dragoni reblogged
Trump Meltdown
Polar bears are considered endangered in the U.S. and are listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN, because their sea ice habitat is under threat from climate change.
Climate change is heating up the Arctic faster than anywhere else, and sea ice is shrinking 14 percent per decade. Even today, in the middle of the bitter cold Arctic winter, satellites show there is about 770,000 square miles less sea ice than the 1981 to 2010 median (That's an area larger than Alaska and California combined).
In the late spring, the ice is breaking up sooner and forming later in the fall, forcing bears to burn huge amounts of energy walking or swimming long distances to get to any remaining ice. Or they stay on land longer, spending the summer and, increasingly, the fall fasting, living off their fat from the seals they caught in the spring.
“I do know that the only solution for the long-term survival of the polar bear is to address climate change.”, Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for Polar Bears International
- Polar Bears Are Starving Because of Global Warming, Melting Sea Ice, Study Shows - National Geographic
- Global warming as a cause of mass extinction is supported by several recent studies, Peter J Mayhew, Gareth B Jenkins, and Timothy G Benton - Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
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