All-Weather Reasoning

This month, two polar bears were spotted in Iceland--and promptly shot dead by local authorities. According to TerraDaily--which publishes "News about planet Earth"--the discovery:

could lend credence to warnings from experts that climate change is creating a more perilous environment for the majestic Arctic animals.

A warming climate means the ice -- where the bears usually hunt their favourite prey, the seals -- is receding and literally melting under their paws, forcing them to swim ever greater distances.

One problem: some sources say polar bears "avoid low ice concentrations near the open oceans," traveling to Iceland during "heavy ice years." Yet other studies tie bear movements to the distribution of prey or report narrowing range resulting from "reductions in stable old ice."

I'm not smart enough to reconcile the competing conclusions. It might merely be another example of warming being "un-falsible." For greens, climate change causes both global warming and/or global cooling (and just about everything else); the warming between 1977 and 2000 (half a degree (C)) stems from human-generated CO₂, though the identical increase between 1905 and 1947 occurred when greenhouse gas emissions were vastly lower; the overall cooling since 2000 doesn't register; and carbon-cutting programs remain exempt from cost/benefit analysis.

Contrary to the "TOOTSIF" mantra, future trends do not invariably mirror the recent past, as Assistant Village Idiot recently observed. No matter: Climate change has become progressives' Procrustean policy, the scientific analog to Middlemarch's unachievable "Key to all Mythologies," the Casaubon delusion. So, I'm inclined to agree with National Review's Greg Pollowitz:

By my count, Iceland has killed more polar bears this year than oil companies.