35,000 Beached Walruses Still Can’t Convince The Daily Caller On Climate Change

Daily Caller Purports To “Debunk” The “Myth” That Massive Walrus Beaching Is Connected To Arctic Ice Loss.

The Daily Caller tried to “debunk” the “myth” that a recent mass walrus beaching is connected to global warming, even though scientists say the walruses have crowded onshore because they cannot find a resting place on Arctic sea ice, which has declined significantly as the Earth warms.

An October 1 Daily Caller article titled “Myth Debunked: Arctic Walrus Beachings Are Nothing New” promoted zoologist Susan Crockford’s claims that a recent massive beaching of around 35,000 walruses on a single Alaskan shore has nothing to do with climate change. To support her claim, Crockford cherry-picked two instances of walrus beachings from the 1970s.

However, Biologist Anatoly Kochnev of Russia’s Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography told NBC News that extended beachings of this size only began occurring in the late 1990s, adding: “The reason is global warming.” Vox.com’s Brad Plumer further reported that this “appears to be the largest ever observed in northern Alaska, though NOAA is still trying to verify the exact numbers.” The current beaching is so vast that the Federal Aviation Authority is re-routing flights in order to avoid setting off a stampede.

In six of the past eight years, all of the floating sea ice in the Chukchi Sea (the region of the Arctic near the current haul-out) that walruses need to rest in between swims has completely melted away by mid-September, according to Chadwick Jay, head of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific walrus program.

In the Daily Caller article, Crockford even noted that mass walrus beachings occurred in 2009, 2011 and 2014, but dismissed them simply because they “did not coincide with the lowest levels of Arctic summer sea ice” in 2007 and 2012.

However, every one of these years had much less Arctic sea ice than the historical average, contributing to the extended beachings.

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