Fox News guest: 'No question' that polar bears are 'thriving'

A Fox News guest on Friday said that there was "no question" that polar bears were now "thriving" and should be taken off the endangered species list.

"The polar bears are thriving as you said," Pacific Legal Foundation President Rob Rivett told Fox News host Shannon Bream. "In fact, 50 years ago, there were only [5,000] to 10,000 of these species, today there are over 25,000. In fact, of the 17 populations, 14 of those populations are maintaining population or increasing their populations. So, there’s no question that this bear is thriving."

"The real concern for us at the Pacific Legal Foundation is these bears were listed based upon simply speculation," he continued. "Let me tell you how this happened. In essence through computer modelling, the federal government determined that this species would be losing its sea ice habitat and because of the loss of sea ice habitat, they felt it was necessary to put them on the threatened list."

Pacific Legal Foundation sued in 2008 to have the polar bear removed from the endangered species list. They have now taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Rivett said that government was damaging the fossil fuel industry and other businesses by keeping the polar bear on the endangered species list.

"The argument is that CO2 emissions from industry is causing global warming," he explained. "Well, industry is basically energy, food producers, transportation, all those things. And if you're going to make that expensive through regulation, all the rest of us are going to be impacted by that. And also, jobs are going to be lost because of that. So simply by listing this species, it's a real problem."

Earlier this month, shocking photos of a 16-month-old polar bear that starved to death went viral. The death was attributed to a lack of sea ice due to climate change.

Think Progress point out that Pacific Legal Foundation gets its funding partially from Exxon and the Koch brothers.

Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Aug. 16, 2013.

(h/t: Think Progress)