Dave Burke : Freelance .NET Web Developer specializing in Online Communities

2/3/2007 7:37:33 AM Permalink

I saw this photos some hours before your post.  I worry about future.  After some years I've started running again and can feel what has happend to our world when I run for some minutes and suddenly can't breath easily!  Here thousands of cars and hundreds of industries are being added to Tehran everyday.

We have to cross our fingers for our world!

Keyvan Nayyeri |

2/3/2007 11:33:13 AM Permalink

Four were found drowned in Canada last fall. Apparently, they set off trying to find food...

Deacon |

2/3/2007 9:29:13 PM Permalink

Yes Dave,

You may know that Caspian Sea has important ecosystems in our world but most of them are in dangerous.  Governments are persisting on oil and tourists are destroying the nature near this lake.  Every time that I go there things are worse than the last time.

Keyvan Nayyeri |

2/5/2007 12:01:45 PM Permalink

I enjoy your blog, and read it from time to time... I did some research into this photo, I thought I had viewed it somewhere before... and as it turns out I have, It was original taken in 1994 and captioned "Mother polar bear and cub on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves". photo © Amanda Byrd. www.whoi.edu/.../dispatch02.html

The polar bears in this picture were not in danger, they were playing and having fun.  They're not even stranded on an ice floe that's broken apart. Dr. Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service. Said "Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one, They just kind of float along and kick".

The photo used for the article was used out of context and is very misleading.  It makes one think from the article that the Polar Bears wandered out on this ice floe, and it broke off, and now it is drifting off far from land/ice and the polar bears cannot do anything about it... the floe will continue to melt and the bears are going to die.

One question I have been asking and cannot get an answer to is "How did our planet come out of the last several ice ages without any form of human intervention (like greenhouse gases) what caused the planet to warm those times"?

Kevin Grygiel |

2/9/2007 7:17:29 AM Permalink

Dave,

The answer is easy: Global Warming. It's been happening every 1500 years for eons. www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?page=article&Article_ID=2319

The argument that humans are responsible is often backed up with heart-tugging photos and stories of ice melting. It's an appeal to your feelings backed up by science that is widely challenged. The earth and our atmosphere are so huge and old that the impact of humankind on it over such a short time period is easy to call into question and difficult to back up.

Remember the ozone layer crisis? It turns out that it's now repairing itself, and is on target to be "healed" by the middle of the century. Do you think that's because of a decline in use of CFCs since 1987? Remember the hubub about overpopulation? The entire world's population can fit in the state of Texas with a population density roughly equal to New York City (all 5 boroughs, not just Manhattan). Remember global cooling? Remeber DDT scares?

It seems the one thing that's sold more than sex over time is self-guilt concerning the environment. No one wants to ask how it could be that a polar bear sat on one piece of ice for so long that it melted around him and he floated 50 miles away before realizing he was stranded and unable to swim for shore. Bears die. Even without us having to feel guilty about causing it.

Josh |

3/17/2007 6:35:19 PM Permalink

Unfortunately the photo is not of 2 polar bears stranded, but 2 polar bears on an ice flow. The photo has been debunked time and time again as taken in early 2000, and does not show the ice flows to either side of the bears. It doesn't show the bears leaving the ice flow and swimming off within minutes of the picture being taken.

Just 1 more example of tree hugging BS to scare the world.

I wonder what caused the global warming that caused last ice age to end. And, why in July of 1974 Time was reporting the coming of the next ice age.

Mark T. Thompkins |