About a year ago I had to endure a fairly unpleasant interview on the subject of polar bears with the BBC's Shelagh Fogerty (transcript here, my contemporaneous post here). Ms Fogerty was fine, but I was constantly interrupted by Greenpeace bigwig John Sauven who objected to my pointing out that estimates of polar bear numbers were in essence hypotheses, being based on computer simulations. This position was flatly denied by Sauven, who accused me of being a flat-earther for my temerity in doubting what he was telling me.
I was therefore amused when a reader pointed me to a recent post by Susan Crockford which reveals that I was being far too polite in dignifying estimates of polar bear numbers as "hypotheses". She has learned that the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group has been playing a game of "guess the number of bears in the freezer". According to the a forthcoming statement from the group:
It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand. It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated. Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations. Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy. Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.
The prize in this particular game appears to have been handed out not for the most accurate guess but for the smallest one.