Polar Bear Specialists Admit They Invented Population Numbers
As for those polar bears allegedly menaced by insufficient bureaucratic suppression of economic activity — the ones that if shrieking warmists weren’t full of baloney would have been extinct by now:
Researchers with the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”
Public demand? I think they mean political demand.
Crockford has been critical of official polar bear population estimates because they fail to include five large subpopulations of polar bears. Due to the uncertainty of the populations in these areas, PBSG did not include them in their official estimate – but the polar bear group did include other subpopulation estimates.
PBSG has for years said that global polar bear populations were between 20,000 and 25,000, but these estimates are likely much lower than how many polar bears are actually living in the world.
How many are there really? The experts scratch their heads and answer,
“Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy,” says PBSG. “Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.”
Translation: “I dunno.”
Here’s why anyone would care how many polar bears there are enough to lie about it:
Polar bear populations became the centerpiece of the effort to fight global warming due to claims that melting polar ice caps would cause the bears to become endangered in the near future. Years ago, some scientists predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by now.
Polar bears became the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act because they could potentially be harmed by global warming. But some recent studies have found that some polar bear subpopulations have actually flourished in recent years.
The collectivist authoritarians hyping global warming have exploited our reverence for science. One of the many lessons this expensive hoax should teach us is that scientists are people, and people can be pressured or bribed into telling lies.
On tips from Henry, Jester, G. Fox, and Dan. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
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