In this July 21, 2017, file photo, a polar bear walks over sea ice floating in the Victoria Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.David Goldman/The Associated Press
An analysis of dozens of blogs that question the threat climate change poses to polar bears has found the writers ignore virtually all the science on bears and sea ice.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal BioScience, suggests the blogs use the two topics to create doubt about climate change generally. And it found that a Canadian scientist is a main source of their arguments.
"If they can push over the polar bear domino, all other examples of climate change are dismissed by association," said lead author Jeff Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. "If polar bears are thriving – and there's no negative effects of climate change on them – you can't believe any of these other studies, so ignore all of it."
Mr. Harvey's study was co-authored by an A-list of international climatologists and biologists who have between them published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on climate change and its impact on environments, especially polar bears.
Researchers looked at 90 blogs that regularly discuss climate change. Half supported the consensus view that changes are happening and are the result of human activity. The other half didn't.
The denier blogs include popular destinations such as Climate Depot, Watts Up With That and Junk Science. Researchers compared the arguments used by both groups with 92 peer-reviewed, published papers that discuss polar bears and sea ice – virtually everything that's been written in the last few years, Mr. Harvey said.
Almost none of the denier blogs agreed with the main conclusions in the 92 published papers and routinely contradicted them.
"The climate-science-based blogs were acknowledging that there's uncertainty, but acknowledging the mounting evidence … in changing Arctic sea ice status and the polar bears," said co-author Meena Balgopal of the University of Colorado.
"The climate-science-denying blogs were really highlighting the negative aspects of uncertainty. They were also using rhetorical devices that were also about name-calling, implying that environmental scientists were not trustworthy."
The denier blogs also reinforced each other through mutual links. The same names surfaced again and again, Mr. Harvey said. "There's a bit of an echo chamber."
About 80 per cent of denier blogs cited the work of University of Victoria zoologist Susan Crockford, even though she has published almost no peer-reviewed research on polar bears. Prof. Crockford, who writes the Polar Bear Science blog, has been associated with think-tank the Heartland Institute, which denies climate change.
"Tell your readers to have a look at my blog," Prof. Crockford said by e-mail. "They will also see what my credentials actually are, as opposed to how they are portrayed by the authors of this paper."