Headline: Global Warming sees polar bears stranded on melting ice…
They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.
Not so fast. In what has become emblematic of the mainstream media coverage of the issue of climate change, the story is not as it seems…and one need only read a couple paragraphs in to realize as much (emphasis mine):
Captured on film by Canadian environmentalists, the pair of polar bears look stranded on chunks of broken ice.
Although the magnificent creatures are well adapted to the water, and can swim scores of miles to solid land, the distance is getting ever greater as the Arctic ice diminishes.
“Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one,” said Dr Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service.
“They just kind of float along and kick…
So they don’t even bury the facts. They run a scam of a headline, yet counter it within the opening lines of the story. That headline couldn’t be meant to simply grab attention; grab readers (read: revenue). No, it couldn’t be that.
But that’s not all. A little digging around online finds that this photo isn’t even recent, nor is the current caption running beneath it on yahoo!. Check out Riehl World View: The Polar Bear Photo They Won’t Show You for a thorough debunking of the #1 Yahoo! picture…the caption that appeared on the photo when it ran 3 years ago was a bit different than the current caption (above):
But what’s this? Scroll down and you’ll see the same picture was first published with a credit to another person on the trip and the caption made it clear what was really going on (emphasis added).
Mother polar bear and cub on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves. photo © Amanda Byrd.
Why am I not suprised? I wonder how many millions of people saw that photo this weekend and thought it was of some poor bears stranded on a small chunk of ice that remained from a large ice shelf that had been melted away by my SUV global warming.
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
http://www.notesinthemargin.com/archives/89/trackback/
March 19, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Pingback from Notes in the Margin · “Stranded Polar Bear” Photographer Speaks Out
March 27, 2007 at 10:15 am
Pingback from We Should Live - Ben Bateman » Suffering for Mother Gaia
April 9, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Pingback from The world’s most confusing winter! - The Liberty Lounge Political Forums
June 20, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Pingback from Notes in the Margin · On Solar Variability and Climate Change; Part II
February 8, 2007 at 10:54 am
JL
How dare you?!?! Picking on those poor stranded bears like that? What nerve! Sure they’re adapted to Arctic life (ice&water) and, depending on where they’re located, don’t spend a lot of time on land, but still! Don’t they look in need of help?
Anyway, I do have 1 point of contention inasmuch as there are at least two pics being used…in one the larger bear is facing the photog (like above), in the other it is not(on cited Riehl page). Having said this, it may please this site’s author to know that most of the comments after the DailyMail’s article do not support the article’s view. Unfortunately the good science of meteorology is dragged into the discussion by some hick in WI:
“When I hear about “Global Warming” it makes me wonder why it’s below zero today (-20 with the windchill today) and going to be a dangerous -14F (-35 windchill) tonight and tomorrow. Is it just called “global warming” when it’s convenient to meteorologists? Politicians?”
See what Cullen got ‘us’ into??
February 9, 2007 at 11:09 am
Jake
I know…I’m so heartless. First we bought an SUV…now I’m throwing the polar bears under the bus…
Yes - it does please the site admin to see the comments on the Daily Mail’s site…much like the comments on that had been posted to the original Cullen blog post. It might seem to the casual reader that the majority of the public opposes the angle taken by such articles/posts, but as was discussed previously, I would attribute a great deal of the dissenting viewpoint posts to the fact that these bogus stories are getting much of their attention and links from other websites with those dissenting views.
As enjoyable as this cold snap has been even down here (more flurries in the air this AM - PERFECT dendritic crystal growth…wish I had a camera and macro lens at the time…), the cold snap is probably detrimental to the global warming “skeptic” crowd since so many talking heads are throwing that out there - “Yeah - global warming whatever…it’s -20 here today - that ain’t no global warming!” Anyone with a fair amount of knowledge to the subject knows those arguments doen’t hold water, so they end up giving the ’skeptic’ crowd a bad rap.
“Skeptic”…not into that label. What should I consider myself (and others who don’t jump on the anthropogenic global warming bandwagon, yet still acknowledge the climate is likely warming)??