Beyond Polar Bears: A glimpse at the many species threatened by global warming
June 2, 2009
While polar bears are the iconic species for the threats of global warming to animals, they're nowhere near alone. This video highlights many other species that are already showing signs of stress due to climate change and begins the discussion about what should be done to prevent further damage to our animals and our planet.
About Tashia Tucker
Tashia Tucker joined The Wilderness Society's E-Communications Team in December 2007.
Experience as a Creative Director for a communications company, along with a Master of Arts Degree in Digital Media... More about Tashia Tucker

Legacy Comments
i agree witheveryone who
i agree witheveryone who thinks global warming is bazar!
keep up the great work and
keep up the great work and thank you all.
jelene
The prevention of global
The prevention of global warming will need all of the following:
Portugal has led the way to the future in which we will need NO fossil fuels, coal (whether dirty clean coal or dirty dirty coal), gas, or nuclear power.
THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!
The following needs to be more widely known:
The MOST important actions on prevention of global warming are STILL NOT being done:
1. Research into TIDAL POWER stations: America's Eastern and Western seaboards offer almost unlimited tidal power over 6000 miles.
The only such station in the Western Hemisphere is in Nova Scotia and that province already produces 12% of its electric power from renewable sources.
Hardly anything is being done in this direction in the USA.
2. Portugal has pioneered the way toward COMPLETE freedom from fossil fuels, using a combination of dams for hydro-electric power, solar farms, wind farms and harnessing WAVE POWER with "SEA SNAKES" (Pelamis). These ingenious scavengers of wave power, invented in Scotland, measure 150 metres in length and 3.5 metres in diameter. They each produce enough power to supply about 1500 HOMES, generating electricity by movement of their 4 sections about hinges. A cable along the seabed carries the energy to a substation on the shore.
Portugal had a goal to produce 30% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Two years ahead of schedule it is at 42% !
[CBC news.ca Oct.22,2008. - Also reported in UN Wire of Oct. 24th.]
America needs to catch up, and to catch up fast !
We need to change the mantra from "Drill baby Drill" to "Snake baby Snake"
WHERE ARE OUR SEA SNAKES? WHY ARE WE WAITING?
3. Research into low cost electric cars and high speed rechargeable batteries. Tesla has already an excellent vehicle, but at too high a cost. We need cheap electric cars and these could easily be made, and would TOTALLY eliminate greenhouse gases from cars.
Any bail out or better, a loan, should be only for the manufacture of electric cars - Now is the time! There are already many different electric vehicles on the market. An additional advantage of an electric car is that no one is going to burn to death trapped in the car.
4. Prepare for recharge stations at service stations and in shopping centre parking lots. Consider an electric pickup through a groove in the main streets of cities. (Like the old trams).
Now new research has developed new batteries with rapid recharge in 20 seconds. These lithium Phosphate Iron batteries have been modified to allow electrons to travel through tunnels in the Lithium in seconds. These batteries are expected to be on the market within 3 years.
5. Put an immediate ban on all new coal powered power stations, and phase out all of the old ones. Put an immediate ban on all mountain top blast mining for coal and on all industrial river pollution.
6. Put an immediate ban on any new nuclear power stations, and nuclear weapons.
Start to research better ways of disposing of nuclear waste The cost needed for nuclear power construction is staggering and far exceeds the cost of creating wind power, wave power, tidal power, and solar power.
We certainly do not need any more Chernobyls or Three Mile Islands, and nuclear waste will not go away because we want it to. It is well known that the transport of nuclear waste is hazardous, and subject to accidents! The horror of ongoing irradiation of the inhabitants in the Marshall Islands and the innumerable deaths and devastating sickness following nuclear bomb testing many miles away, and the far from reassuring recognition that the ground will remain radioactive for 1500 years does not provide any reason for complacency regarding accidents in transport, at waste dumps in volcanic areas, or at power plants, themselves!
Recent revelations exposed the fact that Virginia's nuclear reactor had sustained numerous accidents including one in which a nuclear waste storage tank spilled into the surrounding ground adjacent to a river and spread dangerous levels of radiation into the ground and into the air.
The largest environmental cleanup site in the world at Hanford, Washington (a former nuclear weapons producing facility and the most contaminated nuclear site in the USA) produced over 53 million gallons of nuclear waste in underground tanks, almost 40% of which leaked into the ground and water supply.
Recent studies on animal populations around the site of the Chernobyl reactor explosion showed marked depletion of the animal population and numerous abnormalities and deformities.
There are even more recent revelations that the radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster is still polluting the fields of England thousands of miles away, and farmers are having restrictions placed on their sheep because of enduring radioactivity of the land.
7. Start the construction of large wind farms and solar farms. (The latter are best located in the southern desert states).
Denmark has shown the feasibility of building wind farms over the sea with turbines supported by pylons driven into the seabed. Even now, very little is being done in this direction in the USA.
8. Careful construction of dams for hydro power using technology to prevent a harmful impact on wildlife and drinkable water supply.
9. Accelerating the date requiring increased mileage rules for gas powered vehicles. The meeting of the "Big Three" showed a move in the right direction but fell short of the previously determined target of 35 miles per gallon.
10.Planting new forests and cutting back on lumber industry deforestation. Revelation that most of the Southern forests are in private hands suggests the need for some negotiation for protecting these forests.
11.Aid to foreign nations in need to achieve the above goals.
Cap and trade has done nothing to reduce greenhouse gases, and is merely an easy way out for the coal and fossil fuel industries.
We need action now! Global warming is here and now! The threat of inadequate water supplies is here and now!
Recent determinations have projected substantial rise of the sea level in the Boston area and Nova Scotia from melting glaciers in Greenland. There is all too much complacency in the belief that the major disasters due to global warming will not come about until 2050!
THEY ARE HERE AND NOW RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES !!
Do not let as much as a single attempt at drilling to take place. Big Oil is holding us back and dragging us down! We have lost our power of innovation!
Can we do this? Yes we can! Si se puede!
All of the above will provide abundant employment and will be more than adequate to jumpstart the economy.
For 8 years we have been running an upside down economy which has built up a horrendous national and international debt.
Recent attempts to restart the economy by uncontrolled bail outs have resulted in inevitable failure and highly predictable consequences: The hoarding of donations of taxpayers' money. This has been a back to front effort.
To restore the economy, the FIRST OBJECTIVE MUST BE THE CREATION OF JOBS: Jobs produce products and earn money. To produce products, materials must be bought and transported, thus creating more jobs. Transportation requires fuelling, oiling, maintenance and repairs of trucks, wagons, trains, rails and roads. Wages from all of these workers pays for food from stores and farmers - more workers and more wages to spend on rentals and ultra low interest mortgages on properties with depleted prices. Purchase of properties requires agents and attorneys. Thus the cycle is restarted. An initial impetus stimulus may be needed to start the creation of these jobs and may require an initial addition to the national debt.
The massive blunder of allowing the Bush Administration to have total and secret control of the bank bail out, which should have been under the absolute control of a Board appointed by, and supervised by Congress, resulted in the money being dropped into a black hole.
By contrast, using a bail out or loan to create jobs would produce cash flow. Once the cash flow is started it accelerates and hoarded assets become released to pay for employees, and products. The release of hoarded assets stimulates investment and increases in the value of shares in the stock market. New businesses are opened. Electric cars are made and sold.
Once the economy is restored, the debt can be gradually paid off.
The predicted hoarding by banks, predictably continues, while Congress sits lamely by as if there were nothing that it could do!!! All that is needed is a little spine! Provide bail outs in monthly sums. Before the next month's payment require a certificate that the previous month's payment has been given to X for Y:
Where X equals a list of home mortgages at their reduced prices, and at a reduced interest rate of 1.9% to 2.9%. The home owner then refunds the Bail out account.
Y equals the Home owners and their addresses.
The mortgage is gradually paid off in small sums over a lengthy period.
Some properties can be rented out at extremely low rentals, with the option to buy, giving preference to the former owners. This is far better for all concerned than allowing foreclosed properties to remain empty and deteriorate or be vandalized.
WHY IN THE WORLD IS THIS NOT BEING DONE?????
The same measures can be applied to restoring corporate businesses such as the auto industry. It is simply a method of forcing the banks to open their vaults and put useless money into circulation.
Banks must be forced to release their stored assets by any number of ways, such as placing a ceiling on hoarded assets. (Operation "Tight Fist")
Banks which do not respect workers' rights or try to obstruct unions would not be given bail outs.
Those who concealed the distribution of the first TARP MUST be subpoenaed and testify under oath exactly what was done with this money. America has a right to know. 8 years of secrecy is more than more than enough.
How think you?
Sincerely,
Ian Campbell Cree, MB(Hons.), MS, FRCS(Eng. & C.), FACS, LRCP
Your information on nuclear
Your information on nuclear energy is very obsolete.
There are many possible nuclear reactor designs. The pressurized water thermal reactors, which are almost the only kind used here in the U.S., should not have been built in such large numbers.
There are reactor designs which can use natural uranium, such as the CANDU reactor (CANadian Duterium Uranium). It, and some other types of reactors, are more than 100 times as efficient as our PWTRs and the waste they do produce decays so quickly that it needs to be sequestered for only about 500 years instead of thousands of years.
Moreover, what we are calling nuclear waste from our present reactors is not waste; it is actually unburned fuel which can be burned in other types of reactors.
Reactors have been designed to use thorium for fuel instead of uranium. The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LIFTR) uses thorium tetrafluoride as fuel which, at room temperatures, is a christaline solid but is a liquid at reactor temperatures.
The Chernobel reactor had no containment structure in addition to being a very dangerous design. Reactor safety has been greatly improved since the Three Mile Island accident which, incidentally, resulted in no injuries or deaths.
I hope that everyone will study more carefully the matter of nuclear energy and get more current knowledge.
Good thinking.
You are very practical and realistic. You have thought these ideas through, and they make sense to me, on the first read, at least. I hope you will succeed in promoting all these ideas at the leadership level--Obama. And, I hope they take root at the grassroot level, too, of course. Good luck. I will refer back to your ideas often. Best to you. Jim jimsto@yahoo.com
We need help! Please make a
We need help! Please make a change and help stop this madness. It's raining and cool one day
the next it's hot and humid. It's June and it feels like April. We have no air quality kids are getting colds
and flu off season. It's out of control.
Save your world
The time is now not later. If we choose not to do nothing why should the world keep giving us a place to live. The choice is in each of our hands.
fix the planet
we need to do something now to start fixing this problem because if we do nothing remember the show life after people that is what can happen to us.
my predictions for 2009/2010
mexico destroyed by volcanic eruption
rainier will erupt
yellow stone will blow it cork
china mass starvation
africa ebola, monkey pox etc
florida and u.s sink due to rising waters
california 10.5 quake followed by giant tsunami
that is what I see coming
Optimism
I would like to be optimistic and think the changes will happen in time to save us. Although there are so many problems now it is difficult to be
optimistic, I choose to think positive and keep doing whatever I can. What other choices are there. I believe we need to know the problems in
order to change them if we can.