Young activists like Ollie Nancarrow from the UK need to find another symbol for their messages of climate change.
Polar bears are thriving despite recent dramatic declines in summer sea ice: they have not been devastated as predicted by declining summer sea ice blamed on climate change.
Anyone who uses a polar bear image to further a message of climate change, as Ollie has done, is simply out of touch with reality.
Here are the facts, references provided.
In September 2007, Arctic sea ice hit a low never before seen since 1979 and panic set in about the future of polar bears.
Biologists from the US Geological Survey had just insisted that when sea ice declined 42% below 1979 levels, which was expected at mid-century, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears would be gone (Amstrup et al. 2007; USGS 2007) – a drop from about 24,500 to only 8,100.
Summer sea ice had declined to the dreaded 2050 levels decades before it was expected and has been at those levels ever since (Crockford 2019; Perovich et al. 2018; Stroeve et al. 2007), as the graph below shows.
Below is a NASA sea ice map showing the extent at September 2012 was ‘reduced by nearly 50%’ compared to 1979.
Given the state of the summer sea ice since 2007, there should have been thousands of bodies every year.
USGS biologists predicted that all bears in the green and purple areas of the Arctic shown in the map below would be gone – extirpated – when mid-century-like sea ice levels prevailed:
We should have witnessed a catastrophe but nothing like that ever happened!
Polar bear numbers have not plummeted as predicted.
Instead, even the most conservative estimates show a slight increase since 2005: from about 24,500 bears to 26,000 in 2015 (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2017, 2019a; Regehr et al. 2016; Wiig et al. 2015).
A more plausible estimate that accounts for new estimates published since 2015 and for subpopulations that have never been surveyed or recently updated shows a moderate increase to about 39,000 bears (Crockford 2019b).
Polar bears simply don’t cut it as an icon for climate change.
Eighteen-year-old activist Ollie Nancarrow has his facts wrong: a polar bear is one of the least appropriate symbols of climate change he could have chosen for his insulting lawn-mower message to US President Donald Trump, as reported by the BBC (3 June 2019), headline below:
From this Bishop’s Stortford Independent report on the incident (3 June 2019), my bold:
“Alongside the greeting “Oi Trump”, the teenager – who is taking A Levels in art, product design and business studies at The Bishop’s Stortford High School – has crafted a cock and balls.
This is followed by the message “Climate Change is Real” and accompanied by a polar bear.
Ollie, who runs online marketplace http://www.born-eco.com, connecting buyers with eco-friendly traders, said: “Donald Trump and his denial of climate change are not welcome and I want him to be fully aware of that when he flies in to Stansted on Monday.”
…
Visitors to Ollie’s Born Eco website are greeted with the message: “Join a marketplace connecting you with eco-friendly traders, keeping human connection at the heart of any sale.
“We have a goal, a goal to raise awareness of the need to become a more sustainable society. Together we can make a difference. Every eco-friendly purchase, every plastic bottle refused, every paper straw used brings us one step closer to achieving that goal.”
Read more and references at Polar Bear Science
Turning this eater of baby seals and goslings into the mascot of the Global Warming/Climate Change hoax the Eco-Freaks can always get some Hollywood celeberty like Robert Redford to do fake ads for them and the suckers who send them money so Greenpeace can keep their ships fueled with Fossil Fuels
Don’t forget, polar bears also eat men.
Using 1979 as a base line for sea ice comparisons is one of the ways the climate change movement is dishonest. That year the ice was at its maximum, so any other year in comparison would appear to be even lower. This is typical behavior of the climate change movement. The ocean acidification report picked 1988 as their base line. That year the oceans were further away from being acid than they had been in decades.
Be it polar bears or people, these eco freaks are grossly under estimating the ability to adapt. There have been warm periods in the past and the polar bears are still here. With noting more than Stone Age technology mankind has adapted to the freezing environment of Alaska to the scorching deserts of the American South West.