More spin than a launderette
Yesterday, Paul Sheehan came up with a great article listing ten “anti-anti-commandments” and Lord Monckton’s “verbal bombs”. Here is an example:
1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.
Polar bear numbers have surged since hunting was largely banned in the 1970s. When Tim Flannery predicted that polar bears would be extinct within 25 years, he was challenged by Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the polar bear expert for the Canadian federal territory of Nunavut, which covers most of the polar bear’s Canadian habitat.
Mitchell wrote in 2006: “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present… it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.”
A counter perspective: Last year, at the latest meeting of the world’s peak polar bear study group, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, scientists reported that eight of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears were declining, compared with five declining populations in 2005. Of the other 11 sub-populations, three were stable, one was increasing, and there was insufficient data to describe a trend in the remaining seven.
Polar bear populations rebounded dramatically after over-hunting was restricted in the 1970s, but the threat posed to polar bears now is completely different – a loss of the sea ice habitat that is essential to their survival.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “There are five times as many polar bears now than there were 40 years ago.”
But strangely, today, the article has been rewritten, with the “consensus view” getting the last word as a rebuttal to Monckton’s points:
1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.
Viscount Christopher Monckton, the world’s leading provocateur against the arguments of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said during his current visit to Australia: “There are five times as many polar bears now than there were 40 years ago.”
The counter-punch: Last year, at the latest meeting of the world’s peak polar bear study group, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, scientists reported that eight of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears were declining, compared with five declining populations in 2005. Of the other 11 sub-populations, three were stable, one was increasing, and there was insufficient data to describe a trend in the remaining seven.
Polar bear populations rebounded dramatically after over-hunting was restricted in the 1970s, but the threat posed to polar bears now is completely different – a loss of the sea ice habitat that is essential to their survival.
The other nine points are the same. And there’s a strange note at the end as well, palming off the original article, which appeared in the Herald to The National Times:
Note: All the claims and retorts were published by The National Times yesterday in a companion piece to my column on Lord Monckton’s visit to Australia.
Very peculiar. Seems that those at the Sydney Moonbat Herald couldn’t “bear” to see their precious arguments destroyed by Christopher Monckton, so they’ve rejigged the article as a rebuttal to Monckton and made sure the warmist view gets the last word in each case… Hardly surprising, however, and just shows the lengths the warm-mongering media will go to to stop the truth getting out.
Australian Climate Madness 
Note how the “Counter-punch” is carefully worded so as to avoid saying “the overall population is decreasing”. The reason? To avoid being called liars, since It’s increasing.