Australian wildlife has been savaged by introduced pests like cats and foxes and its habitats degraded by human exploitation. Can they be saved?

ABC 

By JOHN HEILPRIN – 34 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 — and the entire population gone from Alaska — because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

USGS projects that polar bears during the next half-century will disappear along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia and lose 42 percent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed. A polar bear's life usually lasts about 30 years.

"Projected changes in future sea ice conditions, if realized, will result in loss of approximately two-thirds of the world's current polar bear population by the mid 21st century," the report says.

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Gus: as mentioned on this site before (re mammoths), more often than not it takes more than one factor to create a situation in which a species can become extinct. The most important being the critical mass factor under which a species cannot survive — unless humans out of their vicarious guilty charitable desire try as hard as they can to save the species via breeding programs, IVF and other "wonderful" techniques.

Why do I call this a vicarious guilty charitable desire? Presently humans are at the source of most extinction worldwide via overtaking habitats, destruction of territories, ruthless use of insectices and other poisons, soaps and solvents, creating pollution with various noxious gases, increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere — all major contributing factors to reducing others species ability to live... And we know that. But because we see some of our "animals" survive well under these conditions we tend to accept these conditions as okay...But we know we are do this terrible devastation on the planet. Our major response to this onslaught is not to stop it but to give us the illusion of being good by creating artificial breeding programs for these vanishing species...

Why can't we stop the slaughter and the destruction before having the need for these expensive doctor Frankeistein experiments? Below the surface of our deliberate carelessness, there are ugly desires... We want control... we want ownership of everything that moves. And the more "advance" we are the more we're deliberately careless.

And our Johnnee porks of aspirational targets — sneaky euphemism for manipulating our vicarious charitable attitude to fool the guilt we should feel, while we're DOING MORE TO DESTROY THE PLACE... and do not plan to stop.

TRAGIC...

High up inside the Arctic circle the melting of Greenland's ice sheet has accelerated so dramatically that it is triggering earthquakes for the first time.

Scientists monitoring the glaciers have revealed that movements of gigantic pieces of ice are creating shockwaves that register up to three on the Richter scale.

The speed of the arctic ice melt has accelerated to such an extent that a UN report issued earlier this year is now thought to be out of date by its own authors.

The American polar expert Robert Correll, among the key contributors to the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report issued in February, described the acceleration as "massive".

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Gus: while aspirational hot air is being frothed up in Sydney's APEC like milk in a cappuccino machine and while Business-at-all cost pushes forward the even bigger but sneakier problem of nuclear energy, proper necessary massive reduction of emissions is not considered by our ditherers.

APEC leaders sign climate change pact

Posted 15 minutes ago
APEC leaders have signed up to the Sydney Declaration on climate change which says concerted international action is needed.

APEC leaders have signed up to the 'Sydney Declaration' on climate change, which Prime Minister John Howard says forges a new international consensus on the challenge of global warming.

The declaration says concerted international action is needed and the APEC members support flexible arrangements to ensure their energy needs while contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

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Gus: Yes john, I think it's time to publish the cartoon I did about five days ago on the "final communiqué.."... 

Polar bears – the very symbol of the Arctic's looming environmental disaster – are crashing towards extinction as a result of global warming, the US government has found. The admission, the result of a massive investigation by the Bush administration, could force the President finally to take action against climate change.

The development comes at the end of the most momentous week in the human history of the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. Satellite observations have revealed that its ice has shrunk to much its lowest ever level, raising fears that it had reached a "tipping point" where it would melt irreversibly, disappearing altogether in summer in less than 25 years, with incalculable global consequences.

From the ABC

The UNEP report offers the broadest and most detailed tableau of environmental change since the Brundtland Report, 'Our Common Future', was issued in 1987 and put the environment on the world political map.

"The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged - and where the bill we hand on to our children may prove impossible to pay,"

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

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Gus: see cartoon at the head of this line of blogs...