Polar Bears May Be Starving in the Barents Sea Area, But Thanks to Russia We Don't Know If It's Climate Change

A polar bear keeps close to her young along the Beaufort Sea coast in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Source: Susanne Miller/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) Arctic sea ice has likely reached it's minimum geographic extent for 2015, coming in at fourth lowest in the satellite record and continuing a long-term downward trend, according to a just-released update from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The news brings to mind a dramatic image of an emaciated polar bear in Svalbard, Norway that recently went viral. The bear quickly become a poster child for climate change. But posters and scientific evidence aren't quite the same thing. While it's true that shrinking sea ice in a warming Arctic is a plausible explanation for what happened to that poor polar bear, more science is needed to get a definitive answer on whether entire polar bear populations really are declining on Svalbard and ...