When a Picture Says Nothing At All

In most cases a picture says a thousand words. In others, they say absolutely nothing whatsoever:

They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.

Captured on film by Canadian environmentalists, the pair of polar bears look stranded on chunks of broken ice.

When you dry your eyes, realize that they aren't stranded. In fact, polar bears, a semi-aquatic marine mammal, are excellent swimmers. But somehow that fact doesn't play into the Daily Mail's headline, "Global warming sees polar bears stranded on melting ice."

Call it creative license, justified when polar bears could be extinct at any moment:

Studies of polar bears have revealed that not only have their numbers declined – by nearly one quarter in just 20 years to around 25,000 – but so has their physique.

Well, one study found that anyway. Other, much more complete, studies have shown that there are actually more bears than 40 years ago:

A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain concluded that the ice bear populations "may now be near historic highs." One of the leading experts on the polar bear, Mitchell Taylor, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory in Canada, has found that the Canadian polar bear population has actually increased by 25% -- to 15,000 from 12,000 over the past decade.

Then again, it could be that very prosperity causing global warming.

In other warming news: The French waste no time laying claim to American prosperity. As we shall see, the international answer to global warming will be to impose taxes on the U.S. American greenbacks, apparently, make an excellent warmening insulator.

In other, other warming news: The Gore Effect is doubled when Will Steger comes to town.