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.
Frank Kotler (10:06:46) :
“A friend sent me a photo of this sign from Fort Steele Campground in B.C. It refers to Grizzly Bears, but I believe the advice would apply to Polar Bears as well.
. . . .
We advise the outdoorsman to wear noisy little bells on clothing so as to give advance warning to any bears who might be close by…”
If there’s a polar bear near you, it KNOWS where you are. And if by some good fortune it doesn’t, then alerting it to your location is the LAST thing you want to do, because it may be the last thing you ever do.
Polar bear hotline in Churchill, manned 24/7. Don’t go out without it.
I don’t do Coke or Pepsi. I’m a beer man. (And single malts on the odd occasion…)
Yonason (11:42:48)
Okay, cancel the bells. I don’t suppose the pepper spray is much help, either. T’was supposed to be a joke…
Great links. Thanks!
Best,
Frank
It sure is a msytery as to how the poor Polar Bears survive an Arctic Summer, what with all that decreased ice! The Greenies suppose they wander around on land fasting. But I know the real truth: they simply hibernate in Summer! Give me some money and I’ll even “prove” it [they must have to sleep sometime].
Once I convinced a guy on line at the Washington Post that poor school children were not starving to begin with, because they survived quite well in the Summer when there were no “school lunch” programs*. About two years later the gov’t started Summer lunch programs.
* I also had two close relatives that worked to make and deliver “school lunches” – which also supplied breakfasts. They knew that all kinds of people were getting the food who didn’t really qualify. Another problem, one nurse I worked with refused to go along the “program” even though she and her husband “qualified”. She made her children’s lunches herself. Then the parents started getting criticized for denying the School gov’t money.
Aren’t sodas carbonated?
You know – CO2. Are those needless bubbles in a beverage worth the lives of – gasp – polar bears?
Gail Combs (05:49:00) :
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.
I get my tea straight from the importer ‘Accord Fine Teas’ here in UK. I don’t know what is available in the USA, but what I get is not obtainable via Twynings or Whittards or even posh supermarkets. Sorry. Perhaps you could try for small companies around where there are rich Brits (unlike me) lurking, New York or Washington, maybe.
I have:
Assam Special FTGFOP
Darjeeling FTGFOP
Nepal FTGFOP
Ceylon Silver Tip
Oolong Formosa
Gunpowder
Sencha Fukuyu (don’t blame me, it’s Japanese)
Jasmine Chung Hao
Rose Congou
FTGFOP = Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (top grade)
But these are not brands. The tea articles on Wackypodium may not be political!
Old Gasser (06:28:02) :
“…“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.”
I worked as a Quality Engineer for a Personal Care Product Company. We figured one letter of complaint represented a 100 upset customers who voted with their feet instead of bothering to write. So complaint letters were taken very seriously.
I WANT A POLAR BEAR RUG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ever wonder why Santa has bells on his sleigh? It’s to avoid startling the Polar Bears!
Actually bells are safety devices. A horse drawn sleigh is very close to silent. Add drifts and you get an accident with out the bells. (Wear earplugs those blasted sleigh bells are LOUD.) For the idiots who want to go back to prior to automobiles, I suggest some hours long open carriage/sleigh rides in rain/sleet/ice and snow behind some fast trotters. Standardbreds can easily travel at 15 to 20 MPH for long periods of time and I have frozen my butt and hands off in mild weather thanks to the windchill factor. The Amish are a hardy breed to travel as they do.
[PLEASE STOP CARPET BOMBING WUWT WITH REQUESTS THAT PEOPLE VISIT A WEBSITE AND LEAVE COMMENTS – THIS MAKES THE 7TH COMMENT ON VARIOUS THREADS YOU’VE LEFT, ALL HAVE BEEN DELETED BUT FOR ONE- ALL FURTHER COMMENTS OF THIS TYPE WILL BE DELETED – Anthony]
Allan M
I am stuck in the wild hinterlands of North Carolina. If an upscale market doesn’t carry it I am stuck ordering via the internet. Thank goodness for the internet.
I also have tried and like
Darjeeling
Ceylon
Oolong Formosa
Gunpowder
For those who are considering a switch. A year ago I cut out most salt, sugar and starch because of weight gain and High blood pressure. I dropped my blood pressure from 176/143 to 115/66 with no meds. It was a sudden drop half way by reducing salt and gradual the rest of the way from reducing the carbs. So yea getting off the soda has benefits besides in the pocketbook especially for us old foggies.
tom t (08:32:41) :
Anthony you have to be careful what iced teas you drink, some are distributed under authority of The Cocoa Cola Bottling Company or Pepsi Cola Bottling Company. I would suggest just bottled water in very small bottles just to upset the AGW alarmists. Even then, some are bottled by Coke or Pepsi.
“REPLY: Yep well, maybe I’ll just go for well water. ;-)”
Which is owned by the State of California, a major GW activist player.
This morning I saw a commercial from Samsung and a James Balog from the “Extreme Ice Survey” that ended with the comments:
“No Ice
No Winter”
Makes me glad I bought a Sony for the family this year 🙂
Until Coke and Pepsi replace carbon dioxide in their drinks with some other gas their environmental credientials are nothing more than a marketing exercise.
BTW, as far as I can tell Dr. Pepper (my personal favorite anyway), which is owned by Cadbury Schweppes, appears to be AGW neutral from an advocacy standpoint although committed to improving its environmental impact – which I don’t have a problem with
So Mr. Watts, grab yourself a nice cold Dr. Pepper… safe (for now at least) knowing it’s not funding propaganda aimed at our kids 🙂
oh… and Merry-Christmas/Happy-Hanukkah/Jolly-Kwanza/Epic-Festivus/whatever-it-is-you’re-into!
Tea was also a safety device. before it came to Europe, rivers like the Thames were so polluted that drinkg water had a high probability of death. Instead, people added alcohol, even for small children. I once read a paper that described the usual daily condition of the populace of Europe as “inebriated”.
With tea in the 1700s, the boiling of water before drinking killed many nasties. Tea was able to displace alcohol as a bug free drink and we can trace the present high world population to a lack of deaths of breeding age people, caused by both alcohol and the boiling of water for tea. Of course, beer has CO2 bubbles in it.
Few people have ever seen the really top quality tea because the number of leaves needed to make it are sparse on the bush and it takes a special care in later treatment. It does not store for long. The Chinese green tea leaf is merely heated lightly, while the black tea leaf is heated a lot more, so that some critical chemicals change position and end up as minute crystalline crust on the outside of the tea pieces. That is why green tea is often used all day long in China, just by adding warm water to top up from time to time. Black tea donates its essentials in a few minutes. The green tea leaf is generally rather longer, say an inch or so unless broken.
This true geen tea has a varied history outside China too. Most tea has some adulteration. There was once a British craze for green tea and the wily Chinese took black tea and added potassium ferrocyanide, which gave it a green tint. These days all sorts of aromatics and flavours are added so the consumer does not really know what’s in the brew.
There are traditionally two plants, very closely related, for making tea, these being Camellia sinensis and Camellia assamica. (There are other types, like Linden tea, but we are not discussing those). If you make a pure, high quality green tea from one of each species in the simple, proper, unadulterated way, it takes an expert to pick the difference. The suburban expert would usually have not a clue.
The consumer of today who lusts for Russian Caravan or English Breakfast is on the receiving end of a marketing campaign every bit as sophisticated as Coca-Cola. As we say in Oz, “come in spinner”.
Gail Combs (13:33:13) :
Ever wonder why Santa has bells on his sleigh? It’s to avoid startling the Polar Bears!
In the UK it used to be illegal to ride a pedal cycle without a bell. Your ordinary policeman could award a No Bell Prize. (Sorry again. But this close to Christmas they don’t come any better. Have a merry one.)
Every time I read about the declining SH and WH Polar Bear populations I want to scream. Both those populations have been documented as being artificially high due to garbage from communities in those regions. Those communities have, for the last decade, been much more careful with their trash in order to solve the “Polar Bear nuisance”( a documented nuisance at that!) Why does everyone forget this stuff? The inability to remember yesterdays news is downright Orwellian and it scares me.
DirkH (06:39:43) :
Quote – “So yes, when we say Lenin, we probably mean Pepsi, right ? ;-)”
Right. 😉
When I told my wife about my comment and spoke out the last sentence
“…Jesus and Christmas always goes together…” she sensibly added “yet”.
“For The Times They Are A-Changin’….”
Gail Combs (06:22:44) :
Many thanks and Merry Christmas!
Regards
Excellent review of the polar bear nonsense (non science).
Thank you, Anthony, again, for all you have done to advance the truth.
Merry Christmas.
Dave F (19:21:57) :
For some reason when I was reading your comment “the speech” from Team America World Police (moderators feel free to snip this link due to language, if not… fair warning on language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8pAaT4unZc). Now… the *ONLY* reason I mention this is that I get *REALLY* pissed off when people try to force propaganda on kids, and I consider it to be a real A-Hole thing to do.
Ex: http://www.consumerfreedom.com/downloads/reference/docs/040726_mommykills.pdf
Ex: http://www.fishinghurts.com/pdfs/daddykillsanimals.pdf
Ex: After I took 8 kids to go see Happy Feet my daughter told me she didn’t want to eat fish anymore because it makes the penguins starve
Ex: When I was in 4th grade I thought we were all going to die because of the amazing blown out of proportion scare around the hole in the ozone layer that I heard about in school – and yes, I’m still pissed off about that one 😉
I know it doesn’t make a crap in the grand scheme of things, but I like to do little things to flip the bird at “the man” like buying a ticket to a family film if the wife just can’t live without dragging me to the theatre to go see the latest DiCaprio/Brosnan/insert-random-ahole-celeb-here film, or torrent instead of buying music of jerk artists/bands. I make it a point to try and not give my money to a-holes…
Too bad there’s not a choice when it comes to the government amirite ( 😉 ? Ba-duh-dum
Frank Kotler (12:24:26) :
“Yonason (11:42:48)
Okay, cancel the bells. I don’t suppose the pepper spray is much help, either.
Might as well make him earn his dinner.
“T’was supposed to be a joke…”
Wanna REALLY have some fun?
http://www.iceagenow.com/Penguin%20and%20Cymbals.jpg
Regards
The hypocrisy is absolutely amazing! Coca-Cola is a company that expels probably millions (perhaps billions?) of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year producing fizzy brown sugar water that does absolutely nothing but make people fat. Yet, as a huge multinational conglomerate, they naturally feel entitled to lecture us about the threat to polar bears supposedly caused by the very gas that Coca Cola expels into the atmosphere in enormous quantities.
I’d like to take them up on the challenge, and let’s make the “save the world” campaign more substantial than simply wearing tee shirts that say “save the world”. How about if we start reducing deadly CO2 emissions by eliminating our intake of fizzy brown sugar water immediately? That would certainly have an enormous impact wouldn’t it? Consider all of the liters of Coke that are sold worldwide each year. What is it, billions of liters? Tens of billions? How many thousands of tons of high-fructose corn syrup go into making those billions of gallons of fizzy brown sugar water? How many acres of corn are planted to produce all that corn syrup? How much fertilizer is produced to fertilize all those acres and what’s the carbon footprint of all that? How many fertilizer company employees drive to work every day to make all that stuff? How many CO2-belching tractors till and harvest those fields? How many fossil fuel-burning trucks carry the fertilizer to the fields, the corn to the processing plant, the corn syrup to the bottling plant, and the bottled product to the market? How much CO2 is spewed into the atmosphere producing the bottles, the labels, and the dye that colors the labels? Think about it — when it’s all said and done, how much CO2 goes into the atmosphere each year so that people can gulp down fattening fizzy brown sugar water? If had a title like “global warming czar”, wouldn’t you make the abolition of such a useless, atmosphere-polluting substance your top priority?
Of course every one, especially political aware people, blame CO2 for the bad situation of the polar-hudson-bears, I mean they can’t really blame the fishing companies now, can they.
And the only time when there’s an indication of when food is scarce for polar bears, and a lot of other omnivores, and polar bears are just that omnivores, is when the mother is starting to eat her own cubs. That the presumptive dad kills the cubs is only because he don’t know it’s his cubs, he’s just thinking with his little head and a female with cubs isn’t exactly playing along “his” need.
yonason (11:42:48) :
“If there’s a polar bear near you, it KNOWS where you are. And if by some good fortune it doesn’t, then alerting it to your location is the LAST thing you want to do, because it may be the last thing you ever do.”
I’d caution against use of pepper spray as well. It may have an effect on a challenging or charging bear, but to use it in any other case would invite trouble. Even in close quarters I doubt the ability of spray to deter a determined bear, and may even provoke him into a more enraged state, meaning that you might get your head ripped off instead of a few tread marks on the back. Bears attacking have been shot and not stopped.
My advise is to continue walking calmly at angles to the bear, and if charged or signs of aggressive behavior develop, lay down flat on the stomach (unless there is a good tree closeby). Staying calm is also important, since animals can “read” what goes along with a distressed state. Even such things many people are not conscious of as having any effect include eye movement and direction. Stopping, moving backwards or forewards, are also signs animals often translate as aggressive behaviors, especially males and protective females.
More people who pull guns that lack proper training have them used on themselves, the same concept applies to pepper spray and bears.
I suspect there is a higher incidence rate of people not making noise or pepper spraying bears that are not attacked, than those that react and do something so unwise.