As Arctic ice melts, polar bears starve to death

This article goes on & on about how polar bears are eating alternative food now that the ice is melting and they have less access to seals. At the end of the article, where most people would have stopped reading, they finally give the facts about how this is not sufficient. And note the misleading title they gave the article.

So NBC can say they are reporting on the results of global warming, while actually encouraging people to think it's not a problem.

As Arctic ice melts, polar bears switch diets to survive, studies say
John Roach NBC News
Jan. 24, 2014

Arctic polar bears may be adjusting their eating habits as their sea ice habitat melts and the furry white predators stand to lose the floating platform they depend on to hunt seals, their primary food. According to researchers, however, the bears are displaying flexible eating habits as their world changes around them.

Indeed, scientific studies indicate polar bear populations are falling as the sea ice disappears earlier each spring and forms later in the fall. But a series of papers based on analysis of polar bear poop released over the past several months indicate that at least some of the bears are finding food to eat when they come ashore, ranging from bird eggs and caribou to grass seeds and berries.

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In addition to berries, birds and eggs, Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear biologist who was not involved with the recent studies, said people have seen a polar bear drink hydraulic fluid as it was drained out of a forklift, chomp the seats of snow machines, and eat lead acid batteries.

"Polar bears will eat anything," he told NBC News. "The question is: Does is it do them any good? And everything we can see from what bears eat when they are on land is it has a very, very minimal energetic return relative to the cost."

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Derocher, the polar bear biologist, said the only reason these polar bears are eating the snow geese and other plants and animals is that they still have sea ice in the winter to hunt seals and pack on the fat. Once on shore, his and other studies show, polar bears lose about 1.5 pounds per day.

"We've got bears that are dying of starvation on land in the Churchill area at the end of the ice free period. These are bears that don't have enough energy coming off the sea ice. So any resources that they by default have got while they are on land haven't been enough to change that trajectory," he said.

The most recent published population estimates for Hudson Bay polar bears is 935 as of 2004, down from 1,194 in 1987. Unpublished estimates put the current population at around 800, Derocher said. Climate models indicate that the region will be free of suitable ice for polar bears to hunt seals by the middle of this century, perhaps sooner.

"You can't just push polar bears on shore and expect them to do just fine," Derocher said.