Earlier this morning, before I left Denver, I wrote a post about oil companies and their cronies fighting the new rules designed to protect polar bears. Little did I know when I was writing the post that one of those cronies would be picked as McCain's v.p. Yes, guess who else wants no protections for the polar bears? Sarah Palin:
The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.Another global warming denier. Great. Sarah Palin is grossly misinformed. Maybe she should spend some time with the biologists who've been monitoring the polar bears lately. A report on this very subject came out this week:
She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.
Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.
Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.
The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.
"She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Alaska deserves better."
Siegel said it was unconscionable for Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming's threat to sea ice, the polar bear's habitat.
"Even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of global warming," she said. "The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this."
Government scientists reported seeing at least nine polar bears swimming in open water over a six-hour period on August 16, including one more than 50 miles offshore, World Wildlife Fund officials said.Sounds like Sarah Palin thinks the polar bears should just die.
That represents a huge increase over previous sightings, said Margaret Williams of the fund's Alaska office. A total of 12 polar bears were spotted in open water between 1987 and 2003, Williams said in a telephone interview.
In 2004, she said, four drowned bears were observed.
"Unfortunately it's what we might expect to see if bears are forced to swim longer distances," Williams said. "The Arctic is gigantic. When you have nine bears sighted in one transect (route) ... one can assume that there are likely a lot more bears swimming in open water."
