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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. "
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 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."
So that means the bears that do survive will be better swimmers than previous. Evolution wins again!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
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.
This is a win-win situation. Without polar bears we can go ahead and drill for oil without the risk of harming them. There might be a surplus of seals since the bears won't be around to eat them so go ahead and hunt them too.
Baby seals are cautiously optimistic.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
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.
How are the polar bears handling the polar ice cap melting on Mars? Must be the Mars rovers...
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...
Perhaps they will have a theory that polar bears have a natural cycle of extinction and re-evolution every few hundred years.
> 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.
Not extinction and re-evolution, but swings in population levels can be quite severe even in 'undisturbed' nature.
Like another poster mentioned, unless this gets much, much worse natural selection will simply start choosing bears better at swimming, or that find an alternate method for moving.
Interesting thing about evolution: it's not a perfect upwards slope. Indeed, in many ways biodiversity has been on a downwards slope for long before humans came onto the scene. Furthermore, consider that introducing a new way for animals to die doesn't happen in a vacuum; this is one of many examples of shrinking habitats and increasingly hostile situations that animals in the world (including humans, but we're good at changing our immediate environment to offset the overall environment) are finding themselves in.
To go back to what I was nudging towards initially, though: 'natural selection' is not another name for 'all-powerful god', that is to say, just because a new method is needed doesn't mean that this 'natural selection' thing will magically provide it; natural selection is just trimming combined with chaos, there are severe limits to what it can do, and I can't think of many methods that the bears could use other than swimming (I do realize that you said "unless this gets much, much worse", but really, there aren't that many alternate methods of moving, it's not like they'll suddenly develop wings). And anyways, I would think that after so much time, Polar Bears as a species would be pretty damn good at swimming. I doubt it's merely the few weaker ones that are drowning. The article notes that ALL the bears are being forced to swim further from the shore, and some of the deaths noted were from storms that arose; so whether they're good swimmers or not isn't even going to make that much of a difference, it's an extra bonus to the death rate period.
Hmm, in some ways I'm sortof making a straw man out of your argument. But really now, just think about it for a moment. As you mentioned, population levels can swing quite dramatically in rather 'natural' situations, yes. Now say that one of those swings happens for some random reason, combined with the problems noted in the article. It's not that hard to imagine entire populations of polar bears dipping dangerously low. The article mentions increases in the rate of cannibalism due to the lack of food sources, so for many populations there may be a tipping point that would create a downward spiral. Consider also that this is just one of many examples of the effect of humans on the environment that hurts wild populations, so I might agree with you if this was all that was going on in the world (ie. if the only thing that polar bears had to deal with was having to swim further), but it's the combination of many harmful factors that puts species at risk.
Plus, just from an empathic perspective, I'm not exactly going "hurrah! animals are dieing!". I'd rather they, umm, not die when they shouldn't be.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Oh man, Stephen Colbert's gonna be pleased with this!
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Don't worry they'll have several million years to adapt to the new conditions once the environment has become uninhabbitable to humans ...
James P. Barrett
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.
What astonishes me more are the idiots who insist on turning it into a Republicans vs Democrats debate. The world doesn't revolve around American partisan politics and we wish you'd stop reducing all discussions to this petty bickering over whose political logo is the prettiest (because, let's be honest, the parties are otherwise identical). Pretending that the only people who deny Global Warming are Republicans is ignorance to the nth degree. The reality is that some Republicans think Global Warming happens and there are some Democrats who don't. Don't bring your personal politics into this; it's divisive and destructive.
You should be more like Australians. We hate all our political parties equally. When something goes wrong it's not the Liberal party's fault or the Labor party's fault. It's just the politicians fault. All you merkins could learn something from that.
from the article:
The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food.
Typical racist media! Polar bears--WHITE bears--swim to FIND FOOD. But you KNOW that if that had been BLACK bears instead of white bears, this article would have called it LOOTING.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
...Global Warming Skeptic Bingo!
I forget what 8 was for.
I know this was a joke, but you *are* aware that Polar Bears are actually black right?
Black with white (dense) hollow hair, that acts similar to millions of small fiber optic pieces to channel light down to the black skin, where it is more efficiently used.
So, more accurately think of an old black man with white hair. I know a few of those, and they are pretty cool!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
"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.
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