April 16, 2011

Why won't people listen?

Climate change is killing people. Indirectly. They're being eaten by bears.

What on earth are you talking about, Link? Well, listen to this story from NPR's Weekend All Things Considered and tell me how you could do anything but agree with the journalist who's interviewed. His name is Paul Solotaroff, and he wrote an article in the April issue of Men's Journal explaining it. How can this be? The staple of grizzly bears' diet is seed from whitebark pines, extraordinarily hardy trees which have survived 50-degree-below-zero temperatures for centuries. Then the climate in Yellowstone Park where the trees live began to warm in 1980.

Now 80 percent of the Rockies’ whitebark pine groves stand dead or dying in ghost-gray swaths, and the bears who ate their fruit and kept out of harm’s way have bumbled down the hills in search of food.
And so, on July 28 last year, a vastly-underweight sow and her three cubs killed and partially consumed a camper from Michigan named Kevin Kammer.

Read Solotaroff's article. It's heartbreaking, and it's very persuasive. One's tempted to plant all the climate-change deniers at the edge of grizzly range in Montana.

Posted by Linkmeister at April 16, 2011 01:53 PM | TrackBack
Comments

No, they won't change their minds. Because they don't disagree with climate change because they have seen evidence that refutes it; they disagree with climate change because they don't want to believe it is happening, and they have an endless supply of intentional disbelief.

Posted by: Harry at April 16, 2011 03:11 PM

Because the climateers continue to obfuscate and hide their data and methods. Provide 100% of your data and methods or what you're doing isn't science.

Posted by: Rob McMillin at April 17, 2011 04:11 PM

Fascinating story!

And thanks for participating in my latest Limerick-Off!

Posted by: Madeleine Begun Kane at April 17, 2011 07:44 PM