Maggie's Farm

Ahh, Bird Dog ... the New York Times, still desperately trying to fit everything ominous into its man-made global warming meme, blames everything on AGW. As doug correctly points out, polar bears don't necessarily need ice to survive, as long as they can get to those sweet little seals and their blubber. What they need, and so do the seals, is viable habitat, as doug says. The original polar bear species differentiated from grizzlies and brown bears more than 250,000 years ago, mainly because their habitat was so cold, because of global cooling. That's why they evolved black skin, to help collect warmth from the sun, and hollow hairs to their fur, so what sun there was could travel down to that black skin and warm them up. They're surviving quite nicely right now, thank you, with the latest reports that, of 20 polar bear populations being monitored by biologists, 18 have increased.

I know all this because my husband has written several books on polar bears and I've acted as his copy editor.

Fear not for the polar bears, or the seals either. The IPCC has had to reluctantly admit that there has not been any global warming recorded since 1998, and there are 38,000 climate scientists who have gone on public record saying that they do not subscribe to the global warming thesis. That puts Gore's captive scientist, Hansen, in a tight spot. It's going to be fun watching this play out.

Marianne