Who's Right About Polar Bear Photo?

(July 2) -- Amanda Byrd's iconic photo of two polar bears perched atop a fragile-looking ice formation off Alaska is back in the news as the global warming debate flares up.

Former Vice President Al Gore and other environmentalists have used the image as a symbol of climate change's threat. This video posted on YouTube is one example. Those on the other side have also pointed to the "stranded polar bears" picture, arguing that it's been taken out of context.

A meeting of polar bear experts in Copenhagen this week put renewed focus on the message of the photo.

Canadian biologist Mitchell Taylor reportedly was barred from the conference because he doesn't subscribe to the conventional view of global warming. He contends that Arctic warming is caused by nature, not humans, and polar bears aren't at risk.

"He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause," The Telegraph's Christopher Booker wrote this week, going on to cite the photo.

Byrd is pleased that the picture she took as a University of Alaska graduate student doing research at sea in the summer of 2004 still gets so much attention. But she never intended it to be taken as a statement one way or the other about global warming.

"It was just a photograph," she said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fairbanks, Alaska. "I didn't really want to put an emotion onto the photograph."

"We just happened upon an iceberg floating in the middle of the ocean and the captain of the ship said, 'Hey, polar bear on the port side,'" Byrd recalled. "A few of us ran for our cameras and took the photos."

Byrd, now a research technician at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, was studying zooplankton at the time. Neither she nor anyone else aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker was a polar bear expert.

"This was the top of the food chain," she said of the big, white carnivores on the iceberg. "I was studying the bottom of the food chain."

Still, the researchers were curious about what they had seen in the Beaufort Sea.

"We talked on the ship for a few days about how the bears got there, why they were there and how they were going to get off. And we really didn't know," said Byrd. The bears might have been on the iceberg when it broke away from a glacier and floated out the sea. But Byrd thinks it's more likely the bears were making their way from Barrow to their hunting grounds -- a journey that's become much longer as the polar ice sheet shrinks.

They "were way out there" -- about 90 miles north of Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska, and 70 or 80 miles from the polar ice cap -- but it was not clear if the bears were in danger, Byrd recalled.

While her photo was not meant to symbolize climate change, Byrd does have an opinion on the issue.

"I myself do happen to believe that global warming is a threat," she said.

But she doesn't mind her photo being cited by both sides to encourage debate.

"I think it's great," Byrd declared. "If you can't have people creating controversy then the argument would just be moot and you would not get the information that's needed to actually look at what's happening."

What did bother her was the way the picture reached the news media. She had given a CD of her photos to a fellow researcher aboard the ship, Canadian ice specialist Dan Crosbie, for his personal use. She said Crosbie gave the pictures to the Canadian Ice Service, which passed them on to Environment Canada, which eventually released them to news agencies without her knowledge or permission.

Further muddying the water -- and fueling doubts among climate-change skeptics -- the photo of the two polar bears ran in newspapers worldwide in February 2007, on the day the United Nations issued report on global warming. The captions had incorrect information about when and where the shots were taken -- and by whom.

"It was amazing how someone can take my own photograph, call it their own and give it to a few news agencies and -- bam -- it's now around the world. But thankfully that's been settled," said Byrd.

AP withdrew the photo and The New York Times ran a brief correction in March.

Five years after her polar bear encounter, Byrd stays busy with her work at the university and the Center for Energy and Power. She also competes as a "sprint musher" in sled dog races.

"But I'm really trying to do more photography," she added. She got a big dose of encouragement in April, when another of her polar bear pictures -- taken a few weeks before her best-known photo -- was chosen for a Canadian postage stamp.

"How many people get a stamp? I was pretty blown away," Byrd exclaimed. "I thought that was awesome."

This time, there's no mistaking the message. The stamp showing a lone polar bear swimming through melting ice is part of Canada Post's campaign to raise awareness about the effects of global warming.