Pizzlies in Osnabruck photo credit Corradox CC by SA 3.0
I wrote, yesterday about the fears for the future of the polar bear species, and the problems that global warming are causing. Today, I am writing about another news subject from a few months ago – that of hybrids between brown bears and the polar bears.
Polar bears as a species, are only though to be between 150,000 and 1.7million years old, with most putting their estimate at around 600,000 years. This is very young for a species, and they descend from brown bears, with a 2011 study finding that female polar bear DNA seems to originate from a group of brown bears living in Ireland during the last ice age when vast ice sheets stretched from there to the north pole, and allowed polar bears to truly wander far and wide.
Pizzly’s and Growler bears, while found in nature on rare occasions, would have naturally been so rare as to be insignificant. It is only human caused global warming which has forced these animals together – and regular meetings in the natural world, of closely related species, usually ends up with offspring.
These hybrids (male polar bear and female grizzly ends with a Pizzly bear, while a female polar bear and a male grizzly ends with a Growler bear) are likely to become more common. Polar bears will increasingly have to head south, to be able to survive, and Grizzly bears will increasingly head north for cooler environments, bringing them into contact more and more often.
I am not going to pretend that this is not bad. Donald Trumps former term was bad for the natural world and the fight against climate change. Likely changes:
Leaving the Paris climate agreement again – there is some suggestion that this will lead to a collapse of the agreement. Trump has pushed coal among other fossil fuels, and is likely to roll back various progress. Perhaps a possible hope is Elon Musk and his closeness to Donald Trump – might this relationship mean that less is done against electric cars? Last time, the USA carbon emissions fell despite everything that Trump did (definitely not because). Keeping temperature increases to just 1.5 degrees Celsius is pretty much impossible, if the USA does not do its part.
Denialism and doubt will return – it is not just that Donald Trump is not willing to work towards the end of carbon emissions, but he does not believe that global warming is real. This is a real indictment on how he forms his views of the world, as it is a simple fact that the world is warming
Clean energy policies will go, along with scientific decisions on wolves and other wildlife within the country. This is quite likely to have an impact on global biodiversity, as the USA will abandon its lead on this.
Under Trump the first time, protected status for species no longer required the same protections, and much wilderness in the USA lost its protection. A return to office is likely to make this far worse.
The situation is serious. Having been president before, it is highly likely that trump will be more effective this time, as he knows more than last time. He has retaken the Senate, and it looks like he is going to take the house as well. Will he manage to use his position more effectively? Leadership on climate, biodiversity and many more things will fall open, we must wait and see if other countries step up to fill their shoes, and continue to push forwards.
Of the slightly over 8 billion humans on earth, 4.641 billion, or just under 60% live in Asia. While this is expected to grow to 5.25 billion people in 2055 it will only be 54% (due to increasing populations elsewhere in the world) of global population at the time.
So, what is the problem? An average fertility rate of 2.1 is currently considered necessary to maintain population levels (that is, 2.1 births per female). When the fertility rate drops below this rate, there are not enough babies being born to replace all of the people dying. As environmentalists, this is good, as the human population is thought (by some) to be too high to sustainable retain long-term (estimates as to what population the earth can sustain long-term range from a relatively small 0.65 billion to an enormous 9-10 billion). Of course, it depends on what we consider as sustainable survival – for me, and I hope for most of you, what I would consider sustainable, would be a low enough population to allow all other species on earth to thrive, so I would suggest that a number near the bottom of this list is more reasonable.
Below, we will look at a range of Asian countries with large populations
A group of tourists watching a polar bear in its natural habitat
Polar bears are wild creatures. They roam widely, with some having been tracked to a home range of over 6.000,000 square km. One individual was found more than 4000km from where it was before.
Its not even an issue of just giving them a large reserve, as they spend the cold winters roaming far and wide across the worlds oceans. Even in a country like Canada or Greenland, it is not possible to exclude humans from that much land.
Just under 500 permits have been granted for bear hunting, which would drop the countries population under 2000 across the whole country. This is 40% under the population that existed in 2008. This number of licenses gives the game away, it is a give away to the trophy hunting industry, and is not about controlling the population.
While many bear hunters are pleased, there are a significant number who are concerned. Anders Nilsson a hunter in north Sweden said “There are those within the hunting community that are concerned about too many bears being killed off”. This is well above the annual replacement rate, and it is predicted that if this level was sustained into next year, the number of bears would fall below the minimum level of 1400, that is thought that is needed to retain a healthy population within the country.
Bears are a protected species in Europe, and as such “deliberate hunting or killing of strictly protect species is prohibited” with this only being lifted as a “last resort” to protect public safety, crops or natural flora and fauna.
It is feared that the bear is heading in the same direction as the moose, with a population having fallen 60% in the 21st century – having killed too many moose, the hunters are now blaming the bears for killing too many of what is left, and leaving too small a share for trophy hunters in the country. Culls of both wolves (there are currently roughly 450 wolves in the country, considered above carrying capacity, but only because they compete with humans, there is little supported science in working out carrying capacity at this level) and lynx have been increasing (lynx have a population of around 1450, though this is also heavily depressed on what would occur naturally – lynx also rarely target domestic livestock, though in Sweden this is more complex, as reindeer in northern Sweden are semi domestic, being allowed to roam free but owned).
This cull is well above what should be allowed, and is clearly not in line with European rules. It is also highly dangerous, as it risks Sweden’s bear watching industry. 9.2% of the economy comes from tourism, and many of these will spend time in rural areas, trying to see the bears. While it is hard to find numbers for how much money the bear culling brings in, it is certainly lower than the ecotourism potential of each living bear.
I have been lucky enough to see both bear and wolf in Sweden, from a bear hide. Well worth a visit, though, you may feel it worth waiting till the country starts culling fewer. Having said this, visiting to see the bears may instead show the government the value of leaving more bears alive. We have a bear hide on our books in the country click here to see more, or to book your visit, which is likely to be a memory that stays with you for a long time.
Akio Toyoda is the chairman of Toyota ($10.2 million earnings in 2023) claims electric cars will never exceed 30%
So, when someone who is chairman of the car company which sells the most cars in the world says something, people listen. Toyota sold a total of 11.23 million cars in 2023, out of a market of around 92 million cars, or around 12% of global car sales. So perhaps he is right? Well a large number of people do not think so.
His arguments against electric cars include
access to electricity – 1 billion people worldwide do not have electricity. However, there are only 1.475 billion cars in the world, or 2 for every 11 people in the world. Further more, it seems likely that the 1 billion without electricity, probably also do not have a car.
Customer choice – he argues that customers should be able to choose the powertrain they want. However, the electric car has not been explored by Toyota, as they only have one fully electric model, the BZ4X and the UX400e (under the Lexus brand). The BZ4X is a premium car, but it only has an official efficiency of 2.9 miles per KWH, which is worse than the large tesla X gets (this car is over 34cm longer, and almost 9cm taller. This makes it more comparable to the tesla y (still 6cm longer, 2.4cm higher, slightly less ground clearance, but 34% more cargo space), however this car (which you can see is bigger) gets 4 miles per kwh, over 33% more efficient.
We all know what Donald Trump is like. On climate change, he changes what he says on each time. However, his beliefs become clear, when we look at his behaviour. He took the USA out of the Paris climate accord, and made every effort to reverse all improvements on this front.
There are many reasons not to vote for Trummp. While there is a baffling desire to support Donald Trump from the Christian right, consider the factsÂ
He is a thrice married man, who has cheated on all his wives
He does not have any idea on the bible, and while he tries to suggest he is a Christian, has no idea what the bible contains.Â
He has no idea what it is to be a Christian, what it means (see video below). Jesus turned himself over to be killed by the authorities, look at what it means, before voting for this man again. You may disagree with everything that Biden has done, but he is clearly a man who has a relationship with God, look at it rationally before voting for a man who has shown himself to be unsuitable for the role.
What is a Donald Trump second term going to mean for the environment, nature and climate change?
He is especially opposed to wind power and has promised to halt offshore wind development, which he claims harms marine life. Not only is impact on marine life not true, these are not only the cleanest, but also the cheapest ways to make power (wind and solar is currently around 50% less than coal power, and this is only getting better).
Trump greatly expanded the right to hunt on federal land. His changes increased hunting of wolves to such an extent that many years of progress was lost. Grizzly bears are in a similar position, as well as Jaguars and many other more common species.
While carbon emissions did fall under Trump, this was despite not because of him. He relaxed rules on carbon emissions from cars (despite the opposite direction that the market is going).
He has greatly expanded drilling for both oil and gas, and has no intention of curtailing this. We cannot afford to burn all the fossil fuels, but this is not Trumps position.
He rolled back over 100 major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals, despite his mantra of clean air and clean water. Click here to view a new york times with all of these in detail.
This is just a quick list of some of the reasons why you should not vote for this man. Should you have children, or child relatives, it should be obvious why, and I would hope that even without descendants, you would want to leave the world in a better place.
Please share this, and other similar articles with friends who can vote. Lets help Americans to recognize the danger that Trump poses – analysis shows that should climate change continue, the USA falls in just third from the top, in terms of the amount they are likely to have to pay, should climate change continue.
CC by sa 2.0 climate change denial photo credit Edward Kimmel
Why is climate change denial still not over? Because the amount of money that can be made by denying climate change.
Has there been a change? Yes, but not necessarily for the better. For many people (generally with a financial motive) they have gone from outright climate denial, to climate doomism – we have already emitted too much carbon, we are going to see global warming, so there is nothing I can do (this has the advantage of allowing those people to continue to behave in the same way). Climate doomism says, I am too little, I cannot do anything.
Boki the bear (2 years old) was found to have a condition that I also have. It is known as hydrocephalus, and is caused when the liquid that is found around the brain does not drain away properly. This is often found in infants, but can also occur after a head injury.
When this liquid does not drain, rather than protecting the brain, this liquid squeezes the brain, which apart from being very painful (it usually causes insanity before death, if left untreated in babies) but can take decades to kill naturally.
It seems quite likely, that this bear would have died relatively quickly in the wild, as even if the illness did not kill, it would likely cause different behaviour which would likely have caused more problems.
While it is true that bears have a sweet tooth, which may have contributed to this bears like for it, they are also very intelligent, and may well have been able to connect the idea of feeling better with the medicine that he was taking.
For as long as we have emitted large quantities of carbon the world has absorbed the vast majority – no longer?
Pretty much all models that are trying to predict how much danger we are (on global warming) suggest that all current carbon syncs will continue to work, however, that does not appear to be the case.
We have emitted roughly 1500 giga tonnes of carbon dioxide since the industrial revolution, and the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 3200 giga tonnes. Before this point, there was roughly 2200 giga tonnes in the atmosphere. These numbers suggest that around 1 quarter has been absorbed by the planet (these numbers could well be wrong but are worked out from well known figures).
This suggests that at least 1 quarter of our emissions have been absorbed, which if this study is right, means 1 third more carbon being added each year, if we simply keep our emissions stable or conversely, we need to cut emissions by an extra third to meet our goals, if this holds true.
Given our difficultly cutting emissions so far, this is going to prove hard.
