The Sad Story of Polar Bears

A 16-year-old male polar bear was found dead on a beach north of Norway. After examining the bear’s emaciated body, researchers determined that the bear starved to death due global warming. Record high temperatures have melted arctic ice sheets that this and other polar bears need for hunting. Making matters even more tragic, this same malnourished polar bear was in good health when researchers examined it just three months prior in southern Svalbard. 

Polar bear populations are believed to have declined in recent decades due in large part to global warming, though populations are difficult to track due to the bears' remote habitats. ​Polar bears are highly specialised mammals which rely heavily on sea ice for food and other aspects of their life cycle. Satellite data show that Arctic sea ice has been decreasing for the past 30 years, and projections show that this trend will continue as temperatures carry on rising. ​

The changes in sea ice affect polar bears in several ways:

1. The early retreat of summer sea ice means that bears have less time to hunt and therefore less time to build up fat reserves. 
2. The fragmentation and reduction in sea ice has several impacts. It forces the bears to swim longer distances, using up some of their fat reserves. It also reduces the number of seals, which are the bears’ main source of food, and impedes travelling and den making. And it also forces the bears to spend more time on land, with increased interactions with humans potentially leading to higher mortality. 

The polar bears are born in dens or caves on land while their mother sleeps through the winter. The mother and the babies emerge around March famished from a long seclusion and must immediately hunt to feed themselves to stay alive. 

Now, polar bears cannot hunt on land, the only hunting they know is to catch seals from floating ice in the open ocean. The floating ice is located at the edge of the polar ice cap – a floating frozen mass that covers the North Polar arctic region, which is all ocean. 

So in March the polar bear mother and cubs swim from the land in Spitsbergen to the edge of the polar ice cap so that they can hunt. Normally this is a short swim, since in March the polar ice cap is very close to the land, and the polar bears, even babies, are good swimmers. However, last year we saw that the polar ice cap had really shrunk in size due to meltdown from global warming. This meant that the polar bears had to swim many miles from the land in Spitsbergen – sometimes hundreds of miles – to find the floating ice where they can hunt. Swimming hundreds of miles, specially when you are famished and have hungry babies in tow is really very hard and many bears are dying through drowning and starvation.

To get an idea of the potential impacts of future climate change on polar bears, we can look at subpopulations found at the bears’ southern range, where habitat changes have been most noticeable so far. A good example is the western Hudson Bay subpopulation, which is one of the best studied. Here, ice floe break-up is taking place earlier than 30 years ago, effectively reducing the feeding period by about three weeks. As a result, the average weight of female polar bears has dropped by about 21% between 1980 and 2004, and the population declined by 22% between 1987 and 2004. In Alaska, there is evidence of increased cub mortality caused by a decline in sea ice.

The polar bears are just one example of endangered animals because of man’s great appetite for energy which is obtained by burning fossil fuels. All life on earth could be in the balance unless we change our ways.

It's not too late. Act now to effect change. Your actions today will help prevent potentially catastrophic changes from taking place—not only helping polar bears, but also preserving the climate that has allowed humans to flourish.

Global Warming Solutions

There is no single solution to global warming, which is primarily a problem of too much heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. (Learn more about global warming.) The technologies and approaches outlined below are all needed to bring down the emissions of these gases by at least 80 percent by mid-century. 

1. Boosting energy efficiency: The energy used to power, heat, and cool our homes, businesses, and industries is the single largest contributor to global warming. Energy efficiency technologies allow us to use less energy to get the same—or higher—level of production, service, and comfort. This approach has vast potential to save both energy and money, and can be deployed quickly. 
2. Greening transportation: The transportation sector's emissions have increased at a faster rate than any other energy-using sector over the past decade. A variety of solutions are at hand, including improving efficiency (miles per gallon) in all modes of transport, switching to low-carbon fuels, and reducing vehicle miles traveled through smart growth and more efficient mass transportation systems. 
3. Revving up renewables: Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and bioenergy are available around the world. Multiple studies have shown that renewable energy has the technical potential to meet the vast majority of our energy needs. Renewable technologies can be deployed quickly, are increasingly cost-effective, and create jobs while reducing pollution. 
4. Phasing out fossil fuel electricity: Dramatically reducing our use of fossil fuels—especially carbon-intensive coal—is essential to tackle climate change. There are many ways to begin this process. Key action steps include: not building any new coal-burning power plants, initiating a phased shutdown of coal plants starting with the oldest and dirtiest, and capturing and storing carbon emissions from power plants. While it may sound like science fiction, the technology exists to store carbon emissions underground. The technology has not been deployed on a large scale or proven to be safe and permanent, but it has been demonstrated in other contexts such as oil and natural gas recovery. Demonstration projects to test the viability and costs of this technology for power plant emissions are worth pursuing. 
5. Managing forests and agriculture: Taken together, tropical deforestation and emissions from agriculture represent nearly 30 percent of the world's heat-trapping emissions. We can fight global warming by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and by making our food production practices more sustainable. 
6. Exploring nuclear: Because nuclear power results in few global warming emissions, an increased share of nuclear power in the energy mix could help reduce global warming—but nuclear technology poses serious threats to our security and, as the accident at the Fukushima Diaichi plant in Japan illustrates to our health and the environment as well. The question remains: can the safety, proliferation, waste disposal, and cost barriers of nuclear power be overcome? 
7. Developing and deploying new low-carbon and zero-carbon technologies: Research into and development of the next generation of low-carbon technologies will be critical to deep mid-century reductions in global emissions. Current research on battery technology, new materials for solar cells, harnessing energy from novel sources like bacteria and algae, and other innovative areas could provide important breakthroughs. 
8. Ensuring sustainable development: The countries of the world—from the most to the least developed—vary dramatically in their contributions to the problem of climate change and in their responsibilities and capacities to confront it. A successful global compact on climate change must include financial assistance from richer countries to poorer countries to help make the transition to low-carbon development pathways and to help adapt to the impacts of climate change. 

Adapting to changes already underway: As the Climate Hot Map demonstrates, the impacts of a warming world are already being felt by people around the globe. If climate change continues unchecked, these impacts are almost certain to get worse. From sea level rise to heat waves, from extreme weather to disease outbreaks, each unique challenge requires locally-suitable solutions to prepare for and respond to the impacts of global warming. Unfortunately, those who will be hit hardest and first by the impacts of a changing climate are likely to be the poor and vulnerable, especially those in the least developed countries. Developed countries must take a leadership role in providing financial and technical help for adaptation.

Global Warming

Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts see the trend is accelerating: All but one of the 16 hottest years in NASA’s 134-year record have occurred since 2000. 

Climate change deniers have argued that there has been a “pause” or a “slowdown” in rising global temperatures, but several recent studies, including a 2015 paper published in the journal Science, have disproved this claim. And scientists say that unless we curb global-warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. 

Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO2) and other air pollutants and greenhouse gasses collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally, this radiation would escape into space—but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. That's what's known as the greenhouse effect. 

Here are the other effects of global warming : 

• Melting glaciers, early snowmelt, and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages and increase the risk of wildfires in the American West. 
• Rising sea levels will lead to coastal flooding on the Eastern Seaboard, especially in Florida, and in other areas such as the Gulf of Mexico. 
• Forests, farms, and cities will face troublesome new pests, heat waves, heavy downpours, and increased flooding. All those factors will damage or destroy agriculture and fisheries. 
• Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and Alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction. 
• Allergies, asthma, and infectious disease outbreaks will become more common due to increased growth of pollen-producing ragweed, higher levels of air pollution, and the spread of conditions favorable to pathogens and mosquitoes. 

In recent years, China has taken the lead in global-warming pollution, producing about 28 percent of all CO2 emissions. The United States comes in second. Despite making up just 4 percent of the world’s population, US produces a whopping 16 percent of all global CO2 emissions—as much as the European Union and India (third and fourth place) combined. And America is still number one, by far, in cumulative emissions over the past 150 years. Our responsibility matters to other countries, and it should matter to us, too.

In the United States, the burning of fossil fuels to make electricity is the largest source of heat-trapping pollution, producing about two billion tons of CO2 every year. Coal-burning power plants are by far the biggest polluters. 

The country’s second-largest source of carbon pollution is the transportation sector, which generates about 1.7 billion tons of CO2 emissions a year. Curbing dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in emissions, as well as the use of alternatives to fossil fuels worldwide. 

The good news is that The United States have started a turnaround: CO2 emissions in the United States actually decreased from 2005 to 2014, thanks in part to new, energy-efficient technology and the use of cleaner fuels. And scientists continue to develop new ways to modernize power plants, generate cleaner electricity, and burn less gasoline while we drive. The challenge is to be sure these solutions are put to use and widely adopted. 

Scientists agree that the earth’s rising temperatures are fueling longer and hotter heat waves, more frequent droughts, heavier rainfall, and more powerful hurricanes. In 2015, for example, scientists said that an ongoing drought in California—the state’s worst water shortage in 1,200 years—had been intensified by 15 percent to 20 percent by global warming. They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. 

And in 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that it’s now possible to confidently attribute certain weather events, like some heat waves, directly to climate change. The earth’s ocean temperatures are getting warmer, too—which means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as well as the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina—the costliest hurricane in U.S. history—struck New Orleans; the second-costliest, Hurricane Sandy, hit the East Coast in 2012. 

The impacts of global warming are being felt across the globe. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has been losing about 134 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2002. This rate could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters over the next 50 to 150 years.

The North Pole

North Pole (Polo Nord) is the hidden place of biggest world's energy deposits for the future. According to a 2008 study by the U.S. Geologic Survey, the Arctic has 20 percent of the planet’s undiscovered and recoverable oil and natural gas deposits.

Most of the oil and gas deposits are likely within 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones belonging to countries with Arctic coasts. Analysts believe the seabed at the actual terrestrial North Pole — located some 2.5 miles beneath the waves — is probably bereft of resources.

North Pole is also a rich natural resources for wildlive. There are some exotic animals live at the North Pole, including reindeer, polar bear, Arctic fox, narwhal, walrus, seal, ox, moose, orca and snowy owl.

In August 2014, NASA launched ARISE, a program to measure how cloud cover may be accelerating sea ice melt around the pole. This situation may be a danger for the Arctic animals. The ice is the habitat of the animals. They can't stay alive without the ice. 

On the picture above, shown that record high temperatures have melted arctic ice sheets that this and other polar bears need for hunting. Polar Bears can't live without the ice sheets. The ice melting on the North Pole caused by Global Warming. It is a prove that Global Warming is not just a fake issue, it is a serious dangerous issue. And we have to do something to safe our planet.

As some countries have their ambition to control the gas and oil deposits on the area, we really hope that they have the same passion to protect the animals. 

We hope all of us have the passion to safe our planet, and to safe the lovely polar bears.