Their icy hunting grounds is rapidly shrinking, but polar bears in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago have defied the odds by bulking up instead of wasting away, a study has found.
The Barents Sea has lost its ice at a faster rate than other areas populated by polar bears, as temperatures have risen there more rapidly than in other Arctic regions, according to research published in the journal Scientific Reports.
However, polar bears in Svalbard have acquired body fat rather than becoming slimmer, unlike those in other Arctic regions, because the sea ice where they hunt is receding.
‘The increase in body condition during a period of significant loss of sea ice was a surprise,’ said Jon Aars, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI).
Polar bears in Svalbard have become plumper by feasting on land-based prey such as reindeer and walruses – species that have recovered after being over-exploited by humans, the study said.
Warmer temperatures have also made it easier for them to hunt ringed seals that now crowd in smaller sea ice areas.
The scientists analysed the body condition index (BCI) of 770 adult bears between 1995 and 2019 to determine how much – or how little – fat they bear – pardon the pun!
They discovered that their BCI fell until 2000 but increased in subsequent years despite a period of rapid loss of sea ice.
The total polar bear population of the Barents Sea was estimated at between 1,900 and 3,600 in 2004 and may have increased since then, the study said.
The increase in air temperature has been two to four times higher in the Arctic than the global average over recent decades.
The Barents Sea has experienced even more significant increases in temperature than other areas in the Arctic over the past four decades, increasing by up to 2 °C per decade in some places.
The area has also lost sea ice habitat at a rate of four days per year between 1979 and 2014, more than twice as fast as other regions hosting polar bears, it said.
The Svalbard findings may seem surprising because they contradict the results of studies conducted in other polar bear populations’, said Sarah Cubaynes, a researcher at French environmental research centre CEFE who was not involved in the study.
The physical condition of polar bears in Hudson Bay, for example, ‘has greatly declined due to warming’, Cubaynes told AFP.
Now you can call me a conspiracy theorist, but I do not believe in climate change as such.
Because of the variations in water density, melting sea ice has a small impact but does not considerably raise sea levels.
Sea Ice: This is ice that forms from seawater and floats on the ocean’s surface. When sea ice liquefies, it doesn’t contribute greatly to the sea level rise because it’s already displacing its own weight in the water.
The melting of sea ice results in fresh water that is less dense than the surrounding salty ocean water, which can lead to a slight increase in volume, but this effect is minimal.
Land Ice: This includes glaciers and ice sheets that are found on land.
When land ice melts, it adds more water to the ocean, directly contributing to sea level rise. This is an important factor in global sea levelshifts.
The Impact of Melting Sea Ice
While melting sea ice doesn’t cause a substantial elevation in sea levels, it can still have minor effects. For example, the fresh water from melting sea ice is less dense than the salty ocean water, which can slightly raise the overall volume of water in the ocean. However, this contribution is much smaller compared to the effects of melting land ice.
Studies reveal that the melting of sea ice has contributed about 0.04 inches (1.1 millimetres) to sea level elevation between 1994 and 2017, which is somewhat insignificant compared to the contributions from land ice melt.
Conclusion
In summary, while melting sea ice does have a small impact on sea level elevation due to its lower density compared to saltwater, the overall impact is minimal. The primary concern for rising sea levels comes from the melting of land ice, which adds considerable quantities of water to the oceans. Understanding these dynamics is essential for accurately assessing the impacts of climate change on sea levels.
Yes, of course, over centuries of pollution from large industrial metropolises and coal mining towns, so there was going to be some form of global warming, but it’s not all down to pollution. Volcanic eruptions can discharge considerable quantities of CO2 and ash into the air, and as the sun changes, energy output can affect the Earth’s climate, but these variations happen over long timescales and are not responsible for the rapid warming observed in recent decades.
Natural Climate Cycles, which the Earth has experienced with its natural cycles of warming and cooling due to factors like shifts in its orbit and axial tilt. However, the current rate of warming is unusual and cannot be explained by the natural processes alone.
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that human activities are the primary driver of the recent changes in climate, particularly since the
Industrial Revolution. While natural processes do contribute to climate variability, they cannot account for the rapid transformations we are witnessing today.
So, by all means, think green, that’s awesome, but we destroyed this wonderful planet of ours an extremely long time ago.
We are told to think green, live green for our environment. Electric vehicles are now the thing that are powered by lithium batteries, and what does that do to our environment?
Lithium batteries involve several stages, each with its own environmental impact.
The process starts with the extraction of lithium, cobalt, and other minerals, which can lead to significant environmental degradation, including habitat destruction and pollution.
The manufacturing method is also energy-intensive, contributing to carbon emissions unless renewable energy sources are utilised.
At the end of their life, if not properly recycled, these batteries contribute to electronic waste, a growing environmental concern. Recycling lithium-ion batteries can mitigate these effects by recovering valuable materials and reducing the demand for virgin resources.
Then of course, there is the matter of plastic, paper and cotton tote bags, which all have sustainability issues.
Aldi, Asda and Sainsbury’s have increased their plastic bag charges by up to 50 per cent in the past two years. Now you’ll pay anything from 10p to 60p for a reusable plastic bag at major supermarkets, with stores expected to donate the proceeds to good causes.
Supermarkets supplied 133 million single-use plastic bags in the 2022-23 financial year – a huge 99 per cent reduction on the 1.33 billion they supplied just after the charge was introduced in 2016-17.
On the face of it, this is good news. You’re definitely less likely to see carrier bags littering the road or caught in tree branches these days – but behind the scenes, is enough being done to recycle the plastic bags that are still used? And what is the most sustainable way to carry home your shopping?
Single-use plastic bags are a nightmare for the environment, taking decades to decay in landfill.
Most supermarkets have replaced their old thin bags with thicker versions, usually dubbed ‘bags for life’. These bags are stronger, so you can reuse them on numerous shopping trips.
When your bag for life breaks, shops return the damaged bag for recycling, and you may often exchange it for a new one for free.
But this is where things get tricky. Most supermarkets accept all manner of soft plastics for recycling – not just shopping bags – so it’s difficult to measure the amount of plastic bags that do get recycled.
If customers are choosing to recycle or reuse bags at home for other purposes – for instance, using them as bin liners for general waste – the bags could still end up in landfill.
Since recycling soft plastics and film can be tricky, especially if they’re contaminated with food waste, it’s possible that some won’t end up being recycled at all. An investigation by Bloomberg that put trackers into plastic bags discovered that some soft plastic was being dumped at an industrial estate in Turkey.
When the carrier bag charge was introduced in 2015, the intention was for supermarkets to spend the proceeds on projects that helped the environment.
The government’s plastic bag guide for businesses presently says: ‘Once you’ve deducted reasonable costs, it’s expected that you’ll donate the proceeds to good causes, particularly environmental causes.’
However, this doesn’t seem to be happening at every major supermarket.
Although Tesco claims to spend more on its community initiatives than it does on plastic bag sales, the company treats plastic bag revenue as general revenue.
Asda said that it treats funds generated by plastic bag sales the same as sales of any other item it sells. Like all supermarkets, though, it does donate money to community projects.
Other supermarkets said plastic bag sales fund charitable projects, though these aren’t always related to sustainability.
When choosing a bag, the key thing to consider is how often you’ll reuse it. The more you reuse it, the more sustainable it is as an option.
A 2020 report from the Life Cycle Initiative (LCI), which looked at the impact of several types of plastic bags over 10 years, said: ‘The number of times a bag is used directly influences its environmental impacts.
‘For instance, if a bag is used for shopping twice instead of once, it has only half the environmental impact per shopping round.’
M&S may have started offering reusable paper bags in its stores since paper is thought to be more recyclable than plastic.
Paper shopping bags tend to be less durable than the plastic alternative, however. And according to the LCI report, a paper bag’s climate impact can vary greatly, depending on factors like the fuel used in production.
Waste charity Wrap says you can reuse plastic bags ‘well over 50 times’ depending on what they’re made from.
When plastic bags are incinerated, the CO2 they release is harmful to the planet, whereas the CO2 emissions from incinerating paper bags are part of the natural carbon cycle, according to the LCI report.
However, the methane emissions from paper bags will be more detrimental if both plastic and paper bags wind up in a landfill.
On the surface, compostable and biodegradable bags appear to be a good choice, but you are less likely to reuse biodegradable bags since they are weaker and thinner.
Although cotton tote bags are often the most durable shopping bags, they are only environmentally friendly if they are used repeatedly.
According to the LCI study, you need to use a tote bag 50 to 150 times for it to have the same environmental impact as one single-use plastic bag. In short, if you already own a tote bag, don’t buy another – just reuse that one again and again.
Indeed, the question of which bags are most sustainable is extremely complex. The only impact-free way of getting your shopping home would be to carry it without using any bags. But assuming you’re buying too much for that to be possible, try to reuse any bags you already have – and always recycle them once they’ve become unusable.
Some people use plastic boxes or cardboard boxes. My father used to do this. He would go into the store, buy his shopping, and at the checkout would put it back into the trolley as it was being scanned through and then take the trolley out to his car and put the shopping into the boxes, but of course, not everyone owns a car, but for those that do, this is a great idea, and no plastic bags have to be used. I myself use a shopping trolley to bring my food back home because I don’t drive.
At the end of the day, I loathe the term ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainable development’ because I believe it’s an oxymoron, as development is inherently unsustainable.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 