evidence: He was among the first to lay out the simple connection between polar bears and global warming: Hotter temperatures would not only melt the Arctic sea ice they live on, but also threaten their preferred prey, ringed seals. In a paper Derocher coauthored in 1993, he warned of habitat loss, lower reproduction rates, and increasing conflict with humans. But the subject didn’t really catch the media’s attention until over a decade later, in 2004, when he helped write another paper concluding that it would be "unlikely" polar bears could survive if the sea ice disappeared completely. "That one kind of went crazy," Derocher said, spawning dozens of articles and gathering interest from conservation groups. [...] It was not surprising that an animal in the Arctic was the first to draw attention as the victim of climate change, simply because the polar region has been warming four times faster than the rest of the globe. The sea ice that normally reflects most sunlight back into space has been replaced by dark blue ocean waters that absorb heat, a feedback loop that propels more warming and more ice melt. [...] Old news or not, the facts of the situation have remained the same — polar bears are still threatened by global warming. Over the last four decades, Arctic sea ice has declined by an average of 13 percent per decade, shrinking at a faster rate than any time in at least 1,500 years. As early as the 2030s, the Arctic’s ice may completely disappear during the month of September, when it typically reaches its lowest levels.