Now to the newest victims of global warming: polar bears. According to a new government study, two thirds of all the world's polar bears could be wiped out by the year 2050.ABC's Bill Blakemone has the story from the Arctic. Its formal name is also Ursus Maritimus, Latin for bear of the sea, the source of its food, mostly seals. It can swim vast distances, but in summer, it must have frozen sea surface to rest on and hunt from. The Arctic summer sea ice is disappearing so fast now. The red line is the normal summer minimum from ten years ago; this is 2006; this 2007.The scientists now say the great majority of polar bears will be gone before today's toddlers settle into middle age." Our results do give me some concern that in northern Alaska where I 've been working for all these years there may not be polar bears. Polar bears could be absent from almost all of their range, er by the middle of this century." It's not only polar bears facing extinction as the summer sea ice disappears." I 'm standing on the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean about four feet of ice. floating about a mile and a half above the sea floor. The sea ice stretches to the horizon in every direction, one of the most desolate places on earth! Yet the scientists here are finding that this ice is filled with life. and every cubic foot of water filled with creatures." Exotic life forms that depend on the sea surface / being frozen.
