To be concluded next week.

Whenever I go looking for photo references for Tempin’ Bear, especially ones of hunting bears, there are lots of cute pictures and not very many fierce ones. Except this one photo that keeps coming up in Google Images. It’s of a polar bear standing over a bloody carcass of something or other. And it’s nearly always on right-wing loony websites. There’s the “climate change is a conspiracy by evil scientists” ones that you’d expect, but earlier today I clicked on one that didn’t sound like it had anything to do with the environment. It turned out to be mostly about the dangers of being nice to Muslims, who are Taking Over The World. Ew ew ew.

What really annoys me is the way those sites use the photo – almost always with smug accompanying text saying something like “So what do you think of your poster child now? Not so cute and cuddly now, is he?”* It’s as if these people think environmentalists don’t know polar bears are carnivores, and if we see a bear killing something we’ll go “Oh my God! We were wrong! Let’s melt the icecaps right now!”

Considering some of those bloggers’ love of huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’, you’d think it’d be a bit risky for them to claim that only those who don’t kill anything and who love all God’s creatures deserve to have their interests protected. But then self-awareness doesn’t seem to be their strong suit.

***

Please excuse the missing week, and the general not-managing-to-update-on-Thursday, lately. I’ve been building a website for my freelance work and it has eaten my brain. Code to comics is a difficult context switch. It’s fun, though, and it’s nearly finished.

First person to tell me what the first panel’s a reference to gets a prize!

* When they aren’t gleefully quoting seriously dodgy research by Bjorn Lomborg erroneously claiming that polar bear numbers are rising, that is.