Tom Harris： Polar Bears are Not Going Extinct
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
158.2752
Summary
Polar bear expert Susan Crockford explains why polar bears are not dying out, and why we should not be worried about it. In this episode of the podcast, we talk to polar bear expert and author Susan Crickford about the science behind her new book, "The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened."
Transcript
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A lot of people, you know, a lot of the hysteria has been around, you know, that the ice is melting and the polar bears have nowhere to go.
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Well, first of all, if, you know, it's funny, Bob Carter, who used to be our chief scientist, he's just passed away a little while ago,
00:00:17.480
he used to show a slide of polar bears on the ice.
00:00:20.820
And he said, you know, this must be virtual reality.
00:00:25.200
Because if polar bears were as fragile as people think, then they would have gone extinct.
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And he then shows the temperature graph in times in the past when the Arctic truly was ice free many times in the past.
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I mean, polar bears have been around for something like 70,000 years.
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And in that time frame, there were periods where the ice in the Arctic was pretty well gone.
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And he says, well, they must have gone extinct.
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You know, so there are no polar bears alive today.
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And, of course, Susan Crockford, who's somebody you might want to interview from the University of Victoria,
00:00:55.820
She wrote a book called The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened.
00:01:00.400
And right now we have something like 25,000 to 30,000 polar bears in contrast to the 1960s when we had about 5,000.
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So the reduction in sea ice is certainly not hurting them at all.
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In fact, what hurts polar bears are two things.
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One, we conquered, and that was excess hunting.
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That's the main reason why the polar bear populations have recovered,
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But the other thing that hurts polar bears is when it's too cold,
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because the ice is too thick and the seals don't break through.
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But, you know, polar bears are a very, very robust animal.
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You know, when they were considering declaring them an endangered species in Washington, D.C.,
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and they actually said, there's too many polar bears.
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You know, don't declare them the only endangered species is Inuit children,
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and they've actually been issuing a lot more hunting licenses,
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or sorry, rifles, actually, to people just to protect them from all the polar bears.