Bush Environmental Policy Meltdown

A polar bear doing what polar bears do.

I was disturbed to hear this week that the Bush administration proposed to list the polar bear as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. This is apparently some sort of qid pro quo, but I hate this implicit endorsement of global warming hysteria. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) even referenced predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean “within the foreseeable future.” In response Steven Milloy writes:

But such predictions and the potential consequences to polar bears are highly uncertain. No one knows exactly what’s happening with Arctic sea ice, much less what the future holds. The Greenland ice melt, for example, was actually larger in 1991 than in 2005 and the Greenland ice cap is thickening. Data from the Canadian Ice Service indicate there has been no precipitous drop-off in ice cap amount or thickness since 1970.

Let’s keep in mind that polar bears have survived much warmer times than we are now experiencing – like 1,000 years ago when the Vikings farmed Greenland during the Medieval Climate Optimum and 5,000-9,000 years ago during the period known as the Holocene Climate Optimum.

He concludes:

It’s distressing that the Bush administration is opening the door for the all-important issue of global warming regulation to be influenced more by our embrace of a soda mascot rather than science.

Click here for Milloy's year end review of the top Junk Science stories of 2006.