Da (Polar) Bears Are Back

The Guardian highlights a picture and mentions bloggers reactions to an image which made the rounds of the blogs - polar bears on ice. Several images are now being used in organized global warming campaigns.

Or you could read something (see bold below) on Polar Bears and discover the population is on the rise since a hunting ban. But why read anything when even an inaccurate picture is worth a thousand words?

Simon Garfield reveals how activists have used dramatic pictures of the Arctic's most fearsome predator to give their cause real bite and to ignite an emotive PR campaign.

'Initially I thought the picture was a Photoshop fake,' Dr Ian Stirling, senior research scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, emails from his home in Edmonton. 'But I have since checked and it is authentic. There is no doubt the photo is used because of its dramatic effect, and it is true it does not represent the kind of sea ice bears normally live on and depend upon for hunting seals.'

The photograph was taken in 2004. Naysaying bloggers have used the fact the picture has been romanticised to discredit the claim of bears at risk, and in some cases the very existence of global warming. Several sites link to the original text that accompanied the photograph when it was first used three years ago, in an online journal of the Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project, in which the ice block is described as 'extraordinary'. The bears were seen during a late-summer arctic drilling mission that found the ice much thicker than expected.

Second link:

Some, however, see the general rise in polar bear population and scoff at the possibility of regulation. “The law doesn’t say to look at any possible future threat. It says look at the data…if it’s not endangered then it’s not endangered,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow from the National Center for Policy Analysis, a non-profit organization that promotes private alternatives to government regulation, who has written about the polar bear issue.

What counts, he said, is the number of polar bears that exist right now, not some possible decrease in the future. He noted the overall polar bear population has rebounded from about 10,000 to 20,000 and asserted that warm temperatures in the 1930s were similar to current conditions, yet polar bears survived then.

Comments

[yyy]

God forbid anyone drum up some support to save the polar bears while there is still time by using [gasp!!!] photographs of actual polar bears in their natural habitat. I mean that is just wrong.

Better we do some oil drilling, further eviscerate their natural habitat until there are maybe 100 or so, then we can turn what's left of their range into a zoo, get Disney to underwrite it and spark a big increase in travel to Alaska where everyone will make loads more money. And besides, once the polar bears are gone, that land might be useful for houses, mini malls or more oil wells.

It's a total win/win. Fucking dumb animals anyway, who needs them.

[yyy]

Dan you really are a piece of work.

The entire article and every other person quoted all agree that polar bears cannot survive on land without sea ice and that the sea was not disppearing in the 1930's as it is now.

In other words, you took one skeptic out of context to make it appear that 'science' in fact supports the idea that polar bears are not threatened.

It's really disgusting the lengths you people will go in order to discredit anything you think is liberal.

I'm sure Dan would prefer to see every single polar bear on the planet floating dead in the artic sea rather than admit they are threatened and that global warming is the prime reason.

[scarshapedstar]

Remember, kids. All that stuff you learned in science class about how higher temperatures cause phase transitions from solid to liquid? It's all bullshit. What causes ice to melt?

Waves, bitches. Look it up in your Riehl World Physikz™ text. Available now at Liberty University!

[bloodrage bob]

so let's recap. more polar bears now then a few years ago, when it was colder....yup: the brainwashed leftwing marionettes all sing out in unison, just like teacher told them to, "global warming is killing the polar bears!!"

killing them *how*, morons? via overpopulation?

[seekeronos]

Funny thing. I recall reading an article recently that suggested tat the arctic regions are actually *increasing* in ice coverage, particularly in Greenland. Concerning the excess polar bears though, I hear that they make good jerky.

Wonder if Alaska state will issue permist or tags so we can clear them off the oil drilling area? Wouldn't want our boys getting mauled while drilling new wells in the ANWR. :)

[Jeff]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

Look at the bison population... it went down to 750 in 1890, which was it then cooling or warming?

Which is it now for Polar Bears? Maybe a population bottleneck? It must be global warming.

[charles]

"the sea was not disppearing in the 1930's as it is now."

omg! the sea, it is disappearing!

[Jeff]

"the sea was not disppearing in the 1930's as it is now"

According to global warming, isn't the sea supposed to be getting bigger?

"In other words, you took one skeptic out of context to make it appear that 'science' in fact supports the idea that polar bears are not threatened."

In honestly don't care if the polar bears are threatened, now there is another possibility, what if a factor other the "Earth on fire" is causing fluxuations? Man, libs are going to be embarassed when this whole global warming thing turns out to be false. In the early 1900th century and then again in the 1980-1990's it was over crowding. We were running out of food. In 1970's we were going to die a slow, cold death.

And no one ever held the libs to account. Now the globe is burning up and Bush is all to blame. Well...

Somehow these things all just blow over, and my kids will watch VH1 one day and say, "global warming, you mean you actually believed that?" And I'll say, "some people did."

[Hard Right]

As for that Polar Bear pic, you lefties know polar bears can swim, right? They weren't stranded.
BTW YYY, if the population is going up, how does that point to a future threat?

[Hard Right]

One more thing, how about the whole picture of the bears? Anyone know where to find it? I ask because for all we know there was a a major flow 50 meters away. The picture is shot so tightly something like that isn't visible. It would be like going into a neighborhood where a house burned down, taking pics of only that house, and saying the neighborhood is a slum.

[Hard Right]

Found IT!!!! Here's the link to the story the pic came from.

http://www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/dispatch2004/dispatch02.html

[LOL]

20,000 is still a scarily low number to have. That's still "endangered". BUt of course let's trust what some think-tank tells us Dan.

http://www.un.org/works/environment/animalplanet/polarbear.html

This organization has actual scientists working for it. But of course republicans will deny the merits of these scientists. Just like they continue to deny evolution.

[scarshapedstar]

"Look at the bison population... it went down to 750 in 1890, which was it then cooling or warming?"

Dear god, how stupid can you be? I don't know, let's read the Wikipedia article on bisons, or simply call up what everyone else in America learned by about second grade:

"Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to exactly two males by the mid-1880s, from which all the present day's managed herds are descended. One major cause was the governmental idea of killing off the Plains Indian food source--which was the bison. The Government had to subsidize Bison hunting for various reasons, the main one being economics.

* The herds formed the basis of the economies of local Plains tribes of Native Americans for whom the bison were a primary food source; without bison, the Native Americans would be forced to leave or starve.
* Herds of these large animals on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time.
* Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding though hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. As a result, the herds could delay a train for days.

The main reason for Bison demise, as it was for the Passenger pigeon, was commercial hunting."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bison_skull_pile%2C_ca1870.png

I refuse to believe that anyone can be this ignorant. Please tell me that "Jeff" is a parody.

[scarshapedstar]

Oh, that was sarcasm. Haha, I get it now, ecologists claim that all extinctions in history were caused by climate change.

Right.

[bloodrage bob]

well, let's see....lotsa tap-dancing from the leftwing marionettes...check. many attempts to change the subject...check. completely non-relevant "buffalo" reference...check.

whaaat, no sad carrier pigeon tales of woe?

and yet no attempt by the lefty automatons to address the fact that - even as sacred mother gaia warms ever so slightly, hurtling us ever closer to the fiery pit of DOOM!! - the polar bear population is rising fairly rapidly. ok, who DIDN'T see that coming? i still can't puzzle it out: are the leftwing stalinist morons more profoundly *stupid*, or is it just that they're sociopathic *liars*?

[yyy]

The polar bear population HAS BEEN rising, not rapidly.

If you actually read the text of the article Danny posted you would see that several of the polar bear populations are now DECLINING. Get it.

Polar bears have been found drowned and starved to death, but just because one numbnut saw a healthy polar bear he decides that there is no threat to the population.

Sooo sorry for my error in typing I meant the SEA ICE is disappearing...that's what polar bears hunt and live on. Get it.

PS...it was one of you conservative nutters that brought up the bison, and yes I did learn that it was man who hunted them to virtual extinction in grammer school, but perhaps the cons want to put a different spin on it today, who knows, since we all know that facts are not their friends because they are wrong on the facts on just about every subject.

[ET]

catastrophic global warming is neither global nor catastrophic. Some regions are warming while others are cooling. No one can predict future trends with reliable accuracy. The issue has been hijacked by the left as part of their classic scare tactic -- bad things are coming...you need us to protect you! See past scares...the coming ice age, acid rain, the ozone layer, overpopulation. everyone calm down. this too shall pass.

[seekeronos]

Yeah, man.

We got to keep those polar bears from drowning. Nothing worse than seeing a good polar bear pelt go to waste... they make such nice mittens.

So here's my plan to save the poor wittle polar bears that can't swim in that nasty, lukewarm sea water... at least until we can harvest their pelts and club some baby seals for fun.

http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/PolarBears/pbadaptations.html

We better send Algore up there to buy those bears some carbon offsets, or chain them to some unwashed hippies.

Hippies hate water, they are afraid it will wash the stupidity out of them... so they should be able to resist the polar bears' natural tendency to swim. It's not like (the bears) can actually swim around very much, eh?

[yyy]

Acid rain is real.
The hole in the ozone is real.
Overpopulation i s real, people are starving right now all over the globe.

Looks like a pretty good track record to me.

[ET]

yyy,
acid rain is bogus
the hole in the ozone is shrinking
the world's population has stabilized
there is a wealth of data to refute the myth that the current warming trend, which is not occuring in the southern hemisphere by the way, is a manmade catastrophy of global proportions.
certainly, let's all conserve natural resources and avoid damaging the environment. Just don't throw BS 'data' in my face and call me names for not swallowing self-serving politicians' lock-step marching orders, which they don't follow themselves.

[Sean]

The "Global Warming Swindle" is a very important documentary.

Below is a very easy to remember link to send to friends and family to encourage them to see the other side of the global warming issue.

http://gorelied.notlong.com

Here is the web page that talks about the documentary.

http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html