Global warming

I've linked to a similar (very long) report before where I surmised polar bears are the new canaries*.

There is nothing funny about work in Arctic. And a group of Russians at an Arctic weather station felt it on their own back. They spent two nerve-wracking days hiding in an attic while waiting for permission from Moscow to shoot a hungry polar bear rampaging through their house.

...

The newspaper reported that about 170 polar bears, which are a protected species, have been stranded along Russia's Arctic shore during unseasonally warm temperatures.

"Every year the ice forms later. For example, right now the ice is not thick enough to support the polar bear and the animal is being forced to look for food where people are," Anatoly Kochnyov, an expert with the Pacific Fisheries and Oceanography Scientific Institute, was quoted as saying.

(read more)

* For those who don't understand. Canaries used to be and perhaps still are used in coal mines. When they die from poisonous gases the miners know they have to get out. Its a sort of early warning system.