Posted on 09/23/2008 11:58:28 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
(CNN) -- Summer is over in the northern hemisphere, but it's been another chilling season for researchers who study Arctic sea ice.
"It's definitely a bad report. We did pick up little bit from last year, but this is over 30 percent below what used to be normal," said Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
This past summer, the Arctic sea ice dwindled to its second lowest level. Arctic sea ice is usually one to three meters, or as much as 9 feet thick. It grows during autumn and winter and shrinks in the spring and summer.
Scientists have monitored sea ice conditions for about 50 years with the help of satellites. Changes in the past decade have been alarming to climate researchers and oceanographers.
"It is the second lowest on record ... If anything it is reinforcing the long-term trend. We are still losing the ice cover at a rate of 10 percent per decade now, and that is quite an increase from five years ago," said Meier. "We are still heading toward an ice cover that is going to melt completely in the summertime in the Arctic."
--snip--
Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's den and killed her.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
PALIN'S FAULT!
Male Polar Bears have always been canaibalistic —
WOW, the lack of knowledge by the CNN fact checkers, it’s truly awesome.
ummm this is the biggest bunch of BS I’ve ever seen.
Polar bears KILL one another, and males WILL kill females, and they certainly will kill cubs.
And “broke into a female’s den”????? What kind of idiot writes things like that about BEARS? Bears are ANIMALS.
And for God’s Sake the freaking polar region isn’t shrinking...
Isn’t this good news? It means they aren’t eating baby seals!
Anything more recent than one incident four years ago? Quite the misleading headline (not that anybody is surprised)...
CNN is truly pathetic writing a headline like this on a supposedly documented event from four years ago.
No kidding. Didn’t they have an “expert” last year say that it was the first time in his life that he’d ever seen polar bears eating each other and then somebody pulled up a book he had written 20 years ago in which he had said the same thing?
‘a male bear broke into a female’s den and killed her’
Then he stole her computer and DVD player and just bearly got away . The female bear didn’t have a permit to bear arms.
Sorry, I just couldn’t help it....
I remember the time my hairdresser questioned why I was bothering to get my kittens fixed. She asked "They are brother and sister, they wouldn't, would they?"
As a farm girl I was floored that this would not be obvious. Maybe this is half the problem with the global warming/peta zealots. They have never lived in the real world and their only contact with wild animals is the animal storybooks their parents read them as children. They then apply human characteristics to dumb animals. I love animals, but understand that they are limited in their brain power. I guess the same could be said for liberals.

CNN Headline: Scores of Polar Bears Injured ... Scores of polar bears have been reported to have suffered back injuries over the last few months because signs have not be printed in Polareze the often ridiculed and misunderstood language Algore has discovered while in the Arctic measuring ice melt
I always thought it a fact that polar bears have always dined on humans when given the chance...
Abhorrence of cannibalism and incest are human traits. Animals have no such ingrained taboos.
Yes, they tried to say this before.
Same with the disappearing ice.
Polar bears are noramlly cannibalistic, and artic ice disappears and reappears all the time.
Perhaps there are too many polar bears now.
Excuse me CNN, more ice this year than last year would indicate a trend reversal, not a continuation.
So like fish and seals and other critters live in the ice? I thought they swam around like polar bears ..... the ice is just a campground for them ... read where they can swim almost 200 miles ....Canada is real close ....
Liar.
In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female's den and killed her.
And I suppose that a police investigation and grand jury inquiry determined that the attack was due to starvation...?
The enviros had better sharpen up their resumes. It won't be long before Global WarmingTM takes a back seat to real problems and the disposable cash that guilt-ridden armchair eco-warriors send to these sham organizations dries up.
(Hey--there is something positive about a depression!!)
Her den?
Where was daddy's den...Two blocks away?
How do they know that the "burglar" wasn't "daddy gone wild".
They sure like to create any story that fits their agenda.
I wish I had a dollar for every nature documentary I saw that clearly stated that dominant male bears will kill and eat other bears. In addition, if the female is denned up, that is from November to March - or at a time where there is plenty of ice for hunting seals. What idiocy.
Of course, this would have absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that the Polar Bear population has increased... Over use of the food supply leads to 'other' food supply sources.
...cannibalism is normal...
Infanticide and Cannibalism of Juvenile Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus)
in Svalbard
A.E. DEROCHER
1
and Ø. WIIG
2
(Received 29 January 1999; accepted in revised form 9 June 1999
.
Intraspecific predation, infanticide, and cannibal-
ism have been reported in polar bears (Belikov et al., 1977;
Hansson and Thomassen, 1983; Larsen, 1985; Lunn and
Stenhouse, 1985; Taylor et al., 1985).
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic52-3-307.pdf
Pictures?
As the world continues to cool, prepare to read many more articles such as this one. There are so many factual errors in this article that I wouldn’t know where to begin.
First mistake, satellite data showing polar ice goes back to just 1979. This is not 50 years ago, this is only 29 years ago. There have been numerous times even during the past century when it was been predicted that the North Pole would melt completely. This is because sea ice levels were lower than they were last year.
Sea ice was depleted more than normal last year because of changing ocean and wind currents, not global warming.
The polar bear population has been on the increase for several decades. It is normal for a population of predators to increase to a point where their environment will not be able to support them all. There are only so many baby seals to go around.
“Didnt they have an expert last year say that it was the first time in his life that hed ever seen polar bears eating each other and then somebody pulled up a book he had written 20 years ago in which he had said the same thing?”
Yes. here is the link to the article in at CBC.com and I am also posting the comments I contributed to that site.
Here is the story banner:
Beaufort Sea polar bears starving to death, scientist finds
Desperate animals resorting to cannibalism, wandering south to find food
Thursday, April 10, 2008 | 11:48 AM ET
CBC News
Here is the link
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/10/polar-bears.html
Here are my comments:
Dr. Sterling’s claims that “We found four different incidents where the bear had been killed by an adult male to eat in other words, cannibalism.I thought that was very unusual. I’ve never seen it, anywhere.” As another poster to this comments section pointed out, and then provided a link to the passages, Dr Sterling described just this kind of behavior in a book he published in 1999.
What could make a formerly well respected scientist lie about behavior he has previously described in his own published work? Maybe devotion to the Church of Global Warming? Maybe because scientists have found the Global Warming hysteria a cash-cow with real financial gains to be had in government supplied research grants? Maybe because they see it as a way to funnel tax money into their very own field of research? Maybe because they can rationalize their dishonesty believing that any money being put into environmental research, irrespective of the truth of their claims, is a good thing? Explain to me what other reason Dr Stirling, or any other scientist, would lie about facts he has already established?
Last week in a British Newspaper, the Times, there was an article quoting members of the IPCC and a Greenpeace spokesman who claim that the reason we had record cold on every continent this winter is because, you guessed it, Global Warming. I almost laughed myself unconscious reading it. Leave it to the propagandists preaching the religion of Global Warming to proclaim that its too cold because it is too warm. The true believers, and most of the European Socialists that seek control over all of us, will stop at no absurdity to convince we are all doomed unless we give up our freedom, and our money, so THEY can save us from ourselves.
Interestingly enough, solar scientists from both Canada and the Soviet Union have, independent of each other, published papers in the last two weeks that claim that solar activity has not increased as was expected during this phase of the usual 11 year solar cycle. In fact, scientists in both countries claim that the Sun has become dramatically less active and they are worried that we might be entering a “Maunder Minimum”, a period of inactivity on the Sun that scientists have long blamed for the “Little Ice Age” which began roughly in 1550 and continued till the mid-nineteenth century. The Little Ice Age is blamed for the extermination of many Norse tribes as well as starvation and famine in Europe. According to the study prepared by both groups of scientists, the absence of increased sunspots and solar flares could be an indication we are entering a period of global cooling, and perhaps a period of precipitous cooling.
Add this to new data provided by 3,000 underwater Argos system sensors that indicate the oceans have actually cooled over the last five years. as well as the independent study commissioned by our government which slams the International Panel on Climate Change for using flawed statistical methodologies and models, and you start to see the depth of the deception by these power and money-hungry socialist scumbags.
Which is it? Global Warming or Global Cooling? All I know for sure is that science has been hijacked by environmental zealots and unprincipled Leftist politicians and bureaucrats who stand to profit handsomely, both politically and financially, by convincing us that its too cold because its too hot. If they really believe it, maybe they are so dumb because they are so smart. Makes just as much sense does it not?
This is, as others have pointed out, the biggest scam ever perpetrated on mankind.
Charles McFarling
Indianapolis, IN
Ooh, maybe I can get Pam Anderson to go “clubbing” with me! Bwahahahaha!!!
Cannibalism in Polar Bears appears to occur as carrion feeding and attacks by males on small cubs or incapacitated individuals. Direct observations indicate that intraspecific killing and cannibalism occur among polar bears throughout the Arctic.
pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic38-4-303.pdf
Same with Brown and Grisly

I write as well as CNN.

.....;]
Swede shoe, silver tongue, POS, know nothing 50 miles from home!
Last week he was selling ice boxes to Eskimos.
....polar bears eat beluga whales - something that swims. Why would more water = dwindling food supply?
We need to protect the God-given right to arm bears!
broke into a females den
I guess the cold’s hell on those deadbolt locks...
You know what you have to do...
As in...."Bush's fault. Doomed. Dogs and cats living together. Polar Bear Cannibalism. Total Anarchy!"
Let’s see.....
They want to put polar bears on the endangered list.
That would make it illegal to kill one.
Polar bears kill and eat each other.
So, who’s gonna go arrest all the polar bears? GreenPeace?
The spiders in my basement resort to that every winter.
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