"Polar bear attacks on people set to rise as climate changes" Topic

"Climate change may be driving more aggressive polar bears towards areas where people live, and the consequences could be lethal.

"You've got this perfect storm set up where you've got bears that are spending increasing amounts of time on land becoming nutritionally stressed, moving into areas of human settlements," says Todd Atwood, a wildlife biologist at the US Geological Survey. This makes the bears more likely to come into conflict with humans.

Atwood was a member of a team that combed through nearly 150 years of records of bear attacks in Canada, Greenland, Russia, the US and Norway. They drew their data from government agencies, news reports and, in the older cases, from ships' logs…."
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Amicalement
Armand

And the fact that you have humans encroaching on traditional uninhabited (read bear) country is unrelated.

+1 Waco Joe

Waco Joe,

Don't you know? The culprit for everything from now on has to be Global Warming. And if you bring up other factors you are labeled a climate denier. :)

My wife and I watched a documentary a few weeks ago ("Vice" series?) and we both noticed that the two maps they used to compare the 5-year or 10-year change in polar bear travel (and potential for encounters with humans) weren't "apples to apples" at all. One was winter and the other one was summer.

Of course their range varies greatly depending on the season, but they want the viewer to think it was all because the world's weather had declined substantially in that 5 or 10-year period. And some people still wonder why the media has lost credibility with the public.

Dan

Actually, the other main issue is that the total Polar Bear population, accourding to recent figures, has increased since 2000 from approximately 7,000 to now over 30,000. The larger population is increasing its hunting range.

Dave,

Shhh. You're not supposed to mention that!

Because, with a 300% increase in population, the next question people would ask is, if conditions for them are as awful as media constantly says, how could their population be recovering so well?

That would open a whole new can of worms about unreliable assessments of population, their environment, questions about the funding of assessments, and the possible motivations behind the constant reporting of an entirely different media narrative.

So, don't you dare bring up that population boom! What you're supposed to say is that they're spreading because of global warming. :)

Dan

Oops, sorry. Move along, these are not the facts we want.

Never let the facts get into a global warming thread.

Never let the facts get into a global warming thread.

I know I never do.

I was kinda hoping this would be about AGW partisans being attacked by polar bears. Like the exposition looking into the loss of ice getting stuck
by same.

V,

Well, in recent decades there have been several "naturalists" and wildlife enthusiasts who have refused to take a rifle with them when going out to seek out bears … only to end up on the menu.

I think there's a little thing called "survival of the fittest (the most adaptable)" that some people today keep forgetting or ignoring.

Dan

Or maybe someone should read proper sources.

No the Polar Bear population wasn't 7000 in 2000.
It was about the same as today. Maybe a little higher.

There was between.

21 470-28 370 Polar bears in 1993

Well, those super volcanoes will sort out those polar bears' hash.