Global warming threatens polar bears' existence

Polar bears are under threat due to warming caused by greenhouse gases emission from burning fossil fuels.

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The ice edge where the bears hunt in spring are melting too quickly forcing the bears and their cubs to stress through a longer summer without food. The bears hunt for seals on the melting ice-edge in the begining of summers and then spend the summer fasting. As the ice has started melting quickly, the bears get less time to catch the seals which themselves have problem coping with quick meltdown. The seals require stable ice for rest, digesting their food and more importantly rearing their pups safely.

A decline in population and reduced weight of female bears in western Hudson Bay area in Canada have been reported where summer have become a month longer than what it was decades ago. Since bears spend their summers on land without food, longer summer means stressful fasting. Average birth weight of bear cubs has been reported to drop by 15 per cent from 1981 to 1998. The loss in weight of female bears may render them unfit to bear cubs.

Polar amplification effect has resulted in the rise of temperature of Greenwich by more than 2ºF, twice the global average. The melting of ice and snow cover results into more heat absorption which thereby accelerates temperature rise and ice melt down.

Unless the polar bears adapt to land-based living, no ice means no bears.

Global warming is having grave implications for all, especially those who aren't the actual culprits of the carbon emissions responsible for temperature rise. People living in undeveloped nations and other organisms are the first to earn the wrath of nature for something that they are not responsible for.

Aren't we going to mend our ways?

Source: Reuters

Image source: exzooberance.com