The Bears are OK for now...

[jamesb]

<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1887890.htm">Snap!

Freezing Bears - Story</a><p>

 

<i>

Those stranded polar bears on the shrinking Arctic ice - victims of global

warming - certainly tugged at the heart-strings.<br>

 

That photo was published not only in the Sunday Telegraph.<br>

 

It made it onto the front page of the New York Times.<br>

 

And the International Herald Tribune. <br>

 

...<br>

 

But the photo wasn't current. It was two and a half years old.<br>

 

And it wasn't snapped by Canadian environmentalists.

</i><p>

END EXCERPT<br>

 

Looks like we can still trust the media circus just fine. In fact they fall for

so few hoaxes that we have our own show on T.V. to entertain us with them :-)

[jamesb]

My apologies...

 

Photographic relevance:

 

(a) it is about the careless misinterpretation of a photograph. (I say careless, but deliberate might be more accurate).

 

(b) it is about a photograph that was passed from hand to hand, became a story, and was then published. Photographer is an amateur as far as I can tell.

[eric friedemann]

Fiction- using the "stranded polar bear" photo as a prop, Al Gore, who has a a Bachelor of Arts degree in government, but fancies himself a scientist, keeps telling audiences "(the polar bear's) habitat is melting ... beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet."

 

 

Fact- a leading Canadian authority on polar bears, Mitch Taylor, an actual scientist (a biologist who's studied polar bears for 20 years) said: "(w)e?re seeing an increase in bears that?s really unprecedented, and in places where we?re seeing a decrease in the population it?s from hunting, not from climate change." Mr. Taylor estimates that during the past decade, the Canadian polar bear population has increased by 25 per cent - from 12,000 to 15,000 bears.

[pavel_isakov]

Well, the Bush administration seems to agree that the bears are in trouble: <p>Polar bears are one of nature's ultimate survivors, able to live and thrive in one of the world's harshest environments," <a href="http://www.doi.gov/news/06_News_Releases/061227.html">[interior Secretary] Kempthorne said</a>. "But we are concerned the polar bears? habitat may literally be melting."

[inspiration point studio]

It's easy to quote someone. Here is a counter point:

Some Native communities in Canada have been reporting increasing numbers of polar bears on land. Traditional hunters believe this indicates an increased population, although the increased presence on land may, in fact, be related to shrinking sea ice and changes in the bears' distribution patterns. Data is needed to understand the change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states, "In the declining polar bear population of Canada's Western Hudson Bay, extensive scientific studies have indicated that the increased observation of bears on land is a result of changing distribution patterns and a result of changes in the accessibility of sea ice habitat."