Climate change activists apparently have been under the impression that polar bears achieved immortality prior to the advent of global warming.

That seems to be the explanation as to why so many virtue-signaling progressives on social media seemed triggered by a short yet compelling video of a starving and/or sick polar bear in the Canadian Arctic. But melting sea ice allegedly as a result of climate change may have nothing to do with the heart-wrenching footage. Instead, the bear might have been suffering from the adverse effects of old age or from disease or injury.

The Daily Caller explains that the video, which was filmed by the advocacy organization Sea Legacy in late summer, may not be conveying the full story. It has been viewed over one million times in just one week since its release, but it may be using the sad scene to push the climate change agenda.

It has become virtual climate change doctrine that global warming has so devastated the arctic habitat that polar bears are increasingly unable to fend for themselves…the skinny on the skinny polar bear looking for food is that this imagery doesn’t prove an environmental disaster but does illustrate the life cycle of the polar bear.

The National Post of Canada gauged the opinion of several experts. One polar bear biologist told the news outlet via email that “The video shows what appears to be an old male in declining health, but clear clinical signs of starvation aren’t obvious (e.g. convulsions).” He added that depending upon the food supply or other conditions, polar bears can go “from bone racks to obese over a few months.”

A wildlife biologist asserted on Twitter that the animal might be afflicted with bone cancer or another health issue, adding that the “bear is starving, but IMO it’s not starving because the ice suddenly disappeared and it could no longer hunt seals.”

As far as the facts on the ground are concerned, the Post noted that the polar bear population in the Baffin Island area of the Arctic is either stable or a slightly increasing except for the northeastern corner adjacent to Greenland. While acknowledging that that climate change foreshadows an unpleasant future for polar bears, the Post also pointed out that the ice cover shrinks naturally from many polar bear habitats in late summer.

A Sea Legacy official admitted that “he had no definitive proof that the bear’s condition was connected to the global phenomenon” of climate change and that he encouraged people to draw their own conclusions, the Washington Post reported.

Some years back, Natural News revealed that images of four polar bears sinking into arctic seas because of melting polar ice caps as a result of global warming may have been a pseudoscientific hoax and instead their demise may have been caused by a simple windstorm. The U.S. Interior Department began listing polar bears as a protected species pursuant to the Endangered Species Act in May 2008.

Natural News detailed in October that the Arctic sea ice mass has apparently increased by approximately 40 percent in the last five years. [Related: Read more about the global warming movement at ClimateScienceNews.com]

Sources include:

DailyCaller.com

NationalPost.com

WashingtonPost.com