Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

foxfire :
there isn't much hunting of polar bears taking place any more (but there is still some hunting by natives permitted) .
their living grounds are simply shrinking rapidly , that seems to be the same problem .
somewhat similar to some native populations losing their traditonal living space in brazil , the pacific islands , in northern canada ... and other areas .
hbg

Are polar bears endangered?
Polar bears are a potentially threatened species rather than an endangered one. A threatened species is one that could easily become endangered. The major threat to the polar bear is climate change. Other threats include pollution, poaching, and industrial disturbances. Hunting could become a threat if populations are not well managed.

Btw, the Russians, Canadians, and Norwegians, are the only other countries with polar bears; they all confirm our data.

okie wrote:

What does the USGS have to do with polar bears? Just wondering. Maybe they do, but I am not aware that polar bears are their field of responsibility.

Seems, they are spending money for a lot of they aren't responsibil.

My career was geological in nature,

My career was geological in nature, and I spent half my working life studying materials from the USGS, and studying polar bears seems to me to be straying from the original mission of the agency.

The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility.

okie wrote:

My career was geological in nature, and I spent half my working life studying materials from the USGS, and studying polar bears seems to me to be straying from the original mission of the agency.

Quote:

The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility.

(from wiki)

I think, they do exactly that, what similar societies do in other countries .... and what they studied at university :wink:

Ancient global warming was jarring, not subtle, study finds
By Robert Lee Hotz, Times Staff Writer
January 5, 2007

Foreshadowing potential climate chaos to come, early global warming caused unexpectedly severe and erratic temperature swings as rising levels of greenhouse gases helped transform Earth, a team led by researchers at UC Davis said Thursday.

The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

"It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "Should we expect similar but faster climate behavior in the future? One has to question whether that is where we are headed."

The provocative insight into planetary climate change counters the traditional view that global warming could be gradual and its regional effects easily anticipated.

The late Paleozoic deglaciation is the vegetated Earth's only recorded icehouse-to-greenhouse transition, yet the climate dynamics remain enigmatic. By using the stable isotopic compositions of soil-formed minerals, fossil-plant matter, and shallow-water brachiopods, we estimated atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and tropical marine surface temperatures during this climate transition. Comparison to southern Gondwanan glacial records documents covariance between inferred shifts in pCO2, temperature, and ice volume consistent with greenhouse gas forcing of climate. Major restructuring of paleotropical flora in western Euramerica occurred in step with climate and pCO2 shifts, illustrating the biotic impact associated with past CO2-forced turnover to a permanent ice-free world.

The Earth's climate is not constant, and has experienced major changes in the past on all timescales. The causes of these changes, although still incompletely understood, vary according to the timescale considered. Some of the most important causal mechanisms include continental drift, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters, volcanic activity and solar variations. Solar variations have been invoked to explain climatic change on almost all timescales from 1 to 109 yr.