The US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species, under that country’s Endangered Species Act.
Before blasting this idea as an underhanded ploy by evil environmentalists, it is worth considering the exact meaning of the terms in question. The US criteria are not quite consistent with those of the World Conservation Union (which the cognoscenti abbreviate as IUCN). The latter maintains the famous (or infamous, considering how few of its members have actually gone extinct) Red List of Threatened Species, in which “critically endangered”, “endangered” and “vulnerable”, describing an extremely high, very high or high risk of extinction respectively, are collectively known as “threatened”.
By contrast, a “threatened” species under the US law means any species that is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range”, and an “endangered” species is one “which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. Also, there is much more scope for discretion under the US rules, while the IUCN criteria for the different categories are very specific.
So, on what grounds should the polar bear be listed as threatened? Among the US agency’s own research, a population forecast says much depends on 45-, 75- or 100-year predictions of the extent of Arctic sea ice, and even then, there’s much uncertainty. Besides, that analysis (PDF) has come under attack (PDF) for serious flaws in its methods and analysis. Turns out that after a few years of slight decline in Arctic sea-ice coverage, this winter’s Arctic ice is back to normal levels. (Via Anthony Watts, who links to the useful University of Illinois Cryosphere Today site. It also has a cute story about a stolen polar-bear photo, reproduced above, which Al Gore and the media used to tell yet another lie: “They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.” Sob sob. Hat-tip: Hard Rain.)
What about polar-bear population? Well, it’s pretty much stable, it appears. A National Centre for Policy Analysis report entitled Polar Bears on Thin Ice? Not Really!, says that only two of the 20 or so population groups are in decline, which hardly gels with “throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. There’s a picture alongside. The chart illustrates the polar-bear populations that are growing, declining, stable and unknown. Hardly looks like a threatened species, does it?
In fact, although the Red List includes the polar bear (and the hippo, which is responsible for more human deaths in Africa than any other large animal), I can’t see which of the criteria it actually meets. The Inuit around Hudson Bay are saying more need to be hunted, because their population is increasing, and in an amusingly headlined article, “Advertisers urged to kill off polar bears,” James Murray reports on a study that finds advertisers should eschew cute pictures of polar bears to burnish their green image.
Listing a species that isn’t actually endangered is likely to do as much harm to noble conservation efforts as did Norman Myers’s 1979 statement, based on supposition alone, that 40 000 species would go extinct per year until 2000. Didn’t happen. Yet it was repeated in Al Gore’s 1993 book Earth in the Balance, and is only one among many hyperbolic prophesies of mass extinction that simply have not come true and don’t look likely to happen in the foreseeable future either. They’re a bit like the cults who predict the end of the world. They’ve never been right, but of course, that only strengthens their faith that they have to be right sometime soon.
Despite the lack of evidence that the polar bear is, in fact, threatened, Brendon Frazier of the International Fund for Animal Welfare says it should be listed not as threatened, but as endangered. In this AFP article, he explains the reason why:
“An endangered listing can affect the sell-off of the oil drilling rights,” Brandon Frazier, a spokesman for global animal welfare group International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said. “The authorities would have to get approval through the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct drilling if there is an endangered species that inhabits the area.” […]
US lawmakers have proposed listing the polar bear as “threatened”, but IFAW said that did not go far enough. “A ‘threatened’ listing leaves open the possibility for exemptions and doesn’t shut loopholes, such as the one that allows Americans to trophy-hunt for polar bears in Canada and bring their heads and hides back to the US,” Frazier told AFP.
So there’s your reason. Anything to stop the big, bad oil companies from drilling. If the polar bear is under threat, the reason is climate change, which in turn is caused by evil humans, who dare pursue industrial development, scientific advance and economic progress.
That’s what they’re fighting for. If the polar bear gets listed as threatened, this can be used to stop almost any new industrial development, anywhere. Even if the impact is so tenuous, nothing but global warming alarmism can rationalise it. If the polar bear gets listed as endangered, then so is the growth in prosperity that has fuelled the rising quality of life among rich and poor alike. It’s not about the polar bear. It’s about us. It is, to quote William F Buckley, about standing athwart history, yelling “Stop!”.
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“Historically, the annual minimum in NH sea ice area occurs sometime near the end of August or during the month of September. The median (1979-present) annual sea ice minimum occurs on September 8, but the dates have ranged by nearly a month from as early as August 26 to as late as September 24.”
Comparing a late winter’s image to mid-summer meltdown is rather misleading.
“While some have speculated that polar bears might become extinct within 100 years from now, which would indicate a population decrease of >50% in 45 years based on a precautionary approach due to data uncertainty. A more realistic evaluation of the risk involved in the assessment makes it fair to suspect population reduction of >30%.”
@ Jeff: I compared this February’s level with last February’s level, and found them to be more or less equal. This, I pointed out. It is indeed misleading — nay, stupid — to compare winter with summer. Which is why you’ll notice I didn’t mention the 2007 Arctic summer at all, notable though it was.
I could, for example, have pointed out that it is misleading to report a single summer’s anomaly and holler dire warnings about the “disappearing Arctic ice”, as the media has been doing. After the incessant scare stories of the summer of 2007, I was a little surprised to see that this winter’s ice extent is right back to where it was last winter. One would have expected the Arctic ice cover never to recover to last year’s levels.
The fact is that Arctic ice extent has only been tracked for 30 years, and the mild decline of the last decade or so is very far from the catastrophic “disappearing” act that we see blaring at us from every TV and glaring at us from every glossy news magazine.
On your second comment, “vulnerable” is “threatened”, according to the IUCN classification. I took the trouble to be specific about the exact meaning of the terms in paragraph two of my post. Re-read it, and you’ll see that the term “threatened” applies to any and all of the three classifications of “vulnerable”, “endangered” and “critically endangered”.
Imagine my surprise, on re-reading my own post, to find that I never even said the polar bear was listed as “threatened” by the IUCN. I used the term “threatened” only in connection with the proposal to list the the polar bear as such by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, under the US Endangered Species Act. All I said about the polar bear in relation to the IUCN was that the Red List “includes” it.
So not only are you bickering about something that has nothing to do with the substance of the article, and that would have been perfectly correct had I actually written it, but you’re bickering about something I didn’t even write.
Your post is interesting, although depressing. I’m not sure how you can justify your statement about “the growth in prosperity that has fuelled the rising quality of life among rich and poor alike.” Ask the poor in oil- or mineral-rich countries how much their “quality of life” has risen. And how do you define quality of life in the first place?
My view is that the human species should be listed as endangered and human mothers should only be allowed 1 baby each. That way we can decline the need to rip apart and rape our environment and so save all species from extinction.
But no, we worry about polar bears instead of stopping our population growth. If China can do it what is wrong with the rest of us.
Jeff, your ignorance of the subject is astounding. I find it hard to believe you would write an article on something you know so little about.
Arctic ice is declining, this according to the Inuit, who report open water in summer where none has been seen before. Polar bears are showing unmistakable signs of starvation and symptoms such as cannibalism which have not been observed in the population in the past.
You have taken a very limited number of reports and ignored a huge amount of contradictory data to create a biased and misleading column. You have brought any journalist integrity you may have had into question. No knowledgeable reader could take your views seriously. I only fear you can you could influence those that do not have the background to see the slant of your poorly researched article.
@ Owen: I assume you’re kidding. China’s one-child policy was a violation of individual liberty in principle, and brutal in practice. The impact we have on our environment is real, but usually vastly over-stated. There’s quite a lot of earth to go around.
As I told a new mother the other day, when she fretted (rather distastefully) about her selfish contribution to our population, “This kid will during its lifetime produce more than it consumes, or else it will die. Ergo, this kid is a net benefit to the world.”
@ Neil: Depends what you mean but subjective. In statistical terms, it’s not subjective at all. I answered the same question over here, so forgive me if I edit a copy of that reply to address your point:
Measure it how you like, quality of life is better, including for poor people, of which there are fewer as a share of total population than in some mythical past. Pick a measure: life expectancy at birth, infectious disease mortality, daily calorie intake, time spent finding or preparing food, shelter, and clothing, education level, vulnerability to natural disasters, access to clean water, infant mortality, disease incidence… Name the measure, chances are that people are better off today. Life used to be nasty, brutish and short, certainly for the vast majority of peasants and paupers, villagers and nomads, but even for the very few who were prosperous by the standards of the day.
The exception, to which you rightly point, is poor people that suffer under governments that are socialist, corrupt, or both. This includes many of the oil- or mineral-rich countries you mention. This is, of course, a grave concern, and to those people, the subjective reality is harsh. But an exception does not a rule make.
The rule is that more and more people have access to the basic necessities of life. Pick a poverty line, and fewer people live below it than did 25, 50 or 100 (or 250, 500 or 1000) years ago. In fact, absolute numbers of poor have often decreased or remained stable in the face of increasing population size.
If the supposedly progressive Cassandras could focus on poverty, they would. They can’t, so they focus on diversionary measures such as income inequality. Because the poor aren’t getting poorer, nor are they falling behind by non-financial measures of living standards, nor are they growing in number. And where the Cassandras could be progressive and make a real difference — in arguing against corruption, trade barriers and socialism — they shrug their shoulders and blame the rich world.
It’s depressing if you’re a pessimist hankering for the idyll of a mythical past, but the human race has never been better off than it is today. And the polar bears aren’t going extinct.
It’s because of this very attitude of yours that yes we are all doomed. It is the very self same oil, that you want to drill out the polar bears natural habitat, that is causing the global warming in the first place. And if we allow the drilling to go ahead it won’t be long before the polar bear and all arctic wildlife becomes seriously endangered.
Why does a species have to become nearly extinct before it is worth protecting? All these minerals we are drilling out of the earth are probably vital to the earth’s structure and sooner or later the planet itself is going to start to fall apart all because of fools like you
@ David: I assume you meant to aim that overwrought broadside at me, not at Jeff.
My ignorance is indeed astounding, and the more I learn, the more astounding it gets. That’s why I quote people whose ignorance is only slightly startling.
If you can show me the data that shows any unnatural decline at all in the overall polar bear population, which would support the claim that they’re under threat, please do.
So far, the only “huge amount of data” involves speculative long-term prophesies about the impact on polar bear populations in the distant future, caused by a critical change in future Arctic ice cover, derived from regional predictions based on global climate models, which in turn are assumed to be driven by human activity. As both the paper I noted and the article “AM” links to point out, this line of reasoning is dependent on so many dubious assumptions in a long chain of causal links, the failure of any one of which would cause the whole tenuous chain to collapse, that the conclusion strikes me as one of political activism, rather than scientific reason or honest environmental concern. The emotion evident in your response suggests likewise.
It states “Researchers have noted that the bears in Manitoba have been losing weight, becoming less hardy and experiencing reduced survival in their cubs. One estimate suggests that by as early as 2012, if the weight-loss trend continues, most females in the population will be below the minimum threshold needed for successful reproduction.
The main problem facing the bears is that the sea ice on which they hunt seals is melting, cutting the amount of available food. The spring breakup has been occurring earlier in recent years, resulting in a longer ice-free period on Hudson Bay, and increasing the amount of time during which they must depend on body fat gained through winter foraging.”
It is amazing how one is branded as a heretic when you ask critical questions about certain issues. And it is almost always when touching on scientific issues that became political. I think your point is valid and worth debating. I don’t see how a listing of the polar bears as threatened can harm anybody or anything, though. Surely it is not a bad idea to move away from fossil fuels in the long run, anyway?
I’d like to hear your views on household and office recycling. Have you published something?
@ David: Assuming that the article is accurate (though it veers off into what-if speculation rather quickly), this would be one of the two populations, out of twenty, that are in decline. Point data does not a general trend make.
@ Jeff: Having missed the ball on too many occasions, you play the man in stead? Does that work for you?
If by missing the ball you mean refusing to split inconsequential hairs with a pedant; then sure. No worries. : )
And unless you happen to be looking for a spin doctor position with the dept of Minerals & Energy, I really do think you’re damaging your credibility by crusading for rampant industrialization over legitimate environmental concerns. . .
Personally I found your contrivations (that is, the one’s you didn’t copy from wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com) very weak. In fact almost entirely baseless, totally repugnant, and completely devoid of any value.
You whine about such nebulous concepts as “quality of life” - yet appear quite willing to sacrifice our children’s environment for an empty void in space.
I’ve just started reading a book called Data Smog, by David Schenck, which illustrates how 21st Century knowledge workers can be so information overloaded that they know the meaning of everything; and the value of absolutely nothing. You should read it.
You should not that the governments of Ontario and Newfoundland as well as Manitoba, which are the jurisdiction that actually contain the bears and are directly observing them have classified them as threatened.
But I have come to understand you by your belittling addendum ‘if they are accurate’. It’s “I’ve got my opinion, don’t confuse me with the facts.”
@Ivo - I am not kidding. The reason why we are debating polar bears is because we as humans consume so much raw material and produce so much harmful waste.
If there were less of us our quality of life would improve and we would be able to concerntrate on living within our world rather than taking from it.
When will you regard the planet as over populated - when we get to how many billions of people?
Then what will your solution be?
You do realise that we can count every Tiger on the this planet yet we have to estimate how many humans there are. Does that not alarm you?
So
save the Polar Bear - have less humans
save the Tiger - have less humans
save the world - have less humans
There is no other alternative.
If we don’t limit ourselves then good old mother earth eventually will.
You do realise that our present child grant system encourages mothers to have many kids. more kids = more grant money.
My solution in SA is simple - have a child grant of R2000.00 for the oldest child under 18 per mother and nothing for any other children. That way mothers will elect of their own accord to have less kids.
@ Jeff: You disputed the application of terms I didn’t even use, and you accuse me of splitting hairs?
I wrote about a particular environmental concern that is not legitimate. How does that say anything at all about “rampant industrialisation over legitimate environmental concerns”? You’re paint me as some caricature because you can’t argue the facts, I guess.
In my other exchange with you, to which you linked, I asked you to “Please be so kind not to assume that because I oppose the alarmism and political motives of many environmentalists, that I am somehow opposed to a clean, healthy, productive and pleasant environment.” So, please don’t.
On “quality of life”, I did not use it as a nebulous concept, but named several very specific, well-defined, and well-established measures. But I guess the indisputable statistical fact that the life expectancy at birth of the average Jeff Brown almost doubled in the last century, and that you’re 90% less likely to die of infectious disease, are pretty “nebulous” to you.
Oh, and as for my looking for a spin-doctor position with the department of Minerals and Energy Affairs, I’m speechless. Either you haven’t read any of my comments on the power crisis, or you’re smoking some pretty good weed. Either way, I’m tired of this type of “debate”.
@ Terri: A couple of years ago, I wrote a column, “Wasted Efforts”, for Maverick magazine. Ironically, it was nominated as a finalist for a journalism award sponsored by a paper giant that spends millions on a massive recycling campaign. I don’t think it’s available online, sadly. The gist was that while some recycling makes economic and environmental sense, much of it does not. If someone isn’t paying you to recycle (as they do with scrap metals) you’re probably being had. In general, I’m very skeptical of such efforts, especially when imposed by government regulation. If you search my blog for “recycling”, you’ll find some related posts on the subject.
And yes, it is a good idea to move away from fossil fuels eventually. As we are doing already. The decarbonisation of fuel progresses apace, and the more expensive fossil fuels get, the more economic sense alternatives will begin to make.
@ David: I haven’t denied or ignored “the facts”, though it wouldn’t be the first time that I appear to belittle a political decision by a government. I don’t dispute that the governments in question have called the bears threatened, but I did point out that they’re talking about a very small sub-population. By your own numbers, it represents less than 4% of all polar bears. Highlighting this population does not contradict my original reasoning, since I specifically noted and accounted for the populations that are in decline. How do you answer for the populations that are stable, or growing?
And if those two populations in decline are indeed “threatened”, I would also question the government’s conclusion that they are “victims of global warming”. That’s not my opinion, as you so condescendingly state. That is based on the research audit I cited. It points out that the causal chain is long and consists of many unsubstantiated assumptions and what-if scenarios. Basing a firm conclusion on such a tenuous causal chain is highly unscientific. In science, you have to prove every step in your reasoning. You can’t simply consider what might conceivably be possible in a world that matches your political (or fund-raising) objectives and call that a scientific conclusion.
The article itself also indulges in some spurious what-if speculation, which reduces its credibility. For example: “if the weight-loss trend continues…” The question is, would it? And if so, why? Why wouldn’t the animals react to their environment? Why wouldn’t they stabilise at a lower population level, which is how we’ve always understood natural interdependent populations in an ecosystem to react? Might they not migrate to greener (if you’ll excuse the pun) pastures? Or perhaps seek alternative food? Or learn to live on a leaner diet? On what basis could you conclude that a short-term decline in weight constitutes an irreversible long-term trend caused by “global warming”?
I lost two kilograms last month. If that trend continues, I’ll be dead by Christmas. Yet not even my mother panics. See the problem I have with such apocalyptic reasoning?
@ Owen: Forgive me for not joining your little suicide cult.
Paul Ehrlich’s hysterical predictions of population growth, back in the late 1960s, had all the world fretting about mass starvation in the 1970s (as if the coming ice age didn’t cause enough stress). Thanks to the failure of those predictions, it has become clear that the earth can sustain rather more people than expected. Why is this so? Because population growth isn’t exponential after all. It doesn’t simply grow until resources are depleted. In fact, global human population is likely to peak and stabilise over time. Because as the world gets more prosperous, life expectancy increases, and mortality rates decline. As a result, people tend to have fewer kids. The earth can sustain its current (and future) population because global production isn’t a zero-sum game that simply depletes resources in a one-to-one relationship with population size. Again, the more prosperous we get, the more we invest in sustainability and sophisticated resource management, and the more we care about a healthy, productive and sustainable environment. And the fewer children we have. As the rich world amply demonstrates, successful development is not the problem, it’s the solution to uncontrolled population growth and unmanaged resource exploitation. To answer your question, I’d expect an eventually stable level of 10 billion would be perfectly sustainable. You sound like you want to go on a culling spree. I don’t. You sound like you want to stop the developing world from either developing or growing. I don’t.
Besides, assuming that one can handle the rather sociopathic notion of a few billion fewer people on earth, with the rest poorer than today, I doubt whether this would relieve the pressure on some animals and resources. On the contrary. Some of the worst historical environmental damage was caused on a planet peopled by only a fraction of today’s population, at only a fraction of today’s living standards. The evidence simply doesn’t bear out your theory. With fewer people around, well-meaning do-gooders would still be fretting about some messianic mission of “saving” the planet.
Yet the environment turns out to be pretty robust. In general (there are localised exceptions), it is not a fragile, sensitive system that any slight disturbance could tip into disaster. I view the environment as worth caring about, and investing in, but one doesn’t do this by getting hysterical about humans and their use of natural resources. One certainly doesn’t save, say, the tiger, by discrediting endangered status with ill-conceived, politically-motivated and unnecessary listings of marketing icons such as the polar bear.
I do agree with your view on child grants, however. Like most redistributionist economic policies, it has unintended negative consequences. But so does a brutal regime like China’s one-child policy, which is remarkably often held up as a good idea. It’s not. It’s just as sociopathic as idle dreams of fewer people on earth.
If you really want fewer people on earth, go ahead. You first. I’m right behind you.
@ Ernest: Yes, of course there are vested interests at work. There always are when it comes to government regulation that favours one party and disfavours another, aren’t there? For the record, I do not have any interests in the oil industry, at all.
I described the “vested interests” as the self-confessed interest of environmentalists to stop oil drilling, no matter what the environmental reality.
You seem to share that objective, as suggested by the fact that you trumped my Exxon quotation with your Greenpeace link. (Oh, wait, there wasn’t an Exxon quotation.)
As for my credibility, I hardly think taking economic lessons from the most prosperous, successful, and free (large) nation on earth is all that bad for my credibility. Even if you condescend to caricature the choices some of those free people make as “crass” and inferior to your cultured elitism.
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Ivo Vegter writes and argues for fun and profit. He is a columnist, magazine journalist and apprentice model shipwright. In his spare time, he helps run a research company. He specialises in the tech and telecoms industries, but keeps a blog on politics, economics and other curiosities on the spike
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The US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species, under that country’s Endangered Species Act.
What about polar-bear population? Well, it’s pretty much stable, it appears. A National Centre for Policy Analysis report entitled Polar Bears on Thin Ice? Not Really!, says that only two of the 20 or so population groups are in decline, which hardly gels with “throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. There’s a picture alongside. The chart illustrates the polar-bear populations that are growing, declining, stable and unknown. Hardly looks like a threatened species, does it?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/sea.ice.minimum.2007.html
“Historically, the annual minimum in NH sea ice area occurs sometime near the end of August or during the month of September. The median (1979-present) annual sea ice minimum occurs on September 8, but the dates have ranged by nearly a month from as early as August 26 to as late as September 24.”
Comparing a late winter’s image to mid-summer meltdown is rather misleading.
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