No! Not the polar bears too!

[Subdivisions]

I am utterly outraged and appalled and disguted.

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE THINKING! THIS HAS TO STOP!!!

http://environment.independent.co.uk/wildlife/article2944401.ece">The appalling fate of the polar bear, symbol of the Arctic

Polar bears – the very symbol of the Arctic's looming environmental disaster – are crashing towards extinction as a result of global warming, the US government has found. The admission, the result of a massive investigation by the Bush administration, could force the President finally to take action against climate change.

The development comes at the end of the most momentous week in the human history of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Satellite observations have revealed that its ice has shrunk to much its lowest ever level, raising fears that it had reached a "tipping point" where it would melt irreversibly, disappearing altogether in summer in less than 25 years, with incalculable global consequences,

And a separate Independent on Sunday investigation has found that polar bears are being shot in alarming numbers by rich trophy hunters from the US, Europe and Japan, even as their increasingly fragile habitat melts beneath them. Campaigners know that climate change and pollution are the biggest threats to polar bear survival, but believe that stopping sports hunting is symbolically important. Former US presidential candidate Senator John Kerry is leading the fight.

"It's time to put the polar bear on the endangered species list, and give them a fighting chance at survival," he said. "Not only must these bears contend with their home melting away, but they are also being hunted in the limited habitat they have left. It's time to take responsibility for their survival."

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The following is an article I wrote a few months ago about the plight of the Polar Bear. (Reference links within the content are available at the original article location at link provided below.)

http://www.solarhorizons.com/2007/01/21/polar-bears-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine">Polar Bears: The Canary in the Coal Mine?

Plenty of debate is occuring over the existance of Global Warming with scientists, on the one hand, stating that Global warming does indeed exist and is the result of human activity, and Exxon/Mobil funding the anti-global warming agenda on the other.

On Wednesday, January 17, the nation’s leading scientists and evangelicals met in Washington, D.C. to urge action in reversing rapidly escalating environmental problems, including global warming and species extinction. Hmmm… “Global warming” and “species extinction”. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Now, I’m no scientist, but it would seem to me that a perfect barometer of global change, or the canary in the coal mine, as it were, would probably be the majestic polar bear. So, I decided to do a little study on the status of the polar bear and it’s habitat. And what I’m finding is shocking.

Three weeks ago on December 27 and smack-dab in the middle of the holiday season when no one was looking, the Department of the Interior quietly issued a press release in which Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne says regarding the addition of polar bears to the Endangered Species List: “Polar bears are one of nature’s ultimate survivors, able to live and thrive in one of the world’s harshest environments. But we are concerned the polar bears’ habitat may literally be melting.” With that, he announced an initiative “to aggressively work with the public and the scientific community over the next year to broaden our understanding of what is happening with the species.”

But this initiative is not intended to protect the animals from humans, it is to “cite the threat to polar bear populations caused by receding sea ice, which bears use as a platform to hunt for prey. In recently recommending a proposed listing on the Endangered Species List, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service used scientific models that predict the impact of the loss of ice on bear populations over the next few decades.

Citing from the Department of the Interior press release:

Scientific observations have revealed a decline in late summer Arctic sea ice to the extent of 7.7 percent per decade and in the perennial sea ice area of 9.8 percent per decade since 1978. Observations have likewise shown a thinning of the Arctic sea ice of 32 percent from the 1960s and 1970s to the 1990s in some local areas.

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Recent scientific studies of adult polar bears in Canada and in Alaska’s Southern Beaufort Sea have shown weight loss and reduced cub survival. While data are lacking about many populations, the Service suspects that polar bears elsewhere are being similarly affected by the reduction of sea ice. “We have sufficient scientific evidence of a threat to the species to warrant proposing it for listing,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall. “but we still have a lot of work to do to enhance our scientific models and analyses before making a final decision.”

Imagine that scenario. The disappearance of the Arctic polar bear. Then imagine the implications. The entire thinking process of adding polar bears to the Endangered Species List is akin to admitting that a serious problem already exists and that a study on the matter will only serve to enforce common sense facts. The Arctic is melting. And polar bears are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine.

According to Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis released by the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change, global surface temperatures have increased between 0.4 and 0.8°C since the late 19th century, but most of this increase has occurred in two distinct periods, 1910 to 1945 (which coincidentally corresponds with the height of the Industrial Revolution) and since 1976. The rate of temperature increase since 1976 has been over 0.15°C/decade, for which a viable explanation is still a mystery.

Anyone who lives in, let’s say, Minnesota, knows that when springs comes, temperatures begin to rise and that rise in temperatures results in the breakup of ice on lakes. As the ice on the lake begins to melt, it breaks into smaller pieces, which float around and melt away over time. A recent article describes a similar process taking place along the northern coast of Canada.

The Arctic seems to be following this pattern with the recent revelation that a major ice shelf broke free of the land after 3000 years and began to float away…just like the smaller floes on a thawing lake.

The article states:

A 41 square mile ice shelf, the largest to fracture in almost 30 years, broke free without notice last summer from the coast of Ellesmere Island.

Recently discovered by Laurie Weir of the Canadian Ice Service via satellite, the sheer size of the new ice island has alarmed the scientific community and carries potentially serious consequences for westward shipping routes.

Luke Copland, who studies glaciers and ice masses at the University of Ottawa, says effects of global warming and turbulent waters are partly to blame for the breaking Ayles Ice Shelf that cast an ice floe of 25 square miles in its wake.

The threat posed by the floating ice shelf increases this spring, when the waters warm and it can break free from its frozen position, already 31 miles westward of its origin. The speed and distance that the ice shelf traveled before freezing into sea ice has astonished scientists.

“Astonished scientists”? Scientists astonished? Those natural born skeptics whose job it is to confirm (or disprove) theories and make them into fact (or not) for us? Astonished? These are the people who know what to look for when making determinations into how stuff works or doesn’t work and they are “astonished” at the breakup of Arctic ice shelves. Astonished despite all the rhetoric and scientific conclusions about global warming? To me, a shocked scientist is a scary thing when it comes to the signs of global warming.

Sorry, got sidetracked there. Getting back to the lakes in Minnesota. Does the breakup of ice shelves in the Arctic sound a little like what you Minnesotans have seen in the spring time when one of your 10,000 lakes melts? The Arctic has become a hemispheric version of your favorite fishing hole.

Scientists have found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelves. Researchers were “astonished” to find that polar bears were having to swim up to 60 miles across open seas just to find food. Why such long voyages? Because the ice floes from which they feed are melting and drifting farther apart. It’s getting so bad that four bear carcases have been found floating recently in the same are of the sea off the north coast of Alaska, where average summer temperatures have increased by 2-3C degrees since 1950s.

Just as the former practice of keeping canaries in coal mines to alert miners to the danger of lethal gases, so is the polar bear a harbinger of the implications of global warming. If the gases were present, the canaries would die and the miners would know to avoid the danger. The polar bear is the canary alerting us to the dire changes taking place in the Arctic.

However, the polar bear will not be the only creature to suffer when the ice is gone. In fact, on one knows what the consequences will be but one thing makes sense. The ocean conveyor belt, the oceanic current that makes, among other things, the climate of Europe mild, will be severly disrupted as the Arctic ice serves to cool warmer surface water, making that water dive to the bottom of the ocean and turning it back towards the south.

The http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6257664215421518968&q=polar+bear+global+warming">Arctic and the polar bear are apparently under severe stress due to global warming and if we continue on our present course it is us, our children and our grandchildren who will suffer the consequences of our collective inaction as we join Great White Bear of the Arctic in that dark and forboding coal mine.

[lligrd]

1. Hunting Polar Bears Is Just Sick

Then again so is dove hunting. Who the hell eats polar bears or pigeons?

[globalvillage]

2. There are two pieces in the Independent today

I didn't see anything on Sen Kerry's legislation in US 'news'.