Reply #2: I posted this today...

[linazelle]

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Science/story?id=1407585


Dec. 15, 2005 -- NASA has just announced that for the fourth year in a row, it has recorded the hottest annual global temperatures since reliable records started in the late 1800s.

<snip>

...On land, polar bears are clumsy hunters so their existence is threatened as the Arctic keeps melting. Already, field researchers have reported disruptions in the polar bears' well-being — a growing number of females now failing to gain enough weight during the summer to be able to breed. A survey by the U.S. Mineral Management Service has recorded elevated numbers of polar bears drowning. Some have been found swimming far out in the warming Arctic sea as the sea ice pulls back farther from land and the bears try to swim to shore.