Fact Check: Despite Misleading Video, Polar Bears Are Thriving
In 2006, “An Inconvenient Truth” was released by failed leftist presidential candidate Al Gore. The film put forth a number of so-called “facts” that would soon occur if the country didn’t make drastic changes to stop global warming.
Among this list of “facts” was the notion that the globe is losing arctic ice at an alarming rate, which would cause polar bears to eventually be driven to the edge of extinction.
U.S. Geological Survey biologists in 2007 suggested that two-thirds of the earth’s polar bear population would be gone by 2050.
Fast forward to 2017 and the liberals have still been pushing the same sad song – this time, by conservation group Sea Legacy. In an Instagram post that immediately went viral, Sea Legacy co-founder Paul Nicklen showed footage of a starving, rabid looking bear obviously meant to pull at viewers’ heart strings.
The caption reads, “The simple truth is this—if the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar ecosystems. This large male bear was not old, and he certainly died within hours or days of this moment. But there are solutions. We must reduce our carbon footprint, eat the right food, stop cutting down our forests, and begin putting the Earth—our home—first.”
The only problem with the assumption that polar bears are dying in mass is that it is simply not true. Even regarding this particular polar bear, biologists agree there is no way of knowing for sure exactly why this particular polar bear is starving.
“I object to SeaLegacy drawing a straight line between that particular bear and climate change. It’s clearly starving but in my opinion that’s not because the ice suddenly disappeared and it could no longer hunt seals. There are lots of other possibilities as to how it ended up in that condition,” said arctic wildlife biologist Dr. Jeff Higdon.
Moreover, The Federalist pointed out that this video was shot in August, which is “a period of seasonal famine for polar bears.”
Leo Ikakhik, an Inuit polar bear monitor, said this particular bear’s appearance, while very unfortunate, isn’t out of the ordinary.
“Everybody probably was shocked to see a really skinny bear but this is not my first time seeing something like this,” he said. “I wouldn’t really blame the climate change — it’s just part of the animal (life cycle), what they go through.”
But the truth about polar bears goes even further. The Federalist reported that, “while scientists don’t know exactly how many polar bears there are (they’re hard to count, as you can imagine) the global population is estimated to be around 30,000 and stable.”
Polar bears aren’t going any where any time soon. In fact, there are some estimates that show there are more polar bears alive today than 40 years ago, despite a drop in arctic ice.
Regarding the 2007 prediction mentioned earlier, Polar Bear Science explained that “polar bear experts were wrong: polar bears are more resilient to low summer sea ice conditions than they assumed.”
So, instead of a decreasing population, there was actually an increase.
To say that polar bears are dying and starving simply because of global warming is nothing more than an ad campaign for this group and other liberal organizations.
Sorry if this is an inconvenient truth, Al, but polar bears are here to stay.
H/T The Federalist
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