Thinking can be such a 'bear'...

The comedy that is Fox News has come out with the strange claim that Polar Bear populations somehow disprove climate change. Come again now!?

On Friday, Rob Rivett of the Pacific Legal Foundation claimed that Polar Bears are not threatened by climate change, and are actually thriving. He even said that the only thing 'threatened' about the Polar Bear's protected status is that they are a threat to the fossil fuel industry. Crazy, right?

But how is he drawing this conclusion? An absurd and motivated interpretation of facts of course! Rivett stated that 50 years ago there were 5,000-10,000 Polar Bears alive. Today there are 25,000 Polar Bears, so he claims that they are thriving and doing just fine.

He then makes the absurd claim that the Polar Bear was only ever listed as threatened because computer models forecast that their habitat will be profoundly effected by climate change. (completely false claim, but more on that later) Rivett's absurd conclusion is that the real threat isn't to the bears, but that the bears are a threat to the fossil fuel industry. Going so far as to claim that the industry will suffer because of restrictions due to the Polar Bear's conservation status.

One interesting part is that the population numbers that he listed are accurate. The problem is that he twists this data to fit his agenda. So why did Polar Bear population increase in those 50 years. It's quite simple really, and Rivett himself mentioned it. What boosted the population was the bear's granting of threatened status. And no, they weren't given protection because of speculation or climate models. They were granted protection because they were being hunted into extinction.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't think one should be too surprised that as soon as it is made illegal to hunt an animal, and we stop killing them, that more of them live and their numbers increase. No, they didn't become more plentiful because there is no climate change threatening them, but because we stopped killing them! Is that so hard to understand?

But the important factor is the numbers more recently. In recent years, the Polar Bear habitat has been hit harder and harder by climate change. Sea ice has been breaking up and receding. This ice is crucial for the bear's ability to hunt. The result is that the bears have been roaming further and further in search of food. In fact, an otherwise health bear was found that simply starved to death. It simply walked searching for food, and then just collapsed and died. Oh, but Polar Bears are doing just fine right?

So when we are looking at how climate change is effecting Polar Bears, we need to look at more recent statistics. And when we do that we see that their numbers are on the decline once more. It is true that our cession of directly killing the bears did help their numbers over those 50 years. But due to climate change, we are killing them once more, albeit less directly this time.

So no Fox News, Polar Bears are not thriving, or proof that there is no global warming. All it proves is that you will twist and distort anything you can in order to promote your extremely biased agenda.

 -Brain Hulk

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