Published: January 23, 2015
The Obama administration is looking to Disney to push its global warming agenda on America’s children. A top State Department official revealed he is in talks with the entertainment conglomerate to use characters from the movie “Frozen” to teach kids about global warming.
“I said, you’ve taught an entire generation about the Arctic,” Adm. Robert Papp, the U.S. special envoy for the Arctic, told an audience at a Norwegian conference about his talk with a Disney executive. “Unfortunately, the Arctic that you’ve taught them about is a fantasy kingdom in Norway where everything is nice.”
“What we really need to do is educate the American youth about the plight of the polar bear, about the thawing tundra, about Alaskan villages that run the risk of falling into the sea because of the lack of sea ice protecting their shores,” Papp said.
The State Department wanted to use characters like “Princess Elsa and a talking snowman” to warn Americans about the melting Arctic, reports the National Journal. But Papp’s pitch for a doom and gloom global warming movie didn’t sit well with Disney — a company that prefers happier movies.
“As I continued to talk, I could see the executive getting more and more perplexed, and he said: ‘Admiral, you might not understand: Here at Disney it’s in our culture to tell stories that project optimism and have happy endings,’” Papp said, adding he has watched Frozen “at least 20 times” with his grandchildren.
Papp was appointed as special envoy to the Arctic last summer by President Obama after serving as an admiral in the Navy. He said fighting global warming would be his top priority when the U.S. takes control of the Arctic Council this year.
But there are major factual problems with Papp’s idea for a movie. For instance, there are more polar bears today than there were 40 years ago thanks to restrictions on hunting and trading. Research also shows that polar bears may have been a genetically distinct species for one million years — meaning they survived periods with no ice in the Arctic.
It seems logical that if polar bears survived previous warm, ice-free periods, they could survive another,” said Matthew Cronin, an animal geneticist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “This is of course speculation, but so is predicting they will not survive, as the proponents of the endangered species act listing of polar bears have done.”
The Arctic has also stabilized in the last few years. Daily sea ice data shows levels are slightly above where they were in the 2011 and 2012 winter. Arctic sea ice is also within the standard deviation of 1981 to 2010 coverage levels.
“The Antarctic is actually growing and all the evidence in the last few months suggests many assumptions about the poles was wrong,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told the U.K. Express.
Greenland’s ice sheet has also been stable these last few years. Data shows that Greenland’s ice sheet has seen more growth so far this year than in the last four years. Greenland’s growth in 2015 is also higher than the mean growth for 1990 to 2011.
National Journal notes that Papp’s meeting with Disney was only “informational” and “no collaboration is planned at this time.” But Papp promised there was more to come on this topic.
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