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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...

Reporting from Seattle - In what would be the largest habitat zone ever established in the U.S. to protect a species from extinction, the federal government today proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears. Officials said the designation is not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it crucially would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears, the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change. Those steps are crucial for polar bears but are being addressed separately in...

Belief in the myth of Global Warming has dropped 20 points in the last 3 years according to polling done by the Pew Research Center. Obama has followed this up by opening a polar bear habitat in Alaska, which will make drilling for oil and natural gas there much more difficult. ...

The Obama administration is setting aside 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas. Federal law prohibits agencies from taking actions that may adversely modify critical habitat and interfere with polar bear recovery. Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland called the habitat designation a step in the right direction to help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change. The Bush administration last year...

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out - in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out — in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

At a conference for environmental journalists in Wisconsin, Al Gore dodged questions on the many identified errors in his global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. "We're very close to that political tipping point," Gore said. "Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions." While the audience of environmental journalists were largely in agreement with Mr. Gore's presentation and his positions, one Irish journalist and filmmaker asked Gore about the many scientific errors that were found in Gore's global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. "A judge in the British High Court,...

Polar Bear Spotted Riding On Its Mother's Back [Pic in URL] Polar bear cubs ride 'piggy back' on their mother's back to avoid falling into the freezing waters of the Arctic, according to new scientific evidence. By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 05 Oct 2009 A British holidaymaker visiting Duvefjorden, Nordaustlandet, spotted the mother bear with a seven-month-old cub hitching a ride. Photo: Angela Plumb The behaviour has been observed in the wild before by polar bears emerging from the den for the first time or crossing open water. However there was little research into the phenomenon and no photographic evidence....

Which may explain why a polar bear cub has recently been seen riding on the back of its mother as the bears swim across parts of the Arctic Ocean. The cub then briefly rode her back as she clambered out of the icy water, a unique event photographed by a tourist. Experts have rarely seen the behaviour, and they say the latest find suggests it may be a more common practice than previously thought.

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,...

A cold summer in many areas of the country may have meant fewer barbecues and camping trips this year, but lower temperatures have been a boon for the beleaguered Hudson Bay polar bears. Experts say the summer sea ice has lasted longer than it has in years...

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...

Polar bear encounters on the North Slope oil fields have risen to record levels the last two years, a sign that increasing numbers of the white giants may be prowling on land because the sea ice they prefer is shrinking, scientists said. Oil field sightings along the southern Beaufort Sea coast jumped to 321 in 2007 and 313 in 2008, said Craig Perham, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Anchorage. That’s more than double the 15-year average of 138. It’s also a sharp rise from 232, the previous high in 2005

Early in January, a Sarah Palin op-ed appeared in the NY Times in which she argued against adding the Polar Bear to the list of endangered species because the polar bear populations in the Arctic were healthy: "...polar bears are more numerous now than they were 40 years ago. The polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s North Slope has been relatively stable for 20 years, according to a federal analysis." The governor said that the bears were "magnificent animals" who are "worthy of our utmost efforts to protect them and their Arctic habitat," but added that...

As the U.S. Senate now prepares to consider the cap-and-trade climate bill recently passed by the house, they will want to consider all the facts related to this landmark spending program. So far we have learned that the Environmental Protection Agency has suppressed an internal report skeptical about the wild global warming claims and now, from across the pond, we find out that a polar bear expert has been forbidden by global warming alarmists from reporting that most of those animals have actually been increasing in population during the past few years or are at optimum levels. Although you won't...

According to the world?s leading expert on polar bears, their numbers are higher than they were 30 years ago Photo: AP Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up...

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.

Polar bears are not dying out and Turkey Twizzlers are fine, according to a new book from scientists wishing to challenge science "scare stories" Contrary to widely held belief, polar bear populations are rising, according to the scientists It is widely thought that the polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels to rise, resulting in the loss of cities along the coast, as well as a the majority of polar bears. And if global warming does not kill us, then obesity or heart disease will thanks to an addiction to junk food and salt. But a new book, compiled...

Polar bears are not dying out and Turkey Twizzlers are fine, according to a new book from scientists wishing to challenge science "scare stories" Contrary to widely held belief, polar bear populations are rising, according to the scientists But a new book, compiled by Stanley Feldman, a professor of anaesthetics at London University, and Vincent Marks, a former professor of clinical biochemistry and dean of medicine at the University of Surrey, are questioning the end of the world and healthy eating tips.

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.

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...

Lately hunters (primarily from the US) had been paying $30,000 for the chance of whacking a polar bear during a grueling hunt in the Canadian arctic on dogsleds and in subzero weather. If successful, then the hunter's taxidermist landed another $5,000 or so for converting the beast's epidermis into an infuriatingly politically-incorrect rug for the hunter to display to his politically-correct guests at dinner parties. Generally speaking, the most spirited reactions from guests came after uncorking the eighth bottle of wine. Most of these guests were usually his wife's friends from the local Art Council and Kayak Club and spittle...

Maybe a cute polar bear can do what all the good green intentions in the world can’t: Get people to consistently conserve energy. That’s what the Brooks School, a North Andover boarding school for grades 9-12, is counting on with an animated animal that lets students “see” their energy consumption in real time. Instead of showing students what energy they are collectively using in each of the school’s ten dorms with graphs or digital numbers, a “bear-o-meter” displays it more visually on a public screen with the bear’s well-being tied to how well students are conserving.

Today the Obama administration’s Department of Interior announced that it would keep a Bush administration rule [1] forbidding government scientists from considering global warming when protecting polar bears pursuant to the Endangered Species Act.When the Bush Interior Department announced their rule, they were roundly [2] criticized [3] by the enviro-left [4]. It will be interesting to see how they react to the Obama administration taking the same position.More interesting is how the Obama EPA justified their decision. McClatchy reports [1]: On Friday, the Interior Department reluctantly agreed, saying that it’s scientifically impossible to use the Endangered Species Act to regulate...

If having someone tell you a bold faced lie, is a measure of their lack of respect for you, then at least Barry is an equal opportunity prevaricator. Remember when Bush basically said, let the bears die when asked what he was going to do when the Polar Bears habitat was allegedly being melted by Global Warming partially attributed to Americas Polluting ways?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 09-110 Governor Lauds Secretary Salazar’s Decision May 8, 2009, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin was pleased to learn that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has decided not to change the existing Section 4(d) rule regulations concerning the protection of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This decision will provide for continued monitoring and strong protections for polar bears under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and international treaties. This means that subsistence activities and oil and gas development on the North Slope will not be subject to the consultation requirements of the...

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...

"Zoo keepers who saved the life of a woman who jumped into a polar bear enclosure at Berlin Zoo revealed on Monday that they were moments away from shooting the animals. Rifles had already been issued to marksmen and Heiner Kloes, a zoo spokesman, said: This woman's behaviour not only put her life in danger but also that of the staff who had to rescue her. However, we do have guns and we would have been prepared to use them without hesitation if it was felt it was the only way to save the woman. The woman known only as...

A video message for the anti-drilling-ANWR-environmentalists: turns out the Polar Bears don't care too much for us humans! I hope the woman is okay, but stupid is as stupid does: A 32-year-old German woman was seriously injured in a polar bear attack at the Berlin zoo which is also the home of the famous polar bear Knut, Berlin police reported. The victim, a resident of Brandenburg near Berlin, for still unknown reasons, jumped in the moat that divided the bears from the visitors of the zoo when the bears were just being fed, police said. A bear then jumped into...

California’s KQED has a story about elementary school children being taught that man-made “Mr. Carbon” is giving the Earth a global warming “fever” and killing “lovable” polar bears. Of course, the San Francisco-based PBS station thinks that’s just swell. It’s not – it’s outrageous. Cool The Earth, the group behind this blatant indoctrination program, is the brainchild of two Marin County parents who say they were inspired by watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. That’s probably all you need to know, but bear with me – it gets better. According to their website, “Cool The Earth is a ready-to-run program...

So-called "environmentalists" insist on making polar bears the centerpiece for their fight against capitalism. They insist that polar bears are nearing extinction because of man-made global warming. It's not theory to them .. it's etched-in-stone fact. Right now the Bush administration is being sued by environmental groups claiming the Fish and Wildlife Service is in breach of its own mandate – its failure to protect the polar bear as an endangered species. Well, yes ... there actually has been a delay to determine whether or not polar bears are actually endangered species. The fact of the matter is that they...

These twin baby polar bears got their first sniff of the open air today at the Ouwehands animal park in Rhenen, the Netherlands

OSLO (AFP) – Polar bears are in danger of being wiped out unless urgent measures are taken to combat climate change and rapid warming in the Arctic, environmental group WWF warned Thursday. "No sea ice equates no polar bears. It's really that simple," WWF polar bear expert Geoff York told reporters. York was speaking in Oslo days before representatives of the five countries bordering the Arctic were set to meet in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsoe on March 17 to discuss how to safeguard the bear. The WWF insisted the Arctic countries had a special obligation to spearhead efforts...

In 2008, the Bush Administration, responding to litigation from an environmental group, listed the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Bush Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne also made some changes to the implementation of the ESA in order to limit the adverse consequences. But now, the omnibus appropriations bill, first passed by the House and now being debated in the Senate, seeks to reverse these common sense limitations.If successful, this revised polar bear policy would greatly threaten economic growth and serve as a powerful anti-stimulus measure, not just in the polar bears' Alaskan habitat but throughout...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Grumbles the Bear, former president of the International Brotherhood of Polar Bears, said he and his former union brethern would descend on Washington on Monday, March 2, to devour global warming protesters in the nation's capital. "You friggin' idiots. It's March 2, and you're protesting in your skivvies in a friggin' snowstorm expected to bring some areas of the east coast up to 14 inches of snow. I know you're the cream of the crop of our nation's colleges, but I have to tell you...you've wasted my tax money and the hard earnings of your parents," Grumbles...

It may be freezing here but it's too warm for some polar bears: Amazing pictures of the world's most endangered creatures By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE 07th February 2009 A formidable hunter and powerful swimmer, the polar bear is perfectly adapted to the harsh demands of the wild Arctic landscape. And these extraordinary pictures give a more intimate portrait of its life than ever before. Whether diving under water, rolling in the ice alongside a cub or moving in for a breathtaking close-up, these images capture its raw beauty and amazing grace.

You've probably seen the commercials; TV actor Noah Wyle (ER, The Librarian) somberly informs us of an impending grave catastrophe: "A tragedy is unfolding in the world today. Climate change is threatening one of the most magnificent wild animals on the planet. Polar bears. They're struggling to survive."  Heart-tugging violins accompany video footage of a mother polar bear and her cuddly cub on a small ice flow.The ice is melting all around them and food is becoming harder to find as they lose their hunting grounds. Climate change. It's happening right now and its leaving mothers weaker and unable to...

WINNIPEG - Canada's polar bears are not teetering on the brink of extinction and don't need the alarmist rhetoric coming from some of the world's biologists, an Inuit expert said Friday at a one-day summit to discuss the fate of the arctic mammals. While scientists warned vanishing sea ice and over-hunting means two-thirds of the iconic predators could be gone within 50 years, the people who have shared "a personal relationship" with polar bears for thousands of years say the threat is exaggerated. "The current population is stable. It is not constructive to exaggerate the situation," said Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director...

[The following is the only known transcript of an interview last week by Independent Star reporter Bias Jones with International Brotherhood of Polar Bears President Grumbles the Bear about the union's dissention from the list of global warming enablers. The interview occurred on an ice floe somewhere north of an Inuit village on Canada’s Ellesmere Island.]

Polar bears could avoid extinction despite many starving to death in coming years, according to scientists and other observers who have discovered that some of the bears have found a new food source — goose and duck eggs. Meanwhile, snow geese are thriving near the western Hudson Bay, and researchers say there are in fact too many of them. Their eggs can be a good food source, researchers report in the online version of the journal Polar Biology. The geese nest on tundra that some bears have retreated to.

This past week, I was sent this article by Craig Medred of McClatchy Newspapers. The polar bears were elated! Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by abnormally chilly temperatures in June, July and August. "In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering...

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Puzzled zookeepers in northern Japan have discovered the reason why their attempts to mate two polar bears kept failing: Both are female. The municipal zoo in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido brought in a polar bear cub three years ago. They named it Tsuyoshi, after the popular baseball outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and waited until it reached reproductive age. In June, the zoo introduced Tsuyoshi to its resident bear, an 11-year-old female named Kurumi, and waited for sparks to fly. But much to the disappointment of zookeepers, Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances toward Kurumi. Earlier...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The federal government will designate "critical habitat" for polar bears off Alaska's coast, a decision that could add restrictions to future offshore petroleum exploration or drilling. Federal law prohibits agencies from taking actions that may adversely modify critical habitat and interfere with polar bear recovery. That likely will affect oil and gas activity, said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of three groups that sued to force the critical habitat designation. "Other than global warming, the worst thing that's going on in polar bear habitat right now is oil development and the potential for...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department will designate within two years protected areas of the Arctic that are considered critical habitat for polar bears and cannot be harmed by oil development as part of a legal settlement with environmental groups on Monday. The Interior Department formally listed polar bears as threatened in May, but did not create protected areas for them. Environmental groups said the threatened listing needed to be coupled with habitat designations to protect polar bears from spreading oil development or other industry impacts. "You can't protect a species without protecting the place where...

The Republican Sarah Palin and her officials in the Alaskan state government drew on the work of at least six scientists known to be sceptical about the dangers and causes of global warming, to back efforts to stop polar bears being protected as an endangered species, the Guardian can disclose. Some of the scientists were funded by the oil industry. In official submissions to the US government's consultation on the status of the polar bear, Palin and her team referred to at least six scientists who have questioned either the existence of warming as a largely man-made phenomenon or its...

(CNN) -- Summer is over in the northern hemisphere, but it's been another chilling season for researchers who study Arctic sea ice. "It's definitely a bad report. We did pick up little bit from last year, but this is over 30 percent below what used to be normal," said Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. This past summer, the Arctic sea ice dwindled to its second lowest level. Arctic sea ice is usually one to three meters, or as much as 9 feet thick. It grows during autumn and winter...

BARROW, ALASKA -- Federal scientists flying over the Arctic Ocean last month spotted something nearly unprecedented during their annual count of bowhead whales: nine polar bears in the open sea, miles from anywhere. One was swimming 60 miles off Barrow. A flight a week or so later found five bears plying their way through the swells. The findings wouldn't have been so alarming -- they are powerful swimmers -- except that their likely destination, the sea ice on which the predators depend for survival, had retreated 400 miles offshore.

Green-colored polar bears are drawing questions from puzzled visitors at a Japanese zoo. Three normally white polar bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in central Japan changed their color in July after swimming in a pond with an overgrowth of algae. ... High temperatures in July and August and less-frequent water changes because of the zoo's conservation efforts caused an algae growth in the bear pond and safety moat, Kurobe said.