Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/14/2008 2:59:16 PM PDT by Para-Ord.45
A FEDERAL judge in Cal ifornia last month or dered the Interior De partment to decide by this Friday whether to list polar bears as a threatened species because of global warming. It's a fine chance for the Bush administration to stand up for common-sense environmentalism and sound science.
You see, polar bears are thriving - and will do so under all but the most speculative scenarios of global-warming apocalypse. Any "threatened" listing would be absurd.
The case started with a lawsuit filed by Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005. To settle it, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Interior division that administers the Endangered Species Act's land-animals provisions, proposed in December 2006 to list the bears as threatened.
...The world polar-bear population is at a modern high - and growing. Mitch Taylor, a polar-bear biologist with Canada's Federal Provincial Polar Bear Technical Committee, notes that the bears now number about 24,000 - up about 40 percent from 1974, when fears arose about the bear's ability to survive overhunting by Canadian Eskimos and aboriginals.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Global warming won’t hurt polar bears, GN says They’re “intelligent and quick to adapt to new circumstances”
Climate change is not pushing polar bears to the brink of extinction and polar bears and people will adapt to a warmer Arctic, says a wildlife director with the Government of Nunavut.
“No evidence exists that suggests that both bears and the conservation systems that regulate them will not adapt and respond to the new conditions,” says the GN’s director of wildlife research, Mitch Taylor, in a 12-page report to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Taylor emphasizes polar bears’ adaptability, saying they evolved from grizzly bears about 250,000 years ago and developed as a separate species about 125,000 years ago during a period when climate change also occurred.
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/60526/news/climate/60526_01.html
Silly to predict their demise
Starling conclusion to say they will disappear within 25 years and surprise to many researchers
May 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
by Dr. Mitchell Taylor
The Toronto Star
Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s best-known scientists and authors. That doesn’t mean what he says is correct or accurate. That was clearly demonstrated when he recently ventured into the subject of climate change and polar bears. Climate change is threatening to drive polar bears into extinction within 25 years, according to Flannery. That is a startling conclusion and certainly is a surprising revelation to the polar bear researchers who work here and to the people who live here. We really had no idea.
The evidence for climate change effects on polar bears described by Flannery is incorrect. He says polar bears typically gave birth to triplets, but now they usually have just one cub. That is wrong.
All research and traditional knowledge shows that triplets, though they do occur, are very infrequent and are by no means typical. Polar bears generally have two cubs — sometimes three and sometimes one. He says the bears’ weaning time has risen to 18 months from 12. That is wrong. The weaning period has not changed. Polar bears worldwide have a three-year reproduction cycle, except for one part of Hudson Bay for a period in the mid-1980s when the cycle was shorter.
One polar bear population (western Hudson Bay) has declined since the 1980s and the reproductive success of females in that area seems to have decreased. We are not certain why, but it appears that ecological conditions in the mid-1980s were exceptionally good.
Climate change is having an effect on the west Hudson population of polar bears, but really, there is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.
It is noteworthy that the neighbouring population of southern Hudson Bay does not appear to have declined, and another southern population (Davis Strait) may actually be over-abundant.
I understand that people who do not live in the north generally have difficulty grasping the concept of too many polar bears in an area. People who live here have a pretty good grasp of what that is like to have too many polar bears around.
This complexity is why so many people find the truth less entertaining than a good story. It is entirely appropriate to be concerned about climate change, but it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.
Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist,
Department of the Environment, Government of Nunavut, Igloolik, Nunavut
Dr. Mitchell Taylor
Government of Nunavut
Department of Environment - Wildlife Division
PO Box 209
Igloolik, (NU) X0A 0H0
CANADA
Tel: (867) -934-2051
Fax: 867-934-2058
Email: mtaylor2@gov.nu.c
we’re trying to keep another set of high voltage transmission lines off our land. Maybe we should import some polar bears.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Polar Bear Decision Day
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 2:24 PM
If Secretary of the Interior Kempthorne announces that the polar bear is now officially “threatened,” the impacts on the American economy will be extreme and almost certainly not anticipated or understood by the public at large.
Background column number one here.
Background column number two is here.
The Endangered Species Act operates in a very unaccountable fashion, and if the polar bear is listed as a “threatened” species, every federal action —the grant of a permit, the award of a grant— that leads even indirectly to the emission of greenhouse gases will come under at least the theoretical review of the United States Fish & Wildlife Service pursuant to Section 7 of the ESA. MSM continues to report the controversy as though its impact will be limited to the arctic region, when in fact it is as likely to delay or destroy economic activity in any part of the lower 48 as it is in Alaska.
The immediate response of impacted industries and consumers should be a series of test cases to force the delineation of the reach of the Act’s application to the polar bear and the gases allegedly causing the destruction of its ice habitat, test cases brought in jurisdictions most reasonable on such matters. Allowing the ESA to slowly ensnare industries previously unregulated by its commands via suits in jurisdictions cheryy-picked by environmental activists would be the worst possible result.
UPDATE: The bear is listed. We are all officially polar bear predators now.
AND
As I noted a fortnight ago, the listing of the bear is just the first step in an elaborate dance that will result in the imposition of extraordinarily expensive and delay-inducing permitting requirements on any industrial or commercial activity that (1) requires a federal permit of any sort and (2) emits greenhouse gases.
But don’t believe me. Believe the proponents of the listing. In a candid and detailed statement of the objectives behind the listing push, the Executive Director of Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming at the National Wildlife Federation, John Kostyack, and Professor Dan Rohlf of the Lewis & Clark Law School have laid out the potential far-reaching impacts of a listing. Their article, “Conserving Species in an Era of Global Warming,” appeared in the most recent issue of the Environmental Law Reporter. It should be read by anyone who relies on a federal permit to go about their business, whether that business is oil exploration, gasoline refining, road construction, farming, grazing, mining or home building. Kostyack and Rohlf first review what they see to be the climate change perils confronting many species, including the polar bear, and then chart how the Federal Endangered Species Act (”FESA”) could be brought to bear upon the issue of global warming via the section of the FESA that compels “consultations” between any part of the federal government proposing to issue a permit that could impact a threatened or endangered species and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service:
The procedural and substantive protections of Section 7 will almost certainly continue to play a vital role in any future framework for conserving imperiled species. Its provisions require federal agencies to assess their actions and consult with the Services on actions that may affect listed species or designated critical habitat in order to ensure that federal activities are not likely to jeopardize listed species or destroy or adversely modify critical habitat. Today the FWS [Fish & Wildlife Service] and the NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service] conduct thousands of consultations each year. With scientists increasingly able to link climate change with specific threats to imperiled species, far-reaching questions about the future of Section 7 arise. For example, now that the NMFS has listed two coral species as threatened due largely to climate change, and the FWS appears likely to do the same for polar bears, what sort of federal actions “may affect” these animals and their habitats? It is clear that the impacts of climate change, such as disrupted hydrological cycles, must be addressed in ESA consultations. But must the Services also assess the causes of global warming for their effects on listed species? Given that projects releasing GHG [greenhouses gases] will exacerbate climate change no matter where they occur in relation to listed species, must proponents of every single federal project causing increases in GHG concentrations consult with the Services regarding impacts on coral species, polar bears and other species listed due to climate change? Would this consultation duty apply to future permits for construction or would it also reach continued operation of federal projects? Indeed, one can think of thousands of federal activities throughout the country —or the globe— that facilitate increased GHG emissions and thus may affect listed species at risk of extinction in part due to climate change. Will it be necessary to exponentially increase Section 7 consultations? Is this practical or even possible?
Whether “practical or even possible,” you can be assured that various environmental groups will follow the listing of the polar bear with a series of test cases under the citizen standing suit provisions of the FESA designed to oblige all federal agencies issuing permits to anyone whose business involves the release of GHG to stop those permits unless and until Section 7 “consultations” are carried out with the Service. Professor Rohlf and I have been on opposite sides of FESA litigation for most of the past ten years. He and his colleagues are superb litigators, and their roll-out of suits to enforce the listing will be swift and comprehensive. Expect the suits to appear first in the district courts of the Ninth Circuit where the FESA has enjoyed its most expansive interpretations. But the cases won’t stay there. Though the polar bears are in the arctic, any federal permit leading to emissions that could affect their ice will be subject to new federal scrutiny.
Thus any lease of federal land and any federal highway project will be the target of the advocates for urgent reduction in carbon emissions. They will argue that courts must immediately enjoin any federal permit unless and until the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service has reviewed the permit and suggested mitigations —including redesign or compensatory carbon offsets. The avalanche of lawsuits waiting in the wings all come with the promise of attorneys fees awards as well, guaranteeing that the FESA litigation cycle will never end.
There is absolutely no evidence that says polar bears MUST hunt from the ice. I have watched nature shows of polar bears hunting seals FROM THE SHORELINE.
it is time to start issuing hunting tags on liberals...they all need to be killed before they totally ruin the world, plain and simple.....
Polar bears are NOT an endangered species.
Pay your 10$ a gallon gas (before the tax hikes.)
Bump for reference
Bump for reference
Hilarious, the USA is destroyed from within, not without or from foreign enemies who could never defeat the States on any battlefield.
Americans legislate the end of America.
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