Polar Insanity

Polar bears are thriving. Their numbers are at their highest in half a century. Polar ice has become significantly thicker this year. Listing polar bears under the Endangered Species Act under these circumstances would be inexplicable. Yet today, that is what Bush's Interior Department did, though with sufficient caveats that the far left will not be able to use the decision to shut down the entirity of the U.S. economy.

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This from the Washington Post:

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said he made the decision to list the bear as threatened based on scientific evidence showing that the animal's "sea-ice habitat has dramatically melted in recent decades" and "is likely to further recede in the future." He said polar bears thus are "likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future -- in this case 45 years."

. . . "Although the population of bears has grown from a low of about 12,000 in the late 1960s to approximately 25,000 today, our scientists advise me that computer modeling projects a significant population decline by the year 2050," Kempthorne said. "This, in my judgment, makes the polar bear a threatened species -- one likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future."

Read the entire article. That this decision could be made on computer modeling rather than a single hard fact showing a decline in the polar bear population is sheer insanity. Yet for all of that, it could have been much worse. The decision did not quite hand a skeleton key to the courthouse to the Goracle. This from the NYT:

Barton H. Thompson Jr., a law professor and director of the Woods Institute of the Environment at Stanford University, said Wednesday that while the Interior Department gave itself “sufficient room” to list the polar bear, it did not provide “environmental organizations with a mechanism for trying to address climate change.”

He said that lawsuits challenging the connection between a factory’s greenhouse-gas emissions and the threat to individual polar bears might provide difficult to win.

“Interior has a reasonable case here that the connection is just too far removed,” he said.

The provision of the act that the department is using to lighten the regulatory burden that the listing imposes on the oil and gas industry — known as a 4(d) rule — was designed to permit flexibility in the management of threatened species, as long as the chances of conservation of the species would be enhanced, or at least not diminished.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of three groups that originally sued to have the polar bear listed as threatened, said Wednesday that the decision was an acknowledgement of “global warming’s urgency,” but that it fell short of helping the polar bear.

“The administration acknowledges the bear is in need of intensive care,” Ms. Siegel said. “The listing lets the bear into the hospital, but then the 4(d) rule says the bear’s insurance doesn’t cover the necessary treatments.” . . .

Read the entire article. Also from the WaPo article, it appears the Sierra Club and other far left organizations are not reacting well to this decision:

[T]he Sierra Club charged that "Big Oil" would be the ultimate beneficiary of Kempthorne's action.

"After months of delay, the Interior Department has finally recognized that polar bears are on the brink of extinction," Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said in a statement. "But the administration's decision is riddled with loopholes, caveats and backhanded language that could actually undermine protections for the polar bear and other species."

Pope added: "We can't protect polar bears unless we combat global warming and keep oil drills out of their habitat. Yet, the administration is so keen to appease Big Oil" that it promotes continued drilling in the polar bear habitat in spite of today's listing.

"Drilling would inundate polar bear habitat with pipelines, well pads, boat traffic, ice-breaking vessels and seismic blasting, not to mention the ever-present threat of oil spills," Pope said. He said the proposed rule changes "could gut the Endangered Species Act and prevent it from ever being used to actually protect the polar bear or address global warming -- which is precisely what is pushing the bear toward extinction."

This decision will do little more than set off a whole new round of litigation. As far as any new drilling for oil in ANWR or elsewhere in Alaska, I'll be surprised if any occurs. Possibly the only bright spot is that this highly questionable decision will not alone be used to shut down the U.S. economy in its entirity over the next decade.

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Thick Ice, Thriving Polar Bears, & Global Warming Legislation

This picture of polar bears puportedly stranded on a drifitng ice flow has become an icon of the global warming community. We now know it was taken wholly out of context. We also know that sea ice is at or above normal levels in both hemispheres. Polar bears are thriving. Yet there is legislation in Congress to declare polar bears a protected species. That legislation has little to do with protecting polar bears and everything to do with advancing the global warming agenda through our courts.





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The iconic photo above, purported to show two forlorn polar bears stranded on a drifting ice flow, was made famous by the Goracle. Al Gore used that photo as a centerpiece on his lecture circuit, stating of the two bears: "Their habitat is melting . . . beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet."

There are several important falsehoods in the Goracle’s doomsday pronouncement. Arctic sea ice now covers as much territory as it did in 1970, there is actually more sea ice in the Antarctic, polar bears are thriving, and the use of this picture to show polar bears in danger was, as Carole Williams terms it in a recent article, a classic example of "How the Environmental Extremists Manipulate the Masses." Ms. Williams has the whole background story to the photo, which was stolen from a marine biologist and subsequently forwarded to the Goracle and his acolytes who proceeded to twist it completely out of context. (H/T EU Referendum)

As a threshold matter, polar bears are some of the world’s greatest swimmers, being able to swim tremendous distances. Polar bears have been tracked swimming over 60 miles at a time. You of course would not know that from the Goracle, but what you also wouldn’t know, until you read Ms. Williams article, is that the photo of the polar bears was taken near shore, easily within swimming distance for the bears. They were in no danger whatsoever. Or as Christopher Booker put it today, the bears "weren’t drowning," they were just "waving" for the cameras. And you would also not know from the Goracle that the polar bear population is at "historic highs" and growing.

The second bit of what we now know to be incorrect in the Goracle’s statement is that the sea ice has replenished. To be fair to Gore, what knowledge we had indicated otherwise whilst he was on the lecture circuit, bringing home the green. But, as Christopher Booker explains:

Last autumn the BBC and others could scarcely contain their excitement in reporting that the Arctic ice was melting so fast there would soon be none left.

Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois.

This body is committed to warmist orthodoxy and contributes to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just 4 million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km.

A second graph, "Global Ice Area", shows a similar pattern repeated every year since satellite records began in 1979; while a third, "Southern Hemisphere Ice", shows that sea ice has actually expanded in recent years, well above its 30-year mean.

Read the article here. That one will be difficult to explain away but I have faith in the Goracle and the IPCC once they get time to focus on it. They are busy at present trying to work out how global warming is causing snow from Iraq and Jerusalem to a massive snowfall in China.

But back now to the polar bears. In a bit of utter insanity, the Fish and Game Service is currently being pushed to declare polar bears an endangered species. Hearings are occurring as we speak.

What makes this truly insane is that the polar bears are thriving. According to the Inhofe blog, studies undertaken in 1970 estimated the the polar bear population to be about 5,000 –10,000. A 2002 study put the polar bear population at "historic highs, between 20,000 and 25,000. They occupy their entire natural range. And they are a hearty species. The fossil record shows that polar bears have survived several past global warmings that occurred before recorded history, one of which saw the Arctic wholly denuded of ice.

So how on God’s green earth can anyone suggest that polar bears should be listed on as an "endangered species?" And what could possibly be their motivation?

To justify listing polar bears as endangered, global warming enthusiasts are using dubious computer models that, they claim, predict that thirty years or so down the road, the now thriving polar bears will become endangered They have no physical evidence to support their assertions. It is a measure of how screwed we are as a people that our government is seriously considering this legislation.

The motivation for listing the polar bears as endangered has everything to do with the politics of global warming, not the plight of the thriving polar bears. Once listed as endangered, then global warming enthusiasts can challenge in court a whole host of economic and other activities across the width and breadth of America on the basis of their supposed effect on the polar bear and its Arctic home. Or as Senator Inhofe has stated:

Listing the bear as a threatened species is not about protecting the bear but about using the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to achieve global warming policy that special interest groups can not otherwise achieve through the legislative process.

Read the post here. You can find the Minority Report on this issue here. There is a reason we have democracy and several hundred men and women to debate and hold hearings. Somehow, though, I suspect this attept to run around the left side of the legislature and get it into the courts has the Goracle’s full support.

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