Weather Channel Founder Says Polar Bears Doing Great Because Eskimos Stopped Being Savages
In a chat with paid climate change deniers on the San Diego TV station where he now works as a weatherman, Weather Channel founder John Coleman insisted that, contrary to mere evidence, polar bear populations are increasing because
"the Eskimos no longer kill the polar bears for the meat and furs in order to stay alive, it's -- we have now become more civilized in our Eskimo populations around the poles."
"Poles" may have been a verbal slip, or maybe he actually thinks polar bears live at both poles. It is not known at press time whether he illustrated his point with a cartoon of an Eskimo and a geographically impossible penguin shaking hands outside an igloo while a polar bear drank a refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola.
In "reality," polar bears are a "threatened species," according to "wildlife biologists" who "count" them. A ban on hunting the species -- with exceptions allowed for traditional hunting by Inuits -- has helped stabilize the bears' population, but this proves nothing about the existence of global warming anyway.
Coleman dedicated significant air time last week to guests from the Heartland Institute, the climate change denial group that had those fun billboards a while back saying that the Unabomber believed in global warming, so if you believe in global warming you are some kind of Unabomber. (It is also a well-known fact that Adolf Hitler believed that oxygen is what human beings breathe.) The Heartland Institute also publishes fake science reports by the "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" (NIPCC), a denialist group which just happens to sound a hell of a lot like the UN’s real science committee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Heartland has recently managed to get its fake science covered by several mainstream media organizations by pretending to have real scientific data, a strategy it seems to have adopted from the brown-headed cowbird, which kills off native songbird species by laying its eggs in their nests.
[ Mediaite / Media Matters ]
When all else fails, go the way of the way of the "earnest scientist" and say that the data is inconclusive and that more research is needed. See, it SOUNDS sciencey. This method is enjoyed not only by select climate change deniers but the tobacco industry and anti-vaccine advocates.
Wow, back when I had cable the chicks were always pregnant.