This Is Terrible

The polar bears are drowning (via Think Progress by way of AmericaBlog):

Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes.

In a quarter-century of aerial surveys of the Alaskan coastline before 2004, researchers from the U.S. Minerals Management Service said they typically spotted a lone polar bear swimming in the ocean far from ice about once every two years. Polar-bear drownings were so rare that they have never been documented in the surveys.

But in September 2004, when the polar ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of the northern coast of Alaska, researchers counted 10 polar bears swimming as far as 60 miles offshore. Polar bears can swim long distances but have evolved to mainly swim between sheets of ice, scientists say.

So, what is BushCo doing about global warming? If your guess was "not a goddam thing," you'd pretty much be right:

More than 150 nations, including nearly every industrialized country except the United States, agreed Saturday to negotiate a second phase of mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Those include carbon dioxide, methane and other gases accumulating in the atmosphere from fossil-fuel burning. A 1997 treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, covers the first phase through 2012, but the United States, whose tailpipes and smokestacks are responsible for one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, won't participate.

Last year, Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon described the BushCo position on global warming this way:

Don't expect President Bush to discuss global warming -- the world's most serious environmental problem -- on the campaign trail in the next eight weeks. The former oilman from Texas doesn't dare alienate his friends in the fossil fuel and auto industries, prime purveyors of global warming. Bush still refuses to admit that burning Chevron with Techron in our Jeep Grand Cherokees and megatons of coal in our power plants has brought us 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980.

"You're talking about a president who says that the jury is out on evolution, so what possible evidence would you need to muster to prove the existence of global warming?" says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., author of the new book "Crimes Against Nature." "We've got polar ice caps melting, glaciers disappearing all over the world, ocean levels rising, coral reefs dying. But these people are flat-earthers."

I guess very little has changed in a year. Unfortunately, we still have three more years of this idiot. Intelligent Designer help us.