Polar Bears

The push is on amongst the alarmists to "save the polar bears". As if they needed saving, polar bears have been around for thousands of years. Polar bear fossils have been dated back to the last interglacial period, so they went through at least on full glaciation cycle.

Let's get one thing straight from the start, polar bears are apex predators, weighing in a 1200 pounds, and can kill humans with a flick of their paw. They are not warm cuddly animals, you approach a polar bear at your own peril. I have seen full grown polar bears in the wild, up close and personal, and they are to be respected. If you go out in polar bear land, I would recommend a rifle of .338 magnum or larger, for your own protection. Polar bears are great swimmers, often swimming 100 miles in open water, so don't think just because you are on an ice flow, there will be no polar bears around,

A short history lesson ... Polar Bears population took a real nose dive in numbers when the high powered rifle was introduced to the native people surrounding the Arctic Ocean. They were shooting them for food and clothing, the skins are very valuable on the world market and for indigenous use. If hunting continued at the accelerated pace, the polar bear population would have very likely been decimated, and may have even forced them to extinction. Hunting became regulated, the slaughter was stopped, the polar bears have recovered about 3X from the low of the 1970 time frame.

Help for the dwindling polar bear population came in 1973, in the form of treaty restricting hunting of polar bears. In 1973, the "International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears" was signed by all five nations whose territory is inhabited by polar bears. The Governments of Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America, signed on. Also known as the Oslo Agreement, it was a rare case of international cooperation during the Cold War.

Today there are even more regulations, for instance, rules restricting indigenous people taking polar bears and so on. Bag limits are now strictly limited and monitored worldwide. The subsistence and market hunting had likely reduced the polar bear population to under 15,000 animals by the time the 1973 accord was signed. Today the polar bear has rebounded to around 45,000 animals worldwide, and it is still increasing. A success story of taking action and restricting hunting to save a species.

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Now comes the global warming hoaxers and a scheme to shut down energy production in the US. The alarmists want the recovered polar bear listed as an endangered species. It's an ingenious scheme, polar bears use the Arctic ice to hunt seals, the ice is melting, no seal hunting for polar bears, no polar bears. Any activity that might effect global warming, oil wells, shipping and such, would be litigated and stopped. So the plan goes.

One minor problem for the schemers, the ice in the Arctic has been far lesser extent than it is today, and the polar bears happily survived. You knew that, right?

Yes that's right, the conifer forests, called "Boreal Forests" which encircle the Arctic, once grew right up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The area is now barren tundra since it's now too cold. But the records of the trees that were, are buried in the tundra soils. Yes and this includes ANWR, where hardly nothing lives and nothing except tourists go. In 2005 there was a sturdy done by a group of scientists, the results were published in a paper The work “Last interglacial Arctic warmth confirms polar amplification of climate change” was published in Quaternary Science Reviews. The paper showed that the Boreal Forests in many areas, grew right up to the edge of the Arctic Ocean. In fact, across most of northern Russia, they report that the Boreal Forests were displaced northward by as much as 400 to 1000 km.

Deduction is your friend -- It's obvious it was warmer on the Arctic Ocean shores than today, and it's also obvious the polar bear survived, torching the lie that the Arctic ice melting has anything to do with polar bear survival. The idea of modern Arctic warming in excess of that of the rest of Earth is not new or unnatural – Arctic warming clearly defined the climate of the last interglacial period many years ago. The polar bears, they simply adapted to the changing climate and thrived.

It's settled science, since the scientific evidence PROVES the fact that the trees grew next to the Arctic Ocean. End of story, which is why you hardly ever hear anyone talk about it any more.

Taken as it's total, the polar bears now have a much harder time hunting and surviving than they did when the lush Boreal Froests grew to the Arctic Ocean shore. Back then it was easy living, if you were a polar bear.