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>If I could purchase shorts on the polar bear population, I think it would be a pretty safe bet... Ah yes, the polar bears. When I was in middle school we watc

>If I could purchase shorts on the polar bear population, I think it would be a pretty safe bet... Ah yes, the polar bears. When I was in middle school we watched An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore and I wrote a well-referenced essay on how polar bears would probably be extinct by 2020, as he says in the documentary. Since then, their numbers have steadily increased [1]* https://insight.factset.com/polar-bears-bullish-or-bearish-outlook#:~:text=The%20numbers%20indicate%20that%20polar,recently%20(all%20%2B%2F%2D15%25) https://insight.factset.com/polar-bears-bullish-or-bearish-o.... Maybe you should find a way to short Florida beach properties instead, since they should all be below water in about 10-15 years?

another_story 4y ago
After they were over hunted, much like everything in the area in the 1800 to 1900s their numbers have rebounded due to more strict rules around hunting and the fur trade. That doesn't mean their habit is not under serious threat.
- zosima 4y ago
  Their habit is not under serious threat, simply because it isn't. Polar bears who are used to living in temperatures between -30C and 20C or so, will not mind neither 1.5C increase in average temperature nor even twice or four times that. What would make anyone believe that they would?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    They depend on ice and there’s going to be a whole lot less of it at the North Pole, entirely possible that there will be an ice free North Pole in the next two or three decades, habitat =gone. Global average temperatures aren’t the whole story.
rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
>in contrast, the GWPF see bear populations doing well to date. So that's where they get their numbers. And who's GWPF? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundati... Ah, yes!
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  >Of the 19 polar bear subpopulations recognized in 2017, one was in decline, two were increasing, seven were stable, and nine had insufficient data.[48] https://web.archive.org/web/20151224224314/http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html https://web.archive.org/web/20151224224314/http://pbsg.npola...
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    It seems a multispectral satellite photo would quite easily spot bears. Heat signature visible in the IR, and shadow in the visible spectrum. You could get pretty good population estimates by just reviewing random 1 km^2 samples for bears and then extrapolating.
- brutusborn 4y ago
  The other group the article references, the Polar Bear Specialist Group, sadly isn't much better than the GWPF. Look at their most recent report, they show "Data deficient" for most subpopulations. I think the other comment is likely correct, the population is going up, but for reasons unrelated to the existence of global warming. https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/ https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/ This doesn't fit the environmentalist narrative well, so the most prominent statistics on their homepage aren't directly related to polar bear populations, but things like "The mean rate of decline in summer sea ice area across all subpopulations "

another_story 4y ago

After they were over hunted, much like everything in the area in the 1800 to 1900s their numbers have rebounded due to more strict rules around hunting and the fur trade. That doesn't mean their habit is not under serious threat.

zosima 4y ago
Their habit is not under serious threat, simply because it isn't. Polar bears who are used to living in temperatures between -30C and 20C or so, will not mind neither 1.5C increase in average temperature nor even twice or four times that. What would make anyone believe that they would?
- colechristensen 4y ago
  They depend on ice and there’s going to be a whole lot less of it at the North Pole, entirely possible that there will be an ice free North Pole in the next two or three decades, habitat =gone. Global average temperatures aren’t the whole story.

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago

>in contrast, the GWPF see bear populations doing well to date. So that's where they get their numbers. And who's GWPF? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundati... Ah, yes!

raspberry1337 4y ago
>Of the 19 polar bear subpopulations recognized in 2017, one was in decline, two were increasing, seven were stable, and nine had insufficient data.[48] https://web.archive.org/web/20151224224314/http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html https://web.archive.org/web/20151224224314/http://pbsg.npola...
- londons_explore 4y ago
  It seems a multispectral satellite photo would quite easily spot bears. Heat signature visible in the IR, and shadow in the visible spectrum. You could get pretty good population estimates by just reviewing random 1 km^2 samples for bears and then extrapolating.
brutusborn 4y ago
The other group the article references, the Polar Bear Specialist Group, sadly isn't much better than the GWPF. Look at their most recent report, they show "Data deficient" for most subpopulations. I think the other comment is likely correct, the population is going up, but for reasons unrelated to the existence of global warming. https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/ https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/ This doesn't fit the environmentalist narrative well, so the most prominent statistics on their homepage aren't directly related to polar bear populations, but things like "The mean rate of decline in summer sea ice area across all subpopulations "