January 7, 2007

Too much to Bear

Posted by Kate Sheppard at 11:24AM

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The Coney Island Polar Bear Club staged a silent protest on Saturday, huddled (but not shivering) on the beach in Brooklyn as record temperatures were recorded in New York City and the surrounding region.

The high temperatures may lead to the cancellation of this year's round of nearly-naked nuts running into bodies of water.

It would be the first canceled season in the winter bathing club's 104 years.

Yesterday's high of 72 degrees in NYC tops the previous record of 63 degrees, set in the 1950s, according to the National Weather Service.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration, in stark contrast to years of climate change skepticism, has proposed adding the actual big, fuzzy, white polar bear to the Endangered Species List. Now, what are they going to do to actually protect the bear? Well, it’s easier to list than to achieve, friends.

And in other polar news, scientists have declared 2007 as the International Polar Year, in which researchers from 60 countries will attempt to better understand the effects of climate change on the Earth’s poles. It is the first time since the 1950s that this sort of in-depth study of the poles has taken place – and the first study of this sort in light of global climate change. “Close to 60 percent of what is known about the polar regions, particularly the Arctic, comes from research carried out in 1958," Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian research network on the Arctic, told Agence France-Presse. And this time, they’re actually collaborating with the folks who live in the Arctic!