But it was necessary to come up with “scientific” estimates of polar bear populations that showed them in danger. With all the billions of dollars available for global warming-related research, and the elevel of peer pressure that money generates, it wasn’t that difficult.

The greatest scientific fraud in history is slowly but surely unraveling, and the breadth of the corruption revealed is stunning. As any good con man knows, and emotional appeal is necessary, and the warmists found their cuddly-looking icon of endangerment in the polar bear, an animal frequently chosen as stuffed toys for children to hug. Pictures of polar bears on ice floes, presumably doomed to death by drowning as the Arctic ice disappeared, were used to tug on the heartstrings of adults and children alike, in order to scare them into willingly handing over power over their economic destiny to global mandarins who would reduce their standard of living.

As Matt Barber of Barbwire notes:

Polar bear populations became the centerpiece of the effort to fight global warming due to claims that melting polar ice caps would cause the bears to become endangered in the near future. Years ago some scientists predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by now. Polar bears became the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act because they could potentially be harmed by global warming. But some recent studies have found that some polar bear subpopulations have actually flourished in recent years.

As with the hockey stick graph and many other elements of the concocted story, honest scientists working in the finest tradition of skeptical scientific inquiry, started to unravel fuzzy numbers and lies. One such hero is polar bear scientist Dr. Susan Crockford, who publishes the website Polar Bear Science. In it she documents how a scientist responsible for an alarmist lowball estimate of polar bear population is backing away from numbers that she has been questioning:

Last week (May 22), I received an unsolicited email from Dr. Dag Vongraven, the current chairman of the IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature – TL] Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG). The email from Vongraven began this way: “Dr. Crockford Below you’ll find a footnote that will accompany a total polar bear population size range in the circumpolar polar bear action plan that we are currently drafting together with the Parties to the 1973 Agreement. This might keep you blogging for a day or two.” [my bold] It appears the PBSG have come to the realization that public outrage (or just confusion) is brewing over their global population estimates and some damage control is perhaps called for. Their solution — bury a statement of clarification within their next official missive (which I have commented upon here). Instead of issuing a press release to clarify matters to the public immediately, Vongraven decided he would let me take care of informing the public that this global estimate may not be what it seems.

Wow! Burying the news in a footnote and letting a critic know instead of issuing a press release. That is certainly a signal. Here’s the news:

Here is the statement that the PBSG proposes to insert as a footnote in their forthcoming Circumpolar Polar Bear Action Plan draft: “As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total number of polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic. Since 2005, this range has been 20-25,000. It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand. It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated. Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations.Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy. Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.” [my bold]

“A guess to satisfy public demand” but wrapped in the prestige of settled science.

And on this basis, small children have gone to bed weeping, hugging their stuffed teddy bears, worried sick about the doom facing these cuddly animals.

There is so much fraud in the warmist movement that a reckoning must be had, or else we will lose scientific progress, the very engine that has brought us our standard of living. Corruption left untouched multiplies.