By now the message is old hat to everybody, but in case you’ve forgotten, here’s how Greenpeace puts it: “polar bears could completely disappear from the Arctic in the next 100 years if we don’t take action soon.”

Ah, right. Except that it’s dead wrong.

The chief reason? Just as is the case with fears of dangerous manmade global warming, those making the claim depend entirely on computer models, models that are at best not verified and at worst falsified by empirical observation—the “key to science,” as Richard Feynman famously put it.

Susan Crockford, one of the world’s leading polar bear scientists, lays that claim to rest in a comprehensive report just published by the Global Warming Policy Fouundation. Here are some key points, listed handily by James Delingpole:

• Global polar bear numbers have been stable or risen slightly since 2005, despite the fact that summer sea ice since 2007 hit levels not expected until mid-century: the predicted 67% decline in polar bear numbers did not occur.

• Abundant prey and adequate sea ice in spring and early summer since 2007 appear to explain why global polar bear numbers have not declined, as might have been expected as a result of low summer sea ice levels.

• The greatest change in sea ice habitat since 1979 was experienced by Barents Sea polar bears and the least by those in Southern Hudson Bay, the most southerly region inhabited by bears.

• As far as is known, the record low extent of sea ice in March 2017 had no impact on polar bear health or survival.

• Some studies show bears are lighter in weight than they were in the 1980s, but none showed an increase in the number of individuals starving to death or too thin to reproduce.

• A just-released report of Southern Beaufort Sea bears having difficulty finding prey in 2014– 2016 suggests that the thick ice events that have impacted the region every ten years or so since the 1960s have continued despite reduced summer sea ice.

• Claims of widespread hybridization of polar bears with grizzlies were disproven by DNA studies.

• Overly pessimistic media responses to recent polar bear issues have made heartbreaking news out of scientifically insignificant events, suggesting an attempt is being made to restore the status of this failed global warming icon.

Featured Photo by Victor Benard on Unsplash.