Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts
The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart. Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves.
In the grim meathook future, "drowning polar bears" is going to replace the "canary in a coalmine".
Now if only there were something that people could do about all of this.
Wind power for electricity, and electric cars.
Sadly, though, it would take a coherent one world government to act in time to save the icecaps.
By the time the insurance companies decide to start applying meager economic pressure in the form of realistic increases on coastal real estate flood insurance (the kind that Trent Lott did not have) it will already be too late.
no, technologies that can only be used by a few lucky white people are not going to save the polar bears.
The point being that if there was any hope of saving the polar bears, it would involve the use of non-greenhouse gas emitting technologies by all.
well, in any case, it would have to be something other than the usual suggestions that don't scale or work for, well, anyone really. in any case, maybe we don't even need polar bears! maybe their time has passed. you never know!
Roll back Catholicism in Africa and South America, and start handing out condoms.
those countries aren't exactly bursting at the seams. the population excessiveness thing is just liberal racism dolled up in scare-tactic rhetoric. OMG TOO MANY BROWN PEOPLE THE HORROR THEY ALL NEED CONDOMS AND STERILIZATION STAT! it's so nasty and everyone acts like this is totally an ok attitude to have. UGH.
roll back rulers buying guns instead of food and let the people farm for themselves, and everyone will be fed just fine.
No, these countries aren't bursting at the seams. When they want to live like The West, that's when problems arise.
So two things need to happen: "The West" needs to learn to live on less, and Africa, South America, India, and China need to do something about their insane population growth rates so that when they get around to living on more (which they seem intent on doing) we don't have to have wars over natural resources.
But somehow this is horrible racism on my part. Boo hoo.
their population growth rates are slowing, idiot. therein lies your racism, the presumption that it's all unchecked because 'those people' can't stop having kids, when in fact in absolute terms they are having fewer and fewer children overall. so yes, your racism is disgusting and repulsive to me (not to mention unproductive in a change-the-world-for-the-better sense) and yes, the west needs to suck it up and live on less, which is totally not happening.
or little nanotechbots could come along and save us all, woo.
I don't suppose you're going to provide me with links to any data that shows that all of Asia, South American and Africa have dropped to replacement rates, eh?
The fact that you're calling me racist over this is just nuts. Would it be OK if I were to criticise some country full of white folks about their population growth rate? Or is it the act of wanting lower population growth rates altogether that's racist? If I'm going to be racist, I'd prefer it to be non-discriminatory.
Population growth rates need to drop worldwide, period. If they already are, then "yaay!". If not, it's not in The West where it needs to happen; most Western countries are hovering around the replacement rate. Almost all of the population growth rate in my country comes from immigration, for example. (I guess I should be making a comment here about the HORRIBLE INFLUX of scary brown people or something? I'm new at this being scared of brown people business. Do I have to start avoiding certain people at school?)
In conclusion, if you think it's racist to ask countries (who happen to contain brown/yellow/*-coloured people) with higher population growth rates to have lower growth rates, then you're a loon.
no, you are. i would like the human race to continue on, and 'replacement rate' is kind of a liberal myth. you cannot reasonably expect a true 1:1 birthrate to actually keep population levels healthy. much of europe is disappearing because they refuse to have children. americans want to lavish their ONE child, and then get mad because the immigrants want more children than that. you can look at france and germany and see the ugliness of the racism due to immigrants propping up their reduced populations. and you think that's how it should be? people cannot indefinitely immigrate to prop up the jerks who don't want to have kids. it's a stopgap, not anything sane.
i don't want the human race to slowly die out and if that makes me insane, well, ok. my bad for liking the human race and wanting it to continue, apparently.
Yeah, you're right - my real evil goal is the termination of the human race. Because once birthrates fall, they can never go back up again.
Retard.
well, they're not going up in europe, or the USA. you act as if cultural shifts that create antagonism among families and disincentives to breed will just magically disappear overnight, when that is not what is happening. instead, more and more people are getting shoved into the no-children mindset. i mean, you live somewhere where nobody is having any replacement levels of kids, relying instead on immigrants, and I'M the retard for noticing that this pattern is NOT IN FACT GOING AWAY BUT IS SPREADING FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRY? hah. wtfever. meh.
They didn't arise overnight, and they won't dissapear overnight. I don't know about where you are, but where I am we were raised with the gospel of overpopulation. People are encouraged not to have kids.
But if the global population was to drop back down to 1 billion, I don't think that message would survive.
I agree that it sucks that people only have 1 kid, or no kids. It seems to me that people coming out of families with 2+ kids are more able to get along in life on average, and it's nice to have a sizable family.
But we've only got so much room, and if everyone keeps having big families, antagonism among families will take the form of violence over resources. Something has to be done, and that something is having fewer children.
The replacement birthrate might never be a reality, but I'm sure we can approximate it well enough globally.
canada has almost no fucking people. the usa has like 290 million and TONS of space. most of the world is actually not too population dense overall, though the USA, canada and russia and australia+nz are extreme cases of such. we are not overpopulated as a planet, sorry you were taught incorrectly, but, well, you were.
we have plenty of room for a few billions more, although that is not particularly likely to happen since everyone is being told to not have kids in large amounts.
We do have enough room for an extra few billion. We don't have enough resources to let everyone live as we in Canada/USA/"THE WEST" do.
Are you even reading this thread, or just sort of knee-jerking along?
Ok you two, get a room.
Electricity is for white people?
Let's see Ted Steven's swim 60 miles in a fur coat.
"...having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food."
I'm too lazy to walk 10 seconds to the kitchen to get food. I wouldn't drown, I'd just sit there and starve to death.
oh, that's just the liberal media showing it's bias against the glorious energy policies of our esteemed leader. Polar bears are know to be depressed and often commit suicide like that. That is how the Intelligent Designer designed them.
OMG.
You made something funny out of something really, really awful.
I'm being tempted to post a LOST-related joke, but not only is lame, it's not as funny as this guys post.
Hm.
Well, and not that it matters, but I wouldn't get it. :)
blasphemy
(read: Good on ya)
"Could this finally explain that fucking polar bear in Lost?"
(It may have been explained already. I stopped watching because it was so fucking tedious.)
Penguins are dying because of melting ice making their journey back to their home perilous after mating. I guess we will have to have some sort of category 7 storm that decimates the whole US before the goverment does anything about global warming. ( Based on cheesy TV movie ).
Somewhere a colony of cockroaches is quietly rejoycing...
...who fucking busted out of their chair laughing?
I'm sorry. That's funny.
"Swim fat ass! SWIM!"
Pussy ass bears.
...where is the funding?