By Andrew Bolt ~
Remember how the polar bear was the poster child of the global warming alarmists?
How Al Gore claimed they were drowning?
Remember how they were classified as endangered because of warming-induced starvation?
A series of reports, sprawling over more than 400 pages, that [bear researcher Steven] Amstrup had written for the U.S. Geological Survey .. [was] reported and re-reported in every media outlet on Earth. One typical headline read “Scientists: Most Polar Bears Dead by 2050.” …
Around that time, polar bears transitioned from being merely interesting to being the subject of an outright frenzy. Al Gore’s movie, a re-creation of his favorite moments on PowerPoint, had its most dramatic moment with an animation of a drowning polar bear. …
[U]p to that point, no species had been put on the Endangered Species list as a result of climate change…. Until finally, in May 2008, [President George Bush’s Interior secretary, Dirk] Kempthorne… launched into his press conference. “Today I am listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.” …
Remember how Coca Cola put the poor poley on its cans?
Coke and the environmental group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have joined together to promote the Arctic Home project, which will involve turning 1.4 billion Coke cans white, emblazoned with the image of a mother polar bear and her cubs pawing through the Arctic…
Bold gestures are exactly what the polar bears needs. There’s a reason the planet’s largest land carnivores have emerged as the symbols of climate change… “We’re watching the ice shrink in front of our eyes, and if there is no ice, there are no bears,” says Carter Roberts, the president and CEO of WWF. “The polar bears need our help.”
But this scare was always based on dodgy research. The research behind the “drowning bears” claim was particularly shabby. It turned out the claim was based on just four bears actually found drowned at sea after a sudden storm, and not because they couldn’t find ice.
But most of the media and the environment movement was hostile to the truth. They pushed fake claims instead to promote the warming faith. To seem “good” and modern. Gore’s hysterical and error-riddled film was even presented as the truth to countless school students here and overseas.
But now the latest count of bears confirms: this was yet another fake global warming scare:
The new population estimates from the 2016 Scientific Working Group are somewhere between 22,633 to 32,257 bears, which is a net increase from the 2015 number of 22,000 to 31,000. The current population numbers are a sharp increase from 2005’s, which stated only 20,000 to 25,000 bears remained — those numbers were a major increase from estimates that only 8,000 to 10,000 bears remained in the late 1960s.
Until the new study, bear subpopulations in the Baffin Bay and Kane Basin (KB) were thought to be in decline due to over-hunting and global warming. The new report indicates this is not the case.
Scientists are increasingly realizing that polar bears are much more resilient to changing levels of sea ice than environmentalists previously believed, and numerous healthy populations are thriving.
Polar bear researcher Susan Crockford:
The new BB and KB subpopulation estimates should increase the 2015 global population size estimate issued in 2015 by the IUCN Red List from 22,000-31,000 to 22,633-32,257 …
But wait! That estimate does not include a reported 42% increase in the Svalbard portion of the Barents Sea subpopulation in late 2015 that was not included in the Red List assessment of 2644 based on 2004 data.
Therefore, when the Svalbard increase and the Baffin Bay/Kane Basin increases are all added to the 2015 Red List estimate, it might give a revised 2015 global estimate of something like 23,000-33,000 depending on how all the results are interpreted.
After all the media attention given to the fake scare, will we see similar attention now given to the truth?
(Via Benny Peiser at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.)
Andrew Bolt writes for the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, and The Advertiser and runs Australia’s most-read political blog. On week nights he hosts The Bolt Report on Sky News at 7pm and his Macquarie Radio show at 8pm with Steve Price.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/