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URSINE UPSWING
H. Sterling Burnett counts polar bears:
Since the 1970s, while the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased dramatically from around 5,000 to as many as 25,000 today.
Historically, polar bears have thrived in temperatures even warmer than at present—during the medieval warm period 1,000 years ago and during the Holocene Climate Optimum between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago ...
Mitchell Taylor, a biologist with Nunavut Territorial government in Canada, pointed out in testimony to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that modest warming may be beneficial to bears since it creates better habitat for seals.
Looks like ice-melting Byron Bay motorists are off the hook.
UPDATE. Ann Althouse considers melty bear doom. Via Triticale.
UPDATE II. Thick pack ice, “the like of which has not been seen for decades”, may bring polar bears to a fearful Iceland.
With the gorebal goreming hysteria ramping up to a screeching crescendo under the auspices of the UN and Gorezilla, mere facts are going to get buried under all of the hyperbole and idicoy.
But it’s good to see that some people remember what science is about.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 02 05 at 10:49 AM • permalink“idicoy” = “idiocy”......the caffeine has yet to hit my brain this morning. PIMF!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 02 05 at 10:50 AM • permalink#paco
Yes too right there
Where is all the outrage about the bears mutilated for their bile etc in China and other Asian countries?
This is totally ignored by the MSM - something that is really happening NOW against the fairy story about the disappearing polar bears
Sorry paco didn’t mean to get all righteous there but this is a real story the MSM couldn’t give a rat’s arse about
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 02 05 at 11:07 AM • permalinkCan’t say anything about polar bears because I live in the southern hemisphere, but I can say about crocodiles and white sharks and bronze whalers and death adders, funnellweb spiders, redbacks, tree pythons, redbellies, and…and…and… There are so many things that kill you here in Oz, glowball warmening isn’t really an issue, is it?
Pity the poor Greenies. They don’t know who to root for: Those soft cuddly baby seals with the big eyes and all, or the majestic white furry (not cuddly) polar bears.
BTW, for all their cuteness, I’ll bet that cuddling a seal would be like trying to cuddle a pit bull. C’mon people, those are wild animals.
Something funny from Wuzzadem.
I don’t know if you Ozzies are familiar with the whole groundhog thing. Every year (through some strange coincidence, on “Groundhog’s Day”), the press gather around a groundhog’s burrow in the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and watch the little fellow when he emerges from his hole in the ground. If he sees his shadow, it means we have six more weeks of winter. If not, it means spring comes early.
But it does not matter. Because it is really about “feeling good” and power. After WWII, people were told that they had to give up personal choice to the government, because the world had gotten so complex that only “the plan” could provide for their needs.
When that was shown to be false, it was the idea of “limits on growth” and “the population bomb”.
Now that that has been shown to be false, it is global warming.
One thing I have noted (and I am not a total skeptic, I do believe part of the reason for the increase in temperatures is manmade) is that the term “global warming” seems to have fallen out of favor—now it is “climate change”. I believe the reason for this is that if the worst predictions do not come true, they will not have to go through much in the way of verbal gymnastics in their next call.
I just love those propaganda photos of the polar bears “stranded” on the ice floes….just a’floatin’ and a’starvin’. Normal people know that polar bears love to swim. That’s how they get from floe to floe. Sometimes they go after a tasty fish or seal while they’re a’swimmin’.
Posted by bill schumm on 2007 02 05 at 06:16 PM • permalinkThanks for the link to Althouse, Tim, because that picture of the polar bears on the melted iceberg has been bothering me since I saw it in the Sunday Age. Maybe I’ve just grown old and bitter, and lost my childlike sense of wonder, but am I the only one who smells Photoshop on that image? A commenter on the Althouse thread links to another image from the same suite: same iceberg, but bears in a different position, which would lend credence to the photo’s authenticity. Who’s going to fake two slightly differing versions of the same shot? But unless the CIA is running a secret program to cross-breed polar bears with mountain goats, I wonder how a bear can scale what appear to be very steep slopes of ice? The whole thing reminds me of Andrew Landeryou’s very funny photoshop of Julia Gillard on an iceberg.
Dan Riehl has a post on the picture of polar bears on the precarious ice floe. According to the caption under which it was first published, the condition of the floe is a result of wave-sculpting, not melting. Further to my own comments, the photo is not obviously fake in the same way that the various Lebanon war fauxtographs were: as far as I can judge from the online thumbnails, the image is seamless; the light on both the bears and the ice seems to be coming from the same direction. But it still bothers me.
Dan Riehl has more on the picture. Read the comments. The gorebots either have missed Riehl’s point entirely or don’t think it was worth making in the first place. Long live truthiness!
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 02 05 at 07:09 PM • permalinkYou’ll really are way out on a flimsy twig here. Pretty soon you’ll be denying the Holocaust.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2007 02 05 at 08:59 PM • permalinkHow I long for the days when the tiger and the rhino were the gauge by which we measure our bastardry to Gaia. The polar bear is an ursine usurper.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 05 at 09:54 PM • permalink
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Many Americans may view this polar bear gambit as just another backdoor attempt by dedicated greens to restrict energy use in the United States. They might well be right.
Oh sure. Talk up the poor oppressed bears, you greenie sobsisters. Until they start hanging around your neighborhood, digging in your trashcans, and trying to date your daughters!