What the hell is up with Greenpeace—and with the U.S., for that matter? According to Macleans, the U.S., once a strong supporter of banning trade in polar bear parts (I assume it’s the skin that’s the valuable “part”), has now dropped its support, and Greenpeace doesn’t care. Remember, these bears are on the wane.
Inuit hunters may have just brought down their biggest quarry ever.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to stop pushing for an international ban on the trade in polar bear parts — an effort that has been strenuously opposed by Inuit and the Canadian government.
The U.S. agency has been trying for years to have skins and other parts put in the same category as elephant ivory. It sponsored votes at the last two meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that would have prevented Inuit hunters from selling hides or teeth even after eating the meat.
Late last week, the service quietly dropped its campaign.
“Though we remain concerned about the commercial use of polar bear hides as an additional threat to the species, we are not pursuing increased … protections at this time,” says a statement on the service’s website.
“We are putting our resources into working in collaboration with other polar bear range states to address climate change and mitigate its impacts on the polar bear as the overwhelming threat to the long-term future of the species.”
The decision was immediately welcomed by Natan Obed, head of the national Inuit group Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
The sad part is that the U.S. was, until now, on the winning side:
The U. S. service abandoned the campaign even as it appeared to be winning.
The European Union went from supporting Canada at the 2010 convention vote to abstaining in 2013. Major countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom opposed Canada’s position.
The U.S. motion was co-sponsored in 2013 by Russia, which argued that poachers from that country were using Canadian bear permits to launder their own illegal kills.
The Americans were also supported by groups such as Humane Society International, the Natural Resources Defence Council and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. They all warned that allowing Canada to continue trading in the bears was contributing to more hunting at a time when their sea-ice habitat is shrinking because of climate change.
Global concern was strong enough that an international review was conducted in 2014 into Canada’s bear management.
So what happened? Apparently it’s pressure from the Inuit, a fear of crossing a First Nations people, and a lack of support from other organizations, including Greenpeace. The Inuit can shoot the bears for “subsistence hunting,” which includes the meat (not very good, I’d guess), and, more important, the pelts, which can go for up to $10,000 each. But they can also sell licenses to other hunters for trophy hunting, and that’s even more reprehensible. Frankly, I’d say the life of a bear provides more well being to the world than a dead bear does to an Inuit. They were here before us, and I suspect that if trading were suspended, the Inuit would survive. It’s not clear about the bears, though, for they’re already going down the tubes due to climate change and loss of sea ice.
This is of course a judgment call: many of you may hold the economic welfare of the Inuit as being more important than the welfare of the bears. But the bears don’t get a say in this; they were here before we were; and under the Endangered Species act they’re listed as “threatened.” Can we please not kill them for their fur—or any other reason?
And look at who’s in favor of the carnage:
Canada — along with Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, influential scientific bodies and other NGOs — said the Canadian hunt is sustainable and that the real threat to the bears is from climate change. Hunting quotas for populations in particularly unstable habitats, such as those along Hudson Bay, have been significantly reduced.
Environment Canada reports that about 300 Canadian polar bears enter the international market every year. That figure has not changed much in recent years and represents about two per cent of the total Canadian population of about 16,000.
Given their coming decline due to global warming, any slaughter is too much!
Paul Watson, an environmental activist and a founder of Greenpeace, posted an angry reaction on his Facebook page. It’s public, and long, so I’ll just put the first bit here:
And let’s have a look at how it goes (pictures from the Mother Jones article linked to above):
Polar bear skin rug, anyone?
I think I’ll skip lunch, now.
“Frankly, I’d say the life of a bear provides more well being to the world than a dead bear does to an Inuit.”
Agree.
Thanks for posting.
Cultural relativism gone even madder.
My loyalty is to my species. But the permanent loss of a fellow predator makes all people poorer.
I agree Yakaru. This is so disgusting I’m at a loss for words.
🙁
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright…
so long large mammals of my planet.😂
Greenpeace has been on the run from political correctness since the early 1990s.
I cannot immediately find the reference, but I believe that eleven out of thirteen polar bear populations have increased dramatically in the last few decades: because of restrictions on hunting. Apparently, climate change has had little or no discernible effect on the overall numbers.
checkout polarbearscience.com (Susan Crockford’s blog) for factual information about polar bear populations.
As for GreenPeace they’re making far too much money pushing CO2 limitation (on whose behalf one is forced to wonder) to be concerned with conservation of any kind these days.
I don’t believe that you’re going to find much “factual information” at Susan Crockford’s site. She is retained by the Heartland Institute – http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/07/10/daily-caller-wants-you-to-know-polar-bears-thre/204353
Proving what exactly? Does Dr Crockford’s research conflict with you own?
No, I don’t work on polar bears. However, I have done work on populations of wild animals, which is more than Crockford has ever done. My main point, though, is that, aside from her lack of experience in the field that she so persistently criticizes, she’s a shill for a climate denialist site.
Climate change hasn’t stopped, Mr Bond. Just give it time, that, plus increased hunting, will eradicate them eventually. Us, too, no doubt, but no fair that we take them down,as
well.
Climate change will never stop. The relevant questions are to what extent it is caused by increasing CO2, and to what extent that increase is deleterious or beneficial.
The answers are that yes, it is caused primarily be increased CO2 levels, and yes, it will be very deleterious to humans and to a lot of other species on Earth. And polar bears are listed as threatened because there are a lot less of them than there used to be. Their populations have not rebounded.
Here is a suggestion: superimpose the plots of temperature and CO2 from 1860 to 2015, and estimate the correlation. Even the IPCC will only commit to “more that half” the warming being caused by CO2.
Even the IPCC will only commit to “more that half” the warming being caused by CO2.
Where is your source for this claim? The only IPCC documents that make anything remotely similar to this statement actually phrase it this way:
The evidence for human influence on the climate system has grown since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.
Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf (Page 5)
It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.
Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WGIAR5_SPM_brochure_en.pdf (Page 15)
Also source: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/docs/WGI_AR5_2013_Poster.pdf (look for the box entitled “Human influence on the climate system is clear”)
The latter also provides the necessary response to your second sentence:
Here is a suggestion: superimpose the plots of temperature and CO2 from 1860 to 2015, and estimate the correlation.
If you look at the table entitled “Attributed contributions to observed warming (1951 to 2010)” in the poster, it should be clear to what extent it is caused by CO2 and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in general.
The other sources also spell out, albeit in relatively restrained language, the consequences of global warming, and the ratio of risk to benefit is weighted on the deleterious side, especially (if ironically) for people least responsible for the change. The two main consequences, though, are that it will jeopardize a good chunk of global food production and significantly increase the risk of extreme weather patterns.
You have quoted the IPCC statements that I remembered. Please explain why your comments in bold type contradict what I said. In addition, the IPCC assignations of confidence limits on their assessments are not based on any statistical calculations, but are subjective views, expressed as they are in a rather ineffectual attempt to seem mathematically credible.
“Please explain why your comments in bold type contradict what I said.”
Quite apart from the fact that the exact wording is conspicuously different (CO2 =/= greenhouse gases combined, for example), the spirit and context of the phrasing in each case is antithetical. Your portrayal of said phrasing suggested that the “more than half” was “only” what the IPCC would “commit to”, suggesting the evidence was rather weak on that front, whereas the IPCC’s original context made it clear that the correlation and evidence was statistically robust and to an exacting degree (see below). It is, in short, reminiscent of a common “skeptic” tactic of misinterpreting statistical qualification as meaningless hedging.
The rest of your comment, dismissing the measurement as “subjective”, is misguided. If it helps you to understand the use of language, then this note on the Synthesis Report should clear up the issue, especially this paragraph:
Where uncertainty in specific outcomes is assessed using expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence (e.g. observations or model results), then the following likelihood ranges are used to express the assessed probability of occurrence: virtually certain >99%; extremely likely >95%; very likely >90%; likely >66%; more likely than not > 50%; about as likely as not 33% to 66%; unlikely <33%; very unlikely <10%; extremely unlikely <5%; exceptionally unlikely <1%.
Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mainssyr-introduction.html
Moreover, the physical basis for the IPCC report is freely available here, detailing the evidence behind the high confidence rating: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/. Chapter 8 in particular should be of interest to you, especially 8.7. on Emissions Metrics. It also contains citations if you are keen enough to seek out the original papers.
“Ineffectual attempt” is not the correct way to describe it, and frankly I wonder where you got the strange idea that the science has not been “directed to that”, especially considering you seem at least nominally aware of the policy statement.
As for the “confirming a preconceived hypothesis” line, this is frankly a foolish remark. Multiple competing hypotheses have already been tested and measured (e.g. solar forcing, volcanic activity, etc.), and are described in the report. Asserting otherwise in a “should” statement does little for your credibility on this subject.
Global C02 is human caused – we know that the massive amounts of fossil fuel we use and have used release C02 and that the environment has feedback loops (I’m NOT talking Gaia, I’m talking great systems like drying makes fires more likely etc)
Moreover its NOT beneficial. It makes everything more extreme and unpredictable – big droughts some places, rain falling as floods in others – most places hotter – a few colder – a very few better. Moreover More C02 reduces a plants ability to photosynthesise and produces more woody growth rather than something we (humans) can use. Hence GM technology being used to try and grow things that are still efficient photosynthesizers in high C02 environment
I need to clarify on my comment about impact of CO2 on plant growth. Actually increased sunlight and C02 normally increases photosynthesis and leaf growth of both C3 and C4 plants – especially the C3 that grow in temperate regions ant that most crops consist of. C02 causes a degree of evaporation restriction because it causes the leaf stomata to partially close off. However – the overall effect is estimated at 15% saving of transpiration, although the increased photosynthesis is another Water Use Efficiency. In really hot conditions without irrigation this only saves, say a non crop C4 plant from dying for a additional few days, thereby adding to the carbon load
However this finding of increased plant growth is very mixed moreover it is likely to be more than undone by negative factors namely in order of importance
1. Global warming is likely to create very uneven water receipt – and higher evaporation rates (due to greater overall global temperature plus harder rainfall/floods in many areas which will mean lots of runoff and less moisture absorbed. Growth is linearly related to water input. So growth in a lot of areas will be affected by this.
2. A number studies indicate that for C4 plants a substantial C02 decreases growth and that depending on conditions that are as yet not fully understood it can either increase or decrease C3 growth. This may be because the plants can’t access additional micro nutrients (not just nitrogen) to fuel growth and become stressed, or interplay with overheating from leaf stomota constriction but more research needs to be done
3. In natural environments without good soil nutrients C4 plants in particular produce more leaf litter which takes too long to break down to nourish the plant enough for extra growth, plus the plant gets stressed from heat and lack of moisture. Plants lose capacity to absorb the C02 and it builds. Witness mass global die off of trees in forests world wide
Some references:
Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide Levels and climate change
http://www.nap.edu/read/1911/chapter/8#136
Past and future scenarios of the effect of carbon dioxide on plant growth and transpiration for three vegetation types of southwestern France
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/397/2008/
Climate change surprise: High carbon dioxide levels can retard plant growth, study reveals
https://news.stanford.edu/pr/02/jasperplots124.html
A Review of Elevated Atmospheric CO2 Effects on Plant Growth and Water Relations: Implications for Horticulture
https://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/60100500/csr/ResearchPubs/prior/prior_11a.pdf
How plants react to elevated carbon dioxide
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/how-plants-react-to-elevated-carbon-dioxide/2934958#transcript
For some reason, my browser would not let me see your link to “Human influence on the climate system is clear”, but that misses the point: nobody with even the most primitive understanding of the physics involved would deny that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere should cause temperatures to be higher than they would otherwise have been. That goes back to my initial point: to what extent the increase in temperature is anthropogenic, and to what extent it might be either deleterious or beneficial. The science should be directed to that, not to confirming a preconceived hypothesis
That goes back to my initial point: to what extent the increase in temperature is anthropogenic, and to what extent it might be either deleterious or beneficial.
I’ve already provided a rough outline of what the consensus is, but if you’d prefer something more technical, the IPCC has a list of projections here, including sources and methodology:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/
The one most relevant to you would be the technical summary, as it outlines the major projections without the non-technical aspects of the policy report. Just remember to have a qualified climatologist to consult if you wish to dissect more thoroughly than a casual visit can allow.
Lastly, I’m not sure why your browser wouldn’t let you see the PDF (note: the “Human influence on the climate system is clear” is a picture within that document and not a link in itself), but if it helps, they come up on mine as automatic downloads, so it might be worth checking your download settings before trying any more PDFs.
For some reason, my browser would not let me see your link to “Human influence on the climate system is clear”, but that misses the point: nobody with even the most primitive understanding of the physics involved would deny that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere should cause temperatures to be higher than they would otherwise have been.
If you had consulted the table, you would have seen that it answered your question concerning the extent that anthropogenic GHG contributed to tempersture increase. The data in that section shows that its influence is overwhelmingly strong, especially compared with the competing hypotheses you so blithely assume haven’t been tested, to the point that it makes your “IPCC says it’s only above half” comment look even more misleading than it already does.
It is unfortunate that you can’t, for whatever reason, consult the poster’s graphics, but in that case at least refrain from making presumptuous comments about documents you haven’t even consulted. Its contents were a direct answer to the question of “to what extent”, with more technical and statistical qualifications available elsewhere. To see you presume that I have missed the point of your question is irritating, to say the least.
Very interesting article. I will be passing this along to my wife, who likes to give money to many of the animal organizations.
She may need to change course just a bit.
Current IUCN estimates are median about 25500, which is far higher than many endangered species. So far these counts have been quite steady, proposed losses at this point are still theoretical. One wouldn’t know it from the headlines,though.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
The current status of the North, namely “floating sea ice”, might be the absolute worst condition for Polar Bears. They are not accustomed to it, because: Currently science says the polar bear evolved from other species around 800,000 years ago. 90% of that time, the North was under stupendous glaciation, solid far to the south of their normal habitat. The bears have survived at least 7 glaciation cycles. They can cope. During the last interglacial, the Sangamonian/Eemian, ice totally or near totally disappeared from the north for a thousand of year or more, except on Greenland and around the fringes of the Arctic Ocean. It was warmer than the Holocene. The bears did not go extinct.
Also:
The Polar Bear is a vicious predator of other mammals. The male would eat the bear cubs if it could get past the mother bears. The more bears there are, the more seal pups die. Where is the sympathy for the seals? They are mammals, too. Mother seals have to watch the bears eat their children.
a. This warming may be permanent.
b. Bears need seals to survive. Inuit don’t need to kill bears to survive.
There is no such thing as a “vicious” predator. “Vicious” has no meaning outside of a human emotional context. A polar bear eating a baby seal is just a predator doing what evolution has “designed” it to do. It is no more “vicious” than a spider catching a fly, a baleen whale filtering krill, or an amoeba engulfing a bacterium.
If I recant the “vicious” (which I won’t) do you have any other comment about the facts I cited?
Stipulated: seals are vicious predators of fish. So, equilibrium.
I still want to know: why are we not all up in arms about the plight of the seals from the bears?
The Polar Bear has become a political football, is my point. It’s image has been viciously twisted out of shape by many forces.
OK, I’ll bite (viciously).
Polar bears have no choice but to hunt and eat seals. It’s the lifestyle and diet they’ve adapted to, and it’s a natural part of the Arctic ecosystem. Regardless of how unpleasant it may be for an individual seal, their populations are not endangered by bear predation.
So-called “aboriginal” hunting of bears is no longer essential for the survival of those communities. As noted above, it’s basically trophy-hunting masquerading as subsistence. And trophy-hunting is just another term for killing for fun – something I find ethically repugnant, whether it’s polar bears in the Arctic, lions in Africa or marlins and sharks on the high seas.
I agree the ‘aboriginal’ hunting of bears is so much BS, as was ‘traditional’ whaling by Norwegians a while back. If their traditions are so precious, then let them do it the traditional way, without the use of rifles or snowmobiles. All sorts of traditions, from burning witches to keeping slaves, have been superseded and nobody in their right mind misses those as a ‘way of life’. And on-selling their ‘traditional rights’ is completely bogus.
That said, I can see why Greenpeace and the WWF has chosen not to fight a battle over this. They can’t fight every battle on every front. Suppose the Inuit were successfully banned from killing bears. That’s 2% more bears – not going to help much if their habitat is destroyed through global warming. If massive climate change occurs, then the bears are screwed, whether or not the Inuit are stopped from killing them, and so are thousands of other species.
cr
“If their traditions are so precious, then let them do it the traditional way, without the use of rifles or snowmobiles.”
I was thinking the same. Let the law give Inuits and their clients the right to hunt polar bears like real men, without firearms, and let’s see how many will survive the experience. (I guess some Inuits will, but not their spoiled rich guests.)
@ Dave
I keep wondering if the “seal diet” is actually the evolved diet. It might be the emergency diet. During full glaciation, which is 90% of the existence of the Polar Bear, where did the bears live and what did they eat? It cannot be assumed it was seal. The North was solid ice. During the last interglacial, the ice was gone. Other bears survive strictly on land. The polar bear could (did?) too.
My point is: activist humans are going to drastic extremes to “save” a very adapting species, which is not endangered, when you grasp that the endangered designation is not based on the current large population (25,000?) but rather on two assumptions:
1) all the sea ice will absolutely soon disappear from the North;
2) Polar bears will go extinct when the ice disappears.
I challenge both of these presumptions.
Frankly, as other commentators have pointed out, it’s not the small number of bears taken by Inuit, repulsive as that might be. It’s the threat of the ice disappearing.
I think they moved south during that time and progressively moved north at the end of the ice age
… or an Inuit killing a bear?
I suppose the argument is that ‘we’ humans should know better. I don’t support the killing of bears, still less selling licences for ‘sport’ hunters, but arguing which is more ‘vicious’ – or justifying predation – smacks of ‘special pleading’.
My sympathies are with the seals, though doubtless penguins would disagree. Unfortunately Nature is a real bastard.
cr
I think few facts prove the alleged G*d’s benevolence better than food chains.
Mammoths and smilodons also survived several glaciation cycles (the earliest smilodons arose 2.5 million years ago). The ability of a large cold-weather-adapted mammal to survive [interglacial period] is not predictive of their ability to survive [interglacial period + predation by technologically sophisticated humans].
I don’t know about “good” from the gastrognome point of view, but I have heard that the vitamin-A content of polar bear meat – and specifically the liver – is so high as to be dangerous to eat.
Wikipedia confirms the toxicity of vitamin-A (derivatives), though with no specific reference to polar bear liver. So I suspect that’s a “war story” I acquired from lecturers who did a lot of field work in Greenland in the 1960s.
I seem to recall the story of a Polar explorer who ate a lot of husky dog livers and subsequently died. For the same reason, Vitamin A.
(Unfortunately I can’t recall any names). Oh, Mawson and Mertz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A
cr
Mawson and Mertz? “The Worst Journey In The World”? Nope, sorry, getting books conflated. “The Home of the Blizzard”
I just want to point out that the “they were here first” argument is also an argument against antibiotics.
Did I need to add that bears do us no harm AND they are more sentient than bacteria?
Inuit and other natives often sell their hunting rights to Americans. I really don’t know how this should be allowed other than the Canadian government is too afraid of a confrontation with native groups.
I see it as basically the same as the Japanese claim to be conducting research on whales. A thin veneer concocted to protect some lobby’s economic interests.
It’s more than that. Canadians don’t want to touch anything that will upset aboriginals and end in protests. This is how we’ve been ever since Oka. Do a search on the Oka, Quebec conflict. It profoundly changed things vis a vis aboriginal relations with the government.
There is nothing in Canadian politics more corrupt, self-serving, and utterly steeped in bullshit than the “aboriginal” bureaucracy/industry.
And yet, compared to the US, you’ve done a practically spectacular job of balancing the interests of the greater state vs. local native peoples’ communities. Just goes to show how low the US set the bar in that regard…
There’s a problem with denying it, because generations of people have been told that they have to integrate into a market economy, and if they are suddenly told that their attempt to do so is forbidden …
Bears are harvested for their pelts, and organs. Bear organs are used for traditional Chinese medicine. In fact, in China there are bear farms where bears are raised in cages and their gall bladders have catheters installed to harvest bile. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear
Black bear populations in most of Canada are robust, but polar bear populations are being stressed by the lack of ice which is required to hunt seals which is a large part of their diet.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/polar-bears-global-warming.htm
It may bring in money … but at what cost. The population is threatened, it encourages abuse (e.g. laundering by illegal russian bear killers, and no doubt the Chinese will soon be interested) and at any rate it adds to the pressure on the bears … who will soon be gone and a far greater loss to the Inuit culture.
I guess my overall position is (1) in theory, as long as hunting rates are kept responsive to changes in population so that the population does not become threateningly low, I would be okay with it. But (2) I am highly skeptical that that sort of responsiveness is or would be true in practice. We don’t even have to attribute intentional overcounting to the hunting lobby to think it won’t be responsive; all it would take would be ineffective or incorrect population monitoring and we could easily find ourselves in a situation where we accidentally endanger the species. There is also the issue of poaching to consider: the actual hunting rate is always likely to be > the legally determined hunting rate. Because of these issues with ‘doing sustainable hunting right,’ I think a ban is probably the more prudent option.
+ 1.
Amusing that Paul Watson felt the need to make the whole thing about “white” hunters. Do you think he bothered to check whether Chinese, African or Japanese tourists were a major portion of the customers?
Are you suggesting he’s wrong (i.e. factually inaccurate) about that? I’d bet that most of the ‘clients’ are white. I wasn’t aware that Chinese, Africans or Japanese were into hunting polar bears.
Arguably, ‘white hunter’ is shorthand for rich, privileged, visiting ‘sportsman’. Someone who pays the local natives to do all the dirty dangerous jobs while he rides around in relative safety on top of an elephant or whatever waiting to take a potshot at some luckless animal being herded toward him. You could probably apply the term to any visiting ethnicity without too much cognitive dissonance.
cr
Why wouldn’t there be people of those races into hunting polar bear? I am sure there are a few. I also think that it is utterly irrelevant what their skin color is, so he brought it up for no good reason. Not a big deal, but amusing as I said.
Well thats Greenpeace off my gifting List, that is utterly reprehensible.