A new book from Susan Crockford called The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened (March 2019) perhaps could have been called, "How to Hide 30,000 Polar Bears." This is what the Green-Scare machine has apparently done under a mountain of smear and indignation. This is a story of the concealment and the backlash--the failure of science. 1
Polar bear numbers have grown four-fold during the last fifty years (obviously climate change has been good for them). But WWF is still running stories headlined: Polar bear population decline a wake up call for climate change action. Yet polar bear numbers could easily exceed 40,000, up from a low point of 10,000 or fewer in the 1960s.
The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never happened
Here's what Joanne Nova says about Crockford's book: "The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never happened explains why the catastrophic decline in polar bear numbers we were promised in 2007 failed to materialize. It's the story of how and why the polar bear came to be considered 'threatened' with extinction, and tracks its rise and fall as an icon of the global warming movement. The book also tells the story of Crockford's role in bringing that failure to public attention and the backlash against her that ensued. In general, this is a cautionary tale of scientific hubris and of scientific failure, of researchers staking their careers on inconvenient facts. For the first time, you'll see a frank and detailed account of attempts by scientists to conceal population growth as numbers rose from an historical low in the 1960s to the astonishing highs that surely must exist after almost 50 years of protection from overhunting. There is also a blunt account of what truly abundant populations of bears mean for the millions of people who live and work in areas of the Arctic inhabited by polar bears." 1
Crockford's book isn't the first to poke holes in so-called declines in polar bear numbers.
Zac Unger was a firm believer in the much-touted news that polar bears were declining. To further substantiate what he had been hearing, he spent three months in Churchill with his family doing research for his book. If you haven't heard, Churchill is the place to go see polar bears. It is located on the west shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, and is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World." This has put Churchill on the map, helping its growing tourism industry.
The bears were threatened by computer models, but they ignored the threat and prospered
In his book, Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye (2013), Unger reports that local people in places like Churchill look on the carnival of tourists, journalists, and scientists with bemusement, knowing full well that even there in one of the most southerly polar bear populations of all, the evidence of a decline in numbers, or of the health of the bears, is threadbare or non-existent.
Other places have similar observations. Jake MacDonald reports, "In villages across the Arctic, Inuit are reporting an invasion. Polar bears, once rare, are now strolling the streets, peeking in the windows, killing dogs, even stalking. No place has been more menaced than Arviat. In 2012, the Nunavit government conducted a long-awaited census of western Hudson Bay polar bears and came up with 1,013 animals, or about twice as many as the numbers projected by Environment Canada."2 The bears were threatened by computer models, but they ignored the threat and prospered.
Grim predictions of the imminent demise of polar bears have been touted since at least 2001. Polar bears became an icon for environmentalists who claimed that melting Arctic sea ice could kill thousands of bears. Fears about global warming's impact on polar bears even spurred the US Fish and Wildlife Service to say that the bear was 'threatened' under the Endangered Species Act in 2008. Polar bears were the first species to be listed as possibly being harmed in the future by global warming. 3
Polar bears have likely survived past ice-free periods in the Arctic. Scientists with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks released a study claiming that 'stratigraphic' record of the last 1.5 million years indicates that no marine species extinction events occurred despite major climate oscillations, including periods when the Arctic was completely ice-free in summertime. 4References
Joanne Nova, "How to hide 30,000 polar bears," joannenova.com.au, March 25, 2019
Jake MacDonald, "Polar bear invasion: twice as many as estimated," Science News, January 28, 2013
Andrew Follett, "Polar bear numbers still on the rise," cfact.org, February 17, 2017
Thomas M. Cronin and Matthew A. Cronin, "Biological response to climate change in the Arctic Ocean: the view from the past" linkspringer.com, December 2016
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
A new book from Susan Crockford called The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened (March 2019) perhaps could have been called, "How to Hide 30,000 Polar Bears." This is what the Green-Scare machine has apparently done under a mountain of smear and indignation. This is a story of the concealment and the backlash--the failure of science. 1
Polar bear numbers have grown four-fold during the last fifty years (obviously climate change has been good for them). But WWF is still running stories headlined: Polar bear population decline a wake up call for climate change action. Yet polar bear numbers could easily exceed 40,000, up from a low point of 10,000 or fewer in the 1960s.
