first a disclaimer: I do not claim to follow news closely nor know what is true and what is media lies. with that said, this morning on talk radio all the stations were talking about the polar bears. I guess they have been declared a 'threatened species'. So, tell me what you think-what is this all about?? I'll tell you what I heard-a little of both sides of the idea.
Global warming is real and happening right now! a couple populations of bears that are tracked are starting to decline because their ice is melting! We need to do something now to protect them. They are a warning sign of the bad things to come if global warming continues!
The polar bear population is up 500% from about 30 years ago. They are doing fine. The polar ice melts and refreezes a lot over history-none of the times due to humans, and they seem to survive. Also, the endangered animal organization-in charge of saving these threatened/endangered animals (I don't remember their name) has failed 99% of the time in helping an endangered species survive.
Okay-so, whether all that is true is up to you to tell. What's the deal? are we all super-heating? are we all going to melt away? or is this just a desire to be fanatical and get someone's agenda met when in reality nothing is changing and all is well??
YOU TELL ME! (that means COMMENT!! And feel free to take the discussion in any direction desired...)
4 comments:
An important topic, regardless of which side of the fence one occupies. I sort of believe the following:
We should be good stewards of the earth's resources.
It might be warming, but the data is too short term to really know much about the causes and consequences.
There are some things that we can be pretty sure are not good, like cutting down all the rain forests or pouring carcinogens into waterways, or draining the aquifers. Let's avoid these.
There are some things we can be pretty sure are good to do: e.g., promoting "green" construction and manufacturing, promoting sustainable agricultural practices throughout the world, using low flow showers, and so forth. Let's do these as much as possible.
Materialism can drive waste and excess, which are not good.
And I'm in favor of polar bears, even if they'd just as soon eat me.
Just a thousand years ago the people of Greenland could farm! (It's icey now.) Then about 400 years later there was the mini-Ice Age that lasted a couple hundred years, I think. Hmm...But what about today? Have we done anything to truly affect the temperature? I don't think we know yet.
The polar bears did a lot better after we outlawed hunting them regardless of the amount of ice. Hmm...
One thing I'm pretty sure of is that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. That's just bad science.
Overall, I haven't yet seen conclusive evidence that humans are affecting warming (but it seems we do affect the ozone layer - not sure), but I have seen evidence that we can affect mammal populations by overhunting, like the whales, for another example.
Well, all I know is that polar bears do really well here in the Tucson zoo - and they have no ice here. There is a sign outside their exhibit that says they do great here because it's a dry climate.
So, though we might want to worry about global warming and do something about it, I am not overly concerned about the polar bears losing some ice. But what do I know?
I agree with your dad; it's an important topic no matter what. We should just relocate the polar bears to the southwest - we seem to have happy ones here in ABQ's zoo, too - and wear more sunscreen. I can't remember which of my friends commented recently that the environmental scientists, particularly the gov't ones, are reevaluating their previous data to make a different stance on global warming: it's not as bad we thought. Well, I don't know if that's conspiracy theory talking or what, but I do believe we need to go green regardless of what scientists say.
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