One of the more interesting books I've read lately is The Weather Makers, by the scientist and environmentalist Tim Flannery. The title refers to the ability of human beings to influence the climate by changing the composition of the atmosphere, and the book's central message is that we are now weather makers.

The most profound consequence of human influence, of course, is likely to be an increase in average global temperatures owing to emissions of carbon dioxide. Flannery does a good job of presenting the evidence for anthropogenic  global warming, and the book contains sufficient ammunition to blast gaping holes in the standard "skeptical" arguments. However, Flannery is at his most interesting when he discusses the probable consequences of global warming.

Two points struck me as particularly relevant for Canadians. First, the effects of climate change will be extremely uneven. Flannery is concerned about his own country, Australia, which is already experiencing droughts that are partly a result of global warming. Canada faces disruption to the Arctic ecosystem, but melting ice may also make Arctic resources and sea routes more accessible. Furthermore, agriculture in both Canada and Russia may actually benefit from warmer conditions. This is not to say we should welcome climate change - many of the effects on Canada will be deleterious, and after all, I like Australia. But we Canadians need to prepare realistically for the specific changes in our local climate that are likely to occur.

The second point that I found particularly thought-provoking was the role of climate change in driving conflict. The Sudan, like Australia, is already getting noticeably drier, to the detriment of local farmers and herders. This is how Flannery links the changing conditions to the fighting in Darfur:

Camel-herding nomads have been forced to drive their herds onto agricultural lands, where they have come into conflict with farmers. Although the herders are characterized as Arabs, and the farmers as Africans, with the exception of their lifestyles they are culturally and physically indistinguishable.

I might want a second opinion from an anthropologist about the differences between the two groups. However, I have no trouble believing that desperation caused by lack of rainfall is part of the problem in Darfur. Situations like this are almost guaranteed to become more common, in many parts of the world, as changing weather disrupts the agricultural activities on which all societies ultimately depend. Canada should be ready.

Corwin

Yesterday at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Canada, the Cape Farewell Youth Expedition 08 launched. This incredible trip begins September 7 when the students and staff leave from Iceland aboard the Academik Shokalskiy, a Russian research vessel, and travel to Greenland and Baffin Island in Northern Canada. Check out the blog and route map the videos that will be posted from this incredible group of individuals as they draw attention to Climate Change in the Arctic.

From the Cape Farewell Canada Website.

Cape Farewell’s sixth voyage, in September 2008, is the first to originate in Canada. Its expedition includes Canadian youth from high schools representing every province and territory in Canada, as well as a number of international youth.

In addition to the 16 students from Canada, there will be students from the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, and India. Joining these 28 young students are 18 adult mentors, scientists, educators and staff. Moreover, the ship’s master and crew of 30, including a doctor, are active members of the expedition and highly experienced in Arctic voyages.

UXBRIDGE, Canada , Sep 5 (IPS) - Soaring temperatures have led to the collapse of several huge ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic over the past few weeks.

One 50 sq km ice shelf on the northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island simply "vanished" over three days, exposing a coast that lay buried under ice for at least 4,000 years.

At the same time, the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover has declined to near the 2007 record of 2.6 million square kilometres less ice than the summer average minimum. This year's ice loss is still huge -- an area that's far larger than the states of Alaska and Texas combined.

"My gut feeling is that the sea ice decline won't beat last year's record," said Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

This year's sea ice decline is expected to reach its peak in the next few days. "The (2008) decline is already the second largest loss of summer ice on record even though the weather was not as warm as last year," Meier told IPS.

What's significant about this year's is that it means the long-term trend of ice loss is going down much faster than expected, he said.

A summer with an ice-free Arctic is now "inevitable" and less than two decades away, Meier estimates. That doesn't mean there won't be any ice -- on the contrary, the Arctic Ocean will be like shattered crystal on a slate floor, covered by uncountable sharp-edged icebergs and chunks of ice floating around waiting for ships or oil rigs to bump into.

"After the final breakup of the permanent ice, it will be much more dangerous for ships because of the huge numbers of ice pieces that will be floating around," Meier said.

Some of those chunks of ice will be ice islands 50 km sq and 10 stories high just like the ones that broke off from Ellesmere Island's ice shelves this summer, said Luke Copland, an ice expert at Canada's University of Ottawa.

The north coast of Ellesmere Island is the Arctic's deep freezer, where masses of thick permanent ice are found all year round. This year, and probably the first time in thousands of years, there were huge areas of open water, Copland told IPS.

"We were really surprised at how fast some of the ice shelves broke away," he said.

Satellite images from Aug. 7 clearly showed that the 50 sq km, 30- to 50-metre thick Markham Ice Shelf was locked in a deep fjord on the Ellesmere coast as it had been for thousands of years. Clouds closed the curtain over the region until a clearing on Aug. 11 and presto -- the Markham Ice Shelf had vanished.

"How could an entire ice-locked fjord become ice-free in days? I couldn't believe it was just gone," Copland recalled.

In total, five ice shelves of Ellesmere Island lost 23 percent of their ice -- 214 sq km -- during this year's short Arctic summer.

"The ice shelf decline is far worse than our worst estimations," he said.

The declines are clear illustrations of the massive changes happening in the Arctic and the rapidity of this change: "I'd be surprised if there are any ice shelves left in 10 years," Copland said.

See full story:

CLIMATE CHANGE: Arctic Meltdown Signals Long-Term Trend.

Harper recently announced the government would fund a $100 million project for mapping of northern oil and gas resources, something which the oil and gas industry has sufficient funds to do on their own.

He added: "As I've said before, 'use it or lose it' is the first principle of sovereignty in the Arctic.

Harper then continued to use other macho-isms such as “no pain, no gain” while Environment Minister, John Baird, held him up for a keg stand.

Later, Harper attempted to brainwash the press with overuse of the word ‘north’.

''To develop the North, we must know the North. To protect the North, we must control the North. And to accomplish all our goals for the North, we must be in the North."

University of British Columbia professor Michael Byers has commented:

"It's fine to talk about the economic potential and contribute government money toward it, but if it's premised on a kind of gold rush mentality instead of a stewardship approach - focused on sustainable development - this gold rush that Mr. Harper is stimulating could actually end up causing great harm."

We left Axel Heiberg on one of the windiest days I've ever seen.  Upper Camp, where we had been staying further north on the island, was experiencing some nasty cloudy weather, so we took a gamble and hiked a few miles south, in the hopes that the plane would have a better chance of landing there.  The clouds may have actually been better, given the incredible gusts ripping through Lower Camp, and unpredictably changing directions every few minutes.  If I unzipped my jacket and held its edges out like sails, the wind literally lifted me off my feet.

I'd secretly been hoping it wouldn't be able to land, but in some crazy feat of expert piloting, the twin-otter managed to touch down at Lower Camp, after circling a few times to gauge the wind.

We were splashed with jet fuel as the pilots tried to fill up the twin-otter's tank in the blustering wind.  In between gusts, I overheard the pilot say, "Young pilots think they're going to live forever.  Me?  I've already lived forever."

I wasn't sure what exactly that implied for the flight ahead of us, but I guessed correctly that it was going to be a bumpy ride.  As we strapped down our cargo and began to buckle ourselves in, the co-pilot turned around and warned us:

Make sure you buckle those tight.  I mean ... TIGHT.

Sure enough, it wasn't long after the twin-otter took off from the tundra that we hit some serious turbulence.  We were actually weightless at one point, with all our jackets, cameras, and cargo floating right at eye-level.  I was videotaping the view out the window when it happened.  Unfortunately, I didn't think fast enough to catch the floating stuff on camera, but it's a fun video to watch nonetheless:

I get so wistful watching that landscape disappear below the plane.  I can't wait to go back.  I'm addicted to the Arctic.

We left Axel Heiberg on one of the windiest days I've ever seen.  Upper Camp, where we had been staying further north on the island, was experiencing some nasty cloudy weather, so we took a gamble and hiked a few miles south, in the hopes that the plane would have a better chance of landing there.  The clouds may have actually been better, given the incredible gusts ripping through Lower Camp, and unpredictably changing directions every few minutes.  If I unzipped my jacket and held its edges out like sails, the wind literally lifted me off my feet.

I'd secretly been hoping it wouldn't be able to land, but in some crazy feat of expert piloting, the twin-otter managed to touch down at Lower Camp, after circling a few times to gauge the wind.

We were splashed with jet fuel as the pilots tried to fill up the twin-otter's tank in the blustering wind.  In between gusts, I overheard the pilot say, "Young pilots think they're going to live forever.  Me?  I've already lived forever."

I wasn't sure what exactly that implied for the flight ahead of us, but I guessed correctly that it was going to be a bumpy ride.  As we strapped down our cargo and began to buckle ourselves in, the co-pilot turned around and warned us:

Make sure you buckle those tight.  I mean ... TIGHT.

Sure enough, it wasn't long after the twin-otter took off from the tundra that we hit some serious turbulence.  We were actually weightless at one point, with all our jackets, cameras, and cargo floating right at eye-level.  I was videotaping the view out the window when it happened.  Unfortunately, I didn't think fast enough to catch the floating stuff on camera, but it's a fun video to watch nonetheless:

I get so wistful watching that landscape disappear below the plane.  I can't wait to go back.  I'm addicted to the Arctic.

Today the National Books Critic Circle's Critical Mass blog is running a brief essay on Arctic Dreams by Cleveland Plain Dealer book critic Karen R. Long, in which she points out one of the key ideas in Lopez's book:

[Lopez] coaxes us to see these caribous and arctic foxes, polar bears and cod not as objects, but as mysteries, vibrating with behaviors that resemble the uncertainty described in particle physics.

After finishing Arctic Dreams, I found myself with a newfound reverence and awe for the Arctic and its inhabitants as wonders existing entirely apart from any human use or even from human comprehension. Long quotes Lopez: "The physical landscape is baffling in its ability to transcend whatever we would make of it." However much we might study and ponder the natural world, it will remain irreducibly itself; it doesn't exist so that we can observe it or make use of it, and thus is of great value purely in and of itself. In Arctic Dreams, Lopez conveys on both an intellectual and emotional level the full depth of the loss involved in environmental change: it's a death, absolute and final, after which point unique, wondrous, irreducible creatures and places will never again exist on earth.

Iceland has thrown its hat in the ring for arctic oil drilling, opening up the Northern Dreki area along the Jan Mayen Ridge for offshore oil leases.  Reykjavik plans to open bids 15 January and award licenses by 15 April.  From The Times,

Several British groups and StatoilHydro, of Norway, are among those considering submitting bids in January for about 100 exploration licences. They cover 40,000sqkm of ocean more than 300km northeast of Iceland and south of the Norwegian Jan Mayen islands.

The water depth ranges from 800 metres to about 2,000 metres, according to Thorarinn Arnarsson, hydrocarbon licensing manager at the National Energy Authority in Iceland.

With oil prices reaching $147 per barrel last month, the high costs and technical complexity of operating in such remote regions look increasingly manageable. The retreat of Arctic ice sheets caused by climate change has also made drilling easier.

Kristinn Einarsson, project coordinator at the Energy Authority in Iceland, said that plans for an earlier exploration round in the region had been scrapped in the 1990s because the area was considered too challenging. “We think the technology now exists,” he said, citing drilling projects in waters of up to 3,000 metres in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Brazil.

The official press release from the Icelandic Ministry of Industry, Energy, and Tourism is here.  Along with the exploratory leases, which could run for a period of up to 16 years, Iceland is also introducing a new tax regime on oil exploration and production.  From Anthea Pitt at Upstream Online:

... this is the first time in human history that both passages have been open simultaneously, making the North Polar ice cap an island, and the consequences are far-reaching [emphasis added]

Have a look at the [US] National Snow and Ice Data Center's daily sea ice index for the Arctic. Getting scarily close to that crushing all time low of 2007; September will be closely watched indeed.

And Ross Gittins, excellent economics editor for the SMH + The Age explains why the BCA's pleas for even more special government treatment are fatuous, self-serving, and deceitful nonsense:

In the Business Council's case, it seems to have reached its dire conclusions by assuming its businesses have no scope to pass to customers the cost of the emission permits they'll need to buy, no scope to eliminate wastefulness in their present use of fossil fuels and no scope to reduce the need for permits by improving their technology.

In short, the Business Council seems to assume its members are completely lacking in enterprise. Absent a bigger handout from government, they'll just lie down and die - or move to Burkina Faso. What a vote of no confidence in the initiative of Australia's big business executives.

...

The simple truth is that our emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries are in Australia for good reason and it would take a mighty lot to make them move.

If the BCA's plaints that TEEIs really can't adjust and really will leave Australia if forced to, turn out to be true, I say good riddance. I don't believe they will find safe harbour anywhere else for long, and our civilisation can little afford their businesses to continue if they honestly cannot or will not abate.

Let me see if I can get this straight.

She was mayor of a town with a population similar to that of a community college.

She was governor for less than two years of East Jesus, Nowhere. 

She lists among her achievements high school athletic contests, beauty pageants, PTA leadership, and not aborting a baby with Down Syndrome.

She supports the rape of her state's natural resources for the procurement of oil. And speaking of rape, she is staunchly against abortion, no matter what the circumstances.

She minored in political science at the University of Idaho. Idaho! 

That kind of information is surely already old gossip in their small Arctic hometown. What's wrong with McCain that he didn't figure it out? And what's wrong with McCain if he did, but, as he claims, doesn't see it as an issue? Wouldn't you think that would put off the Evangelical base to which he's hoping to pander, lest they should be complete and utter hypocrites?

How strong-arming your daughter into a harpoon wedding to her small-town hockey-star high school-dropout boyfriend and ruining three lives (four, if you include Sarah Palin, who will undoubtedly need to mother her child's child) (or five lives, if you include mine) is better than teaching high school students how to put a condom on a banana, I will never understand.

I truly cannot imagine what will come of her speech tonight at the Republican National Convention. You know, Rob thinks we shouldn't send out holiday greeting cards with our photo on it because it just gives people fodder to make fun of us. I have a feeling the same goes for Palin when it comes to public speaking.

He is a member of a small community of adventurers known as extreme swimmers. Their sport is more about achieving a feat than winning a competition.

Other extreme swimmers in this league are Martin Strel of Slovenia who became the first person to swim the entire 5,268km of the Amazon River and Lynne Cox, an American, who was the first to swim 2km at 0C in Antartica as well as in the Bering Strait between America and Russia.

Pugh had already set the world record for the longest 0C swim in water with a distance of 1,225m in the Nigardsbreen - a Norwegian lake.

"Between Lynne, Martin and myself, we've hit all of the world's major landmarks" Pugh said. "There's really nothing left."

Well, that's what he said. Until he decided to swim in the North Pole.

Both Pugh and Cox had swum in 0-degree water in Antartica before, but no-one had ever swum in water below that temperature, and no-one knew what would happen. The fear, of course, is hypothermia.

Hypothermia occurs when more heat escapes from your body than your body can produce. Your normal core body temperature is about 37C; a temperature of 35C or lower signals hypothermia. Severe hypothermia eventually leads to cardiac and respiratory failure, then death. Your body loses heat more quickly in water than in air, and in water temperatures under 0C, exhaustion or unconsciousness will occur in less than 15 minutes - and you can die.

When Pugh set the world record for the longest 0C distance swim, he swam for 23 minutes, 50 seconds.

Pugh is the only person ever documented who can regulate his own body temperature. Before he commits himself to a cold-water swim he stands at the water edge and does his own system of mental exercises. He thinks about the objective and feels aggression rising up. By the time he plunges into the water his temperature has risen from 37C to 38.4C. "We found that his body temperature was elevated to 38.4C prior to a cold-water swim. This is crucial as it allows him to stay in the water longer," says Jonathon Dugas, a Chicago based scientist who, with Tim Noakes, studied Pugh at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa.

"His real attribute is psychological. just getting past the inhibition of going into the water in the first place is unusual. Then, once he's in, he can suppress the urge to get out, despite his body telling him he's really cold. That he can then swim normal freestyle is remarkable. In zero degrees pugh swims like it's a lap pool, despite terrible pain."

His advice is - DON'T TEST THE WATER. "You put your toe in and you think, Ehhh, maybe, maybe not. Well, if I do that, I can't get in the water. It's like going into battle. I have to get myself really revved up, seriously aggressive. I dive in, and there's only one place I'm getting out—and that's at the end."

However, Lewis Pugh does not take these challenges lightly. "This may sound funny," he says, "but I'm not a risktaker. I consider myself a risk manager, and I take safety really, really seriously. I follow a philosophy that I call the "P factor": Proper planning and preparation prevent a piss-poor performance."

Pugh's records to date are: December 2005 he completed a grueling swim in Antarctica, splashing out a 30-minute mile in the 35-degree (2-degree Celsius) Southern Ocean. Five months earlier he swam for 21 minutes off the northern tip of Spitsbergen Island in an equally frigid Arctic Ocean. Astoundingly, he accomplished these feats in accordance with the Channel Swimming Association's dress code: a swimming cap, goggles, and a Speedo. "Most people would die very quickly," says Tim Noakes, director of the Sports Science Institute of South Africa and a member of Pugh's support team. "He has a unique ability." Finally, in January, Pugh—who crossed the English Channel in 1992—swam 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) across Nelson Mandela Bay, in South Africa, and 9.3 miles (14.9 kilometers) through shark-infested waters off Sydney, Australia, to become the only person to swim long distances in all five oceans.

The north pole swim, however, was Pugh's biggest challenge - the most northern point of the world at the lowest point of the thermomenter that any person has ever swum. His entourage included 3 guards to ward off polar bears, but, as an environmentalist, Pugh had given strict instructions that under no circumstances were the guards to harm a polar bear.

His course was a 250m-long field of open water at -1.8C. He would swim laps until he reached the 1km mark.

On July 15th, 2007, Pugh reached 1km in 18 minutes, 50 seconds, becoming the first person to complete a long-distance swim at the geographic North Pole and breaking the 0C record set by Lynne Cox.

"Compared with this, the Antartic was like a pool at a holiday camp," he said. "It's a surreal environment out on the ice - eerie. It was the most frightening thing I could imagine. You can't see a thing. It's like diving into a dark black nothingness. You get that sense of absolutely nothing underneath you."

However, his successful feat has lifted his profile and jump-started his environmental campaign to 'shock the world' out of its complacency about global warming. He wants the world to realise that as temperatures climb, gaps in the North Pole ice that are large enough to swim in are becoming easier to find. "The paradox," he said was that in order to show everyone that global warming is taking place at an unprecedented speed, I had to freeze!"

On 30 August Pugh began his attempt to kayak from the Island of Spitsbergen (in Northern Europe) across the Arctic Ocean into the Arctic ice pack. He is undertaking this expedition to highlight the dramatic melting of the sea ice.
This year the ice is the thinnest on record.

]

This is Lewis Pugh's own youtube video.

We will keep you updated on his progress.

The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island, which have lasted for thousands of years, have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away.

One of them, the 50 sq km (20 sq miles) Markham shelf, has completely broken off to become floating sea-ice.

Researchers say warm air temperatures and reduced sea-ice conditions in the region have assisted the break-up.

"These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic," said Trent University's Dr Derek Mueller.

"These changes are irreversible under the present climate."

Scientists reported in July that substantial slabs of ice had calved from Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest of the Ellesmere shelves.

Similar changes have been seen in the other four shelves.

As well as the complete breakaway of the Markham, the Serson shelf lost two sections totalling an estimated 122 sq km (47 sq miles), and the break-up of the Ward Hunt has continued.

Cold remnants

The shelves themselves are merely remnants of a much larger feature that was once bounded to Ellesmere Island and covered almost 10,000 sq km (3,500 sq miles).

Over the past 100 years, this expanse of ice has retreated by 90%, and at the start of this summer season covered just under 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles).

Much of the area was lost during a warm period in the 1930s and 1940s.

Temperatures in the Arctic are now even higher than they were then, and a period of renewed ice shelf break-up has ensued since 2002.

Unlike much of the floating sea-ice which comes and goes, the shelves contain ice that is up to 4,500 years old.

A rapid sea-ice retreat is being experienced across the Arctic again this year, affecting both the ice attached to the coast and floating in the open ocean.

The floating sea-ice, which would normally keep the shelves hemmed in, has shrunk to just under five million sq km, the second lowest extent recorded since the era of satellite measurement began about 30 years ago.

"Reduced sea-ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer," said Dr Luke Copland from the University of Ottawa.

"And extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years."

Loss of ice in the Arctic, and in particular the extensive sea-ice, has global implications. The "white parasol" at the top of the planet reflects energy from the Sun straight back out into space, helping to cool the Earth.

Further loss of Arctic ice will see radiation absorbed by darker seawater and snow-free land, potentially warming the Earth's climate at an even faster rate than current observational data indicates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7595441.stm

Good news for shipping companies... they now can map shorter distances, by thousands of miles, for their sea bound journeys.

Bad news for us.... it's because the the Arctic just became an island.

click here for the article.

Major ice-shelf loss for Canada

Ward Hunt is the largest of the remnant ice shelves

The ice shelves in Canada's High Arctic have lost a colossal area this year, scientists report.

The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island, which have lasted for thousands of years, have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away.

One of them, the 50 sq km (20 sq miles) Markham shelf, has completely broken off to become floating sea-ice.

Researchers say warm air temperatures and reduced sea-ice conditions in the region have assisted the break-up.

"These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic," said Trent University's Dr Derek Mueller.

"These changes are irreversible under the present climate."

Satellite images show the loss of the Markham Ice Shelf over the last year

Scientists reported in July that substantial slabs of ice had calved from Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest of the Ellesmere shelves.

Similar changes have been seen in the other four shelves.

As well as the complete breakaway of the Markham, the Serson shelf lost two sections totaling an estimated 122 sq km (47 sq miles), and the break-up of the Ward Hunt has continued.

Cold remnants

The shelves themselves are merely remnants of a much larger feature that was once bounded to Ellesmere Island and covered almost 10,000 sq km (3,500 sq miles).

Over the past 100 years, this expanse of ice has retreated by 90%, and at the start of this summer season covered just under 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles).

Much of the area was lost during a warm period in the 1930s and 1940s.

"Long meltwater lakes" were imaged on the Markham shelf in 2005

Temperatures in the Arctic are now even higher than they were then, and a period of renewed ice shelf break-up has ensued since 2002.

Unlike much of the floating sea-ice which comes and goes, the shelves contain ice that is up to 4,500 years old.

A rapid sea-ice retreat is being experienced across the Arctic again this year, affecting both the ice attached to the coast and floating in the open ocean.

The floating sea-ice, which would normally keep the shelves hemmed in, has shrunk to just under five million sq km, the second lowest extent recorded since the era of satellite measurement began about 30 years ago.

"Reduced sea-ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer," said Dr Luke Copland from the University of Ottawa.

"And extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years."

Loss of ice in the Arctic, and in particular the extensive sea-ice, has global implications. The "white parasol" at the top of the planet reflects energy from the Sun straight back out into space, helping to cool the Earth.

Further loss of Arctic ice will see radiation absorbed by darker seawater and snow-free land, potentially warming the Earth's climate at an even faster rate than current observational data indicates.

“Arctic Becomes an Island for the first time in human history“…really???

On Dec 5, 1932, The New York Times reports the “feat, accomplished for the first time” of circumnavigation of Franz Josef Land (actually, an Arctic archipelago). The same expedition (led by a Professor N.N. Subkov) was also described in March 1933 in the pages of Nature.

Arctic Map

(Franz Josef Land is between the North Pole and Novaya Zemlya in the map above)

Notably, in the words of the NYT, that circumnavigation had been “heretofore regarded as impossible“. It actually took just 34 days, from Aug 17. It was warm enough for the “Eva” and “Liv” islands to be recognized as one, joined by “a low stretch of land” and thereby renamed “Evaliv”.

Fast forward to 2008. Cryosphere Today shows two tongues of ice still clinging to Franz Josef Land as of Aug 31.

Prof. Subkov would not have been so lucky this time around.

.gallery { margin: auto; } .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } .gallery img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }

Arctic Sea Ice Aug 31, 2008 around Franz Josef Land

Arctic Sea Ice 2008 08 31

============

ADDENDUM: The map of end-Aug 1979 clearly shows that at the time, Prof Subkov’s trip would not have been possible

Arctic Sea Ice 1979

i updated the arctic antics guide!

i added about eight of the new codes!

and the location of two more bananas!!!!!

-chaparal

Palin considers herself a "maverick" politician, like McCain [GALLO/GETTY]

Sarah Palin, the youngest and first female governor of Alaska, has emerged from relative obscurity to become John McCain's choice as his running-mate for the Republican presidential nomination.Palin, who describes herself as an "American Thatcher" in reference to the former British prime minister, calls herself a "maverick" reformer rather than a traditional Republican.

She cut her political teeth as mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska from 1996-2002.

And while she has no national or international political experience, she has made headlines by pushing for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The mother-of-five has also angered environmentalists further by opposing the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species.

She is a loyal member of the National Rifle Association who enjoys hunting and supports the construction of a pipeline to move natural gas across the state.

Conservative appeal

Palin beat Frank Murkowski, the state's Republican incumbent governor, in a primary poll two years ago, despite having little money and little backing from the political establishment.

In focus

In-depth coverage of US election

She has also distanced herself from two senior Republican politicians in Alaska, Ted Stevens and Don Young, who are both undergoing federal corruption investigations.But her anti-corruption reputation has been questioned after an investigation was recently launched by a legislative panel into whether she dismissed Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not fire her former brother-in-law from the state police.

The governor, who studied journalism and is a former sports television reporter, will also help attract conservative support for McCain's campaign.

"When you look closer at Sarah Palin, she's very very conservative on virtually all of the issues," says Bill Bradley, a political analyst.

"She has a very compelling and interesting story but she is much more to the right than where the country is today."

Palin is strongly opposed to abortion, and stands in favour of the death penalty.

She is married to Todd Palin, a part-Eskimo former commercial fisherman who now works in Alaska's oil fields and who is a four-time winner of the daunting Alaska Iron Dog snowmobile competition. ]]> http://omnograms.wordpress.com/?p=133 Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:02:07 +0000 omnologos http://omnograms.wordpress.com/?p=133 (Comment to "The heartbreaking picture of the polar bears", Daily Mail, Aug 31)

Much of this article by Mr Wigmore is likely to be not actually true, but "embellished reality". The WWF site in the USA has not published any new news since Aug 21, the day the bears were spotted. I am sure we would have heard and seen a lot from those bears, if anybody were following them or had any news about their whereabouts and wellbeing.

Simply, nobody knows if they are lost at sea, if they plunged into the ocean, if they all lived on a single ice float that then melted, which direction they are going, how far is land or ice, etc etc.

Many people around the world have been needlessy made to worry about these nine bears. This cannot be right. I urge Mr Wigmore to check things as they are, with the WWF in the USA but also from other sources, and correct this article accordingly

The race for the Arctic heats up again.  After a Russian submarine planted a Russian flag on the seabed along the Mendeleev Ridge near the North Pole, the Canadians and Danish got together and launched a counter-attack.  As befitting their national character, they staked their claim on the Arctic based upon sound scientific research, presented at a world geological conference.

Reporting in the Ottawa Citizen, Randy Boswell of the Canadian News Service writes:

There will be no flag-waving or patriotic chest-thumping, but Canadian scientists are quietly set to make one of this country's most important assertions of Arctic sovereignty in decades tomorrow at a geology conference in Norway.

A year after Russian scientists planted their nation's flag on the North Pole seabed -- a controversial demonstration of their country's interest in securing control over a vast undersea mountain chain stretching across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia to Ellesmere Island and Greenland -- the Canadian researchers have teamed with Danish scientists to offer proof that the Lomonosov Ridge is, in fact, a natural extension of the North American continent.

Along with Russia, both Canada and Denmark are preparing submissions under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to secure jurisdiction over large swaths of the Arctic Ocean sea floor adjacent to their coastlines.

To secure those rights, each country has to submit scientific evidence proving the claimed undersea territories are linked geologically to its mainland or its Arctic islands.

Canada's planned UNCLOS submission includes areas in the Beaufort Sea in the western Arctic, on the Lomonsov Ridge in the east and along another underwater Arctic mountain range in the central Arctic called Alpha Ridge.

The Canadian-Danish study of the Lomonosov Ridge is to be presented in Oslo by Danish researcher Trine Dahl-Jensen and four scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada: Ruth Jackson, Deping Chian, John Shimeld and Gordon Oakley.

The study describes various geological traits observed by the two countries' scientists -- including magnetic anomalies, crust characteristics and volcanic features -- that appear common to both the ridge and adjacent parts of Canada and Greenland.

This leaves the U.S. in a bit of a lurch, since we generally avoid international cooperation and presenting raw scientific evidence for third-party review.  It also doesn't help that the Senate never ratified the UNCLOS treaty, so we have no rights under it.  So it appears that we'll have to do it the good ol' American way - by military invasion in support of multi-national oil companies.