Besides changing the climate and environment for people around the world the loss of Arctic sea ice is destroying the habitats for polar bears. Recently we reported about polar bears swimming to Iceland trying to find food and land. And now scientists are reporting that the starving polar bears are desperately resorting to killing and feeding on other polar bears as their natural habitats are rapidly being destroyed by man-made global warming.

“The Arctic sea ice melt is a disaster for the polar bears,” according to Kassie Siegel, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “They are dependent on the Arctic sea ice for all of their essential behaviors, and as the ice melts and global warming transforms the Arctic, polar bears are starving, drowning, even resorting to cannibalism because they don’t have access to their usual food sources.”

Scientists have noticed increasing reports of starving Arctic polar bears attacking and feeding on one another in recent years. In one documented 2004 incident in northern Alaska, a male bear broke into a female’s den and killed her.

Unfortunately there seems to be no light in the tunnel for the polar bears. A new preliminary report from NASA shows that the sea ice at the Arctic continues to disappear and that the ice-levels this year has reached the second-lowest level on record.

A new preliminary report from NASA confirms our worries. The sea ice at the Arctic is disappearing.

NASA reports that the Arctic sea ice has reached a second all-time low “since the dawn of the satellite era”. Previous record low for September was in 2005. NASA says that this year’ loss of sea ice “further reinforces the strong negative trend in summer sea ice extent observed during the past 30 years”. In the past sea ice has covered about 60% of the Arctic. But this winter the sea ice covered less than 30%.

“In March, when the Arctic reached its annual maximum sea ice coverage during the winter, scientists from NASA and the data center reported that thick, older sea ice was continuing to decline. According to NASA-processed satellite microwave data, this perennial ice used to cover 50-60 percent of the Arctic, but this winter it covered less than 30 percent. Perennial sea ice is the long-lived layer of ice that remains even when the surrounding short-lived seasonal sea ice melts to its minimum extent during the summer.”

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Dr James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and one of the worlds most prominent climate scientist, says in an article on the WorldWatch Institute website that climate change liars “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

“Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.”

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Top British climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS has warned that over 6 billion people will die this century due to unaddressed climate change. Already 16 million people die avoidably in the world each year due to deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease (see: “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). It is already clear from declining agricultural production due to drought and massive storm surge disasters in India, Bangladesh, Burma and the US that global warming is already impacting on global avoidable mortality.

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This is a continuation on an earlier post called “It keeps getting warmer, no matter what some people say“.

Just like the global warming deniers say the Arctic ice is approximately the same as it was last year, as data from Nasa clearly shows. But, the Nasa data also shows that the old and thick Arctic ice is melting much faster than previous years.

Data shows that ice older than two years have decreased from 60% to 30% of the total ice mass in Arctic.

Seelye Martin, manager of the Cryospheric Sciences Program at Nasa headquarters in Washington DC, said that “although this March the area is slightly larger than last March, the area of [thick] perennial ice has reached an all time low.” And he concludes that “the volume of Arctic ice continues to decrease.”

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Australian Climate Action Groups from Melbourne and wider afield gathered together on Saturday 9 February, 2008 for a Climate Movement Convergence at Melbourne’s Northcote High School. A major event was the launching of an important book published by Friends of the Earth entitled “Climate Code Red – the Case for a Sustainability Emergency” by David Spratt (Carbon Equity) and Philip Sutton (Greenleap Strategic Institute) (this important report can be downloaded here). A key outcome was the decision by some of these groups to form a Coalition for a Climate Emergency Declaration.

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National Geographic have made a movie out of Mark Lynas latest and most terrifying book, ever. In the book, which is called “Six Degrees: our future on a hotter planet“, Mark Lynas goes through each of the different degrees and explains how each of the degrees will affect our planet.

The movie is called “Six Degrees Could Change the World“. It is voiced by Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin and includes interviews with NASA’s Jim Hansen and IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri.

The movie is premiering on National Geographic Channel in the US on February 10 at 8pm ET/9pm PT, and around the world on later dates. Here are the trailers for each of the six degrees: (more…)