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. "

super polar bears

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see evolution breeding stronger polar bears capable of swimming to your house to eat you. i for one welcome our polar bear overlords.

Darwin, anyone?

[User 956]

"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!

Wrong Direction

[TheStonepedo]

Ice melting is not the real problem here. The bears are simply swimming in the wrong direction because the change in position of the Magnetic North Pole [bbc.co.uk] combined with the accumulation of too many Leap Seconds [bbc.co.uk] has screwed up the BearSUV's latest Navigation Package. Fix the SUV software, sell more BearSUVs with good software to bears, and forget that "global warming" mumbo jumbo.

win-win

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

wheres the photos

[Anonymous Coward]

I was kind of hoping the article had some photos of the drowning polar bears?

Re:200 miles further north than the average

[MoralHazard]

...although i would find it a shame to see ice bears going extinct... ...an even more beautiful creature than the ice bear? ...nor am i lacking sympathy for the ice bears.

What in the heck is an "ice bear"?

Re: Polar Bears Drowning As Globe Warms

[ewe2]

Baby seals are cautiously optimistic.

What about on Mars?

[CCMCornell]

How are the polar bears handling the polar ice cap melting on Mars [spacedaily.com]? Must be the Mars rovers...

Re:How long till the skeptics post?

[gronofer]

Perhaps they will have a theory that polar bears have a natural cycle of extinction and re-evolution every few hundred years.

Fossil Duels

[Bueller_007]

"Fossil Duels". Best. Video game name. Ever.

Re:Darwin, anyone?

[srussell]

So that means the bears that do survive will be better swimmers than previous. Evolution wins again!

... and, eventually, their front legs will turn into fins, and their hind legs will fuse into one large fin, all to help them swim further. And they'll get sued by the seals for patent infringement.

--- SER

Threatdown

[BushCheney08]

Oh man, Stephen Colbert's gonna be pleased with this!

Re:Ice Age

[Bazzalisk]

Don't worry they'll have several million years to adapt to the new conditions once the environment has become uninhabbitable to humans ...

Re:Not long at all!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yaah, let's see the creationists argue with a friggin' flying polar bear!

white bears swim to "find food". Black bears loot

[Cryofan]

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.

At least we can then play...

[abulafia]

...Global Warming Skeptic Bingo [timlambert.org]!

Re:win-win

[Himring]

There might be a surplus of seals since the bears won't be around to eat them so go ahead and hunt them too.

So this baby seal walks into a club....

Try the veal....

Re:How long till the skeptics post?

[rolandog]

There are SUV driving slashdotters? I would've expected they were already driving gokarts powered by their own sense of self-satisfaction.

Re:Darwin, anyone?

[red990033]

>... and, eventually, their front legs will turn into fins, and their hind legs will fuse into one large fin, all to help them swim further. And they'll get sued by the seals for patent infringement.

.. and then the RIAA will sue the seals claiming they stole their name from the artist Seal.

Re:...and here come the sceptics

[MonkeyOfRage]

If we're cold outside, walk inside and it's warm, do we automatically assume that our body is suddenly ramping up it's heat production?

No, of course not, that's silly. But we DO know what it means when we see people carrying umbrellas every time it rains - it means we must destroy the umbrella makers before the effects of umbrellas drown us all!