I just wanted to comment on something I read on Wired that sounded funny to me. The beef is not with Wired, it's with the people they're quoting.

According to the Wired, the US Fish and Wildlife Service makes the claim that "...oil and gas exploration [in previously unexplored Alaskan wildlife areas] will have a negligible effect on the bears' population."

They go on, though, to later say:

"The oil and gas industry in operating under the kind of rules they have operated under for 15 years has not been a threat to the species, It was the ice melting and the habitat going away that was a threat to the species over everything else."
(Emphasis added)

Ok, I don't agree that Polar bears will only be "negligibly" affected by this but whatever. So, then, how is increasing the availability of the very fossil fuels that sparked the melting of the ice and destruction of their habitat going to have no negligible affect on their habitat?

That makes no sense.

We're too pansy ass, as a country, to make it illegal to make significant contributions to global warming (or to do something that will inevitably cause someone to make significant contributions).