Leaf Commercial

Are they really trying to depict the polar bear as declining or are they using it as an example of a top predator that will decline due to a loss of prey base that may occur during a business as usual scenario? i.e. the bear is not declining yet but a large reduction in sea ice extent and thickness (particularly early melts) will reduce krill recruitment which will have ripple effects through the fish, whale and seal populations. The polar bear would then suffer.

Have you come across any population viability studies for polar bear persistence in a particular region?

 

wow, nice rant. I have a problem with the disneyfication of nature, but I had no idea, and still don't about paul tsongas. I hate any kind of facism, so I'm intrigued. Will we be forced to buy leaves or some pseudo scientist will order some polar bears shot?

I'm not quite sure what "they" are trying to say. At first I thought it was about the possible homosexual relationship between polar bears and leaf owners. Which would just be sick and wrong. Now I have come to find out that the bear in the movie is a female, and she was not even really hugging the guy by the leaf. Talk about your false advertising about if you buy a leaf you will get some from a bear. It was worse than some of those beer commercials. hmm.

If you watched that inconvenient movie, polar bear film was taken out of context to pretend bears playing on ice were going to die because the ice was melting. The man that shot that piece of film came forward after his work was distorted. The science of polar bear population really comes down to 2 factors. Removing the top competitor man through laws, and removal of food source seals from melting ice. In the near term of the last 30 years this has put pressure to increase the population of bears not decrease it. Moving forward it is clear that bear populations are moving inland from the ice flows. It is unclear if popultaions will continue to increase and bears will change sources of food, or if food scarcity will decrease bear populations. There may be loss of certain polar bear species and the thriving of others.

 

You had me here...

NAMBLA = North American Man/Bear Love Association

 

I suggest you do some more research. Where you get 1975 for a reported population of 5000 total polar bears is unknown (it's not mentioned as a study in your link anywhere). Naysayers for the endangerment of polar bears usually cite "studies" done in the 50s and 60s that had numbers ranging from 5,000-10,000. Of the scientists that actually do study polar bear numbers, and are not grasping at straws, they cannot reach a full agreement about bear trends. What "most scientists agree" with is that they do not believe in this reported range of 5000-25,000. It's only Wallstreet journal articles that try drawing conclusions from early attempts and surveys. The one article you do bring up in your posts states the opposite of most excepted studies (when it comes to current subspecies numbers).

Here is an interview with one of the handfuls of scientists actually trying to measure bear population trends:

Scientist on Western Hudson Bay Polar Bear Population: “I Consider Myself a Historian” | Global Warming is Real

So my main arguement would be that no reputable scientist would support these estimates of exact population numbers. There wasn't enough work done in the 50s and 60s to give accurate estimates, and if you look at current studies, numbers of subspecies are variable and hard to define.

 

That's would be kind of funny if it weren't so sad. Facts aren't facts because they come from the wall street journal. Let's even pretend populations went in the opposite way that they have because, one scientist hasn't looked into it so can't confirm the numbers.

The numbers today are far from bleak, there is disagreement on whether populations are increasing or decreasing today. On a per species tally 1 is increasing, 3 stable, 8 decreasing, and 7 unknown. That is quite a margin for error for a sure thing. There is even disagreement about whether PCBs and pesticides have a greater impact than melting ice.

Just in case you believe the garbage that it is only the WSJ, here is that anti-environmental NY times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/world/americas/27bears.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

 

It's a beautiful commercial. Bravo to the ad firm who created it. Whimsical and fanciful are good for commercials. It people wanted a documentary, war scenes (for oil) could have been shown but that doesn't sell.