Polar Bears Safe – Bjorn Lomborg

Polar bears would stand a greater chance of avoiding extinction if people stopped shooting them than if they reduced greenhouse gas emissions, according to a book by a leading environmental sceptic.

A polar bear surrounded by melting ice Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish professor who achieved international fame with his previous book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, examines and rejects claims by environmentalists and the former president Al Gore that polar bears are drowning because the sea ice they hunt on is melting.

Lomborg says the story about drowning bears is taken from a single sighting of four dead bears the day after an abrupt windstorm. The bears came from a population that was actually increasing, which has been the overall trend in the polar bear population since the 1960s.

He provides evidence that 11 out of 13 distinct populations of polar bears in Canada are either stable or increasing in number. In his new book, Cool It: the Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, he quotes a Canadian government biologist who said: "They are not going extinct or even appear to be affected at present."