The Statehouse Polar Bear Pageant 
By John McClaughry

Last week saw some political pageantry on the statehouse lawn. The occasion was the legislative session to override Gov. Jim Douglas's veto of H.520, Sen. Peter Shumlin's bill to battle the Menace of Global Warming. The statehouse carnival was orchestrated by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), who Sen. Shumlin represents in the upper chamber. The override effort failed; the House majority fell 13 votes short of the required two thirds.

The pageantry on the lawn and in the halls featured Middlebury College's noted climate activist in residence Bill McKibben, plus a VPIRG functionary prancing about in a polar bear costume, bearing a sign reading "Why doesn't the Governor love me?"

The cuddly, lovable polar bear has become the political symbol of the global warming alarmist crowd. To them, Gov. Douglas's veto of a bill tripling the tax on Vermont's cleanest electrical energy plant to finance $25 million worth of advice to fuel users is tantamount to consigning our grandchildren, in Sen. Shumlin's memorable phrase, to a future "unspeakably horrid."

Left out in the pageantry were the baby seal people. Twenty years ago, before the Menace of Global Warming, they were riding high in their campaign to stop the killing of cuddly baby seals by brutal men with clubs. You'd think they would be out clamoring in support of the alleged demise of polar bears that brutally feed on baby seals. But strange to say, they seem to have morphed into polar bear protectors.

It's worth taking a closer look at the "majestic polar bear", as Greenpeace describes this savage 1200-pound carnivore. The global warming alarmists demand that we "cut global warming pollution" (sic) because the polar bear is threatened by receding ice packs in the Canadian Arctic. There are a few false notes about this story.

It began with a widely disseminated Associated Press photo of three polar bears "stranded" on an ice floe. Al Gore declared that these animals were "literally being forced off the planet."

Research by the Australian TV network ABC turned up some interesting facts. The photo was actually taken over two years earlier, by an Australian marine biology student named Amanda Byrd, in August, at the height of the Arctic summer. Said Ms. Byrd, when queried later, "They did not appear to be in danger. I cannot say either way if they were stranded or not."

Denis Simard, a bear expert at the Canadian equivalent of our EPA, said, "the bears are not in danger at all. They were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim. They are still alive and having fun."

Dr. Mitchell Taylor is a Canadian biologist who has spent twenty years wandering around Nunavut checking up on polar bears. In testimony to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Taylor said that modest Arctic warming may benefit the bears since it creates better habitats for their main food sources. Where bear numbers and weights are declining, Taylor says, warming isn't the cause. It's too many bears competing for food.

On the other hand, a report from an international group called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment claims "global warming could cause polar bears to go extinct by the end of the century." But the group's own report shows that the Arctic temperature was higher in 1940, well before the surge in industrial carbon dioxide emissions that so terrifies McKibben, Gore, Shumlin, and VPIRG.

The ACIS report says that 200 years worth of manmade greenhouse gas emissions have produced a 0.6 degree C increase in average global temperature, and that Arctic temperatures seem to change in 40-year cycles unrelated to carbon dioxide emissions. This pretty much undercuts the concern expressed in the group's press release.

Biologist Taylor says that polar bear numbers are increasing worldwide. An aerial survey of Alaskan polar bears in 2003 reported more bears than any previous survey since 1987. Another study of the Davis Strait population reports that it has increased from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today. Inuit hunters concur, and three villages have sought permission to shoot more bears because they are prowling into the villages.

But never mind all that. The Menace of Global Warming, like a bad B movie, isn't about science or truth. It's about generating enough public hysteria to justify putting governments in charge of taxing and rationing all human energy use and thus controlling the world's economy.

Some gullible Vermonters will fall for VPIRG's image of the cuddly polar bear, and  keep on clamoring for Sen. Shumlin's legislation. Hopefully, a majority will soon come to recognize this scam for what it is.
 

John McClaughry is President of the Ethan Allen Institute (www.ethanallen.org).