Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?

[Conservativesux]

Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?

By JIM CARLTON

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

December 14, 2005; Page B1

It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning.

Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes.

In a quarter-century of aerial surveys of the Alaskan coastline before 2004, researchers from the U.S. Minerals Management Service said they typically spotted a lone polar bear swimming in the ocean far from ice about once every two years. Polar-bear drownings were so rare that they have never been documented in the surveys.

But in September 2004, when the polar ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of the northern coast of Alaska, researchers counted 10 polar bears swimming as far as 60 miles offshore. Polar bears can swim long distances but have evolved to mainly swim between sheets of ice, scientists say.


Polar bears in Alaska face melting ice floes.


The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. "Extrapolation of survey data suggests that on the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds," the researchers say in a report set to be released today.

More:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB113452435089621905-vnekw47PQGtDyf3iv5XEN71_o5I_20061214.html

[marmar]

1. Don't you get the feeling sometimes.....

...that the world is irretrievably f..ked?

:cry:

[Sal Minella]

2. What have we done, what have we done......

[roguevalley]

3. we are. this is the saddest damned thing. those animals are so

damned tough and noble and smart. this is a crime against humanity, this happening.

[kenny blankenship]

4. Oh no, they're just the last holdouts like Cuba or the old USSR & Vietnam

the polar bears have seen the manifest superiority of our capitalist society and don't have the will to go on anymore with their backwards economic system and their own repetitious, ossified, and regimented way of life. They refuse to retool and adapt and they can't admit their error so they're chucking it in.

They know they don't have what it takes to make it in our go-getting, laissez-faire enterpreneurial paradise--they have no marketable skills, they have no bright ideas, nor any of the old fashioned free-enterprising, fire-in-the-belly--and they're giving up, like the weaklings they always were. They had us thinking they were ten feet tall. Well look who's big and strong, and who's helpless now!

Life goes on without polar bears. If they provided anything of value aside from genuine polar bearskin rugs, the market will step forward with a viable substitute. Supply will meet demand, and the departure of the bears will be a good business opportunity for leopard seals, maybe, or the narwhal.

[Lars39]

5. You do that way too well!

:D Although given the topic I feel more like :cry:

[sasha031]

6. it's heartbreaking

don't you love the commercials with polar bears brought to you by the oil companies.

[Lars39]

7. It's off the irony meter.

[kenny blankenship]

8. It's like drinking,

the more drink you've been exposed to previously the more you can absorb--and also the more you will vomit out when your system goes into toxic overload.

[Lars39]

9. Good analogy.

[Clara T]

10. kick

[Rainscents]

11. My heart bleeds when I hear stories like this.

We are killing them. :argh: