Tag Archives: Greenpeace

Bogus Greenpeace claim that lost Russian polar bear is evidence of climate change

Another day, another bogus starving polar bear claim from an environmental organization. Polar bear starvation is virtually never caused by climate change but apparently, Greenpeace thinks there are still some gullible folks out there who will believe anything they are told. A young male polar bear in poor condition found far south on the Russian coast of the Bering Sea a few days ago is an isolated incident: it is not evidence of anything except the sad fact that the life of a polar bear can sometimes be brutal. In contrast to these reports, Chukchi Sea polar bears are doing extremely well overall.

Exhausted polar bear Kamchatka_Guardian headline_18 April 2019

Headline from The Guardian 18 April 2019

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No proof walrus are “struggling from the loss of sea ice” as new Earthjustice lawsuit claims

A new day, a new lawsuit by environmentalists: this time, the species-on-a-pedestal is the same population of Chukchi Sea walrus that generated a news frenzy last month, which apparently still has legs.

Walrus puss_USGS_IMG_4763
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Oil money provided the foundation of polar bear research, now its “greenwash”

Much of the polar bear research in Canada and American Arctic in the 1970s-1980s was funded by oil and gas companies, because it was the right thing to do (and governments required it). Now, Greenpeace says providing such money is just oil company marketing, meant to make them look good.

Stirling et al 1993_oil acknowledgement

Stirling et al. 1993, oil funding acknowledgement for work in the Eastern Beaufort Sea.

Oil money helped fund the Ph.D. research of polar bear biologist and Polar Bears International spokesperson Steven Amstrup (Amstrup and Durner 1995), and made possible a number of other critical research projects in the early days of polar bear research that might not have been possible otherwise (Stirling et al. 1993; Stirling and Lunn 1997).

Yesterday, several media reports announced that ExxonMobil had advertised for a job counting polar bears in the Kara Sea (where very little research has been done), but a Greenpeace spokesperson called this an “obvious greenwash.

Have a look at the media reports and the oil funding acknowledgements from polar bear research papers (“References”) and see what you think.

Courtesy IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group.

Courtesy IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group.

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International polar bear forum, Moscow: who’s invited

Re: International Forum on Conservation of Polar Bears: December 3-6, Moscow.

[Updates added Dec. 2 and Dec. 3, 2013, as noted below]

[Updated Dec. 4, 2013: Final agenda here; and as noted below]

On Tuesday, setup begins for the Moscow meeting of all Arctic nations that signed the original agreement to protect polar bears back in 1973. In my post last week, I introduced the agenda (pdf here).

I’ve also made notes on the interesting mix of folks who’ve been invited.
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