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MELTING SEA ICE could “jeopardise” the survival of most of the Arctic’s polar bear population by 2100, a new study claims.
Researchers from the University of Toronto in Canada said a loss of sea ice caused by global warming will force the animals onto land, where they must rely on fat reserves due to a lack of food.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, said “aggressive” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are now needed to save the animals, which rely on sea ice to reach their prey, from extinction.
Researchers used modelling to determine a polar bear’s energy requirements while fasting and the thresholds that would limit survival, along with a model to predict the future number of ice-free days.
This was then used to estimate when the survival thresholds would be surpassed for 13 Arctic sub-populations, representing 80% of all polar bears.
Study author Peter Molnar and his colleagues found that, under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, the bears’ survival would be “unlikely” over much of the Arctic due to reduced sea ice.
However, under a “moderate emissions scenario”, more sub-populations could survive this century.
“Ultimately, aggressive greenhouse gas emissions mitigation will be required to save polar bears from extinction,” the study said.
Researchers found that cubs would be most at risk from fasting, while solitary adult females would be the least affected.
It also found that survival thresholds may have already been reached in several polar bear sub-populations.
The authors said their study was limited by the use of a single “earth systems model” – used to determine how sea ice will be affected – and because of uncertainties and variations in bear behaviour and energy usage among sub-populations.
“Our model captures demographic trends observed during 1979 to 2016, showing that recruitment and survival impact thresholds may already have been exceeded in some (polar bear) sub-populations,” the authors said.
“It also suggests that, with high greenhouse gas emissions, steeply declining reproduction and survival will jeopardise the persistence of all but a few high-Arctic sub-populations by 2100.”
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Raise taxes on everyone and everything!! It’s the only way!! Well, according to the Greens that is.
@Crispy Brown: no the new way is by driving slower on the motorway
@Crispy Brown: if that’s what it takes.
@Crispy Brown: well seems like the carrot approach hasn’t worked.
@JH66: What it takes is to tackle the big businesses doing most of the polluting but the Greens are just chipping away at the edges because it’s easy and makes them feel good and they’ll make us pay for it.
@EillieEs: What carrot has there been? I’d gladly buy goods with reduced or reusable packaging or use decent public transport or buy an equivalently-priced and equivalently-convenient-to-run electric car and take all manner of planet-saving steps but politicians aren’t tackling the underlying issues and they’re doing exactly what big businesses want them to do by putting the guilt, onus and cost on the end consumer.
@Kem Trayle: Which issue? Take a pot to the farmer shops. They sell without packaging.
You have in your wallet plenty of opportunity to vote for what is produced in the future. Businesses only produce what they could sell. If you want to have the direction in a certain way, do your thing and if others want the same, they will follow.
@Kem Trayle: come on now pal. Your a bit old for the “im not doing it, if there not doing it” approach.
@8-Bit-Relic: Or, y’know, the government could do their job and implement legislation to resolve the issues we’re having like we elected them to do.
@Dj Magee: Rather that than blindly accepting what I’m told to do rather than considering why.
@Crispy Brown: muppet
Nature has been sending all kinds of signals to us humankind and we choose to either ignore them or blame each other. Can we not all sit down and think as a human being about how to do the right things for our own home planet?
@Seriousnojoke: It’s called being on this planet. It’s sent far more extreme “signals” before we even invented farming, let alone the industrial revolution, that ended the ice age. Perhaps it was due to all the mammoth farts, but it wasn’t due to humans.
We are still coming at the end of an ice age,we have no control over global warming.the sun will eventually engulf earth into a fireball.no green tax will solve that dilemma
@tuco: no that isn’t the case. We can see greenhouse gases were released by man and accelerated the process. There isn’t any dispute
@tuco: incorrect we are completely out of the ice age and are currently living in a period of stable moderate temperatures. Its us that are changing the composition of the atmosphere and therefore the temperature. We can massively impact the global temperature one way or the other, its complete ignorance of basic Science to suggest otherwise. As for the Sun engulfing the Earth, that’s estimated to happen in approximately 5 billion years, so I think it’s a bit premature to concern yourself with that.
@Tomás Barrett: Excellent comment. And, some scientists have theorised that moving the earth further from the sun as it expands is possible, and indeed enclosing the sun in a dyson sphere and moderating its output. Pie in the sky stuff for now, but we have a few billion years to do something about it.
@Michael Daly: only saw the Dyson sphere on an episode of Star trek the other day. Would need to obliterate Mars for the raw materials to even contemplate it.
@Michael Daly: would probably be easier to move off planet. But to save it I suppose a possible option. Just have to be 100 million times advanced than the civilisation that has to burn stuff for energy.
@Tomás Barrett: technically we are living in an inter-glacial period.
@tuco: lol where did you read that clap trap ! Coming to the end of an ice age.. stick to the cartoon mate!!
@Craic_a_tower: so that means it’s going to happen anyway just a few years faster ?
One global crisis at a time, please.
@David Law: will there be any humans left by then…?
It would surely help if the government reduced the cost of using public transport. E.g. bus train ticket prices. I know public transport isn’t the best mode of transport with the COVID pandemic.
@John Brennan: a heap of US states the other day have said they will transition to electric public transport in the next few years as its shown to be successful where its been implemented to date.
@Derek: France has done it in a lot of cities, and a lot of buses run on natural gas. They also do things like free public transport for a period of time during the summer or when there is high pollution alerts. It is also cheaper than Ireland.
I propose a nap tax.
Hares, badgers, foxes, rabbits and fish in our rivers are almost totally wiped out….but not due to climate change…..
@Aire Dezamba: Plenty of foxes and rabbits.
@Aire Dezamba: You should call around my place. Plenty of everything you mentioned. I’m not saying there are no issues, because there are, but if the right ecosystem is there, then the wildlife will be there too.
@Aire Dezamba: tbf, saw my first badger last night on the road in many years.
@Logan Shepherd: hey Logan you’ve been very quiet on here since you’ve been able to visit the the other half ;)
@Alan Watts: Settle ..
The polar ice caps have receded and expanded many times over the millions of years this planet has been I existence. The planet heats up and cools down naturally over long periods of time. It is in a warming up phase right now. Global warming caused by humans is a myth.
@Tommy Fitzgerald: while the Earth certainly has cooled and heated in the past it was it is incorrect to say the current warming is not man made. You should look at scientific papers that research and gather data on the subject. BTW watching YouTube videos is not research. Also the problem now is not so much that it is happening but the rate at which it is happening.
At least 2100 gives the bears plenty of notice. Now they can start looking for somewhere else to live.
havent humans only got until 2030, the polar bears are doing well
@Greg Daniel: To make the changes that need to be made, the question of when we’ll survive until is much trickier.
@Greg Daniel: No. I’ve seen this claim many times. It’s from a deliberate twisting of words from those whose agenda lies firmly in fossil fuel stocks and shares or from the scientifically illiterate who are both contrarian and exceptionally gullible.
Half the species on the planet could be extinct in 100 years. Domino effect and co-extinction would contribute to this. Scary to think but unless we rethink everything we do, the world could be very different in a century, in a very bad way.
No polar bears in Ireland, So ??
“MELTING SEA ICE could “jeopardise” the survival of most of the Arctic’s polar bear population by 2100″
“Researchers used modelling to determine a polar bear’s energy requirements while fasting and the thresholds that would limit survival, along with a model to predict the future number of ice-free days.”
“MELTING SEA ICE could “jeopardise”
“Researchers used modelling to determine a polar bear’s energy requirements”
Maybe they should have spoken to Dr. Susan Crockford, here is her take on this garbage
https://polarbearscience.com/
@John Kennedy: Susan Crock-of-$hite-ford. Not peer reviewed.
@Hawm Quinzy: Lovely response, thanks for your contribution.
I sincerely think it’d be even sooner than that projected date.
The world’s human population has grown enormously and continues to grow as life spans increase and formerly poorer countries become consumers. And, all of them need shelter, food, energy. New technologies increased significantly energy use and material use incl. monbile phones , computers etc. and most products are made from oil derived plastic even car parts that were previously recyclable as metal but replaced by plastic.
@Damian Moylan: Ephemeralization has been shown to in fact have been essential to human development, the idea that we as a species can do more and more with less and less as we become more advanced. Think of all the resources you’d have to have consumed a mere 20 years ago to even approximate the functionality of the smartphone. Also, the global fertility rate is 2.4 and falling, replacement level is 2.1. Couple this with renewable and battery tech making huge advances, while getting significantly cheaper. Plenty of reasons to be optimistic, despite the enormity of the challenges we face.
Utter nonsense
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