"According to Fox News, it’s a myth that polar bears are threatened by global warming since the polar bear is actually “thriving.” On Friday, Fox broadcast a segment where President of the Pacific Legal Foundation Rob Rivett claimed polar bears’ only ‘threatened’ status is that they are a ‘threat’” to the fossil fuel industry: "RIVETT: The polar bears are thriving as you said. In fact 50 years ago there were only 5,000 to 10,000 of this species. Today there are 25,000. Of the 17 populations, 14 of those populations are maintaining population or increasing their populations. So there’s no question that the bear is thriving." The real concern for us at the Pacific Legal Foundation is these bears were listed based upon simply speculation. Let me tell you how this happened. In essence through computer modelling, the federal government determined that this species would be losing its sea ice habitat and because of the loss of sea ice habitat, they felt it was necessary to put them on the threatened list. He went on to claim that the bear’s status “is a real problem” because the fossil fuel industry will suffer. “[If] you’re going to to make that more expensive of through regulation, all the rest of us are going to be impacted by that and jobs are going to lost because of that,” Rivett said. Pacific Legal Foundation’s donors include Exxon and the Koch brothers. Now, the legal group hopes to bring the case to the Supreme Court, after first challenging the Bush-era polar bear rule in 2008. Fox has said the polar bear proves global warming doesn’t exist when it’s tackled the issue in the past. Eight polar bear populations are in decline, but what will decimate their population by mid-21 century is rapidly shrinking Arctic sea ice. Based on the extensive study of climate change’s threat to the bear, including 13 out of 14 peer reviewers, the D.C. Circuit upheld the Fish and Wildlife Service “threatened” classification in a case this spring. The warming Arctic has already sent the animals farther and wider in hunt for food. Researchers recently discovered one otherwise healthy polar bear starved to death in a location twice its normal range. “From his lying position in death, the bear appears to simply have starved and died where he dropped,” Dr. Ian Stirling of Polar Bears International said."
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:47:32 +0000
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