Alaska Sues Over 'Threatened' Polar Bear Status

[Rhino]

Alaska Sues U.S. Over 'Threatened' Polar Bear Status
Tuesday, August 05, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The state of Alaska sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Monday, seeking to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Gov. Sarah Palin and other state officials fear a listing will cripple offshore oil and gas development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in Alaska's northern waters, which provide prime habitat for the only polar bears under U.S. jurisdiction.

"We believe that the Service's decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available," Palin said in announcing the lawsuit....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,397601,00.html

[Neil Peart]

We believe that the Service's decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available.That's an understatement.

[DeclinetoState]

By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
Saturday, September 8, 2007; 3:35 AM

WASHINGTON -- Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 _ and the entire population gone from Alaska _ because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

USGS projects that polar bears during the next half-century will disappear along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia and lose 42 percent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed. A polar bear's life usually lasts about 30 years.


Link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/08/AR2007090800363.html) (from last year)

"Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century": Considering that the end of the century is over 90 years away, and that bears live only 30 years, I doubt that any of them now alive will survive till the end of the century.

Just a hunch, though.

[Rhino]

global warming....scientific armOxymoron.