settled on the western shore of Hudson Bay lies Churchill Manitoba here where
temperatures can dip to 30 below Fahrenheit this tiny outpost has the
distinction of no other place on earth it's the polar bear capital of the world
join us as we venture onto Canada's frozen tundra to find the polar bears of
Churchill in this episode we'll take a look at how climate change is impacting
polar bears and their habitats even a place as cold as Churchill shows the
effects of climate change of course polar bears were among the first to know
they live on the ice and their lives depend on it
with ice forming later and melting earlier their ability to hunt for seals
is extremely limited dr. Steve Amstrup explains what have you seen change from
the polar bears from when he started to where we're at now if you had told me in
1980 that I would see the changes in the habitat that I would see I would have
said you're crazy the earliest years that I was in Alaska in the summertime
you could stand on the beach and Point Barrow or Prudhoe Bay at the end of the
summer you could still see the sea ice it was very close to shore it was over
the shallow productive waters you know if you were lucky and had a spotting
scope you might even see a polar bear out there roaming around the last
several years the sea ice was nowhere to be seen it had retreated beyond the
curvature of the earth even the most powerful telescope couldn't resolve it
and to think that that kind of change could occur in just thirty years and
just one working man's career is just beyond me and by the time that came
around I realized we got to do something we got to do something now
what would you say to somebody that says this is too big this can't humans can't
have an impact on this I don't know if I believe in this there's sort of there's
two approaches to that one is can humans have an impact on the climate some
people just don't believe that they can but there were a lot of people who
didn't believe that we could shoot all the Bison we have tremendous potential
as humans to do bad things to the earth and even though co2 is a trace gas in
fact because it's a trace gas it doesn't take very much more to go from the
stable level that has allowed humans to flourish to a level that will make it
really hard for us to continue to flourish so there's that angle of it
that yes indeed we can influence the world around us but the other side of it
is that allows us the ability to change it to change our ways there's a study
that is out there that suggests that if every one of us without having to go out
and buy a new car or anything else just doing the things in our life that we can
easily do like driving a little bit less turning down our thermostat in the
wintertime turning it up in the summertime taking public transit if we
can just the simple things that would be relatively minor changes in our life if
everybody did that in the US we could save more greenhouse gas emissions than
currently are being put out by the whole country of France
we have a potential tremendous potential if we all just took on that personal
resolve to do it but the impacts are there nonetheless and according to NASA
rising temperatures are a trend when Wild Kingdom traveled to Churchill
in November of 2017 it was the third hottest November in a
hundred and thirty seven years of recorded history only 2015 and 2016 of
we're hotter
but it's not just here over 97% of climate scientists agree that human
activities are causing climate change which attributes to ocean acidification
and a rise in hurricanes droughts floods rising sea levels and other weather
extremes people want to have polar bears in their future they don't want to think
of polar bears as they do now of dinosaurs oh yeah there used to be these
great white bears in the north and we have pictures of them but nothing else
luckily it's not too late for polar bears and it's not too late for us it
just takes a lot of people making small changes and smart decisions but we have
to listen to what the polar bears are telling us because if polar bears around
thin ice so are we
you