As the Ice Shrinks, So do the Bears

I was overwhelmed with sadness today when I read about the latest discovery about polar bears- they are getting smaller. A comprehensive study done on 300 polar bear skulls, comparing skulls from the early 20th century to from more recent skulls show they have changed in both size and shape.



Cino Pertoldi, a professor of Biology and lead scientist of the study, states "Because the ice is melting, the bears have to use much more energy to hunt their prey... Imagine you have two twins - one is well fed during its growth and one is starving. (The starving) one will be much smaller, because it will not have enough energy to allocate to growth."



While this news is devastating it is still, in a way, good news. Every shred of evidence we find to help prove that the effects of global warming are killing wildlife and the planet is another shred to push lawmakers to do something about it. Christian Sonne, a veterinary scientist who worked with the team, said that the samples have provided them with an entire century of evolutional development for polar bears., making them a "fantastic sample". Sonne goes on to say "Polar bears are one of the most polluted mammals on the globe."

Which reminds me. Have you signed this petition, from savethepolarbear.org? If not, do it!

And to read more about the study on shrinking polar bears, read this article from the BBC.

Would you drink polar bear tears?

When I first read about the marketing campaign Tappening by former members of the advertising industry a few weeks ago, I was excited. Now that I've seen their campaign ads, I am even more excited. They try to raise awareness about the importance of conserving water, and encourage you to drink tap, or filter your own tap water, as opposed to drinking bottled water.

They have created several "ads" (some of which have semi-lies to express how the marketing and advertising industry stretch the truth of their products to get them sold) which express their objective. As we all know, bottled water is taken from fresh-water springs or glaciers to insure fresher taste, whilst stealing arctic habitats from under the feet of those wildlife living there (or destroying ecosystems with invasive machinery, disposed water bottles, etc...).

It is interesting to note that they created a couple of ads targeted at presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Mccain, saying they had a "drinking problem", which was of course bottled water. After winning the election, they published a congratulatory ad to Obama, as well as a sincere thank you for taking up their challenge and switching to tap.

See my (obvious) favorite ad of theirs, below.



Here are a couple more:





Read more about Tappening and how they got started, here.