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News Briefs 19-09-2007

Yarr, Jameske’s off burying treasure on International Talk Like A Pirate Day. While the pirates are off drinking rum and getting treated for scurvy, we ninjas can meditate on today’s news:

Thanks Jameske.

Quote of the Day:

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realise that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Ronald Reagan

  1. We’re watching!
    “Betchya Margaret Thatcher wishes we had this spiffy DNA technology back in her day.”

    But we did have CC TV technology back then. Yet, I don’t believe it was Ms. Thatcher who turned the UK into one big Big Brother stage.

        1. Oh.
          I didn’t realize Margaret Thatcher ran the pharmaceutical companies. My bad.

          Other than creating all the miracle drugs we have today, remind me again what the inherit evilness is of the pharmaceutical companies?

          1. Alrighty then…
            So putting her name in the same sentence with “pharmaceutical companies” was just as nonsensical as I originally thought it was. Gotcha ya.

      1. Well, sure.
        The Left is all about controlling populations at the expense of personal liberties by way of imposing massive government control and creating complete dependency on that tyrannical, governmental benevolence. But they sure are good at calling everyone else fascists.

        1. Quote
          [quote=Anonymous]Actually I didn’t quote anyone.[/quote]

          “There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears”

          That’s a quote in anyone’s dictionary.

          1. polar bear population
            Does anyone have reliable sources on the decline of the polar bear population?

            I have seen mention of a decline around the western Hudsons Bay, but not numbers. At the same time, I have seen mention of a decided increase around the town of Churchill, which is on the western Hudsons Bar. Perhaps the bears have moved from empty parts of that area to Churchill? Churchill, Manitoba is at 58-45-09 North, 94-09-36 W, more or less. It’s not very big. It is the end of a railroad line, and is (was?) a significant port for shipping grain.

            Back to the bears, I don’t have the studies by the Canadian government handy, I can find out if someone really cares. What I have read there said there was a significant increase. Significant as in more that doubling from the first reliable counts, to today. Of course am increase in the count could be the result of better counting methods.

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          2. bears
            I find that interesting and plausible, the fact that there’s an increase in the bear population in one area, and a decline in the ice shelves, because the bears are maybe moving to territories where the search for food is easier; and that would probably be closer to human settlements. There’s of course news of boars and bears in european countries that were found looking for food near garbage dumps. Could this be the case here?

            If the bears find they can no longer hunt for seal as the used to… will they cross their arms and wait for extinction? possibly not, they would try to find another food source or exploit another niche in the food chain; maybe they could adapt, maybe not. That’s the problem with over-specialization, like in the saber-tooth tiger that could only aim for the mega-fauna preys and so went extinct. Would that be the case with bears? It all seems to point in that direction. But truth is we don’t know.

            Of course, I’m speculating here

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          3. Arctic melt
            There’s definitely a shift in polar bear populations. Due to the decrease in ice shelf areas, polar bears are moving onto land and further south. This accounts for the increase in polar bear sightings closer to human settlements in the southern Arctic/Canada. The shrinking of sea ice has seen maternal denning drop from 62% to 37% in a decade. With less ice to den and nurture newborn cubs, polar bears are moving inland to den. Thus the perceived increase in polar bear populations in one area, and a decrease in other areas.

            You can argue population statistics until the cows come home — the fact is, Arctic ice is shrinking and the north pole is getting warmer. And that’s bad news for polar bears and other Arctic fauna.

            It’s also fact that polar bears are drowning due to the increase in sea distance between ice shelves. Scientifically proven and observed, Anonymous, that should be good enough for your skeptical standards.

            It’s not just polar bears, but the entire food chain that’s at risk. Toxic contamination isn’t helping either, but I’m sure Anonymous is quite fond of hermaphrodite polar bears.

            Face it Anonymous, you’re skating on thin ice.

          4. polar bears
            In the absense of any data (which I will ry to find if you me for, f if you ofer use, or both), I would suggest that polar bears are not so picky about what they eat.

            They will eat any thing and any body. Your garbage, your beans and my strawberries. Also, they will eat you and me. Who can blame them ?

            I will get some stuff so I can evade the fast polar predators. I don’t have to outrun the polar bears, I only have to outrun Rick MG 🙂

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          5. less arctic ice
            What is so bad about less arctic ice?
            It is a deviation from the old days yes.

            But what was so good about the old days ?

            And will there be more or fewer polar bears? I say there will be more bears, and they will eat different things.

            And more or fewer Inuit? I say there will be more Inuit. They have only been there for aboout 1500 yeas or so, they will do better.

            And more or less life in those northern parts of Canada, Siberia, Alaska? I say there will be more life. Why is that bad ?

            Tell me, why it will be worse, and especially, how it will be worse.

            I say, there will be more polar bears, more marine mammals such as seals, more fish, more plant live. There will be more Inuit.

            Tell me why that is worse.

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          6. Because …
            Because we don’t know for sure what the full repercussions will be, and neither do you. Neither does anybody, including all the scientists in the world.
            Knowledge needs humility. This makes us think before automatically accepting things. Yes, the doommongers may well be wrong, but usually the flip-side of the argument is no better.

            I’m fanatical about moderation

            Anthony North

          7. indeed
            indeed we se that change is happening.
            We can se that some of it will be good for use, and some will be bad.

            Som of the change will be bad, just because it forces people to change what they do. That can be expensive.

            So I say, we must be prepared for the change. If it is our fault or not. If indeed it is our fault, and we can slow it down or stop it, then ok, maybe will should do that.

            But really, has anyone asked a polar bear if they really like living like that ? It does not seem all that pleasant to me. And those bears don’t seem to be all that stupid.

            Another (pretty hopeless, yes) approach would be, ask these bears, what do they want?

            I don’t know, the WWF doesn’t know, and Greenpeace does not know either. Only the bears. They would say, if we could ask them properly.

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          8. And evolution said …
            And evolution said, all those fish below the ice, and nothing to keep them in check.
            And evolution saw the bear, and made it white;
            and evolution gave the white bear appetite for the fish, and knowledge of how to hunt them;
            and evolution said, that is good.
            And polar bear stayed by the ice and the fish, and did not move 🙂

            The balanced adult retains an inner child

            Anthony North

          9. Anthony sums it up best. And
            Anthony sums it up best. And there is a polar we can ask, his name is Iorek Byrnison of Svalbard. 😉

            It only takes a minute change in temperature to affect warm water currents. We’re already seeing climate changes due to Antarctic icemelt flowing into the warm water currents of the Pacific and South Atlantic. Most Oceanographers and Climatologists are all in agreement that this will be a very bad thing. So a frozen Arctic is definitely in our best interests.

          10. frozen
            Wel the polar bears dont eat anything when all is frozen in the winter. They hibernate. The only eat during the summer, such as it is up there.

            If it was frozen all the time, the bears would starve.

            No ?

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          11. No, they wouldn’t starve.
            No, they wouldn’t starve. Lots of Inuit up there, according to Anonymous. The polar bears hunt on the ice, where the seals gather — the frozen sea allows them to travel further to follow prey. That’s the problem right now — less ice means the polar bears have limited, reduced hunting grounds.

            I’m still dreaming of a polar bear making armour of meteoric iron …

            PS Did you write the polar bear poem yourself, Anthony?

          12. History
            Bottom line is, the Artic has undergone warming periods many, many times in the past. It wasn’t the fault of humanity in those cases, and there isn’t any proof that it would be our fault this time. Political motivations aside, the bears survived in the past, and given the protections already in place to protect them from direct human harm, there is no evidence that they will be going extinct anytime in the forseeable future.

          13. Yep
            Hi Rick,
            Sure did. And I’ll take it as a compliment that you think it’s poetry.

            I’ve decided to edit out the rest of this, which was aimed at Anonymous. It was a cheap shot, and below me, and if anyone read it, I apologise.

            The balanced adult retains an inner child

            Anthony North

          14. 150,000 Inuit
            There are about 150,000 Inuit, and probably 25,000 to 30,000 polar bears.

            So that makes the Inuit a bad candidate for prey.

            The polar bears need open water along with ice. The open water gaps in the ice allow them to travel, because they swim.

            There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that polar bear numbers are declining. Does anyone have such evidence?

            Just to speculate – perhaps the warming in the arctic allows more little baby polar bears to survive, because they don’t freeze to death. Reduced child mortality will do wonders to population grwoth.

            And when they get big enough, they will eat anything they want. Including, as Rick MG says, the occasional Inuit.

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          15. I don’t know
            [quote=earthling]

            Just to speculate – perhaps the warming in the arctic allows more little baby polar bears to survive, because they don’t freeze to death. Reduced child mortality will do wonders to population grwoth.

            [/quote]

            The mothers dig their dens from the snow, and they stay with their cubs under long periods of time nursing them thanks to all the energy stored through the ingestion of seal blubber.

            If they can’t hunt seals for whatever reasons (thinning of the ice shelf, competition with the inuits, etc) this process will be affected. And making a den in either permafrost or muddy luke-warm soil might not be such a good idea.

            As I said, I don’t think a polar bear would simply lay stll until death comes if it can no longer hunt seals. Perhaps it will move to scavenge for trash near human settlements, but that will disrupt its life cycles in ways we cannot predict. Eating trash is not as effective in energy storage as eating seal’s blubber. There will also be examples of cannibalism among the bear population, we have already seen cases on that.

            And of course there will behuman attacks. We have seen this with pumas in Californi, which of course will bring more deaths to the animal population just to “settle the score”, and because it’s not a good idea to let ananimal know what an easy prey we really are 🙂

            The warming of the poles will bring changes. Some good no doubt, but some bad aswell. In the case of the bears, a more warm climate is not nevessarily a good thing, since these animals have evolved such an efficient insulating system that they literally need to go to the ice to “cool off”! Their skin is dark and their fur is almost like fiber optics capabable of collecting and storing even the smallest amount of heat from the sun.

            Will animals with such a level of over-specialization be able to adapt to the changes we will witness in the decades to come? I honestly don’t know, but I doubt it.
            —–

            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          16. nearby bears
            What would stop polar bears from living and feeding like the big brown bears of North America and Siberia? They are almost the same species, and bears are among the most intelligent animals.

            We would get fewer romantic photographs of the sad white bear on a piece of ice. I think that is the major reason for all the hype.

            You make a good point, human encroachment could be a problem. Could be.

            But nobody in this little debate has made the point that the population is actually declining.

            —-
            The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

          17. Numbers
            We need reliable numbers, I agree.

            [quote=earthling]What would stop polar bears from living and feeding like the big brown bears of North America and Siberia? They are almost the same species, and bears are among the most intelligent animals.[/quote]

            I think you are answering your own question there. Two species competing for the same resource would undoubtedly make one prevail and the other decline.

            I even remember seeing a photograph of an apparent HYBRID between the grizzly bear and the polar bear. This I think should be studied further.

            —–
            It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
            It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

            Red Pill Junkie

          18. Pole jumping
            Hi Earthling,

            My guess is the bears would like to emigrate to the other pole, but its too far to swim, so maybe we should give them a hand. Sure some pinguins will disagree, but lots of them reside on islands anyway.

            A matter of choice;
            Intimidation, corruption and lies, or serenity, sharing and sincerity.

          19. Quote
            “That’s a quote in anyone’s dictionary.”

            That’s from the article. Whom they quote is beyond my control. Get it?

      1. On the other hand…
        I am more inclined to quote the Inuit who actually live up there, rather than the New York Times or the United Nations. Both of whom, among others, seem to be inclined to ignore that which doesn’t serve their ends.

        If only the world were so simple that we could just walk around chanting “save the polar bears” and the whole thing would actually be that simple. Alas, those pesky political agendas get in the way and complicate, skew and sometimes outright fabricate things.

      2. Inuit hunting
        I don’t think the Inuit hunt polar bears all that much.
        Too risky.

        They fish and they hunt seals and things.

        Today, they also survive to a large extent on government subsidies, and hunt in local stores.

        —-
        The cost of living has not affected its popularity.

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