I have seen a hundred stories on the Arctic minimum in dozens of news articles. A new one shows up with a slightly different take on it almost every week. No doubt you've seen a lot of them yourself.

Now, tell me the truth: If I had not posted that single, obscure reference on the Antarctic sea ice record maximum on this board, would you have known about it?

The Antarctic anomaly says something highly significant: global warming does not seem to be altogether global.

The Arctic melt is repeatedly used for political purposes--proof of global warming. You will hear plenty from that side. When I post something that pokes even a small hole in the Conventional Wisdom, I'd bet that many times you will not have read or heard about it before I posted it.

Same for the bears. I went over the whole polar bear issue a long time ago, painstakingly going over the PBSG statistics to see what the truth was when the newspapers were screaming "extinction." My conclusion pointed to what might charitably be called "insufficient information" in the many newspaper stories on the subject. A single population was selected to highlight, and the others were ignored.

As of the most recent numbers, out of all the polar bear populations that have data available (Russian populations are largely unknown), 37 percent of the bears are members of declining populations, 60 percent are in stable populations, and three percent of the bears are in populations that are actually increasing.

Out of the over 14,000 animals in that group, as many as 800 can be legally killed by hunting every year. You really think that's beside the point?

Suffice it to say you are being fed a lot of bullshit in this world, and if it bothers you to have that pointed out, so be it. I'm sorry I irritate people by poking pins into comfortable ideas. If I sound impatient, or contemptuous, maybe it's because I have a respect for facts, and it bothers me when others don't seem to. I don't usually get that way the first time I make a point. But about the fifth time I post the same damn information when presented with the same damn bullshit, even a better person than I am might trend toward the snarky.

The following is for ER, too.

I wonder if what's really irritating people here is the documentation--the hard numbers. People around the internet seem quite comfortable rolling along with the usual "sez you, sez me" kind of discussion. Nobody really knows, right? Everybody can come out claiming to be the winner of the argument, and who can say different? It's all seen as opinions.

But if someone actually pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind the sign, it's not fun any more.