“Good News Bears”? Not Really

[Filius Nullius]

John Tierney's recent op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled "The Good News Bears" is grossly misleading and should be corrected. Various observers have reported that polar bears in and around the Hudson Bay are declining both in health and in numbers due to the loss of pack ice in that area. The fact that bears further to the north are apparently thriving (which, by Tierney’s own admission, may be largely due to limitations on hunting) is a classic non sequitur and does not mean that global warming is not a problem.

Polar bears have adapted over hundreds of thousands of years to hunt seals on pack ice. By far the most obvious of these adaptations are their white color and predilection for seal meat. They cannot "unadapt" over tens, hundreds or even a few thousand years to hunt other prey in non-whiteout conditions successfully. The problem for the bears currently lies in areas like the Hudson Bay where the pack ice has thinned to the point that it breaks up earlier in the year. This provides the bears with less time to hunt seals and build the stores of fat needed to tide them over the winter months. For more on this, have a look at the following reprint of an article by Blaine Harden of the Washington Post in the July 8, 2005 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "Pack ice melting earlier, imperiling polar bear, panel says; Population expected to drop 30 percent in 35 to 50 years".

Global warming could cause this phenomenon to expand to more northern areas so that pack ice no longer consistently remains in close proximity with the shore of northern Canada. This is not idle speculation. Arctic polar ice has thinned and retreated by some 40 percent since the 1950s. If, as some scientists believe is happening, a permanent "northwest passage" is developing on the northern shore of Canada, the polar bears will no longer have access to the pack ice, where their preferred prey resides. This could have dire consequences for the northern bears. See "Northwest Passage Redux" from the June 12, 2005, Washington Times.

Consequently, we should not make light of the danger posed by global warming with cute and cuddly comparisons of pandas and polar bears. A more enlightened perspective on what is happening to the Hudson Bay polar bears is to view it as a harbinger of the effects of global warming on populations of bears that live farther to the north. The key here is "farther to the north," which means that the bears there experience the effects of warming later than their Hudson Bay cousins.

On the question of how rapidly polar ice could melt, frozen methane hydrates (clathrates) locked in the arctic tundra and continental shelves may hold the key. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Estimates range from 20 to 60 times as powerful. Enormous quantities of it are contained in unstable methane hydrates buried below the surface of the artic tundra and in undersea deposits. There are currently over 3,000 times as much of these methane hydrates locked up in ice as is found floating free in the atmosphere, some 400 gigatons in the arctic alone. For example, the permafrost in northern Alaska is as much as 2,100 feet thick; in northern Siberia, it is 5,250 feet thick in places. Permafrost underlies approximately 80 percent of Alaska and an even greater percentage of Siberia.

World climate has, for the most part, been marvelously self-regulating over vast stretches of time, with numerous "negative feedback" mechanisms that prevent processes from running completely out of control. However, if human activities cause the average arctic temperature to rise by only a few degrees Centigrade, these methane hydrate deposits could begin to thaw and be released into the atmosphere. If global warming causes vast expanses of tundra to thaw, there would likely be a "positive feedback" effect since the power of these clathrates to create greenhouse warming is so much stronger than CO2. See "Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb". The heating effect of the newly released methane will likely cause atmospheric temperatures to rise much faster than CO2 alone, which will melt more methane hydrates, and so forth. The effects of this could be catastrophic.

The best analogy I have heard is to a thermostat with the positive and negative leads reversed so that the heater turns on when it gets hotter, rather than colder. Thus, the hotter it gets, the more the heater runs. Actually, once turned on, it never stops. The result could be "runaway" global warming that is beyond our ability to control since reducing atmospheric CO2, which is the only thing over which we have any control at all, will not have much, if any, effect on methane concentrations after we pass the tipping point.

The theory that a rapid release of methane into the atmosphere could lead to uncontrolled global warming is not new. For example, Al Gore discussed it in his 1991 book, Earth in the Balance. There is evidence that this process may already be under way. In recent decades, warming of the tundra has occurred. For example, in many areas of Russia and Alaska, permafrost that should be at –5 degrees Celsius is now only one or two degrees away from thawing.

International shipping interests may salivate at the prospect of a year-round northwest passage. However, the effects of global warming on the rest of the world could be devastating, including the loss of enormous amounts of coastal real estate and some of our most productive farmland. In assessing the danger posed by a particular threat, one must always consider, not only the likelihood that it will occur, but also the magnitude of the damage that will result if it actually happens. In this case, the likelihood of occurrence seems to be increasing every year, and the magnitude of the potential damage is practically incalculable.

We must heed the threat to the polar bears and humanity created by greatly elevated CO2 concentrations induced by uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels and take immediate steps to curb our dependence on petroleum, natural gas and coal. This will require a complete dedication to controlling our population and using clean, renewable sources of energy (such as solar and wind power) to drive our economy. Hydrogen and electricity (which some call "hydricity") must be developed as the new means of storing and transporting this energy. A "Marshall Plan" full of federal incentives to convert to renewable sources of energy is urgently needed.

Unfortunately, the just-enacted federal energy legislation, with its massive give-aways to the oil and gas industry, is woefully inadequate. In fact, the United States Congress has once again demonstrated that it is completely incapable of grasping the urgency of the situation.

“Good News Bears”? No, the Hudson Bay polar bears are global warming’s “canary-in-the-mineshaft,” so to speak. They are growlng an ominous tune that mankind must not ignore.