GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Ask the people in Nunavut about polar bears....

They claim polar bear numbers are increasing...
Polar bears have been wandering into hamlets and chasing children. People in the North have noticed their food caches plundered by the bold carnivores. And some say the thinning sea ice actually makes it easier for the big white seal hunters to catch their prey.

Polar-bear numbers, they say, are on the rise, not in decline.

Those sentiments, some perhaps counterintuitive to the commonly held belief that polar bears are casualties of global warming, have been captured by a new hotline set up in Nunavut to track the whereabouts and behaviour of the critter that has become the climate-change poster child.

“People from the South only hear one side of the story, which is from polar bear biologists or scientists who are using predictions, using computer simulations and we don't agree with that,” said Paul Irngaut, a wildlife adviser with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., who has fielded about 30 calls to the hotline in the past few weeks.

“That's not what we're seeing up there.”

3 Comments:

Blogger Hinchey's Store said...

At the risk of sounding snobby, I would be happy to ask the people of NunavUt about this, but I don't think there is anyone in NunavIt to answer these questions, because that place doesn't really exist - kind of like Narnia... but now I'm just being snobby! : )

10:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd like to think this is true, and that good old fashioned local, on-the-ground knowledge trumps distant computer modelling. And I hope it is: I would, however, point out that the increased numbers that are being noticed are on account of declining habitat: as ice melts, the bears are concentrated into a smaller area, hence they are seen more often...and over time, this overconcentration will result in a die-off. Time will tell.

7:39 PM  
Anonymous Philanthropist said...

Polar bear numbers have seen significant increases since the 1950's when they were first counted by wildlife officers but this fact is ignored due to their marketability as pure white victims, emotions trump science again.

4:13 AM  

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