Toronto, Canada, August 10, 2012: “We tend to hear nothing but alarming messages about the current status and future welfare of Polar Bears from animal advocates of all kinds, including lobby groups and activist scientists,” said University of Victoria Adjunct Professor in Anthropology Dr. Susan J. Crockford who is speaking on August 14 at the University of Toronto. “Many of these tales of imminent doom, however, have important facts left out, glossed over or misrepresented – and much of the uncertainty in the underlying research has been downplayed.” “It is still not known for certain when Polar Bears evolved but there is no question that, in the many millennia they have existed as a separate species, they have survived very significant changes in climate,” said Professor Crockford. “Polar Bears successfully adapted to times when there was both much less, and much more, Arctic sea ice than exists today. Polar bears obviously have strategies for surviving dramatic changes in sea ice conditions – we just don’t know yet what all of them are.”
Presentation Details:
Tuesday August 14, 2012
19:00 – 21:00 (open free of charge to the public and media)
University of Toronto, St. George Campus, Room 1200
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
Dr. Crockford is an expert on polar bear evolution with a focus on evolutionary biology and archaeozoology. She has many professional papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals and books. Her Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “Animal Domestication and Vertebrate Speciation: A Paradigm for the Origin of Species”. Professor Crockford works full-time identifying animal bones for Pacific Identifications Inc., and holds an adjunct faculty position at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she teaches a course for Anthropology students on animal domestication and speciation and advises on matters of paleozoology and archaeozoology. She has a new blog about Polar Bears, called Polar Bear Science http://polarbearscience.com
Besides her scientific publications on polar bear evolution and paleoclimate, Dr. Crockford regularly engages in public education through talks and popular level writings. For example, Dr. Crockford discussed dog evolution on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks in January 2012: http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2011-2012/qq-2012-01-07_03.mp3. Her 2006 published book, “Rhythms of Life”, may be viewed at her book website www.rhythmsoflife.ca and ordered from www.pacificid.com
Professor Crockford’s presentation is sponsored by the Ludvig von Mises Institute of Canada, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the International Climate Science Coalition.
About the Ludvig von Mises Institute of Canada: The mission of Mises Canada is to educate the public to the importance of placing human choice at the center of economic theory, and to advance the Misesian tradition of thought through the defense of the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations. Read more at www.mises.ca
About the Frontier Centre for Public Policy: The FCPP is an independent, western Canada based public policy “think tank” with offices in Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary. Our mission is to develop and popularize policy choices that will help Canada’s prairie region live up to its vast but unrealized economic potential. More at www.fcpp.org
About the International Climate Science Coalition: The ICSC is a non-partisan group of independent scientists, economists and energy and policy experts who are working to promote better understanding of climate science and policy worldwide. The ICSC encourages assisting vulnerable peoples to adapt to climate variability and continuing scientific research into the causes and impacts of climate change. Discover more at www.climatescienceinternational.org.
For further information and media requests please contact Redmond Weissenberger at redmond@mises.ca or 416-624-8848.
