Did you see Night line?- Drowning Polar Bears...Mr. Torture..

ever have one of those days where you just can't see a light at the end of the tunnel? After watching (Mr. Torture) Gonzales' grinning while denying the US ever uses torture, we are informed that the polar bears are drowning and dying of starvation due to one third of the ice disappearing. Earlier I read about how the US Representative at the UN climate talks was essentially put there by Exxon-Mobil. Then tonight I received an alert that the GOP was considering putting ANWR oil drilling into the Pentagon budget to be voted on by Friday.

So can our precious world be turned around by voting for a few "politicians" in the potentially rigged 2006/2008 elections?
Frankly, no.

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The following WSJ article starts with the most outrageous (but typical of the US media) statement: "It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113452435089621905.html?mod=todays_free_feature

Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?

By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 14, 2005; Page B1

It may be (just as gravity may be being causing things to fall?) the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning.

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.

<snip>
While the government researchers won't speculate on why a climate change is taking place in the Arctic, environmentalists unconnected to the survey say U.S. policies emphasizing oil and gas development are exacerbating global warming, which is accelerating the melting of the ice. "For anyone who has wondered how global warming and reduced sea ice will affect polar bears, the answer is simple -- they die," said Richard Steiner, a marine-biology professor at the University of Alaska.

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GOP May Attach Arctic Drilling to Pentagon Budget

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121505Q.shtml

With a budget-cutting measure stymied by stiff resistance to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling, Congressional Republicans began exploring Wednesday a new tactic to win approval of both $45 billion in cuts and the drilling plan. Lawmakers and senior aides said they were seriously considering tacking the drilling proposal onto a Pentagon spending bill that must pass before Congress heads home in the next few days.

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TAKE ACTION !
The pro-drilling lobby is at it again! And this time they’re exploiting our armed forces.

Your tireless efforts and the refusal of some principled lawmakers to allow oil companies to destroy one of our last, great wild places has so far kept Arctic drilling out of the budget reconciliation act. Now the drilling lobby is trying to slip a provision that would allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into the defense appropriations bill.

It’s a dirty trick, and we can’t let them get away with it. Call your Senators right now to stop Big Oil's war on Arctic wildlife!

We have only a little time left to save this special place and the creatures that live there.

The next 24 hours will be decisive, so please call right now.