" Polar bears are starving, drowning, resorting to cannibalism " LINK
Christ.
I don't even want to breathe.
Showing posts with label polar bears. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polar bears. Show all posts
Ok, someone forgot to take their happy pills today. I can't believe this is an AP article!
"Everything seemingly is spinning out of control
By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON—Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
...Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.
Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.
Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.
Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs—turning corn into fuel—is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.
Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought. " LINK
By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON—Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
...Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.
Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.
Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.
Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs—turning corn into fuel—is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.
Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought. " LINK
It just gets worse and worse and worse. Shrub plotting further extraction in ANWAR, while Scottish refinery workers strike... Better get gas tomorrow?
Enough to make your skin crawl.
"According to this report by CNN, BP has confirmed that the Forties pipeline system may have to close if the Grangemouth strike goes ahead. 700,000 bpd UK North Sea production may be lost.
In addition to lost oil production, many gas fields may also have to be shut down as liquids produced with the gas will have no export route.
...Unite has said up to 1,200 workers could strike over pension changes. Ineos have said it could take up to one month to get the refinery back to full production if it is completely shut-down, sparking some panic buying of petrol in parts of Scotland." LINK
and Shrub is in New Orleans, calling for expansion in Alaska oil drilling
"President Bush Tuesday said he was concerned about record-high crude oil and gasoline prices, and said the United States needs to tap an Alaskan wildlife refuge to boost supply.
Bush reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to overturn a long-standing moratorium on drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), home to wildlife like polar bears and migratory birds." LINK
"According to this report by CNN, BP has confirmed that the Forties pipeline system may have to close if the Grangemouth strike goes ahead. 700,000 bpd UK North Sea production may be lost.
In addition to lost oil production, many gas fields may also have to be shut down as liquids produced with the gas will have no export route.
...Unite has said up to 1,200 workers could strike over pension changes. Ineos have said it could take up to one month to get the refinery back to full production if it is completely shut-down, sparking some panic buying of petrol in parts of Scotland." LINK
and Shrub is in New Orleans, calling for expansion in Alaska oil drilling
"President Bush Tuesday said he was concerned about record-high crude oil and gasoline prices, and said the United States needs to tap an Alaskan wildlife refuge to boost supply.
Bush reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to overturn a long-standing moratorium on drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), home to wildlife like polar bears and migratory birds." LINK
Arctic ice disappearing at an astonishing rate.
"An area of Arctic sea ice the size of Florida has melted away in just the last six days as melting at the top of the planet continues at a record rate.
2007 has already broken the record for the lowest amount of sea ice ever recorded, say scientists, smashing the old record set in 2005.
In just the last six days, researchers say 69,000 square miles of Arctic ice has disappeared, roughly the size of the Sunshine State.
Scientists say the rate of melting in 2007 has been unprecedented, and veteran ice researchers worry the Arctic is on track to be completely ice-free much earlier than previous research and climate models have suggested.
"If you had asked me a few years ago about how fast the Arctic would be ice free in summer, I would have said somewhere between about 2070 and the turn of the century," said scientist Mark Serreze, polar ice expert at the NSIDC. "My view has changed. I think that an ice-free Arctic as early as 2030 is not unreasonable." LINK
But hey, some fuckers in Vancouver are real excited about this. They had a conference. "Global warming means the Northwest Passage could become the new Panama Canal. It creates an awesome opportunity for Vancouver." LINK
Look, I am not anti-Vancouver. I just have a really hard time understanding how anyone on this green earth can call the end of the world as we know it an "awesome opportunity." That just blows my mind, breaks my heart, fills me with rage, and chills me to the fucking bones.
And again, the polar bears. I am so sorry.
Faster and worse. Arctic ice heading out. Polar bears heading out.
"They're going to drown, they're going to starve, they're going to resort to cannibalism, they're going to become extinct," she said."
The ice is retreating much much faster than earlier predictions, and the consequences for the entire world aren't understood, but what is clear is that polar bears aren't going to make it. LINK
A world without them is a much poorer place.
So so sorry. I am so so sorry.
Northwest Passage- open.
"The North-West Passage – the sea route running along the Arctic coastline of North America, normally perilously clogged with thick ice – is nearly ice-free for the first time since records began." LINK
People are going to be making a lot of money out of this.
"GLOBAL warming, blamed for melting polar bears' icy Arctic habitat, could be a boon to the shipping and oil industries in the far north, according to a new US report.
The dramatic decrease in sea ice above the Arctic Circle means formerly impenetrable shipping routes are now or soon could be open for much of the year, the US Arctic Research Commission said in a report released last week at a summit of Arctic scientists. " LINK
The dramatic decrease in sea ice above the Arctic Circle means formerly impenetrable shipping routes are now or soon could be open for much of the year, the US Arctic Research Commission said in a report released last week at a summit of Arctic scientists. " LINK
US Government has novel approach to dealing with the drowning polar bears.
"Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so. "
Link to NYT article
Link to NYT article
Deja-vu
The world is starting to feel like a small town tiny little grocery that is going out of business. Getting a little dusty in the corners, running out of things. At first, it's the unusual, what you were always surprised was there to start with, shoelaces, polar bears, gorillas, the unexpected, the startling. Then as the frantic owners get tired of their late night calculations and begin to give up, it's no bread, or no fish. There's a point too, when you walk in one day, and the scruffed linoleum isn't even swept, and you realize that this place is going to close. The difference though, is that the local grocery will probably be replaced by some shiny chain store, fully stocked with twizzlers and bread and something strange like cellphones or feather roses, and the earth, well, there's nothing to take it's place. So long and thanks for all the fish.
Those Polar Bear Coca-Cola ads always made me cry anyway
But for entirely different reasons. Ok, we all know about this, the polar bears drowing because of the lack of arctic ice, and it's the one thing that makes my throat close up and tears start and all that human-type emotion crap that I usually stay far far away from. But fuck, it's polar bears.
So, in what is being called an epic, watershed decision, the US has added the polar bears to the 'threatened' list of species. This is of interest, because :"Listing under the United States Endangered Species Act will provide broad protection to polar bears, including a requirement that United States federal agencies ensure that any action carried out, authorized, or funded by the United States government will not "jeopardize the continued existence" of polar bears, or adversely modify their critical habitat."
So it will be interesting to see what steps the US federal agencies take to ensure that we stop 'adversely modifying their critical habitat'- could the polar bears presage carbon taxes? Kyoto?
It's interesting as hell, but it is too late. It is too late for the polar bears. The penguins are headed out- rockhopper penguins (the kind in that Happy Feet movie) have declined 30% over the past 5 years. So that's the iconic animals of the arctic and of the antarctic headed out.
This is the kind of shit that makes me wish I believed in a heaven- can you imagine what a cool place where the baiji dolphin, the polar bear, the rockhopper penguins, and the tigers are going would be?
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