It has been reported recently (Polar Bears International, Fox News, Washington Post ...) that Polar Bear numbers are decreasing due to stress and habitat loss caused by climate change.
The Conservative Voice, an extremely right-wing site, caught onto ONE "report" from Dr Mitchell Taylor, who claims to be a Polar Bear Biologist, Department of the Environment, Government of Nunavut , Igloolik , Nunavut , Canada that "The evidence for climate change effects on polar bears described by Flannery is incorrect.".
Interestingly, Mitchell Taylor heads the site http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/. It probably isn't worth our energy, given all the confirmation that exists to support Climate Change, though it would be interesting to find what is behind this guy. Every person that has denounced global warming has been found to have some connection with corporations, industries and interest groups that are firmly rooted in their business as usual and will suffer to some degree if the world accepts that climate change is true and stop doing something-or-rather.
George Monbiot, who write the excellent book Heat, which discusses the solutions to climate change, has a blog Blog, and on it can be found such categories as Corporate Power. This lists the people and companies that don't want us to believe that Climate Change is true.
I'm not the only one to be alarmed at the right-wingers who don't believe this is true. Also see Mark York's False Claims Of Hysteria blog post.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Polar Bear population. Up or down?
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2 comments:
Thanks. I've been embroiled in a hopeless attempt to sell my anti-Crichton novel, where the agent miss snark and online followers just didn't get it. "What's the big deal?" Tick Tick... They don't understand who the players are and the influence State of Fear had and still has on policy. And it's a lie.
Query: Warm Front
“The Earth’s surface, atmosphere and seas are warming; ocean currents are slowing; ice shelves are melting faster than projected; spring is coming ever sooner; rainfall patterns are changing; the ability of the earth to self-regulate to resist warming appears to be waning,” NY Times (May 24,2006)
The Arctic is melting. Inupiat villages crumble into the sea. Welcome to the world in WARM FRONT a novel set in the midst of a mounting global warming crisis. In the rapidly growing oilfields of Alaska’s North Slope, caribou biologist Jack Sheldon, monitors the dwindling Porcupine herd, and Jake Elmore an environmental reporter for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, embark on an investigation from the Arctic to Antarctica and back. Along the way, both are imperiled by the consequences of abrupt climate change and intimidation that could end their lives and threaten the existence of life on the planet.
Through treacherous global treks with the scientists to remote camps, Elmore learns just how dire this phenomenon is and methodically lays out the case in a series of climate reports. After the first installment is picked up by syndicated websites, Op-Ed’s posted from “experts,” around the globe begin to appear challenging his findings. Elmore has increasingly frequent accidents and mishaps on his trips and near home.
Sheldon meets Robin Sampson a 28-year-old lawyer and head of the National Wildlife Association attempting to sue Arctic Oil Corporation for endangering the polar bears of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Against Sheldon’s better judgment they become romantically involved. Her father, Alaska Republican Senator Richard Sampson opposes them, throwing all his power behind an effort to obfuscate the truth and discredit the scientists executed by World Tech Central, a web of free market think tanks. And even kill the messengers if need be.
Then, Elmore disappears on the Ross ice-shelf in Antarctica. Will the message be heard before crossing the tipping point to global disaster?
Over a week later and you still haven't backed up your insinuation that Dr Mitchell Taylor is somehow a corporate backed climate change denier.
A mere google search reveals him to be a worldl respected Polar Bear biologist and the director of wildlife research for the Government of the Territory of Nunavut in the Candian Eastern Arctic.
Contrary to your assertion that Mr Taylor "heads" the climate sceptic site you link to. It simply links to an article - and not a "report" (your quotation marks) he wrote which, for what it's worth, doesn't deny climate change at all. He simply doesn't think the US initiative to list Polar Bears as threatened is warranted.
Also, your facile and dated need to frame everything as a left/right issue demonstrates your partisanship on the issue.
The environment transcends simple right/left platitudes and keeping the issue in such tightly restrictive and politicised boundaries is a large part of the problem to finding solutions.
Your not flogging a book too are you?
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