Polar Bears to Die Out by 2050

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clipped from www.world-science.net Report: Most polar bears to die out by 2050 Two-thirds of the world’s po­lar bears will be killed off by 2050 — and the en­tire popula­t­ion gone from Alas­ka — be­cause of thin­ning sea ice from glob­al warm­ing in the Arc­tic, U.S. gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists fore­cast Fri­day. Only in the north­ern Ca­na­di­an Arc­tic is­lands and the west coast of Green­land are any of the world’s 16,000 po­lar bears ex­pected to sur­vive through the end of the cen­tu­ry, said the U.S. Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey, which is the sci­en­tif­ic arm of the In­te­ri­or De­part­ment. USGS pro­jects that po­lar bears dur­ing the next half-cen­tu­ry will dis­ap­pear along the north coasts of Alas­ka and Rus­sia and lose 42 per­cent of the Arc­tic range they need to live in dur­ing sum­mer in the Po­lar Ba­sin when they hunt and breed. A po­lar bear’s life usu­ally lasts about 30 years. Sci­en­tists do not hold out much hope that car­bon di­ox­ide can be turned around in time to help the po­lar bears