Free Republic

Here’s my new idea for getting rid of hippies. Let’s put out this announcement: Due to increased global warming, polar bears are increasingly scared and sad. The only solution is to give them hugs. Thus, as citizens of the earth, we need to go out and hug polar bears now. So just go up to them and start hugging. They may bear their teeth, swing their paws, and roar, but that’s just polar bear for “I’m scared and need a hug!” If you are too intimidated to hug an adult polar bear, at least hug a baby polar bear then....

What's going on at the Copenhagen Conference? Here's one of the days activities from week one. LECTURE ON SAFE PRACTICE FOR RESCUING POLAR BEARS: WHAT NOT TO DO! (This is important, pay attention!)

These are not photoshopped images! These photos were taken by a tourist who witnessed a large male adult polar bear eating a cub in northern Canada. The large polar bear had separated a baby cub from its mother then killed and tore it before the bear eats the cub.

http://www.the-whiteboard.com/ A Polar Bear Doing the News

WINNIPEG — Manitoba is spending more money to upgrade a polar bear jail in Churchill. Conservation Minister Bill Blaikie says the province is spending $105,000 to improve the jail’s walls and main entrance. The compound is used to house wayward polar bears that get too close to the town or return to the community after being scared away.

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

Youngsters in Churchill are warned not to dress in furry white costumes, to steer clear of baited traps stuffed with seal meat and to listen for the tell-tale sound of fireworks. That's because these candy-seekers have more to worry about than ghosts and goblins. They need to avoid a different kind of predator on Halloween - the polar bear. School children get a visit from the polar bear patrol team to go over safety tips. On the day of Halloween, several conservation officers take to the sky in a helicopter to see if there are any bears nearby. As dusk...

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

Did somebody say lunch?             By RICHARD MORIARTY Published: Today     THIS hungry polar bear didn't need a second invitation to pop in for lunch after smelling it being prepared on a tourist ship in the Arctic. The beast stuck its head through the porthole after smelling cauliflower soup being heated up as the boat stopped at an ice flow close to the island of Svalbard, midway between Norway and the North Pole.   Close encounter ... tourists get a rare close-up with a polar bear  Luckily wildlife photographer Andy Rouse was one of 12...

The Care Bears Project by: Sarah Carlsruh, September 22, 2009 Is global warming killing the polar bears? In May 2008, the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) list listed the polar bear as a threatened species. However, “some scientists argue that polar bear populations actually have increased since hunting restrictions were initiated in the early 1970s,” reported CNSNews on September 16th. According to the World Wildlife Fund, an international organization that works to protect endangered species, the population patterns of the approximately 20 distinct polar bear populations in existence do not show a necessarily temperature-linked decline. American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted...

A photographer who tracked down one of the only expanding populations of polar bears in the world was rewarded for his efforts by a series of spectacular images of the animals in their natural habitat.. Steve Kaslowski took the pictures during an expedition to Norway's remote Svalbard archipelago last month. The fact that he managed to capture several different bears on camera has been seen as the latest evidence that Svalbard's population is on the increase. Wild otter makes nightly visits to officeMarine mammal expert and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) spokesperson, Dr Tom Arnbom, 50, from Stockholm, Sweden, thinks the...

It's a good time to be a polar bear. Unusually cool temperatures in the northern climes last winter produced thicker-than-usual polar ice. This gave the lucky bears an extra two weeks to roam the ice floes to hunt ringed seals. As a result, adult bears are better fed and more cubs are surviving their first year. The bears will go into the winter with greater energy stores, which will mean a better chance of survival and even more cubs. ~snip~ The global-warming religion is highly resistant to facts. This came home to us recently when Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat,...

We made the brief music video of chimps, polar bears, zebras, elephants and more at the Baltimore Zoo. We recommend the zoo to anyone visiting Baltimore. Watch video.

Energy: With Ahab-like determination, environmentalists have once again blocked oil exploration in the American Arctic. They may just have succeeded in putting the American economy on ice.On Friday, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals Court panel in Washington, D.C., struck down the Bush administration's five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing off Alaska's northern coast. The plan was vacated, the panel ruled, because of allegedly insufficient environmental review because its "environmental sensitivity rankings are irrational." What is irrational is that despite a more than three-decade long record of environmental sensitivity at Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere, and despite booming polar...

Environmentalists and the media have successfully bamboozled half the populace and every school child in America into believing large numbers of polar bears are starving and drowning in the Arctic because of global warming. But it's obviously not even close to being true. How do we know this? Because if even just one emaciated drowned polar bear's body had been fished from Arctic waters in the last five years, we'd have seen its sorry carcass a thousand times on TV and on the covers of Time and Vanity Fair. By now the poor dead bear would have been given a...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

Alaska polar bear numbers declining ... There was an estimated 0.3% annual decline in the polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea between 2001 and 2007, with the total numbers likely hovering between 1,397 and 1,526 animals, according to the draft assessments.

The Endangered Species Act 'is not the appropriate tool for us to deal with what is a global issue,' Interior Secretary Salazar says in announcing that the Bush-era policy on emissions will stand. Reporting from Washington -- The Interior Department on Friday let stand a Bush administration policy barring the federal government from using the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population as a reason to crack down on global warming, upsetting environmentalists and cheering oil and gas companies. The decision means the government cannot use the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions -- even though Interior...

This is the terrifying moment a woman was attacked by a polar bear after jumping into its zoo enclosure. The 32-year-old leapt over bars at Berlin Zoo during the bears' feeding time yesterday. Despite six zookeepers' efforts to distract the four predators kept in the enclosure, the woman was bitten several times on her arms and legs. The brave keepers eventually managed to push the bear away and pull the woman to safety. She was bitten by one of the four older polar bears in the enclosure and not by the famous Knut, who took Germany by storm as a...

The World Wildlife Fund is condemning Nunavut for maintaining its polar bear hunt quota in the Baffin Bay area, warning that boycotts may follow the decision. CBC News revealed this week that Environment Minister Olayuk Akesuk accepted a recommendation from the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board not to change this season's polar bear quota for the Baffin Bay area, despite concerns from government officials about overhunting. "This is an unfortunate, huge mistake of global significance," Peter Ewins, conservation director with World Wildlife Fund Canada, told CBC News on Wednesday. "There will be major global pressure on Inuit and Canada and Nunavut...

She looks a little rough, but the Assiniboine Park Zoo's polar bear Debby, famous for being the oldest living polar bear in the world, is dealing better than expected with health issues that threatened her life earlier this year, zoo officials said Thursday. Zookeepers feared the worst for the 41-year-old after a series of strokes over several months started taking its toll earlier this year. Officials informed the public about Debby's ailing health in August so people who enjoy seeing her could return for one more visit. Debby's keeper, Bob Sydor, said Friday that the bear's weight is a continuing...

<p>AP) -- Nine polar bears were observed in one day swimming in open ocean off Alaska's northwest coast, an increase from previous surveys that may indicate warming conditions are forcing bears to make riskier, long-distance swims to stable sea ice or land.</p>

The state of Alaska has sued the U.S. government, arguing that listing polar bears as a threatened species will hurt Alaskan oil and gas exploration, fisheries and tourism. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, seeks the withdrawal of a May 14 decision to list the big Arctic bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because climate change is melting their sea ice habitat. "We believe that the ... decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a statement. Polar bears...

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today the State of Alaska has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This action follows written notice given more than 60 days ago to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior and Director Dale Hall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the regulation listing the polar bear as threatened be withdrawn.“We believe that the Service’s decision to list...

A polar bear that swam more than 200 miles through near-freezing water to reach Iceland was shot by local police - just in case it posed a danger to humans. The death of the bear, thought to be the first to reach Iceland in about 15 years, caused a public outcry from animal lovers, the Guardian reported. A police spokesperson said that it would not have been possible to sedate the bear. "There was fog up in the hills and we took the decision to kill the bear before it could disappear into the fog," police spokesman Petur Bjornsson. Iceland’s...

Alaska Suing U.S. Gov't over extra Polar-Bear Safeguards Written by Reuters Thursday, 22 May 2008 The state of Alaska is suing the U.S. government to stop it listing the polar bear as a threatened species. Gov. Sarah Palin says an endangered-species designation will slow development in her state. The Republican governor has argued that the ice-dependent bear, the first mammal granted Endangered Species Act listing because of global warming, does not need additional protections, as mandated by U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. " We believe that the listing was unwarranted and that it's unprecedented to list a currently healthy...

SPECIES STATUS: Unreliable data, threat to energy development cited. By DAN JOLING The Associated Press The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday. She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.

US lists polar bear as threatened species By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago Government officials say the Interior Department has decided to protect the polar bear as a threatened species because of global warming. The officials told The Associated Press the bears are threatened by the decline in Arctic sea ice. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement was to come from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. He scheduled a news conference Wednesday. The action comes a day before a court-imposed deadline on deciding whether the bear should be put under the protection of...

January 25, 2008 Dear President Bush: On behalf of Property Rights Alliance (PRA), I write to urge you to halt the movement to list the polar bear as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This move, proposed by Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, would mark the first time a species is added to the ESA due to global warming. As you know, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 remains in dire need of reform. In over thirty years, the success rate of its main objective, to promote species recovery, was less than one percent. The original...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Department of the Interior wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in one of the animals' two U.S. habitats. The Interior Department on Jan. 9 missed a deadline for a final decision, and three conservation groups sued. In the government response Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review of the proposed listing. A spokeswoman for the Center for Biological...

Knut, the once-cute celebrity polar bear turned vicious killer, is at the center of a controversy over his brutal slaughter of ten carp at the Berlin Zoo. The massive polar bear, who has lived at the zoo since birth, apparently fished the carp out of the moat surrounding him and ripped them to shreds in front of several disgusted zoo patrons. One of Germany's top newspapers, Bild, ran the headline "Knut Embroiled in Carp Scandal," and featured an article which quoted animal rights groups who criticized zoo officials for placing live animals within Knut's reach.

Stuart Brown describes Norbert Rosing's striking images of a wild polar bear coming upon tethered sled dogs in the wilds of Canada 's Hudson Bay:The photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of his dogs when the polar bear wandered in, but The Polar Bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs.

Germany's celebrity polar bear Knut has triggered a new controversy by fishing out 10 live carp from his moat and killing them in front of visitors. Critics say Berlin Zoo should not have put live fish inside Knut's enclosure. But German media report that the carp were put there to eat up algae. There is speculation that hand-reared Knut killed the carp just for fun. A new polar bear cub - Flocke - made her public debut at Nuremberg Zoo on Tuesday, shown live on television. The zoo is expecting up to 25,000 visitors daily, eager to see Flocke (German...

Citizens United Proudly Announces: Don't Trust the Polar Bear: A Parody Ad The Polar Bears are now candidates for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Some environmental groups are claiming that the Polar Bears are in danger of extinction caused by future global warming. This is dangerous and possibly an extremely costly mistake. Currently global population levels of these mammoth bears are healthy. Not only that, but their population has doubled since 1964. In the 1960's population levels hovered near 10,000, but today they number as many as 25,000. The U.S. even produced a study where they found that polar...

Environmentalists welcomed a bill introduced Thursday by the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that would delay the sale of land in Alaska for oil exploration. They believe the Department of Interior has delayed classifying the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act until after they can sell this land, which is also polar bear habitat. "The only thing keeping pace with the melting of the sea ice is the breakneck speed with which the Department of the Interior is rushing to approve oil and gas activities in polar bear habitat," said Kassie Siegel,...

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Citing the complexity of the decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday it would not meet a deadline for a recommendation on listing polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming under the federal Endangered Species Act. The deadline for a listing decision by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is Wednesday. A listing could trigger restrictions on development that affect polar bears or their habitat. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency hopes to have a recommendation within weeks so that Kempthorne can announce his decision within...

I saw that Coca-Cola is promoting the movie [<a href="http://zenit.org/article-21008?l=english">What Every Parent Should Know About "The Golden Compass"</a>], and I wrote to them to express my feelings about it -- including mentioning that the villains are called "The Magisterium" in the movie. Here is the response I got: "We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your concerns. "The Golden Compass movie is a story about friendship, love, loyalty, tolerance, courage and responsibility. This movie also provides an opportunity for Coca-Cola to help raise awareness about climate change and the perilous state of the polar bear. "We do not believe that...

Governor Sarah Palin on Friday called on Congressman Brad Miller to use scientific information, not political rhetoric, to set important public policy issues. Miller recently tried to undermine the State of Alaska's April 2007 comments on the proposed listing of polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. He attempted to discredit one of 54 studies the State had cited. The study was one of many supporting Alaska's position that polar bears should not be listed. The State concluded the best available scientific and commercial data do not demonstrate that the polar bear is likely to become endangered in...

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- The show is over: The Berlin zoo's fast-growing polar bear cub, Knut, won't be appearing anymore with the keeper who raised him. Thomas Doerflein, above, said he remains on hand for Knut but will no longer play in public with him. 1 of 2 The zoo said Monday that it has ended 7-month-old Knut's twice-daily public appearances with keeper Thomas Doerflein. The playful pair have delighted audiences since Knut -- then an irresistibly cute 20-pound cub -- made his first public appearance in late March. Now nearing about 110 pounds, the boisterous bear, who will remain...

Abandoned baby polar bear is 'better off dead' than raised in zooLast updated at 18:04pm on 19th March 2007The Berlin Zoo's abandoned polar bear cub Knut looks cute, cuddly and has become a front-page media darling, but animal rights activists insisted he would be better off dead than raised by humans. When Knut was born last December his mother ignored him, zoo officials intervened and chose to raise him themselves "Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws," animal rights activist Frank Albrecht told the mass-circulation Bild, which has featured regular full-color photo...

Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA) is encouraging the U.S. government and the public to act now to protect polar bears from the life-threatening effects of melting sea ice in the arctic. In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the Alliance supported the FWS’ proposal to list polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. ... 15 years ago it was poachers. They told us none of them would make it through that! And given the choice between being hunted by helicopter by four rednecks with assault rifles, or trying to...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

RESOLUTE, Nunavut — Bob Hudson says he has played in the Rose Bowl, jumped out of airplanes, scuba dived off Fiji and stalked bighorn sheep in the Rockies. But for all the excitement of his 67 years, there was one thrill he still craved: hunting polar bear in the high Canadian Arctic. He sold his beloved Jaguar XKE on eBay for $26,000 to do it. After heavy wind and snow ruined his hunt in April, he took another $14,000 out of his retirement account for a return trip. "Life is short," Mr. Hudson joked. "The last check you write should...

Polar bears are cute. Just ask the marketing executives at Coca-Cola which used animated polar bears to hawk their wares in recent years. Bears, pandas, lions and elephants are "charismatic megafauna" -- meaning basically cute animals that people care about. If you want to sell a product, or a cause, just tie it to one of these animals and you've got the attention of millions of people; kids and adults alike. Thus, environmental alarmists have made much of research claiming the Arctic's great white bear faces extinction from human-caused global warming. Snails, snakes and spiders withering in the sun just...

IVUJIVIK, Quebec, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A Canadian woman this week fought off a polar bear and saved her son and two other children from harm, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Friday. Lydia Angiyou, 41, of Ivujivik, a small community on the northern coast of Quebec, says she and her sons encountered the bear Wednesday. "'My boy, my boy, my boy is going to be killed, nothing I can do,'" she told the CBC, describing what raced through her mind. "But I started yelling and after that I felt better when he was far, the boy was far." Angiyou said...

One worried bear - an apt symbol of the grim news from the planet's twin sentinels By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 30/09/2005) The white wastes at the Poles are often called the planet's sentinels; they provide an early warning system that will reveal what is in store for the rest of the world. For decades, scientists have predicted that if the effects of global warming took hold, they would first be measurable at the frozen extremes, where the impacts would be felt with a rapidity and intensity unlike anywhere else. The reason the Poles are a litmus of climate...

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A Canadian man was awarded a Carnegie Medal on Monday for an act seemingly pulled straight from the tall tales of the American frontier. Dr. Eric Fortier, 34, used a pocket knife to attack a polar bear on Canada's Baffin Island, just south of the Arctic Circle, to save two friends who were being mauled. "All of the research and all of the preparation I did leading up to the trip gave no indication that there were bears in the Soper (River) valley where we were canoeing," he said. Fortier, an orthodontist, learned that there was...

A polar bear has killed the last villager on Russia's Vrangel island off the northern Chukotka peninsula, scientists at a local reserve said today. The reserve's workers attempted to save Vasilina Alpaun, who was attacked on her own doorstep, but were too late. The Ushakovskoye village had been abandoned since 1997, when its inhabitants were moved to the peninsula to make way for the bear reserve, but Alpaun, 25, returned to her old home shortly afterwards. Bears roam free on the island and are rarely aggressive, the reserve's director Leonid Bove said, adding that the woman most likely provoked the...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Paint the polar bear purple and the crowds will come. That seems to be the lesson a zoo in Mendoza has learned, after its 23-year-old bear Pelusa was sprayed with an antiseptic spray that turned her normally white fur a dark shade of violet. The unusual color - a temporary side effect of the treatment for dermatitis - has turned the aging bear into a minor celebrity in Argentina and prompted thousands of schoolchildren and tourists to make their way to the Jardin Zoologico de Mendoza in the western city beneath the snow-capped Andes. "We never...