(Photo credit: AP)

Polar bears can’t catch a break anywhere, least of all Fox News.

On Fox and Friends this morning, Fox Legal Analyst Peter Johnson Jr. was asked about last week’s ruling by the D.C. Circuit to uphold the decision to protect polar bears as a “threatened” species. He made the case that environmentalists use polar bears as a fundraising tool, and that the threat to polar bears may be imaginary:

JOHNSON: It really depends upon whether you believe the global warming is real, whether polar bears are actually threatened or not. This has become a big fundraising tool and it’s become a problem, too, for oil interests throughout the world because they have to act in a way that is very expensive in terms of making modifications.… So is global warming real or not real? I’ve heard a lot of people say it’s not really real.

Watch it:

Global warming is undoubtedly real. In fact, the real climate debate has shifted to how much climate scientists have actually underestimated global warming impacts.

With regard to polar bears, the court said that the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear correctly as “threatened”:

“The Listing Rule rests on a three-part thesis: the polar bear is dependent upon sea ice for its survival; sea ice is declining; and climatic changes have and will continue to dramatically reduce the extent and quality of Arctic sea ice to a degree sufficiently grave to jeopardize polar bear populations…. No part of this thesis is disputed and we find that FWS’s conclusion – that the polar bear is threatened within the meaning of the ESA – is reasonable and adequately supported by the record.” [Page 14]

It went on to say that 13 out of 14 peer reviewers found the rule generally “represented a thorough, clear, and balanced review of the best scientific information available from both published and unpublished sources of the current status of polar bears.”

Polar bears depend on sea ice for feeding. Arctic sea ice volume has collapsed. The question on threats to polar bears is not over whether general population estimates are stable. (Where there is sufficient data, many more subpopulations are decreasing than are increasing.) If Fox and Friends wants to get to the root of the issue, they should host a discussion about whether polar bears should be classified as “threatened” or “endangered.”

Polar bear ranges will only get more crowded by other animals. Under an incorrect-yet-ironic headline (“Study: Global Warming Helps Polar Bears,”) Fox News reported in January that many mammal species will expand their ranges northward as the Arctic warms. As the sea ice melts, the polar bears will surely welcome their new grizzly bear overlords from the south.

by Shauna Theel, via Media Matters

A scientist that Fox News and the right-wing media charged with “Polar Bear Fraud” has been cleared of scientific misconduct. Will Fox News and other outlets follow up on their smears?

Last July, the Interior Department suspended one of its employees, Arctic biologist Charles Monnett, pending an investigation into allegations of scientific misconduct by an anonymous Interior Department employee. Monnett was best known for co-authoring a peer-reviewed paper on drowned polar bears that was cited in the 2008 decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species, along with many other papers establishing the threat that climate change poses for polar bears.

The right-wing media used the investigation not only to reject Monnett’s findings, but also to dismiss all the science on polar bears and global warming. Fox Nation promoted an Investor’s Business Daily editorial claiming the Monnett investigation was exposing “the global warming fraud” with the headline “Global Warming Industry Rocked by Polar Bear Fraud.” Fox Nation also promoted a New York Post op-ed on the Monnett investigation with the headline “Global Warming Theory Faces Sudden Collapse.”

But the Interior Department cleared Monnett of all scientific wrongdoing. Monnett was officially reprimanded for an unrelated issue: forwarding government emails to local government and university officials that “ended up being used in litigation against the government.” Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which provided Monnett legal representation, said that Monnett leaked the emails under the Bush administration to expose suppression of scientists’ concerns about the environmental risks of offshore drilling in the Arctic.

Steve Doocy promised last year on Fox & Friends to “keep [viewers] posted” on Monnett’s case. But so far Fox News remains silent not only on Monnett’s case but also on the record arctic sea ice loss this summer that portends danger for polar bears.

Shuana Theel is a Senior Researcher for Energy & Environment at Media Matters for America. This piece was originally published at Media Matters and was reprinted with permission.

Arctic sea ice is melting at record rates. And rather than raise alarm bells, it’s only encouraged fossil fuel companies to drill for oil in the region as the ice opens up — prolonging our addiction to the resources that are helping warm the planet.

So what will happen if we continue down this path?

Greenpeace has envisioned that future in a striking new film released as part of its Save the Arctic campaign. The organization worked with the band Radiohead and actor Jude Law to put together this distopian story about the Arctic:

“The survival of polar bears as a species is difficult to envisage under conditions of zero summer sea-ice cover.”

That grim prognosis is from the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, by leading scientists from the eight Arctic nations, including ours.  It’s highly likely the Arctic will be virtually ice free in the summer within about two decades, if not one (see “Arctic sea ice volume: The death spiral continues”).

Rear Admiral David Titley, the Oceanographer of the Navy, testified last year that  “the volume of ice as of last September has never been lower” in the last several thousand years.” Titley, who is also the Director of Navy’s Task Force Climate Change, told the Chief of Naval Operations that “we expect to see four weeks of basically ice free conditions in the mid to late 2030s.”

So the polar bear is in a losing battle.  Humanity, sadly, isn’t in any battle at all to stop its own self-inflicted devastation. When will we wake up to the challenge?

Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This is a NatGeo photo (12/10) via Grist (12/11)

A US government department that has spent six months investigating potential fraud in polar bear studies has failed to collect tens of billions of dollars in royalties from oil companies, it has emerged….

The controversy over [polar bear expert Charles] Monnett has become an embarrassment for the agency, which was renamed after last year’s BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Texas exposed the overly close relationship between government regulators and the industry that they were meant to be regulating.

A US watchdog has designated the interior department at ‘high risk’ of fraud, waste and abuse.

I have previously written about the Kafkaesque investigation into polar bear researcher Charles Monnett (see “Breaking Exclusive: Polar Bears Still Screwed by Global Warming“).

As the UK Guardian reports, what’s even more amazing about the whole thing is that while the Inspector General has been sending numerous innumerate  investigators to question Monnett about science whose validity has never been questioned, they have ignored the real incompetence at the Interior Department, which is costing American taxpayers of billions of dollars.  Here’s the rest of that story:

Read more