Polar bear swam for 9 days straight looking for ice

[polly7]

Polar bear swam for 9 days straight looking for ice

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110126/polar-bear-swim-110126/

"A female polar bear swam continuously for more than nine days in just-above-freezing water -- travelling almost 700 kilometres -- in search of Arctic sea ice, researchers have found.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey studying the bears in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, worry it's an example of the effect of climate change on the animals.

The bear lost 22 per cent of its body mass and her yearly cub died on the journey."

[RSillsbee]

1. I have a very hard time believing anything

That isn't a fish could survive a 9 day swim

[polly7]

5. '687' kilometres

“The extraordinary long distance swimming ability of polar bears, which we confirm here, may help them cope with reduced Arctic sea ice,” researchers concluded.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/928891--polar-bear-swims-687-km-in-search-of-ice

[Sal Minella]

8. So, the polar bear that swam to Iceland and was shot on arrival --

do you think that was some sort of mass hysteria optical illusion?

You think polar bears have not evolved to swim great distances?

[RSillsbee]

10. Great distances? Yes

nine days in the water ? No, sorry

If she only swam a mile it's still a tragedy

[polly7]

12. Which bear study have you been part of? Can you point out ice masses

the bears could have rested at along the journey? Apparently there were none.

The report was reviewed by at least one expert studying the bears for years.



"Derocher reviewed the paper for the U.S. Geological Survey before it was published in Polar Biology. The findings, based around GPS tracking of a bear in the Beaufort Sea in Alaska, were the centre of a BBC report this week.


The report said the bear was in the water for 232 consecutive hours in temperatures ranging from 2 C to 6 C.


Derocher is part of research groups tracking polar bears by similar means in western Hudson Bay off Manitoba, the Fox Basin in Nunavut and on the Canadian side of the Beaufort Sea."



Read more: http://www.canada.com/technology/Polar+bear+swam+nine+days+straight+search+Report/4174289/story.html#ixzz1CFiFpxKP

[FBaggins]

14. Bears have trouble using a GPS while swimming.

(And those darn things aren't updated frequently enough anyway).

Spending a long time in the water doesn't mean that there isn't any ice around... just that the gaps were large enough to get lost in when your eyes are only a foot or so above the water level.

In theory, the bear could have passed a number of significant ice masses on the journey and just missed them.

[lillypaddle]

2. Damn. So sad.

:cry:

[dmr]

3. Absolutely heartbreaking. n/t

[xchrom]

4. very sad. nt

[HereSince1628]

6. Nominated as the new symbol of the American worker!

Perfectly adapted to a world that no longer exists, betting and losing everything important to them in a super marathon of hopeless searching for an opportunity to make a living. And in the end being told that all this was their fault...mammals are so last century...they should have been a shark or a skua. Sharks are competitive and in this environment are doing great on wall street. While skuas make a great living eating other peoples babies.

[Sal Minella]

7. Excellent analogy.

If you want to have a financially secure life in the United States now, be careful that you get born into a Wall Street banking family.

Otherwise, be prepared to exhaust yourself laboring for a corporation that will throw you out the door the minute they find a way to ship your job to China.

Heard Chris Hedges on NPR this morning -- He was disgusted by the "business speak" in Obama's SotU because he thinks the business of government should be looking after the long-term welfare its citizens, not toadying to the demands of transnational corporations.

Hedges thinks government should make sure the citizens have educational facilities, public transportation, etc. What a concept.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. I like Hedges very much. He has a wonderful perspective.

[Sal Minella]

13. I just heard that sound byte on NPR again -- Hedges said it's the

government's job to establish regulations that ensure clean water and safe food for the populace, not to smooth the path for corporate interests.

He described three kinds of capitalism --
Penny capitalism: selling squash at the farmer's market --
Community capitalism: businesses whose owners sit on the school board and donate to the local causes, and
Corporate capitalism, which has "hollowed out" our country and left us all in peril, with the guy who works at Wal-Mart paying taxes to bail out the Wall Street banks.

I need to read this guy -- can you recommend something?

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Gladly.

http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Hedges/e/B001IR1G16/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1296148694&sr=1-1

also: google Chris Hedges articles, there are lots of archives in the web magazines he writes for.

wiki will give a bio of him, which points out that he has spent most of his life outside of the USA, which is one reason he has the ability to see it clearly, I believe.

edited to add this short bio:

Chris Hedges was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio.
He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism.

Hedges is the author of the bestseller American Fascists and National Book Critics Circle finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lannan Literary Fellow and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University.

[Sal Minella]

16. Thanks -- good info! n/t

[Lint Head]

9. At least Palin didn't shoot it from a helicopter while it was mourning the loss of it's cub.

[bananas]

17. The only way to stop this is large-scale renewables - desert solar and off-shore wind

as well as roof-top solar and all the rest.