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The decision on Wednesday by the U.S.
Interior Department to declare the polar bear a threatened species
under the Endangered Species Act is a major victory for
environmentalists who have been looking for a back-door legal mechanism
to limit carbon-dioxide emissions.
The decision was made after
nine U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) studies looked into the possibility
that the polar bear might be faced with extinction late in this
century. Polar bears need a sea ice environment for most of the year to
thrive. But summer sea extent has been receding for the last 30 years
that we have been monitoring it with satellites, and as a result, two
of the 13 subpopulations of polar bear have seen population declines.
The other eleven subpopulations have been stable or growing. In all,
the total polar-bear population is believed to be at or near a record
high — 20,000 to 25,000.
So how is it that the eventual extinction of the polar bear has been
forecast in the face of record-high numbers? Well, as in the case of
global-warming projections, experts relied on computer models that
predict continued global warming and continued melting of summer Arctic
sea ice.
And the scientists had some help. Hollywood did their part by producing the heartwarming movie Arctic Tale,
which followed a polar bear family struggling to survive on a fixed
budget and without a father around to help out. Queen Latifah did her
part by channeling the polar bears’ thoughts for us, since the last
person who tried to interview a polar bear was eaten.
Parents
did their part by taking their kids to see the movie. Then the kids
pestered their parents to both pester their elected representatives and
to contribute to the Save the Polar Bear Fund.
Those nice
folks at the Natural Resources Defense Council also helped out by
finding experts willing to say that “if” the sea ice continues to
recede, the polar bears “could” end up being at risk of extinction.
But
by now we all have learned that you can find an expert who will support
whatever position you need to have supported. Two experts can look at
the same data and come to completely different conclusions. This is
perfectly normal in science because it is always easier to collect data
than it is to figure out what the data are telling us in terms of cause
and effect.
In fact, the only peer-reviewed paper addressing the
forecasting of polar-bear population (“Polar Bear Population Forecasts:
A Public Policy Forecasting Audit,” which will appear soon in the
management science journal Interfaces) found that those
unpublished USGS studies did not follow accepted principles of
scientific forecasting. Apparently, the “peer reviewed and published”
requirement that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) has for its gathering of global-warming information does not
apply to polar bear research.
The Inuit didn’t want the polar
bear listed as threatened. They rely on the polar bear for their
livelihood, and had been harvesting them at a sustainable rate. Even a
former assistant secretary of the interior, William P. Horn, has warned
Congress that listing of the polar bear under the ESA would be a
mistake that would result in a number of negative unintended
consequences.
Quite frankly, I don’t believe the activists who
have succeeded in getting the polar bear listed under the ESA really
believe that the polar bear is threatened. This was just one more tool
that will enable a gaggle of lawyers to go after the real object of the
environmentalists’ disdain: Big Oil.
And with three
presidential candidates who all agree with the environmental activists,
the coming months and years are looking pretty bleak for freedom,
capitalism, and prosperity. Meanwhile, the polar bears will do just
fine, just as they have during previous warm periods in history.
I
only hope when global warming ends, and is accepted to be a largely
natural phenomenon rather than manmade, that all of the regulatory
mistakes we’ve made can somehow be undone. Source
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