Lies of the Left (continued) -- The Vanishing Polar Bears

One of the most potent propaganda memes thrown up by the environmentalist Left has been the image of polar bears forced to seek sustenance from ever-shrinking resources. Soon, the warmists claimed, this magnificent species would become extinct because of the effects of global warming. This claim ran counter to abundant testimony from arctic residents to the effect that polar bear populations were growing to the point that they were becoming a real nuisance, Nevertheless the public was inundated by pictures of adult polar bears with cute cubs trapped on shrinking ice floes.

Well, the scientific work upon which the warminsts' claims were based is now looking a bit shakey. AP reports:

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.

Read the whole thing here.

Sigh!

Scientific authority has never been all that useful as a guide to forging public policy, but the politicization of the scientific community in recent years, partly by corporate interests but mostly by left-wing activists, has thoroughly corrupted the enterprise, especially in the areas of medical, nutritional, and climate science. But what can you expect? Science, no less than religion, is a human activity undertaken by mere humans and as such susceptible to all the manifold foibles of humanity. Corruption is inevitable.

As I keep telling you -- there is no such thing as a disinterested authority.

UPDATE:

And then there's this, from Forbes:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

Read the whole thing here.

Once again the evidence upon which recent climate change hysteria has been based turns out not to be what "scientific authority" claimed it to have been and the Church of Climate Change has taken yet another major hit.