Posted on 05/16/2006 9:00:14 AM PDT by Daralundy
Polar bears are cute. Just ask the marketing executives at Coca-Cola which used animated polar bears to hawk their wares in recent years. Bears, pandas, lions and elephants are "charismatic megafauna" -- meaning basically cute animals that people care about. If you want to sell a product, or a cause, just tie it to one of these animals and you've got the attention of millions of people; kids and adults alike.
Thus, environmental alarmists have made much of research claiming the Arctic's great white bear faces extinction from human-caused global warming. Snails, snakes and spiders withering in the sun just don't pack the same emotional punch as a cuddly, furry polar bear slipping beneath the melting ice.
Fortunately, a new study by David Legates, director of the University of Delaware's Center for Climatic Research, throws cold water on the claim global warming threatens polar bears survival.
Mr. Legates critiques the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment that proclaimed Arctic air temperature trends strongly indicate global warming, causing polar ice caps and glaciers to melt. However, Mr. Legates says, the Assessment ignored data that undermine these claims. For example, coastal stations in Greenland are cooling and average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet have decreased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since measurements began in 1987. In addition, records from Russian coastal stations show the extent and thickness of sea ice has varied greatly over 60- to 80-year periods during the last 125 years. Moreover, the maximum air temperature they report for the 20th century was in 1938, when it was nearly four-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than the air temperature in 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
In the 19th Century Arctic Explorers found that eating polar bear livers could be poisonous because of the Vitamin A concentrations.
Tell that to the monkey.
Damn! I'll have to cross those off my list. First fugu liver and now this. Where will it all end?
A township's worth of ice island just broke off south of the North Pole, which narrows the location to somewhere on the planet. The shockwave from the break was recorded by seismographs here in Fairbanks. Probably the polar bears did it by getting rambunctious under the waxing gibbous moon.
<<< FYI Polar bears do not drink Coca Cola and are man eaters >>>
Are you SURE about that?
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/
You need to get a better source than the newspaper. See above.
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