When you see more of something, doesn't THAT mean that their numbers are increasing? Not when it comes to Polar Bears!

In Nunavut, polar bears are wandering into towns, chasing children, poaching food from caches, and generally putting pressure on the people who call Northern Canada home. The increased instance of human-bear interactions, people in this region claim, is a sure sign that the polar bear population is increasing.

However, research suggests that a decreasing habitat is forcing stressed bears into territory they once left for humans.

Biologists working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska, have looked at 27 years of data from the U.S. Government Minerals Management Services. The trend that seems to emerge is that a decreasing habitat is related to an increase in polar bear sightings.

Between 1979 and 1987, 138 bears were spotted in the southern Beaufort Sea region of Alaska. This number increased dramatically, however, to 271 sightings between 1988 and 1996, and finally 468 sightings between 1997 and 2005. Moreover, the data shows that between 1979 and 1987, 12% of sightings were associated with no-ice conditions but between 1997 and 2005 90% of sightings were associated with no ice. (Read more by clicking the title.)

Polar bears are NOT the kind of animal that want to hang around with people. Unless those people are stranded on an ice floe. Only then may the bears temporarily change their policy.

If villagers are seeing an increase in polar bears it is clearly not because the bears are looking for some company. It is because they are starving, and their traditional method for finding food is failing them.

And yes that is the fault of human beings.

Like father like daughter, Murkowski shows her true colors.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) may attempt to handcuff U.S. EPA's ability to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gases with an amendment to the agency's annual spending bill.

Murkowski, ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, may introduce an amendment to the fiscal 2010 Interior and environment appropriations bill that would allow EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions only from mobile sources, and prohibit the agency from regulating heat-trapping emissions from stationary sources like power plants and industrial facilities.

Environmentalists assailed the amendment, saying it would basically instruct EPA to ignore the law.

"This amendment suggests that if global warming pollution comes from a power plant, it is safe, but if it comes from a car, it is harmful," said David Moulton, director of climate policy and conservation funding at the Wilderness Society. "That is a preposterous distinction that cannot be supported in either law or fact."

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch called the amendment "an outrageous assault on EPA's ability to interpret the Supreme Court decision."

I have often stayed somewhat neutral when it comes to Lisa "Daddy's little girl" Murkowsi, and even felt a little relief when I became convinced that Palin would not steal her Senate seat out from under her.

However being better than Palin is hardly the definition of being good. And it is now very clear that Murkowski will sell out the people of Alaska in favor of profits for the oil companies, just like dear old dad.

Attempting to prevent the EPA from following the law to protect rapidly melting sea ice is especially egregious considering the great harm we are witnessing right here in Alaska, not to mention the impact it is having in other parts of the northern hemisphere.

The facts are that climate change is real and it is way past time for Republicans to stop worrying about protecting their major campaign contributors and to start worrying more about their constituents and the state they claim to serve.

And if Senator Murkowski is too steeped in old fashioned political tradition to see that, then perhaps it is time to really make Alaskan history and have TWO Democratic Senators in Washington.

(H/T to Wit's End for the polar bear link.)