Arctic developments over the summer:
- The amount of summer sea ice reached its lowest point in 30 years of records.
- Nearly the entire surface of Greenland's ice cap saw some melting in July, a phenomenon not seen in 150 years of ice records.
Berkman said the polar regions, and the Arctic in particular, show an "amplified response" to a warming climate ahead of other parts of the globe.
That response is twofold, he adds: Arctic temperatures have warmed 3-6 degrees F above the global average, and reduced ice removes huge amounts of reflective white from the sea and reveals a dark sea that absorbs heat.
The sea ice is like "a giant mirror on Earth's surface" he said. "Without summer Arctic sea ice, more heat from the sun is absorbed into the Earth system, which is a feedback that further accelerates warming of our climate."
More world stories from NBC News:
- Protesters storm US Embassy in Yemeni capital
- Libya pledges to help US catch American officials' killers
- US won't rule out Islamist link in killing of US ambassador to Libya
- US Ambassador Chris Stevens was 'courageous and exemplary,' Obama says
- Despite dark past, young Israelis seek new lives in German capital
- No Obama-Netanyahu meeting as rift over Iran widens
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Any idiot can keep repeatedly taking bits and pieces of what they hear and draw their own idiotic conclusions. That's basically how Christians in this country work these days. Bitter, angry right wing people will continue to refuse to believe and cherry pick bogus science, but what they can't do is argue the virtue of pollution.
I've said this before, scientists are not telling us we have to do something, they are telling us we have to stop doing something, i.e. pumping millions of metric tons of artificial pollution into a delicate balance. And yes even the dumbest of you heard in junior high/middle school science that the environment is a delicate balance.
If the earth was a person, the analogy would not be "we have to save that person's life", it's "we have to stop shooting that person". Even better, make it a person we rely upon to survive.
So Mr Superior Bill do you have a degree in science or just a follower in the popular Disney version of ecology. Bet you do not even know the root or the meaning of ecology. Leave the science to scientists and not the popular version of the politicized ones.
typical;
a dem makes original and awesome observations and thinks about how systems relate to one another;
and a repub gives us nothing.... or.... less than nothing
Hey repubs;
take a second and look down the road.
What happens in the future when our food source dries up?
Do you think we are immune to the changes ahead?
You wouldn't recognize a clue if it slapped you upside the head.
Ben Bernanke has looked down that road and said there was a fiscal cliff there. Obama's new motto is Forward over the cliff with more borrowing, more entitliements, more executive orders bypassing congress, more government rules from the agency heads, and more radical czars. Do you think you are immune to the economic collapse Shallow?
I think that there are millions of jobs waiting in home-grown energy sources (such as pellets for stoves) and fuel-efficient systems (such as hybrid cars); and those are only the beginning;
but we need to look down the road, and not just in front of us
So a teapublican walks into a mine carrying a cage with canaries. The canaries all die 100 feet in. The teapublican says, sad, poor canaries, and continues walking deeper into the mine. Wake up!!
AWSOME POST!
but you were too kind;
the repubs would first make fun of the canaries and mock the people noting that we could follow
The liberal then pushes for a law to prevent anyone from keeping canaries in a cage and a ban on any animal in a cage and to stop manufacture of cages. There is a difference between intelligence and a smart ass Bluecat. That is why smug know-it-all liberals are called elitists. Beware of people that think they know all the answers and want to force everyone to follow their version of truth. Bet Bluecat has never even taken a course in ecology and is just a Disney emotional tree hugger.
UncleSam, you seem to think you know all the answers too. Come to think of it, we all do. But that's why we pay scientists to study things objectively. And most of them do that quite well.
First Uncleknowitall, I have been following the issue of climate change since the mid 1980's. I have taken many Master's Degree courses at the University of Pittsburgh GSPIA School in environmental science and economics. But no matter, I believe that the 97% plus Climatologists who study this topic full time know what they are talking about when they describe climate change driven by manmade gases. As opposed to Fox News politico's who are just trying to get ratings.
Teapublicans believe:
1. Climatologists do not know about climate.
2. Biologists do not understand evolution.
3.MD's do not understand women's physiology.
4. Economists do not understand The Economy.
Many posts on this site made lite of this story and focused solely on Polar Bears. People on the right just don't seem to want to understand basic research in this area.
meanwhile as we argue about what political party is to blame (they both are, but yeah one does seem much more ignorant than the other) we all forget to blame god! what's he been doing lately? NOTHING. certainly not helping the 4,100 children who die on this planet DAILY due to lack of clean water. clean water? god can produce water? USELESS!
we need a new god that can actually do something helpful
So a guy on a tour ship sees two polar bears fighting over food and that means the polar bear is going extinct. That is evidence for global warming? Male polar bears are known to kill cubs and eat them, guess it is a guy thing with polar bears. Male lions when they take over a pride will kill all the young. There is no evidence of any kind one way or the other in this article, it is just speculative opinion. It is very unfortunate that ecology and climate science have been politicized. The whole dogma of science is to have research experiments based with controls producing verifiable data to support or not support a hypothesis. The pollution of politics has sullied the research and conclusions of too many scientists and the reputation of science suffers. This article has no basis for any scientific conclusion. Science should stay out of politics. This kind of article is why so many people are sceptical and do not trust science.
FOXpublicans are the ones politicizing science. These researchers are spending their life studying these issues. To think you know more than they is the height of arrogance grounded in ignorance.
I would like all of you people that believe we are killing the planet please go back to your high school science books and read the chapter on NATURAL SELECTION.
And what is your point? Species go extinct naturally, so it is OK to kill them off? People die naturally, too. Does that make murder OK?
Wow, animals fighting over food! Who would have ever thought that might happen. Guess what folks, ice melts, animals fight for food, it happens whether humans are involved or not. Political affiliations can't stop it or start it. For those of you who are such die hard evolutionists, what are you griping about? Shouldn't the polar bears evolve to survive? If not who are we to say which species go extinct and which do not? How do you know that by polar bears dying off, another species will not emerge or excel. Al Gore spouts off about carbon footprints and global warning while heating and cooling and electrifying his mansions, globe-trotting in a jet, riding in a gas burning limo to events, etc. "Victims ,aren't we all"
Evolution doesn't say anything about what should happen. It doesn't care whether we push a species toward extinction or not. That is a judgment call we can only make for ourselves.
Really? Because I thought "survival of the fittest" was the basis of Darwin's theory of evolution. That being the case then the fact that the polar bears have not evolved to warming climates (natural or man-made) means they clearly are not the fittest species and are not destined to survive. Besides, jock59801, I never said evolution cared what we did, it doesn't care what polar bears do either.
In response to:
Max^108
Actually, polar bear numbers have been increasing steadily:
A hungry bear is an angry bear, and availability of food is pretty much the only thing that is holding them back right now.
MAX -
you are absolutely correct, Polar Bear numbers are definitely on the rise!! Just one problem - On average they are 20% lighter in weight than they were 15 years ago! So you may ask why then is there an increase in numbers? Its evolution! When a species is threatened, and its a scientific fact, evolution takes over.. and numbers of that species will spontaneously increase to help save the species in a last ditch effort!!
To other ManMade GW deniers -
GW is NOT a good thing.. Warming of the planet does NOT mean more food, more farming, more habitable land. It's the opposite. It means more droughts, less hospitable land and more problems. The balance has been shifted. Nature can no longer absorb and recyle the Co2 that is emitted into the air. Thus accumulates year after year after year! If you don't think man is significant enough to change the atmosphere, then ponder this - It took approx. 1 billion years for our atmosphere and ozone layer to evolve, but it took MAN just 30 years to put a hole in it the size of Europe using Hairspray!!!!!! freaking hairspray!!! a small can, used for seconds at a time in just 30 years!! and relate that too carbon emissions where 24 hours a day, 7 days a week we are emitting co2 into the air, non stop. everything we touch, we use, we eat comes from Carbon emissions.. the computer you are using, the clothes on yoru back to the dinner you are going to eat tonight.. all come from fossil fuels!!
So, if a can of hair spray can put a hole in the ozone layer, what do you think all the cars, trucks, factories and homes emitting co2 into the atmosphere is going to do it?? NOTHING?? If you think nothing you are just in a complete different, or have a different sense of reality than I..
Our cities are covered in the smog we created. yet that's not enough of a tail tell sign we are damaging the atmosphere. we have caused acidic rain, and that's not enough proof. we can pollute waterways and our drinking water but when it comes to polluting our atmosphere, its suddenly a conspiracy!
when humans have a fever of 100degrees it shows you how fragile a human is, that just 1 degree is cause for alarm. same can be said if you were in a container and the Co2 levels were increased by just a few percent, you will DIE in a very short time! As the atmosphere isn't just some open system that can be filled with anything to eternity without repricussions.. its just an example, or analogy if you will of how fragile we all really are and senstive to such changes!
I have doubts about the observer's hypotheses:
a) How does he/she know this female had a second cub that died ? Polar bears often have only one cub per season. (Sounds a little like fear-mongering.)
b) She may have been defending her cub, since males will often kill cubs. They do this because a female will not go into heat again, until she is not caring for a cub and consequently will not breed.
I just wish people would get how mother nature works and how wild animals survive.. Polar bears as all bears do, dont live together. They tolerate one another to a point.. When a mother has cubs, they will run off or fight to the death any males. Because males will make a meal out of the young. Just because someone takes a video, such as this, does not mean ALL the ice is going to melt away. Global warming.. omg!
OK. Yhe ideology behinfd this is to dump billions of dollars towards more research, right? That will make the ice thicker or whatever. This planet has survived all kinds of drama and stress way before we ever showed up and it has survived without politicians telling the world that we are the bad guys of the planet. We are responsible for everything that goes wrong, including the one bear captured in this photo. This bear could be nursed down so much that she will show signs of weight loss. It happens to does all the time when they are nursing their fawns. Animals are not the gauge for global warming. People looking for job security are the reason for global warming. Creative they are. This planet is constantly undergoing changes with or without our presence. They think everyone is stupid enough to believe that everything they say is gospel. NOT!
No, the idea is that if something is going on that you don't completely understand, it might be wise to learn more about it. There are those that prefer to just deny everything, but those are not people we have to take seriously.
The arguments against runaway clamite change go something like this: "It's warmed before and it'll do it again, it's just a natural cycle!" Well enough, but consider this comparison - you are in a car and you notice that it's accellerating. Then you try to figure out why. Is it because you took your foot off the brake and slightly depressed the gas pedal or is it because a semi truck going 75 mile an hour just rear-ended you.
Now both examples result in accelleration, the first example is akin to the rates of change for most warming and cooling cycles (Yes, there are a few exceptions, so don't jump down my throat). The second situation is much more like the one we are in now. The rate of accelleration makes all the difference between a leisurely ride along the boulevard and a fiery conflagration under the wheels of a truck.
As to the veracity of scientists, I take severe umbrage with those who say scientists are only in it for the money. I have met and known thousands of scientists in many discipliones and can honestly say that I can count the mercenary ones on one hand. I would bet that the total salaries of all the climate scientists in the world doesn't add up to the profit that Exxon-Mobil makes in one month. If you follow the money, who has a bigger stake in proving or disproving the issue?
wow some of you are really stupid! put down the bible and open a 5th grade science book. do you people live in a home? geez. water your crops with gatorade much?
Man caused Global warming, Oh boy!
Now lets go back in time to the last warming trend the Earth went thru. Did all of Europe stop burning carbon based fuels? I wonder if they crashed their economy? To bad we dont have records from back then to find out how man fixed the climate that time. Since we are the only thing that can effect it.
Nobody has ever said we are the only thing that can affect the climate. EVER.
Man doesn't really respect the earth and and all its natural wonders that much.
People may be lead in the wrong direction....there IS research and data out there that suggest polar bears are doing fine, maybe even better than fine.
Is the fact the male had food evidence everything is ok? Maybe the sow is a poor hunter.
Laughsatinsults,
I am a biologist and I know very well how plants use CO2, but I fail to see why you think it is relevant to the debate. Of course CO2 is essential to life as we know it. But we have also known for 150 years that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and therefore effects the climate. The question is why do you not know this yet?
Laughs, greenhouse gasses have such a profound effect on the climate that life on earth would be impossible without them. They increase the average temperature by 33°C. About 10-25% of that is due to CO2.
What happened to halfwit? I didn't get to see his amazing posts. Was he, in the end, proven the REAL half wit?
99.9% of all species that ever lived are extinct, all mans fault, all global warming, right right !!
Since nobody ever lcaimed it was all man's fault, what is your point?
Jesus should just come and part the sea so the bears can walk and hunt on solid ground.
Good point. But Jesus would be pissed if he knew you thought he didn't have the power to part the sea. He would tell God and then the lightning bolt will come.
plork- I have to hand it to you, you know your religion. I'm duly impressed.
Are you saying the jesus would be sent to him room because he failed the sea parting class?
As regards the female polar bear, is this ever normal behavior? I readily admit I am not an expert on their behavior. However, one observation of an angry polar bear momma is hardly conclusive of anything. That would be like judging all human parenting skills by watching one parent deliver a spanking to a child one time. Also, was this animal sick, diseased or injured? It says she was thin, but nothing else. Wild animals do sometimes develop afflictions that prevent them from hunting. Without more information or context, I can't draw any conclusions from this.
Of course this couldn't be the female defending her cub against the male. Male polar bears are notorious for attacking and killing young cubs. Nah...it has to be global warming.
We all know there is no other possible explanation for this. Polar bears are not the farthest swimming land mammal on the planet, and they have no way to get seals unless they can float around on chunks of ice. Do you really think that polar bears just hang out on the edge of the ice and wait for it to break off so they can float around and wait for a seal? Get a grip people, the earth might be getting warmer, but this is not the warmest it has ever been, not even in the last 200 years.
Actually, it is the warmest it has been since at least the 13th century and possibly more like 8000 years ago.
LOL. You are entertaining; I'll give you that.
Hey, Jock. I have to hand it to you. You have great patience and a very thick skin. We've jousted on these vines before, but never to this level. I'd say you are at least a bronze age knuckle dragging parasite. :)
to laughstatleftistshalfwits... aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA you absolute insane bafoon!! Jock is right you halfwit! the 1980s were hotter than the 1970s, the 1990s were hotter than the 1980s and now the 2000s were hotter than the 1990s.. and guess what the 2010s are already warmer than the 2000s.. I LOVE IT when people make an ass out of themselves poking fun at someone else for thinking they mispoke, when in fact they did NOT!! A cooling trend??? Are you that ignorant or just naive?? What kind of cooling trend is this where the ice in the north pole is nearly all gone during the summer??!! OMG the sheer stupidity of people in this world is baffling.. not to you exactly b/c you must have some sense of logic to comprehend the sensitivity of our planet and how easy it is to damage things within it... but what cooling trend are you rerffering too?? The blizzards we may get sometimes? some areas of the earth maybe cooler, but the worlds temperatures are definitely warmer!! this is an absolutte fact. do the math yourself .... I hate anyone affiliated with a political party. it disgusts me thinking that people think their party is any better than the other just by your 'title' alone. it shows you have zero accountability, zero sensibility and zero logic.. I think your moral compass is leaning a bit to far right these days.. Oh lemme guess, humans are not significant enough to change the atmosphere in anyway.. b/c the atmosphere has been around a few billioin years and man can't do anythign in such a short time... but Hairspray, can put a hole into the Ozone layer in 30 years the size of Europe, but excess CO2 is doing nothing to the Atmosphere, right? total illogic. makes no sense we aren't doing anything..
As far a scientists being mercenary, the fact is that they live off grants and institutions to do their research. If you propose to do research on a subject that is not supported by the people who control the purse strings you will not get funded, you will lose your university position. The left wing governmental/university system believes global warming due to man made causes is real and will not fund research that has a stated goal of looking into other causes. Only after years of counter evidence is collected by independent skeptics will there be any hope of change. For a long time no one believed that germs caused disease. Many people believe that vaccines caused autism despite a complete lack of scientific evidence supporting that assumption. Silicon breast implants were believed to cause health issues in women. There are many "facts" that were supported by the scientific community until the evidence became overwhelming clear that those facts were wrong. Global warming due to man made CO2 will eventually become one of those discredited facts.
We have known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas for over 150 years, and the evidence for its role in climate change is increasingly strong. Granting agencies can influence the trends in what gets studied, but they can't create a global "conspiracy" to uphold the opposite of the truth. It just doesn't work that way.
"greenhouse gases" have very little effect on the environment."
LOL. Um, you do know what the definition of a greenhouse gas is, don't you? Greenhouse gases are defined by their effect on the climate. Something we have known for 150 years.
@Laugh, your lack of knowledge on what constitutes pollution is sad. Almost anything in excess can be pollution. Carbon dioxide is used by plant in the process of photosynthesis, but it also traps heat. When the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, more and more heat is trapped. At that point, carbon dioxide becomes a pollutant.
@Laugh, for us to accept your contention that the universally accepted fact that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas or that part of the definition of pollution is not something that there is an excess of, you are going to have to post some evidence. Fallacious arguments disparaging others will not do it. The burden of proof is in your court since you are the one who wants to convince us that the prevailing wisdom is wrong. Also, you are going to have to explain how the greenhouse gases of Venus (including carbon dioxide) is not the reason for the temperatures there (and no, you can not use its distance from the Sun since Mercury's surface temperature would need to be much higher than Venus's surface temperature if this were the case.)
Laugh - you can't be this blind and naive, can you?? it's not saying it as an insult, b/c clearly you do have vast amounts of knowledge and ability.. but when it comes to this, you are misguided, misfocused or just outta touch... You really think this is some huge conspiracy perpetrated by elitist to make money???? That's as crazy as no planes flying into the WTC on 9/11.. it is utter ridicilousness! (and that's not even an word that's how silly it sounds..) .. to actually think this was some hoax, you have to be in a different reality than I... Maybe you think everything is some hoax.. by your title, it seems you don't expand further than just one ideology.. you dont steer from your core beliefs b/c you may feel they are solid...
this tells me you have faith in just one party. another red flag b/c all the issues we face are the result and failures of both parties, yet you think yours has the answer.. someone who doesn't believe in man made, or in part man made GW is in a total different reality. they think its illogical that man can change the temperatures on a global scale.. but in fact, we can put a hole in the ozone layer using hairspray the size of Europe in just 30 years!! the atmosphere took billions of years to evolve, and in 30 years using small cans of hairspray in few second bursts, we degraded the entire ozone layer by 15%! and you think we are not significant? Then what do you think all this excess CO2 is going to do that accumulates in our atmosphere year after year after year??? believe what you wanna believe b/c it actually doesn't matter.. there are enough logical people on this planet to know we are in part largely to blame and we will do something about it while you sit on the sidelines and complain for the rest ofyour life!
Go to the homepage for nbcnews.com and look at the picture that goes with this article there. What is that thing in the lower left hand corner of the picture? It almost looks like a human head.
Its t-shirt weather in Greenland...that is about as scientific as any of the other "facts" that are usually presented to blaim the poor humans again for a warm summer or a snowy-winter or an active hurrican season or the lack of storms this season.
Much of North America has been hot since February and that is due in good measure to the solar storms this year. Remember all the news stories about cell phone and satelite tV interuptions this spring. Remember how the "Northern Lights" were photographed from places like Utah and I think even Arizona this summer?
Mars has global warming too, probably due to those evil human rovers.
LOL