Global warming effects to wipe out Alaska’s polar bears in 50 years

Fri, September 7, 2007
Posted in Alaska News, Top Stories

Polar bear on sea ice
Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The best guess of federal scientists is that polar bears will disappear from the Alaska coast within the next 50 years. A bombshell set of nine studies ordered by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to help him decide whether to put the polar bear on the Endangered Species List was released to the press today at a national news teleconference. The results are significant and, in the words of the scientists, “robust.”

Steve Heimel, APRN - Anchorage

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2 Comments to “Global warming effects to wipe out Alaska’s polar bears in 50 years”

mpb on September 8, 2007 at 1:36 pm

This is one of those sets of studies that needs to be carefully scrutinized as to which variables were examined and what the assumptions are.

It could be the bears get creamed on the highway,
“But after being trapped and flown more than 300 kilometres from Fort McPherson to the coast, it seems the bear simply turned around and started walking south again.”
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/09/01/polar-bear.html

or folks on the Yukon Delta got mad at them for eating the moose swimming in the ocean (we had a polar bear down here on the coast a few years ago.)

Polar bears won’t “revert” to grizzlies but I wouldn’t write them off just yet. However, competition with grizzlies in adapting to the same changing environment, e.g., as they do around Prudhoe, may be fierce.
Anthropology in a climate of change, war, and internecine environments « Biocultural Science & Management on November 29, 2007 at 3:34 pm

[...] I think if Governor Palin actually had a scientific advisor to her environmental sub-cabinet especially from rural Alaska or if Landrieu and Stevens could earmark enough funding out of the millions for the Corps mission in Alaska to pay for scientific support for the Unorganized Borough [over half of Alaska’s area, 970,500 km² (374,712 square miles), an area larger than France and Germany combined], this actually would be more effective than the endless photo-op and news stories about polar bears without ice. [...]