Antarctica

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- McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation
  Posted by Jeff from Grist
  The Polar Bear Conservancy will begin relocation of the first Arctic polar bears to Antarctica on Earth Day, April 22. The relocation will be the initial step in a planned five-year program to migrate 3,000 polar bears from the Northern Arctic to the southern continent of Antarctica. Scientists say polar bears face near-certain extinction by 2020 as global climate change accelerates melting of their habitat in the Northern Arctic. Antarctica, in contrast, can be a viable home for the bears. Republican presidential candidate John McCain voiced support yesterday for the program. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has indicated that relocating polar bears would be much less expensive than listing them under the Endangered Species Act.
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- Ice shelf on verge of collapse
  Posted by Jeff from MSNBC
  A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent.
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- Australia builds Antarctic ice runway
  Posted by Jeff from MSNBC
  The A319-115LR (the 'LR' stands for Long Range) can fly 7,500 miles, sufficient to go from Hobart to the Wilkins Runway and back — a total distance of 4,965 miles — without refueling. The flight each way takes about 4.5 hours, depending on the winds. The twin-engine jet is configured so that it can transport up to 40 passengers and 6.5 tons of cargo. After landing, it spends two to three hours on the ground before returning to Australia.
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- Escalating ice loss in Antarctica
  Posted by Jeff from MSNBC
  Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.
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- The bugs that came in from the cold
  Posted by VincebusEruptum from Environment.independent.c
  Locked in ice for millions of years, Antarctic bacteria are thawing – and they're alive. So will a prehistoric plague be swimming in a sea near you?
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- Analysis Finds Large Antarctic Area Has Melted
  Posted by Jeff from New York Times
  Now, a new satellite analysis shows that at least once in the last several years, masses of unusually warm air pushed to within 310 miles of the South Pole and remained long enough to melt surface snow across a California-size expanse.
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- Big lakes detected under Antarctica
  Posted by Jeff from CNN
  The satellite detected dips in the surface that moved around as the hidden lakes drained and filled beneath the surface glaciers, which are moving rivers of ice. "The parts that are changing are changing so rapidly that they can't be anything else but (sub-surface) water," she said. "It's such a quick thing."
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Jeff comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

Happy April Fools everyone! For more information on climate change, visit our
Global Warming Cloud
.

Reply »
11:08 am 4/02/08
Julie comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

I agree, let’s relocate McCain. That’s a problem-solver right there.

Reply »
4:50 am 4/02/08
eqexroxx comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

Just the WORD styrofoam makes me shudder. It’s so toxic to produce and destroy and it pollutes everwhere it goes. Huge numbers of seabirds die of starvation from eating plastic & styrofoam. I love the concept, though!
How about platforms of untreated wood that we replace every three years? Causes no environmental damage, uses a renewable resource and employs lots of people. I guess hauling them from the forests to the ocean could be difficult – we could use dog sleds…

Reply »
12:40 pm 4/01/08
dogwood comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

There is currently a group working on producing artificial ice for polar bears – essentially large styrofoam pads that they could hunt from as the real ice melts. The technology is similar to the childrens sculpting material ‘floam’.

Reply »
12:18 pm 4/01/08
eqexroxx comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

Well, for one thing, almost no one goes to Antarctica at all, for any reason. And the penguins are the fauna of Antarctica, Jeff. As are the dolphins, seals and all their babies. So – if the polar bears eat all the penguins and the seals, which they may easily do, since the penguins and Antarctica seals aren’t evolved to avoid such a hungry predator, the polar bears will starve and we’ll have no more penguins or seals, either.
I love polar bears – and I’ve often thought this might be an option. I simply have seen enough "great ideas" of importing non-native species gone awry to approach this idea with a bit of hesitation. Mongeese into Hawaii, snakes into Guam, cats into Australia, ivy into forests, goldfish into rivers…. An exit strategy might be a good thing to have…..

Reply »
12:08 pm 4/01/08
Jeff comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

No one goes to Antarctica for the fauna Roxanne! They go for the penguins! Now, they’ll go for the polar bears too … and POLAR BEARS EATING PENGUINS!

Reply »
11:27 am 4/01/08
eqexroxx comments on:
McCain Supportive of Polar Bear Relocation

Sounds like a fun experiment. What’s the back up plan if it totally decimates the local fauna? or, um, is it the same back up plan the bush administration had for the war?

Reply »
11:00 am 4/01/08

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Jeff
Member since Jul 2008
Jeff is the founder of NewsCloud. He is also a freelance writer and blogs at Idealog.
Seattle

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Antarctica

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