Polar Bears
illconsidered | November 8, 2011Peter Sinclair has a good run down of recent politically motivated FOIA fishing expeditions into climate and other scientist emails.
It includes mention of the recent good news in the ATI v UVa case where the court agreed with UVa that the ATI and their lawyers could not be trusted to see emails UVa has claimed should be exempt from the FOIA request for the purpose of challenging that excemption. Ouch. But good call, I am sure.
Peter also includes mention of an excellent non-climate science related example of the same tactic in the case of a Wisconsin history professor, William Cronon,…
stoat | August 17, 2011RP Jr is doing weird stuff - well, he's doing what he's done before: misunderstanding the science, in a very fundamental way, and then arguing tendentiously in a desperate attempt to throw enough confusion in the air to hide his original error. JA has the details.
Come on RP: just say sorry and admit your mistake. And stick to policy in future, which you're good at.
Meanwhile, speaking of "policy", there is mt on Dr. Charles Monnett, the fellow who had the misfortune to be footnoted by Al Gore on the polar bear question. That was the kind of thing you expected (and which happened) under Bush…
illconsidered | October 18, 2010Okay, so this one is a bit of a tear-jerker and I usually like to avoid mixing sentimentality with environmentalism, but it is very informative and interesting if sad. It is greenman3610's Climate Crock of the Week from about three weeks ago and as usual well worth watching.
I tend to be skeptical about anthropomorphizing our fellow earthlings, but I'll be damned if that wasn't a very affectionate mama walrus hugging her baby! If walruses weren't so ugly they just might top polar bears in terms of public concern...
gregladen | September 16, 2010Scientists have been measuring sea ice very carefully since 1979. Prior to that, there are estimates that are of varying degrees of usefulness. I know for a fact that many New England lighthouses were attached to land by winter-long ice in places that have not had sea ice in any living person's memory, and there are similar bits and pieces of historical data suggesting that sea ice was once much more extensive in the Northern Hemisphere than at present.
Since 1979 there have been three years in which Arctic sea ice reached a rather alarming minimum size prior to reforming. We are in one…
hrynyshyn | June 23, 2010"I thought I better come see the bears because the next time I am in this country they will be all gone."
-- Polar bear tourist in Churchill, Man.
Ecotourism. Sounds so responsible, or least, non-exploitative. But let's face it: Anyone who flies long-distance to get close to some endangered piece of nature at risk from climate change is doing their bit to push those species that much closer to extinction. A paper published recently in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism tries to quantify the irony. "The carbon cost of polar bear viewing tourism in Churchill, Canada" (Subs req'd) looks at the…
tlambert | May 10, 2010The Editors report
Camille Paglia, professor of humanities, worries about "a landscape of death in the humanities." I would agree with that, had it actually made any sense, although probably for different reasons:
This whole thing about global warming - I am absolutely incredulous at the gullibility of people. What is this hysteria over drowning polar bears? And finally I realized, people don't know polar bears can swim! For me, the answer is always more facts, more basic information, presented without sentimentality and without drama.
Take that, marine biologists!
Update: More Paglia…
cwilcox | March 26, 2010Those of you who follow me on twitter have been flooded with links about the recent United Nations meeting which included a once-every-three-years Conference of the Parties for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). As a biologist, I take conservation issues quite seriously, especially when it comes to regulations. I feel that large scale efforts are not just important, they are necessary to protect species from overexploitation. Up on the slab were a number of key regulations for a variety of species, and I anxiously awaited the results…
tlambert | March 1, 2010This Jonathan Leake story on the evolution of Polar Bears broke the embargo on this PNAS paper. Ivan Oransky quotes PNAS media and communications manager Jonathan Lifland:
The majority of our infrequent embargo violations are accidental and typically the result of mislabeled copy that does not properly list the 3 p.m. EST Monday embargo expiration. We have a separate situation with the Sunday Times of London. With EurekAlert, we have prevented their editors and reporters from accessing the embargoed news section of EurekAlert, which is where pre-print copies of our articles are accessible…
zooillogix | June 15, 2008Spent the day at the Brookfield Zoo and was lucky enough to catch a resident polar bear inventing games for himself and doubly lucky my fiancee brought a video cam.
Polar Bear Takes a Dive
Polar Bear Tossing Around His Toy
More below the fold
Polar Bear Balances Toy on Nose and Paw
zooillogix | May 2, 2007Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea have begun to cannibalize one another according to a recent study in the online publication Polar Biology. The polar bears' main food source in the area, ringed seals, are accessible only across ice shelves. Global climate change has melted these shelves, cutting off the bears from their food and forcing them to turn on one another.What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
Polar bears often kill their own kind as a form of population control, territorial dominance and reproductive advantages, but killing each other for food had rarely been witnessed…
zooillogix | April 5, 2007The US Navy routinely conducts silent war games beneath the North Pole with foreign nuclear submarines. Occasionally the subs must poke their conning towers through the ice for communications, energy and research. However, when they expose themselves, they open themselves to the possibility of a vicious polar bear attack!!! Well, maybe these bears are just curious, but they still look terrifying (adorable). These pictures are courtesy of the US Navy from the Arctic.Uraniumlicious... Polar Bears, Ursus maritimus
Stalking its prey...The vicious attack!
Another common maritime peril for the US…