Still not convinced that climate change is all that bad? These dead animals beg to differ.

Sometimes, I’m not sure just how much more evidence skeptics need to acknowledge 1) that climate change is real and 2) humans are making it worse. From drought and extreme heat to coastal flooding and superstorms, Mother Nature is throwing out every red flag in her arsenal to get our attention.

If billion dollar damage doesn’t pull at your heartstrings, maybe this will: a 16-year-old otherwise healthy polar bear was recently found starved to death in Norway. Polar bear experts, who had examined the animal’s health just a few months prior, say dwindling sea ice caused by global warming is to blame.

“Most of the fjords and inter-island channels in Svalbard did not freeze normally last winter and so many potential areas known to that bear for hunting seals in spring do not appear to have been as productive as in a normal winter,” Dr. Ian Stirling, a researcher with Polar Bears International, told The Guardian. “As a result the bear likely went looking for food in another area but appears to have been unsuccessful.”

Although we can never be 100 percent sure about the bear’s exact cause of death, the disappearance of the arctic sea ice on which it depends can’t be debated.

In late 2012, studies confirmed that, thanks to climate change, total sea ice in the Arctic was at the smallest amount ever recorded in history. Then, in July 2013, the North Pole suddenly turned into the “North Pool” after another fast and furious decline in sea ice.

And polar bears aren’t the only wildlife suffering the deadly consequences of our unchecked carbon emissions. This summer, record-breaking heat caused surface temperatures of several Alaskan lakes to rise above 75 degrees F. Thousands of fish, including the precious Alaskan King Salmon, died as a result.

Related on Ecosalon:

Top 10 Global Warming Denier Arguments Debunked

Call To Action: 50 Steps To Deal With A Changing World

Image: jidanchaomian

The post Attention Skeptics: Climate Change Is Already Killing Fish & Polar Bears appeared first on EcoSalon.

A new climate era is here.

If you wanted more proof of climate change (Really? More proof? Really?) then this picture should shut you up for good.

This month, the sea ice around the Arctic shrank to its lowest extent since records began, beating the previous record-breaking minimum (in 2007) by a truly worrying extent.

Every year the ice at the top of our world spreads and withdraws in a largely predictable way according to the seasons and influenced by all sorts of factors including sea currents, wind patterns and, of course, temperature. In 2007 the summertime extent of sea ice reached a new minimum of 4.17 million km². On the 26th of August this year the ice again shrank down to this level – and kept going. On the 16th of September the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado recorded arctic ice coverage at 3.41 million km² – the lowest since records began. (The yellow line denotes the extent of the average minimum over the last 30 years).

It’s difficult to grasp the scale of this but picture about a dozen United Kingdoms lined up side by side: that’s how much more sea ice has vanished beyond the average amount left at the end the summer over the past 30 years.

 – David Shukman, Science Editor, BBC News

So what’s going on here, since Antarctic sea ice levels are remaining relatively stable? Simple – it seems that arctic ice is proving a reliable gauge of the way our planet is warming up, while the Antarctic is proving slower to respond. And what will happen next? Nobody can say for sure, although it seems likely that atmospheric disruptions will follow, along the lines of the jet stream displacement that has been causing unusually poor weather across Northern Europe all summer and gave the UK its wettest June for over a century.  It also seems like that so-called “extreme weather” events become more commonplace.

Our northern ice-cap, a permanent feature for all of human history, could be well on the way to becoming a seasonal feature – and our world is visibly changing. Welcome to a new climate era.

Image: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, via New Scientist.

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