what type of apocalypse?

[waterford103]

A universal pandemic caused by human tinkering in a bioweapons lab somewhere which kills 50% of the population slowly and leaves 25% sterile.

That'll do nicely , of course it would ideally happen after I've popped my clogs , say 10 years time .

[Wapinschaw]

Would a magazine NOT offering financial advice be so in-depth, or concerned for that matter?

Maybe, it could then be called a news report.

[Christel]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... a-ice-melt

For whatever reason it is happening, the polar bears are about to join the dinosaurs.

[Sandgroper]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... a-ice-melt

For whatever reason it is happening, the polar bears are about to join the dinosaurs.

Given that the starved polar bear in question was estimated at 16 years old and the average life span of a polar bear in the wild is 15-18 years, couldn't it have simply been too old to hunt and/or adapt to the low sea ice last year?

If it was a polar bear in the prime of it's life that had starved then the article and it's implications would had greater weight IMO.

[Christel]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... a-ice-melt

For whatever reason it is happening, the polar bears are about to join the dinosaurs.

Given that the starved polar bear in question was estimated at 16 years old and the average life span of a polar bear in the wild is 15-18 years, couldn't it have simply been too old to hunt and/or adapt to the low sea ice last year?

If it was a polar bear in the prime of it's life that had starved then the article and it's implications would had greater weight IMO.

Absolutely, there could also have been underlying causes for the demise. However that does not take away the fact that the ice is melting and the amount of bears are declining.

[Sandgroper]

Absolutely, there could also have been underlying causes for the demise. However that does not take away the fact that the ice is melting and the amount of bears are declining.

True, but from the article

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world's largest professional conservation network, states that of the 19 populations of polar bear around the Arctic, data is available for 12. Of those, eight are declining, three are stable and one is increasing.

My questions would be - At what rate are those groups declining and why? What is different about those groups that are stable or increasing? Regarding the 7 groups for which there is no data what is being done to gather data?

If (and it's a big if) those 7 groups are shown to be stable and/or increasing then that paints a very different picture. I'm not saying something isn't happening but for me there isn't enough information (in that article) to say what is happening and what the cause is.

[Dougan]

Up until the hunting bans in the 50s and 60s the bear's population was down to about 5000; but has since gone back up to 25,000 which is healthy considering the amount of habitat they have left...

...but as that habitat shrinks (and behaves in respect to ice cover) with global warming, the bears can either go south and compete with us, or go further north (or to the best ice flows) and compete with each other...

...the long term future isn't looking good for them.

[Blu]

Personally I believe the next big kick off will be over natural resources and those resources don't just include oil and natural gas. At the present rate of our consumption of those resources and as demand grows, it has been estimated that they will run out in about 30 - 40 years. So I figure that in about 20 years time when things start getting tight, that's when we will start fighting over the resources that are left on a scale never yet seen before.

China for one already recognizes this fact hence it's huge forward looking military build up.

Blu

[Burner]

Well then Blu, you better have trained the Boys well.
They will have to defend our local fresh water. Everyone is already after that. We do have more locally in liquid form, then anyplace else in the world.

[Chuck]

China set to pass the USA as top oil importer by the end of 2013 - according to news today.