A new apocalyptic movie being filmed, in part, on the T'suu Tina Nation reserve near Calgary claims to be fuelled by science. It's a nice try, but this piece of fiction is fuelled by ... well, fiction. Agee the actor polar bear will star as the world's last polar bear on Earth in a made-for-TV movie set in the year 2075.The idea for the film comes from the belief that polar bears are on thin ice -- literally and figuratively -- as a result of man-made global warming.
Terry Marsh, president of Calgary-based Full Frontal Films and this movie's production manager, wrapped up one-month of filming in Calgary and area yesterday and was reached while en route to the airport for Paris, where filming will continue. "This movie is based on a United Nations report on global warming," says Marsh. "It's a docu-drama -- which is heavy on the drama. It's not a glitzy, Hollywood production about climate change, it's a very serious look at what might actually happen as a result of global warming."
That's curious, says I. I just read some reports by polar bear experts and despite what many global warming alarmists claim, polar bears are not dying and drowning, but surviving and thriving. "I have no idea about that," says Marsh. "This is only a movie and I'm a film maker, not a scientist."
Good point.
But, will the movie claim to be based on science? The answer to that question, is, infuriatingly, "yes." In other words, just like the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who's going to let a few facts get in the way of a good piece of fiction or even a United Nations' report?...
...Last spring, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a wildlife biologist with the Government of Nunavut's Department of Environment presented a 12-page report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was endeavouring to determine whether it should declare the polar bear "threatened" under its Endangered Species Act.
Taylor's report showed that of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada's north -- all but two are increasing or remaining stable. According to a Nunavut Department of Environment spokesman, Taylor is "out in the field tagging polar bears" in the 140,000 sq.-km Davis Strait area. Taylor has reported that in the mid-1980s there were just 850 bears in Davis Strait, whereas earlier this year there were 2,100. The worldwide numbers are way up too.
As he said at the time: "Scientific knowledge has demonstrated that Inuit knowledge was right. There aren't just a few more bears, there are a hell of a lot more bears."
An inconvenient truth for the prophets of global warming doom, to be sure, but nothing that will stop them from needlessly alarming children about disappearing polar bears...
The full Calgary Sun column by Licia Corbella is right here.
