The Telegraph
An inconvenient truth for climate zealots: polar bears are thriving
Isabel Oakeshott
Fri, January 30, 2026 at 1:56
Well, well, well. How inconvenient.Exactly 20 years after climate change was catapulted to the top of the political agenda, the poster creature of the crisis –the polar bear – appears to be doing remarkably well.
Had all the prophecies of plague and pestilence played out asthe most pessimistic “experts” expected, by now these magnificent creatures would literally be on their last legs.
They would be skinny and starving and stranded on ice caps as fragile as the top of a crème brûlée.
They would be so exhausted by endless swimmingin search of hunting platforms they’d be too weak to reproduce.But guess what? It turns out that Charles Darwin was right.
As their habitat changes, the bears are adapting, and bouncing back.
How awkward for all those eco warriors who still think the world is about to end.
It is two decades since Al Gore transformed global warming from a scientific thesis into a global political crusadewith the release of An Inconvenient Truth.
His seminaldocumentarymarked thebeginning of the mass hysteria about climate changethat reshaped the global economy and united a generation of policy makers in the quest to avoid apocalypse.
This was thestart of the net zero madness that still rages to this day.
According to Gore’s most alarming predictions, changing weather patterns linked to the burning of fossil fuelswould displace hundreds of millions of people, scorching farmland and flooding entire cities. As for plants and animals, those on the frontline could be completely wiped out.
Polar bears quickly came to symbolise the crisis.
From a PR perspective, they made the perfect victims: powerful yet vulnerable apex predators of a pristine wilderness in meltdown. Some of it was real. As weather patterns changed, land and sea ice was indeed disappearing – and it still is.
If anything, Gore may have underestimated the pace of retreat, with some scientists suggesting that Arctic summer ice has fallen away by as much as 28 per cent since 2005. (They are still sticking to it)
Precisely how fast it’s happening is still a matter of debate, butonly crackpotsdispute the macro situation: the world is getting warmer, with profound implications for animals that live on and around ice. (And only crappy news keeps repeating the lieand misunderstanding of the earths transitions, are not the end of the world.)
Cue pitiful pictures of seemingly starving polar bears marooned on melting ice caps.Such images did more to sell the climate change calamity story than any number of words. At the Norwegian Polar Institute, the expectation was that the bear population would decline, as they struggled to catch their staple food: seals.
Instead,after an initial setback in the mid 1990s, the Institute saysboth male and female animals have actually gained weight and body fat.
While they are now forced to spend more time on land (a habitat that was not expected to suit them)they appear to be thriving in their new conditions, having tracked down new prey.
Though the bears aren’t quite out of the woods,they are producing plenty of healthy offspring.
How is Greta Thunberg going to spin this?
One of the firstBritish politicians to jump on the climate change bandwagon. in 2006 wasDavid Cameron, then a thrusting young Leader of the Opposition.
Shortly after the publication of Gore’s book, he hot-footed it to the remote Norwegianarchipelago of Svalbard, where he famously sped across the ice on a dog sled.
Photos of the future prime minister “hugging huskies” on that triphelped make his battered old party fashionable again. Soon Tories were campaigning under the slogan: “Vote Blue, Go Green.”
How funny that Svalbard is the very place where polar bears are recovering. Perhaps different weather doesn’t have to be an existential threat. Any chance thepoliticians leading the climate change charge today might now take a chill pill, and grudgingly acknowledge that flora and fauna have an amazing ability to adapt?
Don’t hold your breath.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/inconvenient-truth-climate-zealots-polar-185635485.html
(Al Gore should have to pay for all psycho therapy for creating a generation or two that were programmed they end of the world is coming!Seriously they all should be put on trial, and sent to jail, because they all knew it was and is a lie.)