In an
age in which emotional narratives often trump facts, the polar bear quickly
became the icon of the climate alarmist movement. The frame of a cuddly polar
bear clinging on to a swiftly melting tiny ice floe tended to immediately rake
up a flurry of emotions all sympathetic for a creature, apparently portrayed as
helpless to starve off the danger of its imminent drowning.
Al Gore, former US Vice
President, used the above frame in his controversial documentary “The
Inconvenient Truth”. All these publicity spurred the frame going viral over
the internet and succeeding in recruiting tens of thousands to the climate
change cause. It however also spawned an ever increasing band of climate
critics. Science, the renowned international scientific journal selected the
frame in its editorial “Climate Change and the Integrity of Science” to
counter this growing worldwide trend of “climate scepticism”:
"We
are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on
scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens
should understand some basic scientific facts."
But they didn’t factor into
their calculations, an encounter with my pal, James Delingpole of The
Telegraph, a leading newspaper in the UK. James’ brilliant investigative work
exposed the frame as a photo-shopped graphic! Instead of helping to refute the
allegation, this frame ended up confirming that the integrity of climate
alarmist scientists was indeed suspect. Science consequently had to
swallow its pride and render the following editorial correction:
"Due
to an editorial error, the original image associated with this Letter was not a
photograph but a collage.
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