Darn it, I hate to come late to this party, but my computer was ‘hors de combat’ this weekend, and the Internet was denied me. However, I’ve got a few thoughts on the Global Warming Hysteria that you might be interested in. My husband and I have been watching, fascinated, as the hysteria has grown, aided and abetted by Mr. Gore, who hopes to coast to the presidency on the rising tide of misinformation.

In fact, my husband is a nature writer and photographer, and one of the founders of Polar Bears International, which takes a close and continuing interest in the welfare of the world’s polar bears. They’re doing just fine, thank you, in spite of what Big Al thinks. They have been around as a species for about 200,000 years, through warm years and those not so warm. Kind of hard to take a census on them, because they are solitary wanderers of the circumpolar regions which don’t really have set boundaries, but the polar bear biologists keep track [kind of] of about 20 populations, of which maybe two groups have fewer members than the last ‘census,’ and 18 have added members.

The squawking about polar bears drowning is silly stuff. Polar bears are designated taxonomically as ‘ursus maritimus, the largest land-based marine mammal.’ Like seals and walruses, they can swim hugely long distances if they are healthy and not injured. Polar bear biologists have tracked a banded mother bear and her cubs as swimming more than five hundred miles without hauling up for a snooze and an off-road snack.

Walruses and seals haul up out of the water to have their babies. But polar bears are fascinating in their mating and birthing habits. I swear the females are feminists. After a successful [and noisy] mating, the female tucks away her fertilized ovum in cold storage, so to speak, and ambles off to build up her strength with lots of seals and other nummies. Only when she is satisfied that she is sufficiently fat and healthy enough to endure a long fasting period, does she go off to dig her birthing lair in chilly snowbanks in places like Wrangel Island in the Russian arctic. Then, when everything is ready, she tells her body to implant the fertilized ovum in her womb, and her pregnancy begins. During the process of gestation, she does not leave the den or feed herself. Even when the cubs are born, she waits and continues to nurse them until they are strong enough to survive in the frigid arctic environment. By the time they emerge from the den, they can stagger along at her heels on their own. By that time, she is pretty much staggering herself; she’s much much thinner and must catch and eat enough prey to restore her energy and feed her babies.

But just imagine this. Mother bear can decide when she will be pregnant. That’s why I think she must be a feminist at heart.

Anyway, we’ve been paying close attention to this growing climate frenzy for around fifteen years now. You’re right about the adherents turning it into a cult, and like all cults it has a religious intensity about it. S. Fred Singer, the climatologist who wrote Unstoppable Global Warming – Every Fifteen Hundred Years, said in a recent interview, that even the IPCC states that human-caused global warming would amount to somewhat less than 10% of total global warming. Is changing that figure worth beggaring the American economy to achieve?

Marianne Matthews

“You can make the facts (?) say anything you want.”

So much for the scientific method if this is how our teachers behave and think.

I still like the NASA scientist who asked who decided that this is the most perfect climate we’ve ever had and that it should be kept this way. Of course, he was forced to recant or be re-educated.

But I appreciate that thought more and more. Algore thinks he’s deity-like in declaiming the dire warnings of climate warming. I still remember the 1970s and the claims of global cooling. That all went away never to be heard of again.

Maybe that’ Algore’s plan — since he’s not running for President, he’s running for God?

Double Yikes!