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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. "
Flooding with poor propaganda is just that, a propaganda. It's probably like that "study" with certain species of butterfly being given nothing but GM plant to eat and then concluding "GM plants are killing the butteflies". This type of organizations is filled with maniacs bent on spreading hysteria or else they lose publicity. Seals dying, bears cannibalizing on each other, seas rising (even though there is good evidence sea level has actually FALLEN by some 20 cm since the 19th century), omigod, the sky is falling as result of global warming. Best to ignore that nonsense.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Quick! Fetch the zoom lens! We need a few heart-rending shots of some poor critter suffering and dying, just like they've always suffered and died, to use in pushing our Sociopolitical Agenda!
resigned
Global cooling harming seal populations.
Ice conditions in the arctic continue to deteriorate as global cooling continues to increase the size of arctic ice flows. Whereas 20 years ago Polar Bears had to swim as much as 60 miles between flows, the cooling trend over the last 2 decades has reduced the distance to as little as 1-2 miles in some cases.
Polar bear populations have been exploding in recent years. Polar bears are preditors of baby seals (see picture of cure little seal with big brown eyes attached). Polar bears have been known to eat as much as 100 pounds of seal flesh in a single feeding. Bears can kill several seals in a single day.
Bears search around until they find the breathing holes seals need to make through the ice in order to breath. Faced with certain death from drowing the hapless seal has no alternative other than to take her chances.
2 decades ago the arctic was warmer than today and with the cooling, vast areas of the arctic ocean which were formerly open water are now freezing over. This further adds to the misery faced by the seals. In the past seals could simply surface in the open ocean whereas today they must not only cope with the encroaching ice, they also face certain dead either from drowning or from predatory bear attacks.
Global cooling has been attributed to the inability of mankind to stabilize the climate.
Fossil fuel consumption has been in decline worldwide since the peak of World Oil Production in 2007. CO2 levels are still rising but are not strong enough to offset the well recoginzed cooling trend identifed by the progression of our planet into another ice age. As the planet cools, ice continues to build up and ever greater amounts of water vapour are lost from the atmosphere. This sets on a vicious positive feedback mechanizm which will eventually culminate with a full blown glacial cycle with Glaciers to a depth of over 10,000 feet in the North Eastern part of the USA.
The peak of the last ice age occured about 18,000 years ago and is widely recognised as the 22'nd cycle of the recent Pleistocene ice ages. The present ice ages have been gripping the earth since the cooling trend of the last 30 million years which is now recognized as being a partial consequence of the mountain building which peaked in the Miocene and which continues today in areas like the Himalyan Ranges.
The present cooling trend is thought to be the beginning of another ice age which is anticipated sometime during the next 20,000 years. In the past glacial cycles occured with a frequency of about 110,000 years and are caused by the variations in the Earth's orbit (Milankovitch cycles).
For more information please check Christopher Scotese's paleoclimate website: http://www.scotese.com/lastice.htm
Well, in defense of the mods, in this case the post was actually flamebait. If you honestly think opening a post with a content-free tirade of insults is an invitation to polite discourse, please tell me where your ettiquette instructor is buried, as the perpetual rotary motion could prove quite handy as a clean source of energy.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Just for the record, evolutionary changes scale with rapidity of the reproduction cycle, the severity of environmental pressures, and a great number of other factors. Even speciation (the usual benchmark for an 'extreme' evolutionary change) can thus occur in a couple decades, if you're a bacterium or a fruit fly living under relatively harsh conditions. Lesser things like behavioral patterns and communication methods can change well within the human timescale.
What I'm saying here is that the reason you think it's going to take several million years is that you've set your standard of 'sorting it out' artificially high. If I pulled the same arbitrary bullshit in the opposite direction, I could tell you that the sorting-out is pretty much instantaneous. After all, any eliminated species either was eliminated through termination of its niche (and thus had no purpose) or because it's been or is being supplanted by another (in which case the role is filled). I'd be just as right as you, too.
Ok, do I win the 'hijacking the OP's strawman' contest yet?
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~