The latest media "faux-tography"

Is that ocean photoshopped?

Disregard the article, disregard the IPCC AR4 summary, there's a brand new Fauxtography SCANDAL. The New York Times uses polar bears on ice to illustrate global warming! NYT's caption:

Polar bears on chunks of glacial ice in the Bering Sea in 2004. Much higher temperatures are forecast for the Arctic, climate scientists say.

Which makes Althouse question:

Here's my question. How many people look at that picture and think the polar bears were living on some ice and it melted around them and now they are stuck?

Answer: only wingnuts who don't go on to read the article and instead try to "debunk" global warming one polar bear at a time.

But what's this? Scroll down and you'll see the same picture was first published with a credit to another person on the trip and the caption made it clear what was really going on.

Mother polar bear and cub on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves. photo © Amanda Byrd.

Clear irrefutible evidence that the media is biased. Polar bears "on chunks of glacial ice" is so not "on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves." And not only that, others have used this photo to tug at our heartstrings as well. A Myspace site used it! Wow, that's some serious shit. And "an ezine" had the audicity to caption the photo:

Polar bears on an ice remnant in the Beaufort Sea – August 2004.

Just like the smoke over Lebanon, this is a clear indication of bias. So let's try a more balanced caption:

Now that the bears are slowly drifting away on their icefloes, the benenficial effect of global warming will allow oceanfront development along the beautiful Beaufort sea. Properties will include swimming pools and palm groves.

This caption brought to you by ExxonMobil. Fixin' the internets. One polar bear at a time.