Slashdot Mirror
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. "
Everytime there is an article about global warming there will be an army of sceptics who say that global warming has not been scientifically proven and that trying to do anything about it is a wast of money and bad for the economy.
This bothers me a great deal. Although it may not be possiple to _prove_ without a hair of a doubt that global warming is occurring, there are way too many signs saying our climate is changing drastically.
We know this and we know that CO2 and other greenhouse gases have a strong influence on our climate. Looks like reason enough to strive for a change to me. Because of the upcoming shortage of fossil duels, reducing fuel depency also makes sense ecologically. And no, without significant increases in nuclear power usage, the hydrogen economy is not it.
The same thing has been happening for ever.
Agreed. But the question is, is it our fault this time? People die all the time. But that doesn't mean I can get away with murder.
1) could we please have a proper discourse about probability distributions? having the ice recede 200 miles further north than the average means nothing without a given variance. and even then they would have to name the period of observation to get any meaning out of it. obviously giving all that information won't go so well for an article, but giving just scraps of information isn't all that hot either
2) global warming is not a threat to nature! nature has dealt with catastrophic climated changes in the past and it will deal with them in the future. the threat of global warming is to us humans and the the status quo of nature, but there's no doubt in my mind that the ecosystems will adapt to a warming planet - as they have to countless ice ages, meteor hits, etc. although i would find it a shame to see ice bears going extinct due to human interference in world climate, we _can_ not take responsibility of _nature_ on this scale; what if a warmer climate brought forth an even more beautiful creature than the ice bear? wouldn't we make _that_ extinct by preventing global warming as well?
note, i'm not advocating to do nothing, nor am i lacking sympathy for the ice bears. but in my mind, global warming is first and formost a danger to the status quo and to _our_ survival. if the planet heats up drastically other species will replace the current ones and the cycle of life will turn on; with the difference of us being dragged down by the environmental changes...
jethr0
Even if you don't give a damn about the bears further changes such as these signal problems for us. Our civilizations depend upon stable food supplied, stable ocean levels, predictable tides, seasons, and weather, all of which may likely be thrown off drastically by global warming. Most of humankind lives within a few miles of sea level. As polar ice retreats oceal levels rise. As temperatures rise so do the frequency of powerful storms such as Katrina. Similarly rising temperatures herald more unpredictable seasons and thus crop losses. Changes in weathere patterns seem likely to doom some areas to overly warm weather (e.g. Africa) and some areas to much colder weather (e.g Europe).
It is one thing to be sanguine about the loss of polar bears to natrual selection. The loss of human populations, that's another thing.
It astonishes me the blind naiviety of these Republicans who insist they aren't convinced that Global warming is happening. Every year we get another story or two like this and they still have their hands over their ears going "LA LA LA - I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Even more naive is the notion that it can't affect us or that we can buy our way out of any issues it causes.
The house has smoke all thru the ground floor - the ceiling is burning two stories up out of sight and all Republicans can say is "Well, we're not convinced this smoke is our house. And we're not convinced that there hasn't been smoke here before and that this is natural geology - and we're not convinced the fire will spread to the ground floor if the building is on fire.
idiots - naive, blind, idiots
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
I have to say this, because every time something like this comes up, there are a bunch of posts saying, "It's natural, it's evolution, new species will develop, nature will repair itself, bla bla bla". I just want to point out a fucking obvious fact that people seem to forget. Yes, nature will sort it out. Somewhere during the next several million years. You, your grandkids, and the whole human race probably won't be around to see it. Evolution works on geological time scales. Try and wrap your head around it. Save those species now, because from our point of view they will never be replaced.
As far as the seals and the bears up north go, it wouldn't take too much to apply the same concept, minus the million dollar boats, and build some platforms (artificial bergs) up the coast for them to use. For the distances they're swiming placing one every 10 miles or so should be plenty, and would give a boost to the fishing in the area as well.
You may find that this is how biodiversity ends. I doubt that there many animals capable of evolving over the space of 100 years.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Maybe we could just use the truths that we know to promote environmental friendliness and leave out the unprovable theories. There are too many factors in the atmosphere to even predict local weather, let alone the cause of global warming.
> The same thing has been happening for ever.
> Its how bio diversity starts.
Not quite.
Ecological change is usually on the order of hundreds of thousands of years.
Evolution is a slow process; it can cope with hundreds of thousands of years.
It doesn't cope with drastic changes on the order of a hundred years.
When *that* happens, species just get wiped out.
The rate of change in their environment is greater than the rate of change in their genome and so they find themselves trying to behave in a way entirely unsuited to their new environment.
Examples of this are swimming sixty miles in open water in storms, or trying to eat bamboo when there's none left because it doesn't grow any more, or laying eggs which only hatch when it gets hotter than 28.5C but it never gets that warm any more, etc.
As a geologist, [...] 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.
As a geologist, you aren't particularly qualified to make judgements about cause and effect in climate models.
In any case, it is unnecessary to prove conclusively that human activity is causing global warming in order to justify taking steps; reducing CO2 emissions is sensible and economically beneficial public policy.
Let me explain my point just a bit more clearly for you. Animals do adapt but that takes time. If their environment changes faster than they can adapt and a large part of population is lost, then that may result in their survival becoming unsustainable. This could be due to inbreeding which will result in a weaker species. Please read up more on extinction if you are going to be arguing points like this in future. BTW, I do not remember saying anything about bears growing flippers.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Massive reverse-osmosis water purification plants on the African coast, to terraform our own planet?
In all seriousness, are we willing to accept phenomenal loss of human life in Pakistan, Indonesia, and the US gulf coast, because we don't want to pollute in the name of saving life?
Do we roll back the clock to simpler, agrarian times, and excuse ourselves from feeling any guilt, or roll the clock forward to cleaner technologies?
I do realize this. The question is, what political leadership has sufficient moral authority to champion the cause? The problem with the Republocrats is that they're obviously in the pocket of Big B'iness. The problem with the Demmicans, at least as far as Red State America is concerned, is that their power base consists of societal elements at least as dangerous as global warming itseslf.
Thus, the existing political order is about as helpful as the tacit global experiment underway to which you allude. Running your question through the Inspector Fowler Paraphraser: "Our cock-up, our arse". A less than erotic realization.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Gee, look at that - get a couple of ground weather station in the artic, look at the local surface temperature and conclude that there is no global warming effect. If only one of those scientists who spend every day studying this had actually had such a good idea. But just the someone might wonder - what is the connection between the ground temperature at these places and the extent of sea ice? Well, it seems that sea ice has been decreasing over the last 40 years: see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/286/544 6/1934 [science] But, by looking at those two temperature time series you probably wouldnt guesss it.
The primary claim here is that polar bears are dying because artic sea ice is retreating to a greater than normal extent. This tallies with predictions that climate change science makes.
And how long will it be till the enviro-wackos like yourself tell us to quit doing anything and just die, so the earth will go back to its old self? The earth has been warming LONGER than we've even been on this planet you idiot. Typical response from someone who was probably schooled in a government school.
This is kind of a debateable point. When you're talking about an animal that is, normally, covered entirely in fur, it's fairly standard to refer to it as its fur color, not its skin color. (For instance, I would say my dog is tan & white, not pink & brown. Unless you shaved her. In which case she'd probably get upset with you.) I guess it would be more correct to say that polar bears have white fur & black skin. (Although I thought it was more brown... Or was that artic foxes?)
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
"seriously-do-you-need-more-proof?"
As much as I am starting to dislike the editorial filter that Slashdot has and Digg avoids, let me just say in response:
Proof of warming does not equate to proof Kyoto is a good idea.
Even the planners agree that all countries participating for a century would do almost nothing for the projected warming. Recently, the non-Kyoto-signer US has had higher economic growth and greater improvements on GHGs than the Kyoto signers of the EU. Do you need any more proof that it's the wrong approach?
Perhaps instead of a half-ass non-solution, we should fund more research for true, viable alternatives. I want bettery batteries, solar, and fusion to all be so cheap that any GHG emitting methods of energy generation and storage aren't used because of their economic cost.
Arbitrarily trying to limit carbon emissions, when billions of people who embrace modernity need energy and don't have alternatives, is a bad idea. Here is a good article by Bjorn Lomborg on the The relative unimportance of global warming, with better policy suggestions.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
Q: What's a fur seals favourite drink?
A: Canadian Club on the Rocks!!
I've heard this before and I think it's likely a myth for some basic physics reasons. Polar bears appear white. That means they reflect most of the light that hits them. Now its conceivable that the hairs work only in certain directions, but if a polar bear looks mostly white at all angles, I am pretty sure that it is impossible the polar bear to be simultaneously absorbing any large percentage of the light. You can't get the best of both worlds, either you are white and camouflaged (with the snow) or black and use the sun to heat yourself.