ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.It wasn't enough that Polar Bears started to take it on the chin from global warming now Walrus are in the same boat.
Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.
Luckily for the bear and walrus, however, we have well known climate scientists like Rush Limbaugh, Senator Jim Inhofe and novelist Michael Crichton who can provide them with hard data showing that despite the ice having melted it really hasn't because there is no global warming.
The first Walrus I ever saw were hauled out on an ice flow just off the shore from Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. I landed there in a Bering Air flight from Nome before heading on to Gambell. The Walrus were just hanging out being moved around the ocean on the endless maze of ice floes just like they have done for thousands of years. Now, thanks to inaction on the part of the United States (under Bush) and other industrialized nations (China and India come to mind) we are experiencing a huge climate crisis, the end of which is not that many years away.
However in the halls of the White House our man-child is strutting around acting tough because he knows he's doing what the minority of the public wants him to do. After all, he's the "decider guy."
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