Baby Walruses Drowning because of Melting Ice
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 2.06
In a recent post (In America, Global Warming doesn't even register) we quoted "Getting global warming is too much of an intellectual process. Perhaps pictures of drowning polar bears (which we are trying to find) will move people but even there, people will need to believe that those drownings are due to our failure to build cleaner power plants and cars." Well, there may not be pictures of drowning polar bears but there are of drowning walruses. A recent study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reports " an unprecedented number of unaccompanied and possibly abandoned walrus calves in the Arctic Ocean, where melting sea ice may be forcing mothers to abandon their pups as the mothers follow the rapidly retreating ice edge north." One researcher said “We were on a station for 24 hours, and the calves would be swimming around us crying. We couldn’t rescue them” All pointing out that changing ice patterns are killing animals that live on the ice- as it retreats it is over deeper water and the walruses cannot dive deep enough to find food. They may not get as many cuteoverload points as a polar bear, but they are drowning and there appears to be a direct corelation to global warming. ::Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution thanks, tipster marc
Wow, that is heart breaking.
Crying over my bagel--great way to start the morning. Damn people.
I agree...imagining walrus calves crying kinda puts a pit in my stomach...
It's too bad this is happening and so why don't we drop massive floating islands? It shouldn't be that expensive to build them would it?
And while working on solving this problem maybe someone can come up with an sonar reflecting fishing net to safe the dolphins as well.
It is possible to make changes but we must realize that there has been major damage. This is the beginning.
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I know a lot of people who don't believe in Global Warming. They say something like...'That's what they said about the coming ice age'. There are people in my own family who don't believe in Global Warming despite all the evidence to the contrary.
I definitely believe that we, as humans, have decimated this beautiful world that we were given to care for.
Even if it isn't Global Warming (hypothetically), there is still an obvious problem here. When the ice sheets are coming in 3-4 weeks later, receding earlier, and danger of a rise in sea levels, we definitely have a problem that cannot be ignored. Too bad there are unbelievers out there.
I have tried to get my own family to see what is happening but they refuse.
It is really an awful shame because our animals and wildlife are paying the price for our stupidity and our arrogance.