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Gold9472
12-21-2006, 09:42 AM
Climate Change vs Mother Nature: Scientists reveal that bears have stopped hibernating

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2091875.ece

Published: 21 December 2006

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.

In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the forests of Spain's Cantabrian mountains, when normally they would already be in their long, annual sleep.

Bears are supposed to slumber throughout the winter, slowing their body rhythms to a minimum and drawing on stored resources, because frozen weather makes food too scarce to find. The barely breathing creatures can lose up to 40 per cent of their body weight before warmer springtime weather rouses them back to life.

But many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern cordillera - which have a slightly different genetic identity from bear populations elsewhere in the world - have remained active throughout recent winters, naturalists from Spain's Brown Bear Foundation (La Fundación Oso Pardo - FOP) said yesterday.

The change is affecting female bears with young cubs, which now find there are enough nuts, acorns, chestnuts and berries on thebleak mountainsides to make winter food-gathering sorties "energetically worthwhile", scientists at the foundation, based in Santander, the Cantabrian capital, told El Pais newspaper.

"If the winter is mild, the female bears find it is energetically worthwhile to make the effort to stay awake and hunt for food," said Guillermo Palomero, the FOP's president and the co-ordinator of a national plan for bear conservation. This changed behaviour, he said, was probably a result of milder winters. "The high Cantabrian peaks freeze all winter, but our teams of observers have been able to follow the perfect outlines of tracks from a group of bears," he said.

The FOP is financed by Spain's Environment Ministry and the autonomous regions of Cantabria, Asturias, Galicia and Castilla-Leon, where the bears roam in search of mates. Indications of winter bear activity have been detected for some time, but only in the past three years have such signs been observed "with absolute certainty", according to the scientists.

"Mother bears with cubs make the effort to seek out nuts and berries if these have been plentiful, and snow is scarce," Mr Palomero said, adding that even for those bears - mostly mature males - who do close down for the winter, "their hibernation period gets shorter every year".

The behaviour change suggests that global warming is responsible for this revolution in ursine behaviour, says Juan Carlos Garc^a Cordón, a professor of geography at Santander's Cantabria University, and a climatology specialist.

"Meteorological data in the high mountains is scarce, but it seems that the warming is more noticeable in the valleys where cold air accumulates," Dr Garc^a Cordón said. "There is a decline in snowfall, and in the time snow remains on the ground, which makes access to food easier. As autumn comes later, and spring comes earlier, bears have an extra month to forage for food.

"We cannot prove that non-hibernation is caused by global warming, but everything points in that direction."

Spanish meteorologists predict that this year is likely to be the warmest year on record in Spain, just as it is likely to be the warmest year recorded in Britain (where temperature records go back to 1659). Globally, 2006 is likely to be the sixth warmest year in a record going back the mid-19th century.

Mark Wright, the science adviser to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the UK, said that bears giving up hibernation was "what we would expect" with climate change.

"It does not in itself prove global warming, but it is certainly consistent with predictions of it," he said. "What is particularly interesting about this is that hitherto the warming has seemed to be happening fastest at the poles and at high latitudes, and now we're getting examples of it happening further south, and heading towards the equator.

"I think it's an indication of what's to come. It shows climate change is not a natural phenomenon but something that is affecting not only on the weather, but impacting on the natural world in ways we're only now beginning to understand."

The European brown bear, with its characteristic pelt that ranges from dark brown through shades of grey to pale gold, has black paws and a tawny face. It has poor vision, although it sees in colour and at night, and if threatened rears on its hind legs to get a better view. It can live for up to 30 years. It has acute hearing, and an especially fine sense of smell that enables it to detect food from a long distance. It is carnivorous, but has a multifunctional dental system with powerful canines and grinding molars perfectly adapted to an omnivorous diet.

The animals would normally begin hibernation between October and December, and resume activity between March and May.

The Cantabrian version of the brown bear, a protected species, was once as endangered as the Iberian lynx or the imperial eagle still are in Spain, but is now recovering in numbers. Between 70 and 90 bears roamed Spain's northern mountains in the early 1990s; now 130 live there.

Other seasonal freaks

The osprey found in the lochs and glens of the Scottish Highlands in the summer months, usually migrate to west Africa to avoid the freeze. This winter, osprey have been spotted in Suffolk and Devon. Swallows, which also normally migrate to Africa for the winter have been also seen across England this winter.
The red admiral butterfly, below, which hibernates in winter, has been spotted in gardens this month, as has the common darter dragonfly, usually seen between mid-June and October, which has been seen in Cheshire, Norfolk and Hampshire.
The smew, a diving duck, flies west to the UK for winter from Russia and Scandinavia. This year, though, they have been mainly absent from the lakes and reservoirs between The Wash and the Severn.
Evergreen ivy and ox-eye daisies are still blooming and some oak trees, which are usually bare by November, were still in leaf on Christmas Day last year.
The buff-tailed bumblebee is usually first seen in spring. Worker bees die out by the first frost, while fertilised queen bees survive underground between March and September. This December, bees have been seen in Nottingham and York.
Primroses and daffodils are already flowering at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, in Carmarthenshire. 'Early Sensation' daffodils usually flower from January until February. Horticulturalists put it down to the warm weather.
Scientists in the Netherlands reported more than 240 wild plants flowering in the first 15 days of December, along with more than 200 cultivated species. Examples included cow parsley and sweet violets. Just two per cent of these plants normally flower in winter, while 27 per cent end their main flowering period in autumn and 56 per cent before October.

thumper
12-21-2006, 01:36 PM
walking teddy bears

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1sZgXUKGCIs

DemBruceLeeStylez!
12-21-2006, 07:02 PM
I think this is just pretty much propaganda, global warming is happening but it's also happening on Pluto the furthest planet away, Mars, the whole damn Solar System. It's the Sun going through a hot cycle, it as little to do with manmade emissions, a giant volcano eruption injects in one go more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere then mankind has ever been able to produce combined. We are, or more to the point scumbag corporations who make money from us, are doing f*cked up things to the environment like cutting down Rainforests and destroying animal's habitats, dumping poisonous shit into the Oceans etc. And we do need to be more green in that sense and knock down these corporations etc who are doing this. But "Global Warming" as the media spins it is more cynical manipulation designed to fool people into coughing up more taxes and ultimately relinquishing more control to the state and make concessions on their lifestyle, which makes them easier to control etc. Al Gore is a scumf*cker like the rest of them, he's doing his little part to f*ck society for the benefit of the “elite”.


The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
"Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html)

Here's a BBC article from 98, long before all the apocalyptic propaganda from the great Al Gore, and all the other establishment shills;

Friday, February 13, 1998 Published at 19:25 GMT
Scientists blame sun for global warming
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/55000/images/_56456_sun300.jpg
The Sun is more active than it has ever been in the last 300 years



Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.

Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual - but a mini ice age could soon follow.

The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.

Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.

And individual cycles can be more or less active.

The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.

That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.

The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 - earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/55000/images/_56456_tree.jpgAncient trees reveal most warm spells are caused by the sunUsing ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.

They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming. The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm

thumper
12-21-2006, 07:15 PM
global warming is useful propaganda towards the illuminati's planned 'global tax' and also an excuse to consolidate all the world's industry.

YouCrazyDiamond
12-21-2006, 07:57 PM
They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming. The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm


I thought this last sentence (above) summed it up pretty well.

Though, I might want to add the idea that we will ultimately want to take that ‘understanding’ of the climate and environments in general, and (along with plenty of other knowledge and technology) learn how to ‘maintain’ them?

‘Maintenance,’ like a doctor toward a patient.

Not ‘control,’ like a narcissistic sociopath toward a victim.

beltman713
12-21-2006, 09:10 PM
Are these bears still shitting in the woods?

Gold9472
12-21-2006, 09:39 PM
That's a good question. One I will have to ponder.

beltman713
12-21-2006, 09:42 PM
Hey Gold, do you think I can stop paying my taxes and blame the Illuminati for it?

Gold9472
12-21-2006, 09:45 PM
Hey Gold, do you think I can stop paying my taxes and blame the Illuminati for it?

Prove to me the "Illuminati" exists. As for not paying your taxes... call the IRS, and ask them about the law that says you have to pay them.

Gold9472
12-21-2006, 09:52 PM
Sometimes I wonder if the real "Powers That Be" jokingly refer to themselves as, "*giggle*... we're the "Illuminati"... BWAHAHAHAHA!!! dumbasses..."

That would be funny.

YouCrazyDiamond
12-22-2006, 01:23 AM
Sometimes I wonder if the real "Powers That Be" jokingly refer to themselves as, "*giggle*... we're the "Illuminati"... BWAHAHAHAHA!!! dumbasses..."

That would be funny.
Lol.

Maybe I should add the word 'real' to my user title.




As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. ~ Gore Vidal