7 ms·

Video Shows Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land

98 points by brakmic 9y ago

jamesmccann 9y ago
Meanwhile, we out here obsessing about making money on BTC...
- brakmic 9y ago
  Same thoughts on my side. And we're mostly doing nothing to stop the growing catastrophe. And I am no exception to that, ...just to be honest.
- chinathrow 9y ago
  There are folks who on purpose do not participate in BTC because they know the energy consumption is wrong. Go tell people about it and they might get it.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    I don't participate in BTC because I find the whole thing hilarious. Between it's inability to work as a payment method at scale (transactions per minute), exchanges running off with client bitcoins, exchanges getting broken into constantly and the shady way it's handled when that happens and on and on. I'm not saying the idea is fundamentally useless (clearly) but the implementation is terrible. I might be wrong and in 20 years I'll be getting paid in BTC but I'd bet that isn't the case.
  - knownothing 9y ago
    And they make their snide observations from where? That's right, their computers. How much energy is spent consuming and deliving Facebook? Or iOS games?
    - Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
      Depends where their electricity is coming from, doesn't it?
    - chinathrow 9y ago
      There is indeed a lot of engery spent elsewhere - your comment is pure whataboutism though. A single Bitcoin transaction currently use as much engery as energy spent in a single home for days.
  - cyberpunk0 9y ago
    What a pathetic argument. Do you realize how much energy is used to maintain existing computers systems used by banks for all their fake fiat currency?
    - chinathrow 9y ago
      Again - pure whataboutism here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism There are multiple reports now out detailing and comparing energy use of traditional transactional fiat money vs. the new schemes
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- refurb 9y ago
  There will always be terrible things happening in the world. That doesn't mean we should only work on those problems at the expense of everything else.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    That’s just an empty sop to a blistered conscience.
- awinder 9y ago
  Given that bitcoin can be boiled down to essentially a Chinese energy index, these two things are not unrelated.
tim333 9y ago
While it's sad that the bear died it's a bit of a jump to link it to global warming.
- dh-g 9y ago
  There is an entire paragraph showing the causation. I disagree that its a jump.
- asadlionpk 9y ago
  You won't see species vanish in a 1 minute video. It's a slow and painful death.
- PostOnce 9y ago
  The article is mostly about global warming and contains a wealth of citations / references / relevant links. They provided their evidence as to why it's not a jump to link it to global warming -- where is your evidence that it is, in fact, a jump?
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    The polar bear situation really doesn't look like good evidence to me, they state the bear's lameness is assumed to be due to starvation-based atrophy but it seems as likely that this is just an injured bear that can't hunt effectively. I'm certainly not denying climate change is wiping out polar bears, just that this shows good evidence of that. The article states bears starve through summer until sea ice forms on which they catch seals .. but the image is from Summer, when the sea ice presumably is yet to form. I guess it could be cumulative from the previous Summer being too warm; again it's not good, clear evidence as it's presented. Could someone answer where the seals go? I'd have expected if they weren't resting/mating on sea-ice that they'd rest on land and actually be easier to catch? Do they instead stay at sea?
    - chr1 9y ago
      In the winter seals have to use holes in the ice to breath, which makes them very vulnerable. Without ice it is much more difficult for bears to catch them. http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-seal-breathing.htm http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-seal-breathing.h...
000000000000001 9y ago
The changing climate conditions are going to wreak havoc on countless species in the coming century. The only question is would we be ready when things start rolling faster than we could control?
- brakmic 9y ago
  If the richest and most powerful countries say "there is no climate change" and "others want to destroy our economy", then the answer is a pessimistic one. The same applies to countries that say "yes, there is a climate change and we must do something", but in the end avoid doing anything to unwind the death spiral.
  - ant6n 9y ago
    Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US.
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      > Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US. You could generalise that to:- Most rich countries acknowledge <foo is a problem> and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US. Where <foo> is healthcare, corporate governance, lobbying, women's rights, racism, income equality, prison incarceration rates, police brutality. Growing up in the UK in the 80's I was fascinated by America and planned on one day visiting if not living there. Now? If I leave the UK (and I probably will) it'll likely be Germany or Holland, they aren't perfect (what is?) but they look a lot better than the US/UK these days.
      - Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
        The problem is: if you remove yourself, it's still going on back home. It's probably better to stay where you have some power to try to change it for everyone's good, particularly when foo is something like climate that affects the whole world. (or that's what I tell myself when Canada beckons)
thomasfl 9y ago
The world needs more SolarCoin and less Crypto Kitties https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/29/solarcoin-cryptocurrency-earned-generating-solar-electricity/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/29/solarcoin-cryptocurrenc...
- rebuilder 9y ago
  Solarcoin issuance appears to be centralized and controlled by the SolarCoin foundation. I'd stay well away.
- anotheryou 9y ago
  So how does proof of solar work? It's merely centralized payback points for solar without any promised value?
- jackhack 9y ago
  This is getting really, truly absurd. Might as well trade in four-leaf clovers. They're solar generated, renewable, organic, gluten free, etc. etc. etc. And just as worthless. Let me take that back. At least clovers can be plowed back into the soil and used to improve the earth. What the world needs is to wake up from this nonsense and get back to actually making tangible products and quit obsessing on ways to sell mindshare of fellow citizens as if it is a commodity.
eemax 9y ago
Individual animals in the wild die cruel, slow, painful deaths all the time, regardless of whether their species as a whole is thriving or not. So while this video might evoke a strong emotional response, it is just an anecdote and not actually evidence one way or the other for human-caused climate change. Of course, human-caused climate change is obviously real, but it's not OK to use bad arguments even if your conclusion is correct. EDIT: To clarify further, I am not disputing that polar bears are not being harmed by climate change, or even that the particular bear in the video is not starving because of climate change. I am merely pointing out that one could produce a video of a starving polar bear both in our world and in the world where climate change is not happening, because wild animals starve all the time.
- ant6n 9y ago
  > I am merely pointing out that one could produce a video of a starving polar bear both in our world and in the world where climate change is not happening, because wild animals starve all the time. Good thing most people already know we don't live in the world where climate change is not happening, so this doesn't need to act as proof of it happening, but rather as an individual example of what is happening all over.
  - eemax 9y ago
    Yes, this is probably effective propaganda, and moreover, propaganda for a just cause. Nonetheless it is not evidence for climate change, and moreover it is not even necessarily an example of the effects of climate change - even we 100% fix climate change, there will still be plenty of starving wild animals available for sad videos. The actual way to ensure there are no starving wild animals is to exterminate them in the wild. But that's probably not a good idea.
    - b4lancesh33t 9y ago
      Has anyone in the linked article or in these comments tried to position this video as evidence of climate change? I don't see it if so.
sparkzilla 9y ago
Polar Bear populations are not declining. Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/15/baffin-bay-and-kane-basin-polar-bears-not-declining-concludes-new-report/ https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/15/baffin-bay-and-kane-...
- perbu 9y ago
  Observed polar bear populations are not declining. However, since there is far less ice the polar bear are much easier to find these days, making the counts go up, rather than down. This has been the case in Svalbard, at least.
  - superb_herb 9y ago
    And there I was thinking Svalbard was only a made up island for the Bear Kingdom in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy...
- wepple 9y ago
  That link does not pass the sniff test at all. Massively slanted an opinionated pieces that look like any5ing but proper science.
jhiska 9y ago
"Heart-wrenching" doesn't convince minds in Hacker News.
- superb_herb 9y ago
  Did you watch the video? It's rough.
- fulafel 9y ago
  Did you ever spring to action after intensely experiencing something you were already factually aware of? I think climate denialism is not a big problem on HN, but apathy and priorities are.
freech 9y ago
Maybe you'd prefer watching a polar bear eat a seal alive?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- moocowtruck 9y ago
  yea no kiddin seals are probably in favor of climate change
  - lovelearning 9y ago
    Doubt it. [1]: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120106-harp-seals-global-warming-sea-ice-science-environment/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120106-harp...
    - moocowtruck 9y ago
      that poor lil guy :( who likes cats when you got these
- cyberpunk0 9y ago
  No I'd prefer the ice caps not to be melting
DavidTNcl 9y ago
Propaganda
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jordache 9y ago
maybe the bear is diseased?
- jackhack 9y ago
  But that breaks the value of this finely-crafted propaganda and won't help the cause, brother. You can't question the Official Narrative(tm). Now off to the re-education camp with you!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

98 points by brakmic 9y ago

jamesmccann 9y ago

Meanwhile, we out here obsessing about making money on BTC...

brakmic 9y ago
Same thoughts on my side. And we're mostly doing nothing to stop the growing catastrophe. And I am no exception to that, ...just to be honest.
chinathrow 9y ago
There are folks who on purpose do not participate in BTC because they know the energy consumption is wrong. Go tell people about it and they might get it.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  I don't participate in BTC because I find the whole thing hilarious. Between it's inability to work as a payment method at scale (transactions per minute), exchanges running off with client bitcoins, exchanges getting broken into constantly and the shady way it's handled when that happens and on and on. I'm not saying the idea is fundamentally useless (clearly) but the implementation is terrible. I might be wrong and in 20 years I'll be getting paid in BTC but I'd bet that isn't the case.
- knownothing 9y ago
  And they make their snide observations from where? That's right, their computers. How much energy is spent consuming and deliving Facebook? Or iOS games?
  - Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
    Depends where their electricity is coming from, doesn't it?
  - chinathrow 9y ago
    There is indeed a lot of engery spent elsewhere - your comment is pure whataboutism though. A single Bitcoin transaction currently use as much engery as energy spent in a single home for days.
- cyberpunk0 9y ago
  What a pathetic argument. Do you realize how much energy is used to maintain existing computers systems used by banks for all their fake fiat currency?
  - chinathrow 9y ago
    Again - pure whataboutism here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism There are multiple reports now out detailing and comparing energy use of traditional transactional fiat money vs. the new schemes
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
refurb 9y ago
There will always be terrible things happening in the world. That doesn't mean we should only work on those problems at the expense of everything else.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  That’s just an empty sop to a blistered conscience.
awinder 9y ago
Given that bitcoin can be boiled down to essentially a Chinese energy index, these two things are not unrelated.

tim333 9y ago

While it's sad that the bear died it's a bit of a jump to link it to global warming.

dh-g 9y ago
There is an entire paragraph showing the causation. I disagree that its a jump.
asadlionpk 9y ago
You won't see species vanish in a 1 minute video. It's a slow and painful death.
PostOnce 9y ago
The article is mostly about global warming and contains a wealth of citations / references / relevant links. They provided their evidence as to why it's not a jump to link it to global warming -- where is your evidence that it is, in fact, a jump?
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The polar bear situation really doesn't look like good evidence to me, they state the bear's lameness is assumed to be due to starvation-based atrophy but it seems as likely that this is just an injured bear that can't hunt effectively. I'm certainly not denying climate change is wiping out polar bears, just that this shows good evidence of that. The article states bears starve through summer until sea ice forms on which they catch seals .. but the image is from Summer, when the sea ice presumably is yet to form. I guess it could be cumulative from the previous Summer being too warm; again it's not good, clear evidence as it's presented. Could someone answer where the seals go? I'd have expected if they weren't resting/mating on sea-ice that they'd rest on land and actually be easier to catch? Do they instead stay at sea?
  - chr1 9y ago
    In the winter seals have to use holes in the ice to breath, which makes them very vulnerable. Without ice it is much more difficult for bears to catch them. http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-seal-breathing.htm http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-seal-breathing.h...

000000000000001 9y ago

The changing climate conditions are going to wreak havoc on countless species in the coming century. The only question is would we be ready when things start rolling faster than we could control?

brakmic 9y ago
If the richest and most powerful countries say "there is no climate change" and "others want to destroy our economy", then the answer is a pessimistic one. The same applies to countries that say "yes, there is a climate change and we must do something", but in the end avoid doing anything to unwind the death spiral.
- ant6n 9y ago
  Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    > Most rich countries acknowledge climate change and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US. You could generalise that to:- Most rich countries acknowledge <foo is a problem> and try to come up with solutions. The big outlier is the US. Where <foo> is healthcare, corporate governance, lobbying, women's rights, racism, income equality, prison incarceration rates, police brutality. Growing up in the UK in the 80's I was fascinated by America and planned on one day visiting if not living there. Now? If I leave the UK (and I probably will) it'll likely be Germany or Holland, they aren't perfect (what is?) but they look a lot better than the US/UK these days.
    - Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
      The problem is: if you remove yourself, it's still going on back home. It's probably better to stay where you have some power to try to change it for everyone's good, particularly when foo is something like climate that affects the whole world. (or that's what I tell myself when Canada beckons)

thomasfl 9y ago

The world needs more SolarCoin and less Crypto Kitties https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/29/solarcoin-cryptocurrency-earned-generating-solar-electricity/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/29/solarcoin-cryptocurrenc...

rebuilder 9y ago
Solarcoin issuance appears to be centralized and controlled by the SolarCoin foundation. I'd stay well away.
anotheryou 9y ago
So how does proof of solar work? It's merely centralized payback points for solar without any promised value?
jackhack 9y ago
This is getting really, truly absurd. Might as well trade in four-leaf clovers. They're solar generated, renewable, organic, gluten free, etc. etc. etc. And just as worthless. Let me take that back. At least clovers can be plowed back into the soil and used to improve the earth. What the world needs is to wake up from this nonsense and get back to actually making tangible products and quit obsessing on ways to sell mindshare of fellow citizens as if it is a commodity.

eemax 9y ago

Individual animals in the wild die cruel, slow, painful deaths all the time, regardless of whether their species as a whole is thriving or not. So while this video might evoke a strong emotional response, it is just an anecdote and not actually evidence one way or the other for human-caused climate change. Of course, human-caused climate change is obviously real, but it's not OK to use bad arguments even if your conclusion is correct. EDIT: To clarify further, I am not disputing that polar bears are not being harmed by climate change, or even that the particular bear in the video is not starving because of climate change. I am merely pointing out that one could produce a video of a starving polar bear both in our world and in the world where climate change is not happening, because wild animals starve all the time.

ant6n 9y ago
> I am merely pointing out that one could produce a video of a starving polar bear both in our world and in the world where climate change is not happening, because wild animals starve all the time. Good thing most people already know we don't live in the world where climate change is not happening, so this doesn't need to act as proof of it happening, but rather as an individual example of what is happening all over.
- eemax 9y ago
  Yes, this is probably effective propaganda, and moreover, propaganda for a just cause. Nonetheless it is not evidence for climate change, and moreover it is not even necessarily an example of the effects of climate change - even we 100% fix climate change, there will still be plenty of starving wild animals available for sad videos. The actual way to ensure there are no starving wild animals is to exterminate them in the wild. But that's probably not a good idea.
  - b4lancesh33t 9y ago
    Has anyone in the linked article or in these comments tried to position this video as evidence of climate change? I don't see it if so.

sparkzilla 9y ago

Polar Bear populations are not declining. Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/15/baffin-bay-and-kane-basin-polar-bears-not-declining-concludes-new-report/ https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/15/baffin-bay-and-kane-...

perbu 9y ago
Observed polar bear populations are not declining. However, since there is far less ice the polar bear are much easier to find these days, making the counts go up, rather than down. This has been the case in Svalbard, at least.
- superb_herb 9y ago
  And there I was thinking Svalbard was only a made up island for the Bear Kingdom in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy...
wepple 9y ago
That link does not pass the sniff test at all. Massively slanted an opinionated pieces that look like any5ing but proper science.

jhiska 9y ago

"Heart-wrenching" doesn't convince minds in Hacker News.

superb_herb 9y ago
Did you watch the video? It's rough.
fulafel 9y ago
Did you ever spring to action after intensely experiencing something you were already factually aware of? I think climate denialism is not a big problem on HN, but apathy and priorities are.

freech 9y ago

Maybe you'd prefer watching a polar bear eat a seal alive?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
moocowtruck 9y ago
yea no kiddin seals are probably in favor of climate change
- lovelearning 9y ago
  Doubt it. [1]: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120106-harp-seals-global-warming-sea-ice-science-environment/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120106-harp...
  - moocowtruck 9y ago
    that poor lil guy :( who likes cats when you got these
cyberpunk0 9y ago
No I'd prefer the ice caps not to be melting

DavidTNcl 9y ago

Propaganda

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jordache 9y ago

maybe the bear is diseased?

jackhack 9y ago
But that breaks the value of this finely-crafted propaganda and won't help the cause, brother. You can't question the Official Narrative(tm). Now off to the re-education camp with you!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]