John Eidson, electrical engineer: There are more polar bears in Canada today than 30 years ago. Of the 13 polar bear subpopulations in Canada, 11 are stable, one is increasing and only one is in decline. In the expert opinion of Dr. Mitchell Taylor, polar bear expert, these bears are not being wiped out by climate change or anything else. His research shows they’re flourishing! Dr. Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Victoria in Canada. With 35 years experience, she’s a certified expert on the evolution of polar bears. In the 1960s there were an estimated 10,000 polar bears in the world. By 2015, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimated the number had risen to as high as 31,000. Because their good faith scientific opinions upset the people who try to scare kids by saying that polar bears are being killed off by global warming, Dr. Crockford and Dr. Taylor are demonized as “climate deniers.” They’re not denying that climate change is real—the climate is always changing. What they dispute is that polar bears are dying out. The best available population estimates support their view.
