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Post by louise on Jan 25, 2011 12:29:43 GMT 1
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Post by rsmith7 on Jan 25, 2011 21:01:55 GMT 1
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Post by nickrr on Jan 25, 2011 21:35:38 GMT 1
It's probably why their population is healthy and increasing And your evidence for this is ....
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Post by carnyx on Jan 25, 2011 21:50:55 GMT 1
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Post by louise on Jan 26, 2011 12:49:15 GMT 1
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Post by rsmith7 on Jan 26, 2011 13:21:04 GMT 1
Some propaganda from a lobby group - oh dear. Just like greenpeace telling us cod were an endangered species. How gullible are you?
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Post by louise on Jan 26, 2011 13:26:26 GMT 1
I feel quite sorry for people who are so cynical that they refuse to believe that anybody else could ever be acting for altrusitic reasons.
Is it because they themselves couldn't concieve of ever acting altruistically themselves?
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Post by rsmith7 on Jan 26, 2011 13:30:59 GMT 1
You couldn't be more wrong. I work un-paid as a fishermen's representative - for the last 13 years. I've become active politically (un-paid) to try and stem the flow of highly damaging tripe from the left/green movement. You still haven't stated your motivation for your green activism.
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Post by carnyx on Jan 26, 2011 15:16:05 GMT 1
Louise, I see that you have read stuff about the shrinking of the ice coverage of the Arctic, and the bad effect on the polar bears. Seeing as they swim at least as well as their prey, who are also mammals, what would the problem? Is the seal population declining? .. And also, polar bears mate with brown bears .. and so are not a separate species but merely white brown bears in fact. ( had it crossed your mind that there migh be some colour discrimination going on here? ) .Anyway, if al ice disappeared tomorrow, and then came back in a thousand years, we woud see bears recolonising the ice, and in a few generations we would see polar bears again. Now this shows us that bears are very adaptable to environmental change, and wil cope IF the arctic ice melts away. But how do you explain this? Is there really anything wrong with artic ice? www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
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Post by eamonnshute on Jan 26, 2011 15:56:18 GMT 1
Is there really anything wrong with artic ice? Yes, there is. The volume is decreasing much faster than the area, because the ice is rapidly getting thinner.The maximum volume of ice last winter was not much more than the minimum volume in summer 1980. I expect to see dramatic changes in the extent in the next few years. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Plot_arctic_sea_ice_volume.svg(link corrected)
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Post by jonjel on Jan 26, 2011 16:47:12 GMT 1
I don't wish to fall out with you Carnyx, but that simply is not true. One bear was shot a few years ago which appeared to be a hybrid between a grizzly and a polar bear.
Brown bears are a lot smaller than polar bears, grizzlies a bit closer in size.
You also mentioned that polar bears are good swimmers, so why worry about them feeding. Well they hunt on firm ground that is why, they can't chase and catch prey at sea.
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Post by carnyx on Jan 26, 2011 17:15:13 GMT 1
Ah, thanks for that .. grizzlies then.
My point was that the white bears are a subset of the 'grizzly' population .. and if the polar population is subsumed back into the main population the genetic propensity for albino 'sports' is not lost, and so populations of the polar variety will likely re-emerge when the climate is favourable.
And as their main prey, seals, come ashore anyway .. so they too will come up on the shore ( as opposed to the ice) and will not be lost as a foodsource for land-bound bears.
All this is to show that the ice-bear population is very adaptable and will not be 'lost'.
@eamonn,
Are you saying that it is the thickness of the ice rather than the coverage that matters? The graph I gave the link to, was for ice greater that 6 inches, and as you see there is little change over the years. Are you saying that 15 cm of ice will not sustain the weight of a polar bear?
(BTW were you aware that your link was to the output of a Mathematical Model, and not on a plot of measurements?)
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Post by eamonnshute on Jan 26, 2011 17:28:24 GMT 1
@eamonn, Are you saying that it is the thickness of the ice rather than the coverage that matters? The graph I gave the link to, was for ice greater that 6 inches, and as you see there is little change over the years. Are you saying that 15 cm of ice will not sustain the weight of a polar bear? My point is that if the ice continues to decline as in the past then there will be no ice at all in summer a very few years from now, which is not apparent from graphs of area. And in a few decades there could be no ice even in winter.
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Post by louise on Jan 26, 2011 17:47:23 GMT 1
There are graphs (from observation - not models) and pictures taken from space of both arctic and arctic ice extent over the last decade or so here wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/Here are a couple that show very recent vs average but there are lots more at the link.
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Post by carnyx on Jan 26, 2011 21:18:17 GMT 1
Thanks, Louise.
They all show no case for alarm, except perhaps alarming increase in the amount of Antartic ice.
(BTW perhaps we could encourage polar bears to emigrate there?)
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