Polar Bears Drowning As Globe Warms 503
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. "
...and here come the sceptics (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ice Age (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. But the question is, is it our fault this time? People die all the time. But that doesn't mean I can get away with murder.
No shortage of fossile fuel (Score:1, Insightful)
The known oil resources are expected to last for 150 years with the current pace of burning. When this runs out, we still have coal for a 1000 years or so. We will have to stop using fossile fuels for other reasons. For environmental reasons.
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:3, Insightful)
Common tactics in arguments is to misrepresent the "opponents" and turn the issue into something other then it is. Are the non-wack job conservatives (yes, they do exist. Another common tactic is to paint your opponents as inherently worse then yourself) even arguing about whether or not global warming is happening? I thought they had conceeded that point, but are now unsure if it is caused by humans.
And that's a fair point. The weather is cyclical and isn't static. So it is possible that it isn't caused by humans. Having said that, I don't know whether or not there is damning proof it's being caused by humans. That's because I keep seeing liberals just arguing about whether or not it is happening.
200 miles further north than the average (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:2, Insightful)
It should be noted that I'm 100% against the monster trucks that are passing for SUVs these days (and most other vehicles that get less than 30mpg); if you need a truck for hauling a boat or the trailer you live in there's no reason you can't use bio-diesel!
Darwin or not this is a problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Republicans are Naive and Blind (Score:3, Insightful)
The house has smoke all thru the ground floor - the ceiling is burning two stories up out of sight and all Republicans can say is "Well, we're not convinced this smoke is our house. And we're not convinced that there hasn't been smoke here before and that this is natural geology - and we're not convinced the fire will spread to the ground floor if the building is on fire.
idiots - naive, blind, idiots
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:2, Insightful)
Dumb evolution arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
Bears and seal just need.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ice Age (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a logical fallacy to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe we could just use the truths that we know to promote environmental friendliness and leave out the unprovable theories. There are too many factors in the atmosphere to even predict local weather, let alone the cause of global warming.
Re:Ice Age (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
Re:How long till the skeptics post? BSOD scenario (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Republicans are Naive and Blind (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine another 20 years of weather like last year and Cat 5 hurricanes 3 or 4 times a year. The Entire Southeas would become uninhabitable - uninsurable - our Port infrastructure would have to be totally retooled to keep supplies coming into the US.
This is heavy stuff, people - Katrina was the first example of the BAD stuff. We joke when it's winter about a 2 degree increase, but forget how the climate feels about it....
I am just MAYBE, MAYBE starting to think Mother Earth is getting a bit pissed off and swinging back?
RB
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:5, Insightful)
Science doesn't have a goal. It's a method, not an entity.
The people practicing science have goals, and their goals often include helping to solve social, political and ethical problems.
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, but the natural cycle is approximately 100,000 years (as says the NOAA link). It seems that with pollution we've managed to compress that down to just a few 100 years. Over 100,000 years there is time for flora and fauna to adapt to the changing conditions - through evolution, or migration, or whatever. In the space of a few 100 years there's no opportunity for adaption; the flora and fauna simply die.
Consider an analogy. A human life is on average 70 years and if you stab them to death that's just uh... speeding things up. But stabbing someone to death is considered criminal. Speeding up the natural glacial cycle by several orders of magnitude causes more death than a single stabbing yet for some reason it's not considered criminal. Why isn't mass extinction a criminal act?
And it's even worse than that. The real danger is that rainfall distribution will change. Unfortunately rainfall in the Sahara won't suddenly make the desert a fertile ground for crops. The desert simply lacks the nutrients and the surrounding ecosystem of insects and animals to sustain a high volume of life. However a reduction of rainfall in farming regions will lead to failed crops and widespread starvation. You can't just move the farm to where the rainfall occurs; the non-fertile ground can't support the crops, and the fertile ground lacks the necessary rainfall. Over 100,000 years there is time for the non-fertile ground to become fertile. But over a few 100 years? There simply isn't enough time to adapt.
So don't you dare say that this is all fine because it's natural. About 100,000 years is natural. A few 100 years is frightening.
Re:Climate is Cyclical (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Republicans are Naive and Blind (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Republicans are Naive and Blind (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Climate is Cyclical (Score:2, Insightful)
And where was current Alaska back then? Continental drift is a few cm per year, so it could have been several 1000 km away from where it is now.
Re:How long till the skeptics post? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Ice Age (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:pathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
Massive reverse-osmosis water purification plants on the African coast, to terraform our own planet?
In all seriousness, are we willing to accept phenomenal loss of human life in Pakistan, Indonesia, and the US gulf coast, because we don't want to pollute in the name of saving life?
Do we roll back the clock to simpler, agrarian times, and excuse ourselves from feeling any guilt, or roll the clock forward to cleaner technologies?
I do realize this. The question is, what political leadership has sufficient moral authority to champion the cause? The problem with the Republocrats is that they're obviously in the pocket of Big B'iness. The problem with the Demmicans, at least as far as Red State America is concerned, is that their power base consists of societal elements at least as dangerous as global warming itseslf.
Thus, the existing political order is about as helpful as the tacit global experiment underway to which you allude. Running your question through the Inspector Fowler Paraphraser: "Our cock-up, our arse". A less than erotic realization.
Re:Climate is Cyclical (Score:1, Insightful)
As a geologist, you aren't particularly qualified to make judgements about cause and effect in climate models.
Just curious. What sort of background exactly do you think a paleoclimatologist should have?
I wouldn't even care if your middle name would be Einstein or Nobel.
Everyone who can clash at least 2 braincells randomly together can figure out:
1) we're are speeding up the climate changes.
2) polar bears are dying because if it right now
3) we're going to die because of it sooner than we should
Who gives a shiny damn ass about what degree someone got from where if we're going to extinct ?
Maybe cutting back on some CO2 emissions and replacing the tech we use today with something more economical could give your grandchild a f*cking chance to see the f*cking sun ? Gee i thought someone would teach you people something useful at universities but it seems like planning more than 1 tiny year forward didn't fit into your schoolplan.
I don't know about you dudes, but i want to teach my grandson how to shoot a bow and teach what animals live in the forest after 50 years from now, not be some damn Waterworld hero who drinks his own
The whole f*cking planet is going down and you dudes fight about some damn uni degree...
ps. people that really attended the lessons at uni, remember that we have no freaking idea what the planet can look like after 25 years from now.
Re:No shortage of fossile fuel (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:win-win (Score:1, Insightful)
But Islam means peace... (Score:0, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_
http://www.jihadwatch.org/ [jihadwatch.org]
http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?ty
Anyone who can still deny the threat that Islam presents to the freedoms we hold dear in the West is just not paying attention, or they're just afraid of ending up like Theo Van Gogh.
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wild extrapolation here we come... (Score:2, Insightful)
freeze to death in the dark (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wild extrapolation here we come... (Score:1, Insightful)
You left out a few things in your attempt tp recruit Fox News viewers: Tree ring samples from around the planet indicate longer growing seasons and warmer growing seasons in the last 150 years, the fact that the AVERAGE temperature across the Artic is increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the planet, that glaciers on mountains across the planet are in retreat, and that sea temperatures from Antartica to the Arctic are rising. Strangely, all of these phenomena are almost perfectly correlated with the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Saying that we should do nothing because we might not be the cause of the warming is like saying you shouldn't turn the heater down in the summer because it isn't your heater causing it to be hot.
But wait, the Arctic from 70-90 is still not as warm as the 1930s
Whoa buddy! Talk about wild extrapolation. You have two points of data and you think that invalidates every thing else? I know you're not that stupid, so you must be intellectually dishonest (a new, unexplored frontier for conservatives). You do know that global warming doesn't mean that every single measurement point on the Earth will show an increase in temperature don't you? You know that some places will get colder as the climate changes, right? Tell me you haven't been sleeping through class. Bueller
Since the poster child for linking climate change with carbon dioxide use has been shown to be a product of bad statistics
Actually, your pet theory has been shot down [nationalacademies.org]. Sorry. Next.
Therefore, hence, or in conclusion: I call bullshit.
You can call bullshit all you like if it makes you feel better, but it doesn't make you right. Don't you have a Target store to protest or something?
Re:Wild extrapolation here we come... (Score:1, Insightful)
Classic straw man. Good try, but intellectually dishonest. New territory for conservatives I must admit.
Arguing that the current warming is a natural cycle, and therefor we should do nothing, is no different than suggesting that one should not turn off the heater in the summertime because it is natural processes are responsible for the increasing temperature.
But wait, the Arctic from 70-90 is still not as warm as the 1930s, as can be seen from long station records all across the high Arctic (for example Nuuk or Ostrov Dikson ) This was well before large increases in carbon dioxide.
Two problems with your reasoning: 1) Carbon dioxide has been increasing for about 150 years now. Last I checked, the 1930's was only 70 years ago. That's an 80-year margin of error there. Better check your math. 2) When the climate changes, it doesn't change everywhere in lockstep. Some places will get colder, and some will get warmer. Talk about wild extrapolation. You are asking us to believe that temperature data from two isoloated stations should contradict the overall trend from hundreds of thousands of stations across the entire planet over hundreds of years.
Since the poster child for linking climate change with carbon dioxide use has been shown to be a product of bad statistics
Hate to tell you buddy, but your pet theory was shot down about 5 years ago. Take a read at a real scientific paper here: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309068916/html/ [nap.edu]. Not only that, but do you know anything about Venus? Do you know why it's so hot there? You do know that carbon dioxide is fairly opaque to infrared, and that's how it insulates, right? I assume you are not trying to call into question basic laws of chemistry and physics while at the same time accusing others of wild extrapolations are you?
Therefore, hence, or in conclusion: I call bullshit.
What is wrong with you people? This isn't crazy hippies crying about killing the poor flowers somewhere. This is a near perfect consensus of scientists across dozens of different disciplines on a global scale. They are trying to sound every alarm at their disposal and we are ignoring them. Instead of taking their word about their fields of expertise, we have people with no trainng at all (most with no college at all) questioning the conclusions of people who have spent their entire lives studying this stuff. The sad thing is that, if they are right, in 50 years the Republican Party is going to be having hearings on why our scientific community failed us, and they will be telling us how they were trying to save us all these years and it was the evil liberals that stopped them.
Of course this message has been brought to you by Exxon Mobil, the Bush Administration, the Republican Party, the Freemasons, the Illuminati and all stations to Satan.
I don't think most of us imagine anything so grand. Just uneducated, dishonest conservatives who see global climate change as a threat to their monied way of life, and who are willing to risk making a world of Katrina-like events commonplace to protect that way of life. Simple as that.
Re:white bears swim to "find food". Black bears lo (Score:3, Insightful)
This is kind of a debateable point. When you're talking about an animal that is, normally, covered entirely in fur, it's fairly standard to refer to it as its fur color, not its skin color. (For instance, I would say my dog is tan & white, not pink & brown. Unless you shaved her. In which case she'd probably get upset with you.) I guess it would be more correct to say that polar bears have white fur & black skin. (Although I thought it was more brown... Or was that artic foxes?)
Let's ignore all Other Science too..... (Score:1, Insightful)
2) The sun is scheduled to go super nova, last I checked, in about a mere 10,000 years. Go figure. We suddenly have large changes in the spin off now...
3) If you got to www.co2science.com you can get some expert opinions, from people who actually work in the field, rather than some computer program calculations based upon statistics and path plotting. I am not saying that pathing models are not useful, but they tend to be highly inaccurate, remember the sun rotating around the earth was accepted for a long time due to pathing predictions. heh.
I am not denying changes, they are measurable. But they may be part of some other effects, and we have not been recording information for long enough period to determine what is happening. We go by 10,0000 year blocks of time for measuring changes in the past, because we have to. That does not mean the changes were not sudden, just that our tools are limited to detect that aspect.
After spending many decades in science, both applied and theoretical, I think it is pretty arrogant to think we matter in the scheme of things. Since the advent of printed matter humans have claimed we are destroying ourselves and our world. It hasn't happened, yet our arrogance of our "power" continues.
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:3, Insightful)
Well what we do know is that as CO2 emissions have increased in the last 200 years, raising the global atmospheric C02 concentration a significant amount (an order of magnitude larger than any fluctuation in C02 levels in the last 650,000 years). We also know that average global temperature has risen over roughly that same time frame.
Of course correlation does not prove causation. What tends to weigh in heavily on the side of causation is that we know from basic physics that atmospheric C02 will trap heat, so we have good reason to believe that C02 levels may be causing observed warming. When computer climate models are used we find that the increase in C02 levels and the predicted rate of heat retention accounts for that portion of warming (about 60% of the increase) for which we have no other explanation.
So yes, correlation does not prove causation, but then we have a lot more to claim causation than just a correlation.
Jedidiah.
Re:...and here come the sceptics (Score:3, Insightful)
The current levels of CO2 are about 25% higher than they've been in any interglacial in the last 650,000 years. The levels of other important greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide are even higher relative to previous earth history. This means that the current warming is expected to bring about temperatures significantly higher than we'd see in any of the Pleistocene interglacials.
To some extent, small amounts of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (enough to raise global CO2 levels by around 20 ppmv) may have a beneficial effect by offsetting the natural climate cycle, keeping us comfortably warm when the earth would otherwise be heading slowly toward another ice age over the next several millennia, but we've gone way beyond that point (the increase is around 110 ppmv from the early Holocene, 10,000 years ago).
Fussing about SUVs is completely beside the point. Transportation accounts for only about 30% of US CO2 emissions. Much more (around 38%) comes from burning coal to produce electicity. Switching all 18 mpg SUVs to 36 mpg hybrids would have a much smaller effect on global warming than switching all coal-fired electric power plants to gas-turbines. Better still, let's have a crash program to put nukes in service.
But at the end of the day, if we're serious about limiting global warming, we need to cut the world's use of energy by about a factor of ten over the next few decades. There won't be anywhere near enough clean or renewable energy sources to replace our dirty ones over that time scale, so the only options are to shut off 90% of our electricity, stop driving cars altogether, and stop artificially heating and cooling our homes or else learn to live with the disruptions global warming will throw our way.
YES!, re:"seriously-do-you-need-more-proof?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [blogspot.com], with better policy suggestions.
Re:win-win (Score:2, Insightful)
A: Canadian Club on the Rocks!!
Re:200 miles further north than the average (Score:2, Insightful)
The arguments I hear that it's a natural phenomenon or that we're causing it are irrelevant. If the climate changes, independent of the cause we'll go extinct. For our own survival we need to be looking for ways to stabilize our environment, which is currently extremely chaotic and dangerous.
I seriously doubt we'll become so powerful that we can protect ourselves from everything. The problem gets even worse if you consider current scientific thought, which says that our sun will eventually explode. We'll have to escape that somehow. But even if we find a way, we'll have to figure out how to escape the universe before entropy takes hold and cools it down completely.
It's arrogent to think our technology will save us. You have to ask yourself, what's so special about us as a species that we deserve to live after all life in the Universe has died? I think I'd be kind of lonely.
I say don't worry about global warming or our dying sun. Go play in the rain. It's fun. Just try not to think so much about the lightning off in the distance.
Re:white bears swim to "find food". Black bears lo (Score:4, Insightful)