Climate threat to polar bears: despite facts, doubters remain

So far, the most important impact of global warming sceptics on the polar bear issue is their influence over a key Canadian scientific committee that advises the government on endangered species. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada decided last year that, despite ample scientific evidence that polar bear populations are facing a grave threat, there was no need to change the status of the creature from “special concern” to threatened.

Their decision was based on a report co-authored by Mitch Taylor, a former polar bear biologist for the Nunavut government in Canada whose study did not link the future decline of polar bears to a loss of sea ice. Taylor is a global warming sceptic who has criticised the US decision to list the species as threatened, has stated that CO2 emissions are not causing Arctic warming, and has claimed that - other than the Arctic - the globe has been cooling since 2000. All of his contentions are contradicted by facts or disputed by the vast majority of climate scientists and polar bear experts.

What most concerns Canadian polar bear experts is that by failing to acknowledge the threat, the Canadian government has not adopted a management plan to help polar bears adjust to a warming world. That plan could include controls on Arctic development, reduced hunting of polar bears, and pollution reduction.

No one is disputing that polar bears have survived periods of warming that occurred during the last interglacial period, about 120,000 years ago. The issue, however, is a red herring. The maximum temperatures of the last interglacial were roughly 2 degrees F warmer than now. Given the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures are currently rising, the Earth could easily undergo 3 to 4 degrees F of warming by the end of this century - significantly greater than anything polar bears have experienced during their evolutionary history.

Derocher also noted that the current situation is much different. “There were no people back then hunting bears,” he says. “There was no oil and gas development, no shipping or pollution. People weren’t pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like they are today. You can’t compare the situation today to the one 125,000 or 250,000 years ago and suggest that bears will do just fine.”

Said Stirling, “Given all the controversy, it might sound complicated, but it isn’t: without sea ice to hunt seals, polar bears are in big trouble.”