The media and polar bears

Commenting on a scientific study, Polar bear attacks on humans: Implications of a changing climate, the international media have set off the alarm: pushed by a climate that is getting warmer, polar bears would attack humans.

However, this is not the meaning of this study which actually weighs in on animal behaviour and not climate change.

What the study does is to review every case where polar bears have attacked humans over the last hundred years, the most recent case taking place six years ago in 2011. But it does not examine the exponential increase in the potential for such attacks on humans who are now frequenting the natural habitat of polar bears.

This campaign is taking place in the context of US’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement (which is effectively the US’s withdrawal from the Coal Stock Market, which was supposed to be a wealth-creator for its inventors). This stock market was the brainchild of David Blood (former Director of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and Al Gore (former US Vice-President). Its by-laws were drawn up by Barack Obama (later to become the President of the United States of America).