This week I'm out on the tundra in Wapusk National Park in Manitoba, Canada, on the shores of western Hudson Bay, for educational webcasting and blogging with Polar Bears International. Polar bears gather in this area every fall, waiting for the bay to freeze so that they can go back out onto the ice to hunt seals, their primary food. We watch the bears from a special teched-out vehicle called a "tundra buggy," and during the day you can often see the same bears we're watching out the window on the live polar bear cam.
There was a time today -- standing out on the back deck of the buggy, when two large males came quite close to us -- that I was so mesmerized I couldn't even take a photo. Instead I just lost myself in the sound of their footsteps, the rhythm of their breathing and the wonder of their massive bodies, so magnificently adapted for life in the frigid North. Several males were play-fighting, wrestling and rolling on the ground, looking fierce and majestic one moment and teddy-bear cute the next. To complete the picture, a mother polar bear and her cub also passed by. It's hard to describe the magic of these animals.
The other night the just-past-full moon rose in yellow glory over the rippling open waters of Hudson Bay. It was a lovely sight but also disturbing, because even though it's mid-November there is virtually no ice on the bay. And polar bears need that ice to live. As the climate warms, the ice-free season here in western Hudson Bay has gotten longer, and the bears now have to contend with ever-increasing periods of fasting on land and shorter periods out on the ice to catch the seals they need to survive. The bears here are smaller and lighter than they used to be, fewer cubs survive, and the population is declining in numbers. Increasingly, individual bears are starving as the Arctic rapidly warms. This population, among the southernmost of the world's polar bear populations, is on a course to be the first victim of global warming. What's happening here will be the fate of all polar bears if we don't rapidly reduce greenhouse emissions.
This week we've also seen several very thin bears. Polar bears fasting on land lose about two pounds per day, and it's not clear how much longer it will be before the ice freezes and bears here can go back out onto the ice to hunt seals. It's painful to see their condition, but it's not surprising: Scientists have long predicted the situation now playing out. I fervently hope the ice will come soon for the sake of these bears, but ultimately the only way to prevent more suffering and save the species from extinction is to get serious about cutting greenhouse pollution. Of course, polar bears are only one of so many reasons we need to act. But it always strikes me deeply, when I'm watching these beautiful creatures in their northern home, what a compelling reason they are all by themselves. And it just so happens that the deep and rapid emission reductions needed to save the bears are the same reductions necessary to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes for the rest of the world too.
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Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired. This means more bats and migratory birds will live.
From Minnesotans for Global Warming: “The symbol of Green renewable energy, our savior from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.”
Canada has most of the world's population of PBs. The conservation efforts started in the 1960s has lead to growth in most PB populations. Nunavummiut, especially hunters and elders, who have lived all their lives in the North, who have extensive and professional knowledge of the environment and wildlife in Nunavut, have said repeatedly that PBs are plentiful.
How about covering the destruction that wars bring. The Polar bear is thriving, humans are under attack.
Warming seems to be good for them.
http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html
Anyone but a conservative would come up with a totally different interpretation.
Those challenges, supported by facts on the ground, including observations from Inuit hunters in the region, haven’t stopped climate fear-mongers at the U.S. Geological Survey from proclaiming that future sea ice conditions “will result in the loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century.”
Such sky-is-falling rhetoric brings smiles to the Inuit population of Canada’s Nunavut Territory. They, too, know how to count, and they claim the bear population is stable or on the rise in their own backyard. Polar bears may be on the decline in some areas, but during their frequent visits to Inuit towns and outposts they rarely decline an easy meal from the local dump or a poorly secured garbage can.
Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.
Please pay attention on properties of water:
1. We need 539 kcal to evaporate 1 kg of water.
2. Water vapor is lighter than most gases in air, it help convection forces to bring all (ALL) GASES UP.
3. PdV work stop convection forces around 500 m from sea level.
4. Only partial condensation of water vapor release energy to heat parcel of surrounding air, including GHG. It property of water recreate convection.
5. Droplets of water in rain, as cleanest water take from atmosphere almost all particles of Black Carbon and others aerosol, and bring them to land, oceans.
6. Only new snow is cover soot on the old snow on the land and ice in oceans. It process increase reflection of direct sun radiation back to space.
7. Droplets of water solved partially all gases, including GHG and bring them down as nutrition.
8. 99% of water vapor condensed in upper troposphere.
9. Band of IR radiation for H2O and CO2 is different. That’s mean, if CO2 present after upper troposphere, most of IR radiation from water vapor, which going to space do not trapped in CO2 molecules.