Killer whales have become the most contaminated mammals in the Arctic, new research indicates.

Arctic orcas highly contaminated

In the effort to slow earth's rising temperatures, even a well-intentioned proposal could backfire, scientists said Wednesday.

Trees May Be Bad for You

IN December 1997, representatives of most of the world's nations met in Kyoto, Japan, to negotiate a binding agreement to cut emissions of "greenhouse" gases.

They succeeded. The Kyoto Protocol was ultimately ratified by 156 countries. It was the first agreement of its kind. But it may also prove to be the last.

Today, in the middle of new global warming talks in Montreal, there is a sense that the whole idea of global agreements to cut greenhouse gases won't work.

On Climate Change, a Change of Thinking

Under the new plan, called Pleistocene "re-wilding," close cousins and counterparts of the lost beasts, mostly from Africa, would be released into large, protected tracts of land and allowed to roam freely. Ideally, such actions would not only give parts of North America back an approximation of their long-ago megafauna diversity, they would also help save animals such as the African cheetah from extinction.

I heard about this on All Things Considered the other day. Wow ... just ... wow.

Conservationist Plan Would Give Lions, Elephants a Home on the Range

] The waves rip huge boulders from cliff faces and sweep
] them up to 50m inland in exposed areas such as Shetland,
] Orkney and the Western Isles.

Damn.

Huge waves eroding British coast

] Beneath the calm, sheltered waters around Washington's
] San Juan Islands, local killer whales are trying to adapt
] to a new challenge: the overwhelming rumble of engine
] noise from a growing fleet of whale-watching boats.

The world just keeps getting weirder and weirder...

Killer whales having to shout over din of orca-watching craft

] The Earth is apparently geologically programmed not to
] let the atmosphere get too hot. And if the temperature
] does spike, global cooling processes can kick in as
] little as a decade later, new European research says.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm pro-environment/anti-pollution. But I've always thought the global warming stuff was pollitically-motivated bad science.

Earth uses self-cooling mechanism, study finds

] CALCUTTA, India — Endangered Bengal tigers might be making a
] comeback in numbers in a remote Indian forest, officials said
] Wednesday.

Indian tiger census in Sunderbans Forest finds population stable