Some serious stuff in here:

You've probably seen the photo the the polar bear nibbling at a U.S. submarine.


There is more in a story at strategypage.com, but what caught our eye was this:

American submarines have been operating under the Arctic ice for over half a century. ... They have also used their sonar to measure the ice thickness and report that the ice has lost 40 percent of its thickness in the last 20 years. This has caused problems for the polar bears, who feed on seals that surface near offshore ice flows or through breathing holes in pack ice. Some bears are forced to come ashore earlier because of the longer warm season. This is caused by a combination of global warming and the normal fluctuation of Arctic ice thickness.

So, does this mean that the U.S. Navy has solid evidence that we are at risk of losing the north polar ice-cap? And has the skeptical-of-global-warming Bush administration got the data, but not released it? The world wonders.

ADDENDUM: Another picture is here in Yahoo news.

posted by Quiddity at 5/30/2003 03:59:00 PM