Global Warming Is Driving Polar Bears Toward Extinction, Researchers Say

[Zorro]

By century’s end, polar bears worldwide could become nearly extinct as a result of shrinking sea ice in the Arctic if climate change continues unabated, scientists said.

Polar bears could become nearly extinct by the end of the century as a result of shrinking sea ice in the Arctic if global warming continues unabated, scientists said Monday.

Nearly all of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, from the Beaufort Sea off Alaska to the Siberian Arctic, would face being wiped out because the loss of sea ice would force the animals onto land and away from their food supplies for longer periods, the researchers said. Prolonged fasting, and reduced nursing of cubs by mothers, would lead to rapid declines in reproduction and survival.

“There is very little chance that polar bears would persist anywhere in the world, except perhaps in the very high Arctic in one small subpopulation” if greenhouse-gas emissions continue at so-called business-as-usual levels, said Peter K. Molnar, a researcher at the University of Toronto Scarborough and lead author of the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Even if emissions were reduced to more moderate levels, “we still are unfortunately going to lose some, especially some of the southernmost populations, to sea-ice loss,” Dr. Molnar said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/climate/polar-bear-extinction.html

[hunter]

1. It makes you wonder if there's any practical way to feed them...

... without changing their natural behavior too much. Polar bears are not averse to scavenging. They'll eat dead whales and other animals that wash up on the beach. Randomly placed "bear chow" would just be another found food to them.

Each polar bear usually eats 40-50 blubbery seals a year, catching them on the ice. No ice makes the seals harder to catch.

Of course, quitting fossil fuels would be the most sensible thing for humans to do. We have all the technology we need, we just don't have the will.