Our World and Everything in It

“We were in fully open ocean, dozens of miles from the ice pack, in a sort of half-fog at what passes for dusk around here, when a 10 foot wide chunk of ice flowed past. It was visible for maybe 15 seconds - the only ice we’d seen for days. On it: a polar bear, just drifting wherever the ocean wanted to take him” http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2008/2008-02-11-01.asp.

I quoted that to say this. As the polar bear waits to get on the Endangered Species List, a decision that comes from the Department of the Interior, the polar bear’s habitat continues to disintegrate. It is practically wide-open seas according to the same article, and “the polar ice cap has reached its lowest extent in recorded history.” The summer Arctic may be ice-free as soon as 2040 and polar bear populations will decrease by two thirds. Out of an estimated 22,000 bears, that means over 14,500 polar bears will die. The one that floated by the Coast Guard Cutter is just one example that they won’t be afforded a quick death.

Many animals are at the mercy of the Department of the Interior lately, the wolves, and now the polar bears. The polar bear’s biggest and most volatile habitat is in the Chukchi Sea. Despite an outcry from native Eskimos, environmental groups, animal welfare organizations, a lawsuit, and citizens from around the world, the Chukchi Oil leases are going through as per the Dept. of the Interior. Royal Dutch Shell, and Conoco Phillips, you know the oil company that is supposedly investing in a green future like BP, plan to bid on the leases.
 
According to a Wall Street Journal Article Conoco Phillips said that “listing the polar bear as threatened ‘is not warranted’ based on the bears’ current population numbers. Listing them as threatened ‘will have an adverse impact on the oil and gas industry and people that live in the Arctic.’ Well I feel real sorry for the oil and gas industry, don’t you? Exxon Mobil netted $75000 per minute in 2006 and we should feel for the oil and gas industry and the heck with the polar bears? We’ll be on that soon-to-be extinct list too if ignoring ethics in favor of money, money, money keeps up.
 
The idea here is prevention. There are 22,000 bears, the Arctic is already open water so bear numbers will soon be declining rapidly without frozen land to walk and hunt. The Dept. of the Interior should put the bear on the list immediately to stop a catastrophic loss of most of that population, but waits instead using the bear’s current numbers to validate the delay. Meanwhile, the Dept. of Interior rushes to OK the auction of some 30 million acres in one the most pristine parts of the sea, a major polar bear habitat, for oil drilling?

I’m sorry but in a business situation the Department of the Interior’s single authority in both the protection of a clearly endangered species of animal like the polar bear and the very lucrative sale of the polar bear’s habitat for the purpose of drilling for oil presents a conflict of interest. And the delay in adding the polar bear to the Endangered List is an obvious morally unethical decision by a dubious Secy. of Interior, Dirk Kempthorne.

For Kempthorne, Conoco Phillips, and anyone else like President Bush that doesn’t appear to understand the English language, the word endangered means: exposed to danger, in peril. ENDANGERED DOES NOT MEAN ALREADY DEAD! The polar bear is in danger, and definitely in peril with a ruthless administration like this one.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120208255421639257.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.
http://world-wire.com/news/0802060002.html

This week the senate will vote whether to allow guns in national parks. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but that by itself ruins the idea of a “park” to me. So I’m strolling through the park enjoying the peace and tranquility but hear gunshots instead. Was it a misfire; did someone get shot; is someone poaching? So much for the organic feel I get from the word “park” knowing that in the deepest areas of the woods a real nut gets to carry a gun, shoot someone that happens by, and bury them all in one neat tidy place. OK, a little dramatic, but it still doesn’t seem right. 

Gun legislation points to the NRA and sure enough they are pushing this Coburn amendment. Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican wants to allow state law rather than federal law to govern the carrying and transportation of firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges, according to (ENS) Environmental News Service today. Already I see 50 different gun laws. Even people that want to carry a gun to a park will be confused. I realize Republicans favor states authority and less federal rule, but too many different rules are a reason this is not feasible. And why carry a gun at all? I don’t get it? This looks suspiciously like illegal hunting where you’re only guilty if you’re caught. And the only thing raising a ruckus relative to illegal hunting right now is wolf hunting. This amendment will obviously encourage opportunistic poaching. Curious.

What’s more peculiar about this amendment is that there is no reason offered as to why carrying a gun in a national park is necessary or relevant to anything since hunting is either controlled or prohibited in the parks. The ENS article went on to say:

On February 1, the Association of National Park Rangers, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, and the U.S. Park Rangers Lodge, Fraternal Order of Police wrote a joint letter to U.S. senators urging them to reject the Coburn amendment. ‘Senator Coburn’s amendment could dramatically degrade the experience of park visitors and put their safety at risk if units of the National Park System were compelled to follow state gun laws,’ warned the rangers and retirees.

The ENS article also said that the Coburn amendment actually “forbids the Interior Secretary from enforcing ‘any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm in any unit of the National Park System or the National Wildlife Refuge System…,’ and that On December 14, 2007, a group of 39 Republican senators along with eight Democrats wrote to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne urging repeal of these regulations because they are ‘confusing, burdensome and unnecessary.’” These senators think it’s unnecessary to have laws that prohibit carrying loaded firearms where people hike, bike, and camp? One standardized federal law is confusing as compared to 50 different state laws? And the federal laws are burdensome to whom, the NRA? Hmm.
 
That just about says it all doesn’t it? We have a curious amendment that allows the states to do what they want in national parks like carry loaded guns while the federal government is told to butt out. The people who spend most of their lives in national parks, the rangers, write a letter advising against Coburn’s amendment, that it is not a good thing for the parks. But in the meantime the NRA gets 47 senators to urge the federal government to get rid of its regulations relative to possessing a firearm anyway. Wonder how much this cost the NRA? If this amendment passes it will cost the parks their reputation for tranquility and peace, and a place of REFUGE for wildlife that’s for sure, not to mention campers. It’s probably going to cost something else down the line in the way of natural resources too.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2008/2008-02-12-091.asp.
 
 

Today, June 5, is World Environment Day. The theme is “Melting Ice – a Hot Topic” in support of International Polar Year, which runs from 2007 to 2008 according to the website Environment news Service, http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2007/2007-06-05-03.asp. Tromso, Norway will host the event this year.

Melting polar ice is worse than we think. The article went on to say that the actual melt rate of glaciers into the Gulf of Alaska has nearly doubled since 1995. We should all be concerned, very concerned. Its effects will be felt by people in the tropics, temperate climates and large cities around the globe not only people living in Artic or ice capped mountainous regions because an estimated 1.5 billion people are dependent on water from rivers impacted by melting snow and ice. That would be our Northwestern states. The ice caps in Glacier National Park are disappearing at an alarming rate. The flow of water from yearly spring melts is what sustains the tributaries that maintain the water supplies of many cities out West. The increased rate of melting will eventually see the last of the water from those mountaintops and then what?

About 300 million people are dependent on snow and ice melting in periods with low precipitation. In Central Asia, Peru and Chile, large land areas are completely reliant on melting water from snow and glaciers. And melting snow and glaciers on the mountains of Asia alone could affect about 40 percent of Earth’s population, the report warns. The Norwegian Minister of the Environment said that we have started an accelerating process and do not know its outcome. Norway is one of the countries in an area that will see the first results of ocean levels rising and gobbling up shorelines.

As the ice and snow melt, avalanches occur that dump into glacial lakes causing the water to stir up and levels to rise. Many of these lakes are unstable with large areas of methane gas at the bottom. The report explains that rising temperatures, coupled with the thawing of frozen land or permafrost, are leading to the creation of new lakes and the expansion of existing lakes in places like Siberia, which are releasing bubbles of methane, estimated to be 43,000 years old.

The first global warming event that scientists have been able to reliably trace, took place 40 million years ago and was caused by the release of too much methane gas when the earth was still unstable. I looked into this quite a while ago and the most frightening aspect was that the climate temperature only rose a ½ degree and slowly over a period of a thousand years compared to what we are experiencing now with a rapid change of possibly 1 degree in a little over a hundred years. The event caused the earth to incinerate.

Make no mistake. This is not the same temperature change we experience on a daily basis where a few days ago it was 85 degrees and today it is 66 degrees. This is about over all climate change across the entire world that drastically affects everything. So the next time you hear someone like Regis Philbin say, “One degree, I’m really scared” and make fun of it on TV, don’t rely on his or her common logic or should I say stupidity. It does not apply here and is not about the temperature fluctuation we experience seasonally or on a daily basis.

With less snow and sea ice the surrounding land will absorb more heat from the sun and polar oceans that will speed up the process even more. Anyone that skis the slopes in the winter knows about the reflected sunlight off the snow. With no snow the sunlight is simply absorbed. Sunglasses are a necessity and is it just me or is the sun getting to be sickening in strength? I can remember when I was young; it was possible to look directly at the sun for at least a few seconds. Now the glare is simply too strong to forego sunglasses when it’s a sunny day. Is this an effect from the loss of the reflective layer in our artic poles that protected us for so long? I do know that pets that are outside all of the time suffer cataracts earlier than pets kept indoors. I don’t doubt that in the future there may be warnings about keeping your animals outdoors at all as the ice and polar caps melt and the reflective process decreases. After that it may not be long before we are asked to stay indoors as much as possible. What kind of life will that be?