Hahaha, you see, I used the same tactics as the left: Show a cute, heart-wrenching picture of an innocent animal, then name a victim that is brutally murdering it and must be stopped. Only in my case, it's near truth; whereas human actions have resulted in.... quintupling polar bear populations in the last 50 years!

Then you fell back on elitism and generalizations of your opponents, and no substantial argument.

Apologies for derailing your thread Snax... I got a little carried away.

PC, please do give sources for the information, and I dont mean the wiki.

lmfao.. PC and I give well written, well thought out arguments supporting our beliefs, and in return, we get the debate-winning "You're just a bunch of inbred hicks!" Brilliant! Amazing! Such a way with words!

break19

Shadoen, the info that polar bear populations have grown from 5000 to 25000 in the past 50 years I read in a book called Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjørn Lomborg. I haven't read it all, but I read much of his previous The Skeptical Environmentalist, which was very well thought out, and both books are extremely scrupulous about providing sources. Unfortunately the polar bear thing was in the preface, and very uncharacteristically there isn't a source, even though a huge portion of the book is sources and literature he studied. I found a source on the internet, though:

http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=20631

I skimmed it and it seems to have a lot of good information, and probably cites sources, but I know the liberals reading this will discount it solely on the fact that it comes from a conservative source. So here's a statement straight from the WWF about how polar bear population is at least stable:

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/about_species/species_factsheets/polar_bear/pbear_population_distribution/index.cfm

As can be seen, hunting, not warming, is the threat to polar bears.

And bears in general are the number one threat to America, of course.

Yes, I know the WWF has that spin and bias, which is why I commented on the sickening TV ads in my blog post. The trick is digging into the actual data, rather than accepting their conclusions. When it comes to real data, the WWF and IPCC (occasionally, though they ignore important things like water vapor) conclusions don't hold up. The fact is that polar bear populations are at least stable if not increasing, and they have been around through warmer times than this. They were there with less polar ice than we have now. Yet if there's not a threat to be fought, the WWF doesn't get money, so they make ads full of lies but no data, and spout this propaganda all over their website. You have to dig for the truth, but it exists even there. That's why I used WWF as a source, since people like you absorb all their arguments on faith without facts, or better yet in spite of facts.

Oh, and you're right, I was too lazy to read every word of the article. I've already read so much, and I start a new semester of school tomorrow, so I hope you'll excuse my priorities.

I don't discount any of the melting of polar ice, I'm relatively sure that it's happening. I guess I just don't care all that much about polar bears that can't adapt and move into areas where they have some solid land. Remember, seals need solid land, too. So as long as the polar bears just follow the food, they'll be fine, even if the Arctic icepack melts completely and stays melted throughout Winter.

This is evolution at work. Only the smartest bears will survive, or, maybe, only the bears that can sleep while floating.

The irony is that while we're so afraid of what global warming will do to the Earth, historically there has been more biodiversity in Earth's warmer times than its cooler times. We're recovering from an ice age right now; do you really want ice to cover Kansas again? CO2 is not a pollutant, and it is a very weak greenhouse gas. Plants grow faster and bigger when there's more CO2, it's their staple food! And what of the carefully balanced ecosystem? It is not balanced. A balanced system is a stagnant system. There is always change; every time a species makes a breakthrough and gains a monopoly on some niche in the ecosystem, others fill the void left by anything that disappears. It would be very sad if the polar bears disappeared completely, because they are very cool despite being a threat to Eskimos. But there would be no harm to the ecosystem if it happened; other predators would take advantage of the new food supply of seals, etc., and replace the bears, just like has been happening for nearly four billion years.

Nukes can prevent species stagnation (and thus survivability) by creating more genetic variation. Nukes are good. Yeah!

Speaking of nukes... Iran wants one sooo badly, maybe we should just say the hell with it.. and give em one.

of course, it'd be given as an airburst, directly over the home of Mahmoud I'ma wantin' jihad.

Problem solved. Iran got their nuke, and we dont have to worry about them using it against us.

break19

edit: can't wait for the "zomg you warmongerer" stuff. it's soo easy to tweak em.

Sigh. I, too, dream of what those vast deserts would look like from space--were we to melt them into an ocean of glass.

A gigantic Archimedes Death Ray.

^^ Nice ;)

I've often thought it would be fun to stand atop a skyscraper with a giant Fresnel lens, aimed at the sidewalk below...

There was an animated Tick episode based on that premise, Doc.

A queen ant took over a building and was gonna burn humans with its giant lens. Oh, yes: Here's the synopsis:

"Ants in Pants!" (21:20) (Originally aired November 18, 1995)
Mysterious women in hats and trenchcoats are really large groups of ants, who are strangely stealing pieces of glass around The City. The sight prompts The Tick to visit a sanitarium for some coupon-priced counseling with Captain Sanity. Meanwhile, Arthur, American Maid, Die Fledermaus, Sewer Urchin, and Fishboy try to stop the diabolical ants.

The Tick may have been the best cartoon ever. I still laugh out loud at the episodes. Even that description above is funny to me.

Ah, The Tick.... I miss that show. And Animaniacs, and Pinky & The Brain, and Darkwing Duck.

Thunder. Thunder. Thunder. Thunder Cats! Hoooooooo!

"Sigh. I, too, dream of what those vast deserts would look like from space--were we to melt them into an ocean of glass."

my sentiments exactly, as for the wimps who say 'oh what about the innocent civilians', screw em, hell maybe if their crispy corpses ain't too radioactive we can feed them to the precious polar bears. Come to think of it, glow in the dark polar bears would be cool, then we can hunt them in the dark.

Oh hell yea. I'd be one of the first to volunteer to go hunt glow-in-the-dark bears! I could leave my nightvision scope at home! woot!

edit: yea, for those curious about me being able to HIT the bears.. I'm a marginally-better shot in real life, compared to vo. hehe

Darkwing Duck!!! <- teh awesome

"We're tiny, we're tooney, we're all a little looney, and in this cartoony, we're invading your TV.." <- best song evar

break19

Suck gas, evil doer!