Topic: News

Leahy, S. (2018, February 01). Polar Bears Really Are Starving Because of Global Warming,                  Study Shows. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://news.nationalgeographic.com/                  2018/02/polar-bears-starve-melting-sea-ice-global-warming-study-beaufort-sea-                          environment/

As I was searching for topics to give my current event presentation on, there was not much that caught my attention. I scrolled through many mainstream media popular pages to no avail, thinking that if there was nothing that caught my attention, it would be impossible to catch my audience’s attention. I wanted to report on an article that would make people want to change their ways.

I scrolled past a National Geographic article of which the title caught my attention. “Polar Bears Really Are Starving Because of Global Warming, Study Shows.” I always knew that the polar bears were becoming endangered due to the warming of the planet, however I never realized that it was due to starvation. It reminded me of a video that went viral through Facebook, being shared along with sad faces and words of disappointment. The video showed a polar bear on an iceless plot of land, lacking in fur and life, struggling to walk due to starvation. The bear is seen looking through trashcans for something to eat, but finds nothing. The photographer of the video was later interviewed and said the entire crew had tears rolling down their faces. I decided that this would be an interesting topic that would get my audience to pay attention.

Polar bears burn more than twelve thousand calories a day meaning they need to eat more than that in order to survive, especially if they are more active while finding food. This creates a sort of catch 22. In order to get the calories the bears need to catch calories, they need to burn more calories, which means they need more calories. Seals are polar bears main form of food. When seals come up to the surface to breathe from cone shaped holes in the ice, the bears smack them on their head and drag it to the ice where the seal then becomes dinner.

Polar bears are not incredible swimmers, especially compared to seals. So because the Arctic ice decreases by 14% each decade, seals no longer need to come up for air at these cone shaped holes. This makes it impossible for a polar bear to reach the seals.

The study done by Anthony Pagano shows shocking results. The study began by capturing 9 female polar bears in an area known to have many seals. These bears were equipped with video cameras and GPS trackers and were observed over an 11 day period. By the end, four of the five bears had failed to catch a single meal, one bear losing 44 pounds during her hunt. To me, these results are painful. Climate change is occurring rapidly due to the human race, which is literally starving other animals on this planet. It is extremely selfish of us.

This source is valuable in that it was published by a prestigious news source. The study is recent and shows accurate, thought-provoking results. The author, Stephen Leahy, co-won the United Nations Global Prize for Climate Change Reporting, which shows he is extremely qualified to write on this topic.