Bears of Knowledge

About 60% of the estimated 22,000 polar bears live in the Canadian Arctic. The planet's largest land-dwelling carnivores are a sight to behold. Sea ice is essential to their survival because it is the platform from which they hunt ringed seals and other prey. Global warming is causing the ice to retract, threatening the bears' ability to hunt and breed. At this rate, the sea ice could disappear by 2050.
"They will lose their habitat, and if you don't have your habitat, you don't have anything," says Lara Hansen, chief scientist for climate change at World Wildlife Fund

Polar bears need to maintain a minimum weight to reproduce; those in the Hudson Bay population are approaching a weight at which breeding will no longer be possible. The bears can migrate north, but unless action is taken to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which cause global temperature increases, "we'll slowly be moving the line of polar bears until there is nowhere else for them to be," Hansen says.

Viewing trips are offered out of Churchill, Manitoba. Outfitters include WWF partner Natural Habitat Adventures, whose all-inclusive seven-day trips in October and November, including airfare from Winnipeg, start at $3795, double. 800-543-8917; nathab.com.

All photo's may be expanded by clicking the image.

With messages of varied subject these bears of the Arctic will teach us. We will only have to watch their behaviour and listen to the words they bring us. Some may be of a humorous nature but all will have "nature" in mind.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

MONTREAL -- Take it from Jose Kusugak: climate change is turning life upside down for indigenous peoples in Canada's North.

Extreme weather shifts in the Arctic bring in their wake swarms of insects, treacherously thin ice floes and fast-spoiling food supplies, the Inuit community leader said Friday at the United Nations World Climate Change Conference.

"Many nations think of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in the abstract -- we experience it," said Kusugak, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

The national association, which represents about 54,000 Inuit in four regions across Canada, Friday launched Unikkaaqatigiit: Putting the Human Face on Climate Change -- Perspectives from Inuit in Canada.

The study, available online at www.itk.ca, was conducted over four years in partnership with Laval University, the National Aboriginal Health Organization, Inuit land-claim organizations and 17 Inuit communities across the Arctic.

"If anyone knows about climate change, it's people who live their lives outside," said Kusugak, 55, who was born in Repulse Bay, Nunavut

Dramatic climate changes and their impact on everyday life are troubling for many traditionalists, he added.

"Unusual animals are appearing where I hunt. I'd rather not have these species in my hunting grounds,'' Naalak Nappaluk, 84, a Nunavik community elder who attended the UN conference to voice his concerns about climate change, said through an Inuktitut translator, citing lynx and a new variety of seal pups. "They are not good for the health of the existing animals, and disrupt the balance of nature."

Muctar Akumalik, 73, is perplexed by weather changes around his home in Arctic Bay, Nunavut.

"I used to be able to predict the weather, but now I often get it wrong," Akumalik said, through his translator.

Arctic travel is also more difficult because increasingly strong winds blow snow cover from the trails used by dog teams and snowmobiles, Akumalik added.

New land roads to link isolated communities, freezers and food exchanges for lean times, improved housing and drinking water treatment plants are among recommendations listed in the Inuit perspectives study.

Not that climate change has been all bad, said Kusugak, who enjoys more occasions to go out on his boat and to fish during prolonged warm spells.

But the downside -- rotting meat, unexpected ice cracks under foot, homes shifting in the softened permafrost -- is more worrisome, he said.

"People are dying because of the quick pace of climate change in the Arctic," Kusugak said. "It's like a new world out there, and a not so good one when you consider that we depend on history and traditional knowledge to live, hunt and prepare food."

acarroll@thegazette.canwest.com

Montreal Gazette

© CanWest News Service 2005

Do you have pictures of bears? Send them to Squire and he will apply an appropriate caption for you. Polar Bears are the main subject matter but all bear pictures will do

.( Images posted are from the WWW and the original copyrights are applicable for photo credits.)

2005 was warmest year on record: NASA
Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:04 PM GMT

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Last year was the warmest recorded on Earth's surface, and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday.

All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a statement.

"It's fair to say that it probably is the warmest since we have modern meteorological records," said Drew Shindell of the NASA institute in New York City.

"Using indirect measurements that go back farther, I think it's even fair to say that it's the warmest in the last several thousand years."

Some researchers had expected 1998 would be the hottest year on record, notably because a strong El Nino -- a warm-water pattern in the eastern Pacific -- boosted global temperatures.

But Shindell said last year was slightly warmer than 1998, even without any extraordinary weather pattern. Temperatures in the Arctic were unusually warm in 2005, NASA said.

"That very anomalously warm year (1998) has become the norm," Shindell said in a telephone interview.

"The rate of warming has been so rapid that this temperature that we only got when we had a real strong El Nino now has become something that we've gotten without any unusual worldwide weather disturbance."

Over the past 30 years, Earth has warmed by 1.08 degrees F (0.6 degrees C), NASA said. Over the past 100 years, it has warmed by 1.44 degrees F (0.8 degrees C).

Shindell, in line with the view held by most scientists, attributed the rise to emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and ozone, with the burning of fossil fuels being the primary source.

The 21st century could see global temperature increases of 6 to 10 degrees F (3 to 5 degrees C), Shindell said.

"That will really bring us up to the warmest temperatures the world has experienced probably in the last million years," he said.

To understand whether the Earth is cooling or warming, scientists use data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea surface temperature since 1982, and data from ships for earlier years.

More information and images are available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html.

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