Bear-ly credible

This story at CNN ("Arctic mission to spotlight polar bears") is another one written according to the ominous global warming template. It begins:

Two U.S. explorers plan to start a four-month summer expedition to the North Pole next month to gather information on the habitat of an animal they believe could be the first victim of global warming -- the polar bear.

While these explorers plan on going north, the credulous CNN story has already gone south, because I was told that the "first victim" of global warming was Tuvalu. "Ah," you say, "but they're just people. We're talking about the animal kingdom's victims of mankind here." Um, okay. Weren't we told that the golden toad was the first critter nixed by global warming? I'm not saying that there can't be multiple victims, but there can only be one "first." Perhaps the polar bear is intended to be the leading, page-one cute, fuzzy hostage to global warming then? Or is it the pika (american mountain rabbit)? Folks will have to get back to me when a decision is reached.

Next paragraph:

Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen plan to travel 1,100 miles by foot and canoe over the Arctic Ocean to test the depth and density of the ice in summer in a mission sponsored by Greenpeace, the environmental group said on Thursday.

So basically this is a story banged out based on a Greenpeace press release. That would help explain the alarmist bent. How does the rest of the story about this allegedly-scientific journey hold up? Not too well, I judge, based on this hilarious admission:

Unusually heavy snow and ice last year forced Dupre and Larsen to call off a similar mission [...]

Question: If heavy snow and ice prevents you from going out to measure the ice, aren't you biasing the outcome a bit? No wonder the trip is named "Project Thin Ice." They've already decided that when there's thick ice, they'll wait until next year!

The story ends on a sobering note, as all stories of this kind try to do:

The polar bear population fell 14 percent to just 950 in the 10 years to 2004, according to Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Looks like Greenpeace needs to jump on those miscreants at Polar Bears International, who are irresponsibly touting a figure of "22,000 to 25,000 bears". Or how about National Geographic, which writes that the Canadian arctic itself accounts for 15,000 bears?

If Greenpeace brings the same standards to measuring ice thickness as they do to counting bears, we're never going to hear from Dupre and Larsen again.