Rohrabacher responds to polar bear post

Your June 11, 2009 blog posting "Rohrabacher Bears Down on Global Warming" criticized comments I made in jest rather than highlight the evidence that supports my stance, and that of thousands of scientists globally, on the fraud that is manmade global warming.  During my keynote address at the International Conference on Climate Change, I discussed a variety of misnomers extremist environmentalists use to propagandize their global warming agenda to the American people. 

One common example is the alleged threat global warming poses to the polar bear population, yet, there is credible scientific evidence to the contrary. For example, internationally known forecasting pioneer Dr. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his colleague Dr. Kesten Green of Monash University in Australia, co-authored a Nov. 29, 2007 paper with Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon which found that polar bear extinction predictions violate "scientific forecasting procedures." 

Biologist Josef Reichholf from the National Zoological Collection in Munich believes fear of mass species extinctions because of global warming is "nothing but fear-mongering for which there is no concrete evidence." He argues the slaughter of tens of thousands of seals, the polar bears primary source of food, in Canada hurts the polar bear population more than any claims of climate change.

Evolutionary Biologist and Paleozoologist Dr. Susan Crockford shares this view.  Dr. Crockford has published her skepticism of man-made global warming in peer-reviewed academic journals where she points out that polar bears survived several episodes of much warmer climate over the last 10,000 years than exists today.

"There is no evidence to suggest that polar bears or its food supply is in danger of disappearing entirely with increased Arctic warming, regardless of the fairy-tale scenarios predicted by some computer models," says Dr. Crockford.  "Evidence from the past tells us that sufficient sea ice will persist, even with significant increases in temperature," she concludes.  As a matter of fact, the polar bear population has increased from 5,000 in the 1960s to approximately 25,000 today.

The polar bear example is a tangential distraction used by global warming alarmists dependent on emotional irrationality to further their cause.  In fact, there's growing scientific consensus that global warming is not man-made. Over 17,000 scientists asked the U.S. not to sign the Kyoto treaty because, "there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

Many believe the temperature fluctuations of the last 300 years directly correlate with naturally occurring fluctuations in solar activity. If increased levels of CO2 correspond with global warming, then why was there a cooling trend between the 1940s-1970s, despite those increases?

I'd say the case is far from closed. 

Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46)

Member of Congress