Archive - May 14, 2008

I love the stillness of the wood:
I love the music of the rill:
I love to couch in pensive mood
Upon some silent hill. -

Scarce heard, beneath you arching trees,
The silver-crested ripples pass;
And, like a mimic brook, the breeze
Whispers among the grass. -

Here from the world I win release,
Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude,
Break in to mar the holy peace
Of this great solitude. -

- Lewis Carroll

(quote)

The U.S. Department of the Interior Wednesday listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, however, made clear several times during a press conference announcing the department's decision that, despite his acknowledgement that the polar bear's sea ice habitat is melting due to global warming, the ESA will not be used as a tool for trying to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for creating climate change.

The decision was based on evidence that sea ice is vital for polar bear survival, that this sea ice habitat has been reduced, and that this process is likely to continue; if something is not done to change this situation, the polar bear will be extinct within 45 years, Kempthorne said. He pointed to computer models he and his colleagues studied that project a 30 percent decline in sea ice by 2050.  read more »