thenumber of Atlantic hurricanesshows no trend over the pasthalf century; the number oftyphoons has fallenthroughout the past 30 years;the number of tornadoes hasrisen only because of betterdetection systems for smallertornadoes; but the number oflarger tornadoes in the UShas fallen. ERROR 8Polar bear dying Gore says a scientific study shows that polar bears are being killed swimming long distances to find ice that hasmelted away because of âglobal warming.â They are not. The study
by Monnett & Gleason (2005)
mentioned just fourdead bears. They had died in an exceptional storm
with high winds and waves in the Beaufort Sea. The amount of seaice in the Beaufort Sea has grown over the past 30 years. A report for the World Wide Fund for Nature shows that polarbears
which are warm-blooded
have grown in numbers where temperature has increased
and have become fewerwhere temperature has fallen. Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200
000 years ago
and survived the lastinterglacial period
when global temperature was 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the present and there was probablyno Arctic ice-cap at all. The real threat to polar bears is not âglobal warmingâ but hunting. In 1940
there were just 5
000polar bears worldwide. Now that hunting is controlled
there are 25
000. Ms. Kreider says sea-ice âwas the lowest ever measured for minimum extent in 2007.â She does not say that themeasurements
which are done by satellite
go back only 29 years. She does not say that the North-West Passage
agood proxy for Arctic sea-ice extent
was open to shipping in 1945
or that Amundsen passed through in a sailingvessel in 1903.
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