Ten polar bears were recently spotted swimming in open water off of the northwest coast of Alaska, federal officials confirmed on Friday. Polar bears were not often spotted in open water until about 2004, said Susanne Miller, who heads up the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's polar bear project. She and other biologists worry that the bears could exhaust themselves with long swims, which take more energy than moving on ice or land. Green groups point to the unusually high number of swimming bears as yet another sign of global warming, with melting ice forcing bears to swim farther than usual to hunt seals or reach stable territory. A higher-than-usual number of polar bears have also been seen on land this summer, perhaps because sea ice is retreating. The Bush administration in May declared that polar bears are a threatened but not endangered species, making sure that oil drilling could continue in their habitat.
source: The New York Times, Associated Press
EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity
Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success
Comments
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Wolverine Posted 8:31 am
25 Aug 2008
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Annimal Posted 10:46 am
25 Aug 2008
http://annimal.bloggsida.se/
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caniscandida Posted 6:34 pm
25 Aug 2008
If drilling for oil means the painful death of countless Arctic sentient creatures, then I hope I never benefit a drop from all that selfish drilling.
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Delay And Deny Posted 11:27 pm
25 Aug 2008
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GonzoDon Posted 1:02 am
26 Aug 2008
But really. It has always seemed to me that, whether we like it or not, once all the clever comments are put aside, we are still left with a very real moral responsibility to take seriously the kind of planet we are leaving behind to our children...
... to take seriously the kind of debts we are racking up and leaving for THEM to pay after we are gone (who is paying the $500 billion for our War in Iraq, anyway? It's surely not you or me) ...
... to take seriously the kind of dilemmas their generation will face when there are 9 billion human beings on the planet and -- surprise, surprise -- cheap petroleum, cheap fertilizer, and cheap air-conditioning for the McMansions in Phoenix becomes but a fond memory ...
Not to mention unaffordable food for 3 billion or so of the unluckiest among them.
But, ah, "moral responsibility", when it comes to thinking ahead even one generation into the future -- much less seven -- has become such an outmoded, old-fashioned concept. It's kind of like riding the trolley to work, or buying your new refrigerator on the "layaway plan". Hopelessly quaint.
Nah. We're too hip now, too cool, too ironic, too self-absorbed to really "care" about anything but ourselves. Lord knows we elect people who cater to that self-absorption. Lord knows we listen to talk-show hosts who gratify us by wallowing in that attitude.
Which works OK, I guess -- right up until the day the fecal matter hits the rotating oscillator. Mark Twain: "You know the worth of water when the well runs dry".
The smart-ass strategy seems to be to bet on the fact that we won't be around to have to clean up the mess we left. Snarf up all the cookies now and skedaddle out of the kitchen before anyone can catch us.
Well. All I can say is: the next generation is growing up quickly, and boy are they going to be pissed.
One solution to that unpleasant development, of course, is to simply give all those young folks neatly-bound copies of jabailo's snarky, ironic, and oh-so-clever posts. That will make them feel much better about inheriting a trashed planet, I'm sure.
Won't it?
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Paleocon Posted 4:52 am
26 Aug 2008
Why is the "Darwin-fish" medallion sporting crowd so upset when Darwinism is seen in action.
How many Mastadons should there be?
By the way, I am the guy paying for the war and every other government program.
If you aren't paying your fair share of the price tag, that is your failing as a member of society. Will you step up and do something to change your status as a net consumer/societal leech?
Happy thoughts and hand wringing doesn't feed any hungry kids. My tax dollars take care of a bunch of them.
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caniscandida Posted 6:26 am
26 Aug 2008
Anyone who goes out onto the street wearing or sporting an explicitly Christian symbol should be prepared to answer a lot of serious questions.
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Paleocon Posted 6:50 am
26 Aug 2008
The contrast you draw between your religion and mainstream Christianity makes for an interesting topic.
The Marxist underpinnings of the modern day environmental "movement" certainly has a bloody history. Many atrocities have been committed in the name of "the cross", as well.
What remains to be seen is just how much misery the modern AGW Fundamentalists will be able to inflict upon humankind. Christianity's reign of terror is larger a thing of the past.
Your religion, however, has the support of the broad secular left who will provide cover for all manner of incremental assaults upon our way of life.
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GonzoDon Posted 7:41 am
26 Aug 2008
That's why they call it a "federal deficit".
And that's a key reason why the federal deficit has reached a record size under the Bush Administration.
It was thoughtful our good friends in China and Saudi Arabia to loan us the money, though.
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LaRojaja Posted 8:51 am
26 Aug 2008
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Delay And Deny Posted 12:32 pm
26 Aug 2008
My own take on it is that most of us are simply too unqualified and uninformed to take real action, so yes, we should comment and shoot the breeze, but not presume that "mass action" would have any effect...especially if it's of the middlebrow nature that most Grist Ecologists propose.
I just thank heaven that there are enough truly brilliant people in the world willing to subsume their lives to real science and do things like creating Hydrogen from Water (Nocera). To me that's worth a thousand "energy policies" from blowhard Democrats and puffed up imbeciles like Al Gore.
As far as what we "leave our children", I think that again, thanks to the real innovators, like the guys at Arpa who invented the Internet, coupled with the beneficent effects of natural global warming, the next few generations will be among the healthiest mentally and physically and the most privileged to ever inhabit Earth. Unlike GenXers who spend their lives decrying Baby Boomer excess, I imagine Generation SA (Super Abundance) building statues to the inventors of the LCD and fuel cell for having gifted them this new clean, hospitable planet.
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caniscandida Posted 5:23 pm
26 Aug 2008
And it sincerely pains me that, for many long decades now, lots and lots of fundamentalist/evangelical Christians persist in idiotically believing that the logical conclusion of the theory of evolution is the utter abolition of all moral values. (Cf. the story on the biology classroom in Florida, on the front page of Sunday's NY Times.) That is pure craziness -- as well as profoundly offensive to us friends of Darwin and promoters of evolution.
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MAD MAC Posted 6:36 pm
26 Aug 2008
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caniscandida Posted 8:14 pm
26 Aug 2008
The sudden changes imposed by global warming on Arctic ecosystems are catastrophic. This is not a question of (good ol' Republican) "survival of the fittest, and God damn the rest."
Consider Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Of all the people incinerated near Ground Zero, were some "better adapted" to withstanding the effects of the explosion of an atomic bomb, and the subsequent release of radioactivity? If so, did it matter at all?
Arctic animals are experiencing an 8/6/45 event, extending over just a few generations. Expecting the "fitter" of them to survive, endure and pull through is grotesquely unrealistic and ignorant.
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MAD MAC Posted 8:38 pm
26 Aug 2008
Because in all probability the ice caps are going to melt regardless of what we do right now vis-a-vis climate. You know that as well as I do. So adios polar bears. It was nice knowin' ya. Captive breeding programs would appear to be their only chance of survival.
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caniscandida Posted 9:03 pm
26 Aug 2008
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WarMaker Posted 10:44 pm
26 Aug 2008
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Wolverine Posted 5:14 am
27 Aug 2008
It's not that polar bears were spotted in the open ocean that's the problem. It's that due to melting ice they're forced to swim distances significantly longer than those for which they have evolved.
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