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Polar Bears Drowning As Globe Warms
An anonymous reader writes "The Times Online is reporting on disturbing findings from the arctic. Polar bears appear to be drowning when they attempt long sea crossings as a result of receding summer ice." From the article: "New evidence from field researchers working for the World Wildlife Fund in Yakutia, on the northeast coast of Russia, has also shown the region's first evidence of cannibalism among bears competing for food supplies ... As the ice pack retreats north in the summer between June and October, the bears must travel between ice floes to continue hunting in areas such as the shallow water of the continental shelf off the Alaskan coast -- one of the most food-rich areas in the Arctic. However, last summer the ice cap receded about 200 miles further north than the average of two decades ago, forcing the bears to undertake far longer voyages between floes. "
As a geologist, I know that the areas I work in here in southcentral Alaska were covered by an ice sheet 1,000 feet thick just 9,000 years ago, but 65 million or so years ago it was hot and humid, and there were many more active volcaloes than there are now. I suspect that there were few, if any, humans around in an industrial culture 65 million years ago.
That ice sheet was one of many recent glaciations. Are humans contributing to "global warming'? Perhaps. Is that contribution significant compared to natural process? I am skeptical.
Finally, in another article I read, (CONSERVATIONISTS FILE LAWSUIT) I have to ask exactly what, other than fund-raising, will this lawsuit remedy?
Alaska Volcano Getting Stinky, May Erupt
The polar bears seem incredibly adapated to living on ice -- the article says they live their whole lives on ice. Their natural range is circumpolar (http://www.solcomhouse.com/polarbears.htm ). I know their feet, fur and sense of smell are all optimized for living in ice. I'm sure there are more things.
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It seems that the next time the earth gets warm, for whatever reason, the polar bears are going to die off in droves.
The same is true for camels: they've got special eyes, feet, a way to store water and energy for long periods, etc. If there is ever a mass greening of the earth, wild camels will have a hard time.
More general animals, like brown bears ("grizzly" bears) have it differently: their problem is that they are adapted to living in Eurasia and North America, so they come into conflict with humans in nearly all the areas they'd like to be. Here's their range (it would all of North America and Europe, but for humans):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ursus_arctos_d
If you look, you'll see brown bears live all over Alaska. That's where that bear-maniac Treadwell got mauled by them. There's now a movie about it, and it uses his amazing bear footage:
http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10725/
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
No discussion of polar bears is complete without mentioning Churchill, Manitoba, The Polar Bear Capital of The World. I visited at the end of October and had the chance to go out on a "Tundra Buggy" tour. It was quite exotic.. we saw 3 polar bear. There's also a guy who lives out on the tundra for a few months a year in a huge tundra buggy with satellite internet access.. He has a site: http://www.polarbearcam.com/
The buggies are amazing.. probably about 4-5 feet off the ground, HUGE tires, furnace inside to keep warm.. we ate dinner on board as well, with the bears just outside. Our tour guide was VERY professional and knowledgeable, we were quite impressed. It turned out he had also lived in Africa for many years and given tours there, etc etc..
Here's some fun facts about polar bear off the top of my head:
Their skin is actually black to absorb the sunlight (it's amazing how well adapted they are). The fur is really transparent but looks white in the same way a cloud looks white because of all of the water droplets.
They have suction cups on their paws to keep from slipping on the ice.
Churchill has had, I believe, only 2 or 3 fatalities in the past 30 years. One was a few weeks before I got there as a drunk wandered out of the town limits.
They are very careful about bear up there, for obvious reasons. Every night they fire off shotguns to keep the bears away. People living on the outskirts of town always have rifles in their houses just in case - they also put out traps.. basically boards with nails going through them.. to keep the bears away.
If a bear comes into town they will stun it and carry it away with a helicopter! We actually saw this happening! They move it further north IIRC... but if the bear comes back 2 more times, they put it into the "polar bear jail" which is in town (no tourists allowed sadly). They only water the bear in the jail, and do not feed it, otherwise the bear may view it as a rewarding experience.
I was surprised how nice everything was up there.. beautifully decorated hotels, at least on the insides. Food is expensive though and their economy is pretty much dependent on the bears, although they do export grain to Europe. The train takes 2 days from Winnipeg and is quite a slow ride, sometimes traveling at only 10 miles per hour. (They run 2 engines just in case one breaks down.)
I remember lots more about the bears and Churchill if anyone is interested.. just ask!
Oh - there was far less ice compared to previous years when I was up there. Everyone I asked said they weren't sure if it was global warming or just a temporary cycle. You can check the sea ice information for the Hudson Bay at the Canadian Ice Service site.
There's more data than that, but the darling of the global warming scare maniacs is the CO2 level claimed to supposedly have been 280-290 ppm in the preindustrial. The problem is - this is bollocks. The "scientists" in question have falsified the data and this single lie has been repeated over and over in the same publications, trying to create impression of many independent original sources, whereas in reality there was just one: http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm "The problem with Siple data (and with other shallow cores) is that the CO2 concentration found in pre-industrial ice from a depth of 68 meters (i.e. above the depth of clathrate formation) was "too high". This ice was deposited in 1890 AD, and the CO2 concentration was 328 ppmv, not about 290 ppmv, as needed by man-made warming hypothesis. The CO2 atmospheric concentration of about 328 ppmv was measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii as later as in 1973[8], i.e. 83 years after the ice was deposited at Siple. An ad hoc assumption, not supported by any factual evidence[3, 9], solved the problem: the average age of air was arbitrary decreed to be exactly 83 years younger than the ice in which it was trapped. The "corrected" ice data were then smoothly aligned with the Mauna Loa record (Figure 1 B) , and reproduced in countless publications as a famous "Siple curve". Only thirteen years later, in 1993, glaciologists attempted to prove experimentally the "age assumption"[10], but they failed[9]."
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Another good example of how the non-scientists at Time can mangle a study to their own views. Anyone care to get the actual study and review it instead? Good clue how they have missed the issues again - read this slowly, "However, last summer the ice cap receded about 200 miles further north than the average of two decades ago, forcing the bears to undertake far longer voyages between floes." When can we get the global warming issue out of the political MSM and back to the scientists?
That's one skewed ass statistic if I ever saw one.
Actually, the effects of the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming on each other is pretty circular- UVB destroys small phytoplankton in the Antarctic. This contributes to global warming [see HERE], as well as a collapse in the polar and sub-polar oceanic food supply. I also hope you appreciate that global warming helps to slow the repair of the ozone layer by raising the temperature of the stratosphere. Just because you haven't been taught something, it doesn't mean it's wrong. And yes, the UVB is absorbed no matter *where* it's absorbed, but to be honest I'd rather it were absorbed higher up, and not by the micro-organisms that help to keep our climate stable. In any case, the ozone disappearing and reappearing *is* cyclical, but most recent science takes it for granted that CFCs and our activities on earth are seriously affecting that pattern.
Even to proponents of punctuated equilibrium, "geologically instantaneous" is not 100 years. Gould and Eldredge, who came up with the concept, say "for small populations speciating away from a central mass in tens or hundreds of thousands of years, will translate in almost every geological circumstance as a punctuation on a bedding plane, not gradual change" Original paper here In world beset by global warming, the bears are not going to have time to evolve floaties.
of course, biting monkeys is not to everyone's taste - Konrad Lorenz
You have fallen for Anti-Global Warming Myth #81.
Wake up to reality. Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.Do you just make this stuff up to justify your wasteful lifestyle?
Notice how I link to an educational site, written by scientists. What possible source of information do you have for your claim that volcanic activity is a greater contributor than mankind? The Rush Limbaugh Fan Club? The SUV Enthusiast Blog? The Oil Funded Think Tank of the Month? Take your head out of the sand.
The following quote is also from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website.
And further down on that same page.
Hrm, but wait, your quote makes it seem like abrupt global changes in a few decades are natural. You even explicitly quote the WHOI in apparent support for your statement that the rapid climate change over the past 100 years "doesn't mean it isn't natural". Yet the two quotes I just gave say quite clearly that the recent changes cannot be wholly accounted for by natural causes. How can this be? How can there be two clearly contradictory claims from the same organisation? Could it be... no, certainly it's not possible that you cherry picked a quote to support your self-claimed right-wing neo-con agenda, without realising that the WHOI actually agrees that the current spate of global warming is primarily caused by human activity and that abrupt climate change is significantly affected by global warming?
Oh dear, it seems that's exactly what happened. The WHOI is saying that global warming in combinatio