I used to love the Coca-Cola Polar bear TV ads at Christmastime. I marveled at the quality of the CGI animations when they first came out, like this one:
They were fun and entertaining to watch, even though not reality based because papa polar bear would just as soon rip the heads off the cubs as he would to have a Coke. But there was never a hint of any political message. Just good clean fun and lightly pushing a uniquely American product I enjoyed.
But recently this started showing up on WUWT, courtesy of Google Ads:
You might even see it show up below this entry. Coke and Christmas always went together. To find out Coke has surrendered their famous Christmas polar bear ads to a political cause is like the day I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real.
This is where it takes you:
But it gets worse, on that page is a link to the real group behind it:
Egads! It’s the scummy WWF, purveyors of the 9/11 video ad showing airplanes hitting New York City.
Message to the Coca-Cola Company.
I don’t need your political views to quench my thirst. I now choose Pepsi* Tea, a company that has the good sense to not try hanging their hat on questionable causes or tactless eco-political organizations.
Maybe WUWT readers can enlighten the Coca-Cola company via their contact page on just how well polar bears are doing these days. See below.
A few countering reports:
Global warming leads to too many polar bears
Christian Science Monitor, May 3rd, 2007 – Despite global warming, an ongoing study says polar bear populations are rising in the country’s eastern Arctic region.
Science Daily May 10th, 2008 – Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed, Forecasting Expert Asserts
National Post March 6th, 2007 – Polar bear numbers up, but rescue continues
WUWT May 9th 2009 – The “precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population”
Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist with Nunavut Territorial government in Canada wrote this letter (PDF) on April 6th, 2006 to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
Some excerpts:
At present, the polar bear is one of the best managed of the large arctic mammals. If all the arctic nations continue to abide by the terms and intent of the Polar Bear Agreement, the future of polar bears is secure.
…
Polar bears are believed to have evolved from grizzly bears during the Pleistocene era some 200-250,000 years ago (Amstrup 2003). Polar bears were well developed as a separate species by the Eemian interglacial approximately 125,000 years ago. This period was characterized by temperature fluctuations caused by entirely natural events on the same order as those predicted by contemporary climate change models. Polar bears obviously adapted to the changing environment, as evidenced by their presence today. That simple fact is well known and part of the information contained in the reference material cited throughout the petition, yet it is never mentioned. This fact alone is sufficient grounds to reject the petition. Clearly polar bears can adapt to climate change. They have evolved and persisted for thousands of years in a period characterized by fluctuating climate. No rational person could review this information and conclude that climate change pre-destined polar bears to extinction.
…
The petition admits that there is only evidence for deleterious effects from climate change for one polar bear population (Western Hudson Bay [WH]) at the southernmost extreme of polar bear range (Fig. 1). The petition argues that the likelihood of change in other areas is reason enough to find that polar bears should be regarded as a species at risk of imminent extinction. I hope the review considers the precedent set by accepting this argument. Climate change will affect all species to some extent, including humans. If the likelihood of change is regarded as sufficient cause to designate a species or population as “threatened,” then all species around the world are “threatened.”
Some data. With hunting no longer allowed, bear populations have increased 4-5 times:
Fig. 1. Circumpolar distribution of polar bear populations. The Western Hudson Bay population (WH), for which data on negative impacts of climate change exist, is highlighted. Polar bears of WH comprise approximately 4% of the world total population polar bears.
* From comments: Turns out that Pepsi is involved in a carbon fund, looks like tea for me now.
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I don’t know why anyone would buy that overpriced crap. I buy the Tesco own label cheap crap: Tesco 2 litre soda – about 60p; Coca Cola – about 160p.
Polar Bears <bNot Turning To cannibalism Due To Warming Say Inuit
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6949625.ece
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/12/03/mb-polar-bear-cannibalism-churchill-manitoba.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234066/Is-global-warming-causing-hungry-polar-bears-resort-cannibalism.html
Polar Bear Numbers Up Since The 1960s Despite Less Sea Ice!
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/
Polar Bears Thrive While Arctic Warms Up!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1545036/Polar-bears-thriving-as-the-Arctic-warms-up.html
Polar Bear Swims 200 Miles!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/05/animalwelfare.animalbehaviour
Polar Bear Swims 100 Km
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/polarbears/pbadaptations.html
When asked why he went out on the ice, the polar bear replied “because that’s where the seals are.”
And the seals are only there because they have to cross the ice to reach the arctic ocean. Impressed as I am by the amazing behavioural adaptability of animals, I would hypothesise that if the ice ever disappeared a la Gore, all that would happen would be that the seals would become shore based. The polar bears wouldn’t have to trek across hundreds of miles of ice to find their meals. No alarmist has yet offered a convincing argument of why there isn’t enough room for both brown bears and polar bears to coexist in their present numbers, if this was to happen.
I’m a fanatical tea drinker. I have 9 different teas on my shelf from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Taiwan. I drink it from a pint mug (Worcester Porcelain), without milk or sugar (that way I can taste the tea!), and that needs top quality tea (FTGFOP, etc.). Nowadays, if someone gave me a cup with milk and sugar I wouldn’t be able to drink it (unless a large sum of money were involved). Who needs this tooth-rot anyway! There must be someone in the States that imports the quality stuff, not just here in Old Blighty (although even here I have to get it direct from an importer).
bubbles (23:58:44) :
In fact, I’m not much of a Coke consumer. Despite having access to as much free Coke as I could want, I have a can just once or twice a month.
In my home town there was a chocolate factory. The company policy was to allow the production line workers to eat as many as they liked. After a few weeks in the job they didn’t want any at all (not a reflection on the quality of the chocs).
Following on (02:57:11) A merry Christmas to Anthony and the mods. This year has turned out pretty darn well in the end, mostly thanks to your hard work and dedication. Here’s looking forward to next year being even better, and The Hoax finally evaporating. And 100,000,000 hits by the year end!
Look on the brightside, by switching to tea you could possibly lose weight (if you need too) and live long enough to see hte sea levels not rise.
Aren’t you being a bit harsh? They don’t know that the scientists are exaggerating because they get their science from the mainstream media. Neither is it out of green smuggery – it’s purely marketing to the young and no more false than any other marketing campaign. if it doesn’t shift the product it’ll be abandoned. Lastly, they don’t actually make money directly from supporting WWF causes and they might lose a lot – and some of it might actually go to good causes. Contrast that with the carbon traders like Government Sachs who have encouraged both this CO2 panic and the related panic of peak oil purely to benefit from a stealth Wall Street tax on everything.
JDN (19:33:31) :
Now that it’s been brought up, I’ll try to keep an eye out for how many fuzzy animals actually kill/eat their own species. It would be nice to have a list.
Practically ALL of them if you consider males during breeding season. I have seen a tennessee walker show horse stud try to kill his son and a donkey jack grab a pony gelding by the throat and choke him to death.
Polar bears behave like beasts because they are beasts.
It is to be hoped that humans are held to a higher standard.
Unfortunately some humans succumb to lower and more bestial impulses. Kindness gives way to cruelty, love to lowest lust, hope to despair, and generosity to greed.
The distressing thing about much Alarmism is that it tends to despair about over-population and pollution, and rather than seeking hopeful answers it slumps into mean-minded solutions involving dishonest propaganda and other perversions of Truth. As soon as it veers away from Truth it becomes bestial, and contributes to the world becoming darker.
However in the darkness there shines a bright Light, and that Light is Truth. Both Christmas and Hanukah are celebrations of Light defeating darkness, against all odds, and doom and gloom giving away to Joy.
This site is a Joy, simply because, for the most part, people seek Truth here. People seek Light rather than obfuscation. It may seem a simple thing, and not all that religious, but it defies darkness, and tells the Beast where to go.
Merry Christmas, everyone! May Light, Truth, and Joy soak and saturate your lives, reviving and refreshing, and may we all charge into the New Year like gang-busters!
It’s hard to be in business these days, you can’t please everybody as the saying goes; and, of course, business has to deal with the usual suspects that are extremely vocal in their criticisms, easily offended and threaten to mount some kind of ‘social action’ that your product is a “bad” for some reason or other.These groups tend to be ignored by the regular guy but have the “lawmakers” at their command, unfortunately.
Here in New England, there is a beverage company based in Worcester, Massachusetts called “Polar” that does use the polar bear as a logo and mascot. They produce quality products and distribute the “uncola” 7-UP among other nation brands. But alas, they too have “partners with nature” according to their website.
Ideally, a business probably shouldn’t partner or contribute to anyone, instead selling its product at the lowest possible price and paying its employees the highest possible wage. Let the employees and customers decide individually whom they want to contribute and support.
Now for me, “Moose milk” hits the spot, being made from eggnog and applejack. Besides, the apple trees love that CO2 the cows produce. If “Moose milk is temporarily unavailable, Cherry 7-Up supplemented with 100 proof Kirschwasser is an acceptable substitute. The cherry trees love that CO2 too!
Merry Christmas Everybody !!!!
For me “Climategate” is a Christmas present.
Mapou (20:31:04) :
“…. The mass media should not be given a free pass out of jail, in my opinion, because it is the job of journalists to seek and investigate the truth.
Sorry that is a different Universe. The job of journalists is to make a buck for their paper and the papers advertisers. Truth is incidental to that goal.
Check out The Festering Fraud Behind Food Safety Reform http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2009/12/the-festering-fraud-behind-food-safety-reform/
The mass media has been hiding the HACCP regulation connection to the dramatic increase in food poisonings/deaths for over a decade despite interviews given by John Munsell and others. HACCP regs turn food safety control over to the corporations and relegates Govt agents to auditing paperwork. Cap and trade Waxman’s food safety bill specifically state HACCP is to be left intact. It imposes massive paperwork and fines on farmers instead. Similar laws in the EU have driven independents off the land so it can be scarfed up by the international corporations.
John gave a several day interview to a New York Magazine that was killed by the magazine’s owner. This is from the lawyer John contacted in his fight to try and prevent the food poisonings that finally lead to death. http://www.marlerblog.com/2009/07/articles/lawyer-oped/one-e-coli-o157h7-outbreak-i-think-i-could-have-prevented/
I bring this up because food poisoning is a hot button for every one and Cap and Trade Waxman is KNOWINGLY aiding and abetting the poisoning of Americans. There were two Congressional investigations where this came out. John Munsell personally testified to the problems with HACCP. Stan Painter Union leader of the food inspection agents backed him up in his testimony. “There seems to be too much reliance on an honor system for the industry to police itself. While the USDA investigation is still on going at Hallmark/Westland, a couple of facts have emerged that point to a system that can be gamed by those who want to break the law.” Painter also stated he receive reports from union member that SRM (mad cow) regulations are not uniformly enforced. and a Freedom of Information Act request by his Union turned up Over 1000 non-compliance reports.
Coca Cola is not free from the food poisoning taint: from India
“The complainant, Raj Mohan Atrey, an East Delhi-based doctor, complained that he started vomiting as soon as he had few sips of Coca Cola that he bought from one Prince Pan Corner in West Jyoti Nagar on April 21 last year. He claimed that he saw fungus floating in the bottle. He was admitted to Maha Laxmi hospital in Shahadra with acute gastroenteritis and food poisoning. He stayed in hospital for six days…. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Coke-fined-Rs-1-lakh-for-fungus-in-soft-drink-bottle/articleshow/5137020.cms
J.Peden (23:54:20) :
High Fructose corn syrup is most probably as safe as table suger, sucrose, which is also simply a combination of glucose and fructose. Fructose apparently tends to be sweeter than glucose without fructose, so that starches, like those found in potatoes, which are comprised solely or mostly of glucose do not taste sweet.
Glucose is what your brain lives off of for calories, although the brain can possibly live off of other “monosacharrides”[sp.?] – one molecule sugars – also. I can’t remember if it can, or if the other monosacharrides have to be converted to glucose, or if some can’t be converted to glucose at all. Too lazy to look it up.
No kidding Papa would rip the heads off the kids. I watched a male bear stalking mom and her two cubs in northern Labrador. He was hiding along the seashore until we flushed him out. Mom, who was upwind knew he was there and was lying low herself. As soon as the male climbed the bank and headed off inland, Mom and cubs hit the water and swam well downwind of him before making shore. Needless to say he was pissed that we discovered him. He was huge, too, with a backside that was about five feet wide. While all this was going on a pilot whale surfaced between our canoes! Just to be safe and prevent any unexpected guests during the night we crossed to the other side of the fjord (3 miles)
Oh dear, I was going to suggest that New Englanders can always drink Moxie. (I only recently tried some as I became a Coke-addicted computer geek before moving here.) Unfortunately, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie says “Moxie is currently owned by Cornucopia Beverages Inc. of Bedford, New Hampshire, which is owned by Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Northern New England Incorporated, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Kirin Brewery Co. Ltd.” A second reading says Moxie is Japanese! How many New Englanders know that?
Sadly, Moxie has made the switch to high fructose corn syrup.
To me, Moxie tastes like a combination of root beer and ginger ale, full flavored for each. Maybe Kirin just wanted to expand to non-alcoholic beer? 🙂
It is Dr. Pepper for me! I’m a pepper, you’re a pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too? And since Dr. Pepper is currently owned by Cadbury Chocolate, I’m safe.
Of course, my favorite liquid concoction is sweet tea. Being born and raised in the southern US, sweet tea is a fact of life. I don’t have juice or milk for breakfast, I have sweet tea. I used to drink 4 cans of Dr. Pepper a day. I switched to sweet tea and lost 15 pounds. I’ll still have a Dr. Pepper, but I get my caffeine from tea now.
My only wish is if the US would ban high fructose corn syrup. Sugar has got to be better than that junk. A coke with real sugar in it, as you get at some Sam’s Club (Hencho en Mexico), tastes so much better. But, like AGW, politicians meddling has made things stupid.
Allan M (02:57:11) :
I’m a fanatical tea drinker. I have 9 different teas on my shelf …. There must be someone in the States that imports the quality stuff, ….”
What brands do you recommend? I have Stash and Twinings in the cupboard (USA) but they keep changing stuff in the store, so I am always on the lookout for good tea brands.
As a former Coke drinker, I have recently switched to AriZona teas. They are produced by beer and malt maker, Ferolito, Vultaggio & Sons of Brooklyn, NY. Privately owned.
Przemysław Pawełczyk (00:46:55) :
“…Thanks God I live in Poland and I was not brainwashed to American totalitarianism – “When we say LeninCoke We mean the PartyUSA And when we say Partythe USA We mean LeninCoke”.
For us in Poland – “…Jesus and Christmas always went together…”
Yes this song captures the spirit of the American Christmas as compared to that of other countries. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZR3lJobjw
Merry Christmas
Bulldust (21:28:11) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tea_companies
—————————————–
Another believer quoting from his bible.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/19/climategatekeeping-wikipedia/
Good job!
Kate’s SDA blog takes a practical view. Her opinion:
“I get the sense that, for as important as it is to yell at elected representatives who endorse policies that damage our interests, it’s the negative feedback directed towards AGW promoting corporations that may produce the most results per complaint over the long run.
“Unlike their counterparts in mass media, most sensible retailers understand that the consumer can, and will, reject a product tainted by political agenda. A few angry letters can alert an executive that the global warming “consensus” ain’t what she used to be.”
Good enough for this uncredentialed floor buffer.
Maybe the solution is that the Government can subsidice Cola and Pepsi to produce for storage only? Forbidden to drink?
I mean after all, it will require less power-consumption to compress CO2 into all those bottles, than to compress it far down into the gound, which the Norwegian Government wants.
So ….AGW=>CO2 forbidden=>Coke and Pepsi forbidden=> Coke and Pepsi bankrupt……
Its a travesty….
“Przemysław Pawełczyk (00:46:55) :
[…]
Thanks God I live in Poland and I was not brainwashed to American totalitarianism – “When we say LeninCoke We mean the PartyUSA And when we say Partythe USA We mean LeninCoke”.”
Well Coke conquered Western Europe – they supplied the GI’s during the invasion so they were allowed to build their plants there.
Pepsi took revenge by conquering the SU and the rest of the Warsaw pact (there’s a famous film of Chrushtshov holding a Pepsi). To this day Warsaw
is dominated by Pepsi.
So yes, when we say Lenin, we probably mean Pepsi, right ? 😉
Clive (22:46:52) :
That’s the same approach I took…posting a “marketing idea”…and it’s almost verbatum what you posted, including the benefit analysis.
JimB in USA
Scroogle.com
If you want to effect change, stop lending your eyes to their ads.
Wade (05:34:17)
I’m a Pepper, too! Though at dinnertime I switch to Harpoon IPA.
/Mr Lynn