Polar Bears Gone By 2050

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

(AP) More than two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 - including the entire population in Alaska - because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

The agency projects that polar bears during that time will lose 42 percent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed.

Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, their primary food. But the sea ice is decreasing due to climate change.

"It's that declining sea ice that appears to be driving the results in our models," said U.S. Geological Survey scientist Steven Amstrup, the lead author of the new studies. "As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear."

Scientists do not hold out much hope that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases blamed for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse can be turned around in time to help the polar bears anytime soon.

"Despite any mitigation of greenhouse gases, we are going to see the same amount of energy in the system the next 20, 30 or 40 years," Mark Myers, the USGS director, said.

Greenland and Norway have the most polar bears, while a quarter of them live mainly in Alaska and travel to Canada and Russia. But the USGS says their range will shrink to no longer include Alaska and other southern regions.

The findings of U.S. and Canadian scientists are based on six months of new studies, during which the health of three polar bear groups and their dependency on Arctic sea ice were examined using "new and traditional models," Myers said.

They were made public to help guide Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision expected in January on his agency's proposal to add the polar bear to the government's endangered species list.

Last December, Kempthorne proposed designating polar bears as a "threatened" species deserving of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, because of melting Arctic sea ice from global warming. That category is second to "endangered" on the government's list of species believed most likely to become extinct.

A separate organization, the World Conservation Union, based in Gland, Switzerland, has estimated the polar bear population in the Arctic is about 20,000 to 25,000, put at risk by melting sea ice, pollution, hunting, development and tourism.

[Guest dahzel]

it's a horrible thing, really.

i'm just waiting for someone (and it WILL happen) to say that it's a natural cycle. the earth heating up at it's current rate is normal and polar bears becoming extinct is natural collateral damage.

the earth heating up is natural and normal but the rate and severity of the temperature of this planet is not normal.

[Guest drlogic]

ready? here I go!

warming cycles are normal. rate of warming faster than normal, but warming is still normal. If only the worlds greatest polluter(CHINA) did something to reduce it's carbon footprint the warming might have been slowed down. Unfortunately, China (and India) does nothing and the world doesn't pressure them to either cause China wipes their ass w/ what the world thinks. So do many other industrialized nations. At least America does something to reduce it's impact(however MINOR) it might be.

Regardless, the warming rate can't be stopped. The only thing that brings me a lil' comfort is that the "alarmist" have yet to be right......they've been on this "mea-culpa" campaign for decades....first it was cooling..then it was the claim that the ocean would no fish by 2000....now it's warming? Go fig'r? I guess if those Eco-Warriors name enough scenarios, they're bound to be right about one of 'em. Throw enough wet toilet paper and some is bound to stick.

I believe the human race, as a whole can ALWAYS do more. I just refuse to buy the notion that humans are responsible. That's where the kooks lose my support.

Where's Albert Gore when you really need him? Oh yeah, cruise'n the friendly skys on a bad ass PIMP Gulfstream G4...Nice!

[Guest drlogic]

Also, if it happened to the woolly mammoths then why can't it happen to polar bears? Educate your mind and read up a bit on the Cenozoic era. Wikkipidia it. Go to the library and rent out a book regarding that erra, anything. Just do something. Here's a small portation what I found when I simply googled "Cenozoic era."

During the Cenozoic era, there was a gradual lowering of temperatures as well as the gradual establishment of different climatic zones of the earth -the tropics, the temperate zones and the cool climates of the higher latitudes.

The culmination of the cooling trend was the Pleistocene epoch, or Great Ice Age, of the last 1.8 million years (no Americans back then, no SUV's back then). During this time vast expanses of North America and Eurasia were periodically covered with enormous continental glaciers. These glaciers advanced during the four ice ages (glacial periods) and retreated during the three interglacials. We are now living in the fourth interglacial stage. During the glacial periods the sea level became much lower because so much water was converted to ice. Consequently land bridges, especially the Bering land bridge across the Bering Sea joining Asia with North America, became available for animal migrations.

[Guest slamminshaun]

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s.

For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

[Guest drlogic]

You may be interested to know that global warming' date=' earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s.

For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

[img']http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/piratesarecool.jpg

Nothing illustrates the obsurdity in an argument better than a lil' humor! LOVED IT!

[Guest mr.miami]

dont worry by then the whole world will be blown up anyway.

[Guest drlogic]

what? no more ClubSpace?

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

Also, if it happened to the woolly mammoths then why can't it happen to polar bears? Educate your mind and read up a bit on the Cenozoic era. Wikkipidia it.

Dude you're way off base now!

How many milleniums was the Cenozoic Era? Didn't the woolly mammoths disapear over the course of serveral millions of years and not hundreds of years?

I think if maybe 'you studied' not only the numbers of species in decline you will also find that their numbers are declining at an alarming rate!

Not to mention that it took from the beginning of man standing erect as Homo Habalis to 1900 for the human population to reach 1 Billion people.

The human poplulation has grown from 1 Billion people to nearly 7 Billion people in only 107 years!

Dude do the math. If the human race continues to grow at the exponential rate that it has in the last 50 years, Professor Stephen Hawking calculates that in 500 years, humans will be standing shoulder to shoulder on Earth, taking up every square inch on the planet where there is land.

Those are staggering numbers Dr Logic. You yourself can not ignore that fact that the human race growing 6 billion people in only 100 years doesn't have a strain on the environment.

I to believe that warming and cooling is a force of nature. But I also know (as well as you should) that the Earth is one big giant fish tank.

What happens to the fish tank when it doesn't get cleaned? The algae and waste build up on the tank and eventually kills all the fish inside the tank.

Sure warming is natural. Fires are natural. Hurricanes are natual. But humans behavior is anything but natural and the world is not designed for human activity on the scale that it is.

You say China and India do nothing to clean up their acts. What does the US do? The United States, even though we only have 1/5 of the combined popullation of China and India, we consume much more than they do on every level, be it consumer products, materials etc..

We also produce the most waste from fossil fuels such as petrolium, coal and on top of that we produce more nuclear waste than all of the other countries in the world combined that have nuclear fuel.

Just from these facts alone, I don't see howanyone can dispute that human activites are not contributing to the decline of our environment.

[Guest drlogic]

we are breeding like rabbits.....I don't blame humans for the warming. I especially don't blame America. I think that we have humans living in areas where humans never really lived before and in very high concentrated #'s,,,so when weather affected these areas in the past, there were no humans affected. Plus, the information age has also fueled many emotionally unstable, mental midgets to cry "the sky is falling". I will never deny that humans may have a part, but the cause,,NEVER...any part played by humans is minute compared to what nature does to the environment...like say,,,,,,THE SUN heating at the fastest pace ever recorded.

But that's just me.

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

we are breeding like rabbits.....I don't blame humans for the warming. I especially don't blame America. I think that we have humans living in areas where humans never really lived before and in very high concentrated #'s,,,so when weather affected these areas in the past, there were no humans affected. Plus, the information age has also fueled many emotionally unstable, mental midgets to cry "the sky is falling". I will never deny that humans may have a part, but the cause,,NEVER...any part played by humans is minute compared to what nature does to the environment...like say,,,,,,THE SUN heating at the fastest pace ever recorded.

But that's just me.

Human's can't be blamed for natural evens such as the suns temprature and the Earth's proximety to the sun at any given time or any natural event on that scale, etc..etc..

I also don't think that humans are the cause of global warming. Surprise-surprise.

I do believe that humans are the cause of the acceleration certain natural events such as global warming however.

[Guest drlogic]

maybe so? I won't blanketly deny that. But assuming you're correct, the % of the human effect compared to that of the sun just doesn't even register on a graph.

[Bling]

JUST SHIP A TON OF COCA COLA TO THE ARTIC AND EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

..the % of the human effect compared to that of the sun just doesn't even register on a graph.

No shit... Some scientist say that the sun is beginning it's phase where it's going to turn into a Red Giant, cool down and expand ,thus swallowing the solar system. But that's going to take millions of more years.

In the meantime we're stuck on this rock. I look up in the sky and I don't see another rock like it anywhere near us or anywhere else for that matter.

So imo I think we should take better care of what we have while we still can.

The US is moving towards producing alternative sources of energy other than oil. But we're doing so by building more nuclear power plants and mining more coal??

What are the benefits of that other than that they are 'domestic' sources of energy?

What good does more pollution do us? What good does creating more targets for terrorists to attack (by opening up more nuclear power plants). What good is there in harvesting more coal form the Earth and putting more lives at risk in doing so?

What baffles me it that we have had numerous methods of producing energy that is cleaner, cheaper and safer for the past 15 years or so and we have done little to embrace such technology and make a true effort o change our habits.

And as a consequence we are at the mercy of the nations of the Middle East.

We don't like them ad they don't like us. But we (along with the nations of OPEC) play this silly little game of 'lets make a deal', keep them rich and wealthy (the U.S is rich but it's not wealthy) and turn a prepetual blind eye on the obvious truths and consequences of our dependency of fossil fuels...

Been to Brazil lately? They have absolutely no dependence what so ever on oil from the Middle East.

Brazil can pretty much tell OPEC to kiss their asses and still be able to sustain their countries transportation needs. Why? Because more than 70% of the vehicles in Brazil run on E85.

It took them more than 16 years to transform their infrastructure to enable this.

Brazil of all places!

So I ask (constantly ask) some of you.. WHY NOT THE UNITED STATES???

The dependence on oil makes us weak! Like a crack addict seeking out their next bag from the dope dealer!

The world knows this and those towel heads over there know that they can fuck with us..

Now if the US didn't need Middle East oil, 1) It would make the world a cleaner place 2) We would have much more leverage in the region and perhaps more respect than we do at the moment.

In the game of addiction who has more leverage? The Addict? Or the crack dealer?

If you don't think the sky is falling yet then you really have to look up ASAP...

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

OH and BTW Dr Logic... If the sky isn't falling for you then it most likely will for your 3 year old son!

According to United Nations estimates, by the time your son is our age (around hte year 2040) there will around 10 to 10.5 Billion people on Earth barring some major catastrophe of some kind..

That's a lot of people that will be living on about the same amount of land if not less... (due to ocean levels rising)...

[Guest drlogic]

Well, if ocean levels are gonna rise like that,,then thank God for global warming...we'll need more "evaporation"...LOL

Besides, i saw a discovery special that said the Mayan calander ends in 2012(i think??)...same w/ the egyptian calander....apparently, we're all gonna die in half a decade.

[Guest slamminshaun]

51L6kvaxMBk

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

Well, if ocean levels are gonna rise like that,,then thank God for global warming...we'll need more "evaporation"...LOL

Besides, i saw a discovery special that said the Mayan calander ends in 2012(i think??)...same w/ the egyptian calander....apparently, we're all gonna die in half a decade.

There is actually a pyramid that they found in Egypt who's interior that was perfectly constructed mathmetically to map out the end of time which is said to be around 2012...

That sucks...

[Guest JMT]

Well, if ocean levels are gonna rise like that,,then thank God for global warming...we'll need more "evaporation"...LOL

Besides, i saw a discovery special that said the Mayan calander ends in 2012(i think??)...same w/ the egyptian calander....apparently, we're all gonna die in half a decade.

There is actually a pyramid that they found in Egypt who's interior that was perfectly constructed mathmetically to map out the end of time which is said to be around 2012...

That sucks...

damn, i guess i can scale back on my 401k contribution then.

[ryan2772]

20 + 1 + 2 = 23!!!!!

[Guest drlogic]

lol

i saw that movie too!