Antarctic Ice Bridge Buckles Then Breaks

Ancient Antarctic snow an d ice bridge in the coldest place on Earth could no longer support its weight and fight off warmer air simultaneously. The Laws of Physics intervened, separating two chunky islands of ice, Charcot and Latady, while preparing for the shrinking Wilkins Ice Shelf to drift untethered from the continent holding the magnetic South Pole. The western region of the land mass is heating with all undue speed, rendering past scientific models obsolete as to when the shelves would actually melt.

The shelf, which was originally the size of Jamaica, is located on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, which thrusts up from the continent toward the southern tip of South America.

Originally covering about 13,000 sq km, the ice shelf lost 14 per cent of its mass last year alone, the statement quotes a scientist Angelika Humbert of Germany's Munster University as saying.

Glaciers are gliding to their doom. As ice melts; sea levels rise, storms become more intense and eroded places become flooded are a few of the impending calamities facing the world as climate change becomes more real. Scientists are doing a hair raising freak out in a methodical toned down Spock/Data manner that is just not hyped up and dramatic enough to get the public and media's attention. Ice melting is happening faster than butter on a hot plate. When that happens, horror movies starring weather apocalypses will reign supreme on the nightly news with video of the living nightmare of all caught in the latest event. Antarctica is much larger than continental Europe with the islands of the UK thrown in as seasoning and its ice is breaking off, like giant crumbs, into the sea.

"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects ourplanet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a
consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

"This continued and often significant glacier retreat is a wakeup call that change is happening ... and we need to be prepared," USGS glaciologist Jane Ferrigno, who led the Antarctica study, said in a statement.

"Antarctica is of special interest because it holds an estimated 91 percent of the Earth's glacier volume, and change anywhere in the ice sheet poses significant hazards to society," she said.

For the most part anybody trumpeting that it will make it easier to get oil or other natural resources missed reading in full the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Scientific research gets a big thumbs up with welcome signs and a ice post office for 4000 international scientists. Military maneuvers and mining is just a flat out NO as the ecosystems and area are meant to be preserved. Rookeries of penguins make their homes in Antarctica with whales making the trek each year trailing certain countries opportunists harpooning behind them, cough, Japan. Antarctica is broken up into claim areas with some nations reserving the right to name a claim later. That doesn't matter much when cubic meters of ice the size of larger Caribbean islands are falling into the ocean because all will feel the effects as more ice melts or destabilizes other pieces.

Third time is the charm and maybe, the curse of an adventurer. A thrilling, yet terrible adventure story that lets you feel the killing cold conditions and the most terrible decisions are in the phenomenol and classic book, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. It's a real icy barnburner of a read that won't let you abandon book.

Dirty Dozen Diseases Plot World Domination

Twelve different dirty microscopic pathogens are gearing up to decimate the world. Their germ fuel to grow stronger, faster, deadlier is Climate Change. Earth is going broke in the financial greed demolition derby, placing a precarious world at risk to prepare against a takeover by a dozen powerful germs. Cash is required to fight the marauding germs to buy and distribute drugs and doctors efficiently into containment zones. People on the move from famine, fighting and fallow farms will just accelerate the spread of diseases as refugee crises take on nightmare proportions. Mix in deadly destruction from desertification, storms and flooding and the germs are rubbing their grubby little cells in glee. Most of the world watches as their money turns into unusable leprechaun gold without apparent appreciation that their health is also at stake as the animal kingdom falls prey. Scarcity makes people antsy and it beckons tin pot dictators to unilaterally take decisions to try and take over the world, especially if a two front war develops in the financial markets and a full scale effort to eradicate spreading diseases or pandemics. Who's military will have the money to stop them?

Animals spread disease. Climate change is altering the bounds of nature and pathogens are mutating while animals, mammals, birds and fowl are being eaten. Wildlife experts are screaming at the top of their lungs while global financial markets have people mesmerized as education hopes and retirement dreams float away in the world's legalized gambling meccas. As food prices skyrocket, a celebratory steak may come from a mad cow and that super special Peking duck may have had bird flu are making the remaining wealthy just as vulnerable. China has made it clear making money comes before public health and safety and that's precisely where America's corporate elite put their business chips to increase management's profits and the almighty bonuses.

Ebola, Cholera Notice & Avian Influenza

The resource rich continent of Africa is a hot bed incubator for disease outbreaks as the climate changes habitats for humans, insects and beasts of burden. Waterborne diseases will devastate health as well as its scarcity making crops fail and refugee stampedes likely. Standing water attracts mosquitoes which are disease carriers for malaria and yellow fever. China has long been noted as a location of origin for the H5N1 bird flu to morph to a human flu that would make the the Black Death of the Middle Ages or the 1918 pandemic that felled millions seem small in scope. China's algae problem blossomed stinky lime green right before the Olympics in a 100,000 ton fashion, but it the poisonous red algae tides that will kill off marine life and make eating fish a more perilous exercise.

"The term 'climate change' conjures images of melting ice caps and rising sea levels
that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will change the distribution of dangerous pathogens," said Steven E. Sanderson, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

"The health of wild animals is tightly linked to the ecosystems in which they live and influenced by the environment surrounding them, and even minor disturbances can have far reaching consequences on what diseases they might encounter and transmit as climate changes. Monitoring wildlife health will help us predict where those trouble spots will occur and plan how to prepare."

The "Deadly Dozen" list - including such diseases as avian influenza, ebola, cholera, and tuberculosis - is illustrative only of the broad range of infectious diseases that threaten humans and animals, according to a WCS release.

Cholera is a waterborne disease of opportunity from lack of sanitation mixed with water which is prevalent in a myriad of developing countries. Iraq is still suffering from large outbreaks of cholera. Lyme Disease is already in the US and proliferating in the tick community that spreads it to humans. Recently, Malaysia completed a simulation for an outbreak on a plane. Babesiosis is a tropical tick germ that styles itself as a malaria like invasion of the body. Wide eyed raccoons are susceptible to parasites that turn into worms, Baylisascaris procyonis. Animals are our canaries on the Earth mine.



Climate change made clear with charts graphs and analogies that make sense. It draws upon the Nobel Peace Prize winning work of the United Nations IPCC scientific work to make Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming a seminal book on the topic. It is a great book to have alongside An Inconvenient Truth from last year's Co-Nobel Peace prize recipient, Al Gore.

Hurricane Havoc Continues as Hanna & Ike Move In

(AP Photo Mississippi during Gustav)

Fay flooded Florida after making landfall four different times, each visit filled with water wrung out of the the sky as if it were a sopping dish cloth. It was enough that Fay as a Category 1 hurricane made people move with a bit more alacrity to protect life, limbs and property when Gustav roared into the Gulf after wreaking havoc throughout the Caribbean. Over 600,000 people are in need of help with just over 200,000 still trapped by floodwaters in Haiti.

Haiti and Cuba took a lashing and up came Gustav, devastating Haiti in ways most cannot appreciate. The poorest nation in the western hemisphere has no trees to stop the erosion of hillsides as mud tumbled onto the meager amount of arable land burying their food supply. The people of Haiti are slowly starving to death while water borne diseases could reach epidemic levels. Bodies are floating Katrina style in the rivers created from the floods. The Red Cross & Red Crescent are moving in with some supplies but it is nowhere near enough for the amount of people in need. It is heartbreaking as even children are going days without food or fresh water, especially as the floods remain and Ike could cause more catastrophic damage to the flooded port city of Gonaives. (AP Photo above, American Red Cross just below)

"I am worried because the soil is completely impregnated with water and there is no way for the rivers to take more water," said Max Cocsi, who directs Belgium's mission in Haiti of Doctors Without Borders. "We don't need a hurricane -- a storm would be enough."

Cocsi, who arrived in Gonaives on Thursday, told The Associated Press that no one knows how many have been killed. The focus now is on reaching the living, not recovering bodies.

Late Thursday, a few blocks from where U.N. peacekeeping troops stopped to dish out cooked rice from their own food supplies to a small crowd of hungry orphans, a woman's corpse in a floral dress was floating in a submerged intersection.

Hanna is going to blow into South Carolina and leisurely make her way up the eastern seaboard sprinkling buckets of rain over the weekend. Hanna is being taken a little more innocuously, much like rainmaker Fay that tied Florida in flood insurance knots. Maryland upgraded from a Storm Watch to a Tropical Storm Warning with expectations of beach erosion and flash flooding along Chesapeake Bay.

In Charleston, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said there was no reason to flee, but urged residents to stay inside when Hanna blows through with wind gusts that could reach 65 mph.

"Stay home, protect yourself, look out for your neighbors and we will get through this just fine," he said.

Several counties in both North and South Carolina opened shelters, and hotels further inland offered discounts to those fleeing Hanna's path. But on the thin barrier islands that make up North Carolina's Outer Banks,
vacation home owner Joe DiStefano checked out the forecast early Friday and said Hanna appears to be moving too quickly to cause much damage.

Ike blew up to a category 4 monster then shrunk to a major category 3 hurricane with winds sustained at 125 mph as it chases Hanna across the ocean seas. Ike looks like it won't mess with an already drenched and miserable Haiti, but just drying out Florida residents will be a bit more uneasy. Ike means no respite for the hurricane weary over the next week.




Chris Mooney gives insight into the links between global warming and the scope and scale of storms in Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the Battle Over Global Warming. This book is a bargain at Amazon in hardback chock full of storm research and

Stockholm Hosts World's Biggest Water Fight

It's another conference about water, mainly everybody's waste water. Much of the world's population, 2.5 billion people go to the bathroom leaving behind much of the water unfit for human use because a toilet does not exist. An epidemic of over 1.4 million kids die all over the world from diseases directly associated with the lack of clean water, year in and year out. Everybody needs to get a little pissed. With over 2500 water experts from 170 organizations debating and discussing the issues of fresh water, sanitation and hygiene in Stockholm, its bound to get a bit tense over a lack of urgency on issues related to water. That is happening at the World Water Week again in Stockholm this year at the annual conference. Most of the globe's population remains oblivious that conservation is about to take over all our lives as water resources dwindle and issues about who controls it makes the world military powers have itchy trigger fingers.

"We've had a luxurious lifestyle during the last 25 years, not caring at all about the environment. It's necessary to change the way people consume, buy, eat," said British professor John Anthony Allan, winner of the 2008 Stockholm Water Prize.

Almost half of the world's population lacks proper toilet facilities, a situation that can have dire consequences on public health and which poses a challenge to resolve since water is becoming an increasingly
scarce resource.

"Sanitation is one of the biggest scandals of all times. It's something that we have to put on our radar screen," insisted Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, who heads up the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. (Photo Prince Willem-Aexander)

Biofuel discussions are causing mental meltdowns as many scientists urge people to eat less red meat. Even in the US, vegans versus vegetarians versus carnivores is no joke as animal waste is causing massive food recalls from outbreaks of E coli and other waterborne diseases. Royals are piping up all over the world on food and water issues. Organic farmer, Bonny Prince Charles himself went nuts over genetically modified foods, calling them an environmental disaster and an experiment gone seriously wrong was roundly criticized for his remarks.

The conference will also look at the problem of increasing water stress throughout the world in the wake of global warming, with climate scientists estimating 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with absolute water scarcity by the year 2025. High on the agenda will be the effect human beings are having on the world's climate.

"We have to understand that what we eat and the products we buy have an immediate implication for the availability of the world's water resources," Blenckner said.

Plus this:

A British professor, John Anthony Allan, said the effect of the growing use of biofuels "is too frightening to even begin to realize."

Allan, 71, of King's College, London, was awarded the 2008 water prize for his concept of "virtual water," which measures amounts of
water used in the production of food and industrial products.

He also urged people to cut down on meat consumption, saying it was "bad for the environment."

"Nonvegetarians consume five cubic meters" or 176 cubic feet, "of water per day; your bath is a tiny puddle compared to that. It is the water for food that is the big problem," Allan said. "Be rational and eat less meat."

UNICEF declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitization. In western nations with sewage infrastructure in place, the unpleasantness of being human and the disposal is taken for granted on a large scale. Almost 40% of the world's population does not have the same luxury, leading to shortened life spans and a drain on everyone's resources for aid and large migrations of people fleeing war torn areas as fights over perishing fresh water continue in earnest. Nobody is shying away from the tough stuff at the conference either. India, China and Vietnam regularly use waste water in their agricultural practices. Just don't expect something so important and basic to get carried on the US evening news.

The meeting, which opens Monday and is entitled "Progress and Prospects on Water: For a Clean and Healthy World," will focus in particular on the dangers that the lack of adequate toilets and hygiene facilities presents to 2.6 billion people.

"It's not very popular to talk about toilets and excrement and where to go when you are menstruating. This is something that makes people feel uncomfortable," Stephanie Blenckner, spokeswoman for the Stockholm International Water Institute that is organising the event, told AFP.

Last year's post: World Water Week in Sweden Affects Us All. This year's annual water fest ends 23 August, 2008. Mark your calendar's Global Handwashing Day is 15 October, 2008 for the entire world. Everyone must have clean water to wash their hands.

Smoggy Cloggy Skies for Beijing Olympics

Most people adventuring over to China for next month's Games of the XXIX Olympiad, have no idea of the magnitude of Beijing's air pollution challenges. The Olympic Village for the athletes opened in a dark cloud cover. Athletes are incorporating preparation for breathing issues into their training regimens as the head of their Olympic teams - including the USA, hand out protective face masks even as the facilities boast an acupuncture and top of the line nail salon, tea house Chinese style and produce markets. Australian athletes are being given the option of going home and not competing in the Olympics over the air pollution hazards, the Deputy Chief of Mission for the Aussies confirmed. Gold medals are at stake, even though one may not see the ceremony if standing more than a few hundred yards away. There is not a Gold Medal in asthma attacks. China would rather deal with the air pollution issue as minor, then point towards the clean up of their 100,000 tons of slimy algae as a temporary triumph in their war on water pollution. Sunday, as evidenced in the last picture above shows the worst day of air quality in the last 6 days. (Reuters photo)

Humid weather conditions and low winds have meant efforts to clear the city's notoriously polluted skies have so far had only patchy results at best.

Pollution is one of the biggest question marks hanging over the games which are due to open on August 8.

On Sunday a ceremony to open the athletes' village was overshadowed by a pall of pollution said to be the worst seen in the past month.

Around the Olympic Green area, the centrepiece for the games, visibility was reduced to about 1km.

Nothing like an urgent last minute crackdown on Chinese factories and construction projects to make a valiant attempt to hope the air clears out in less than two weeks. They so missed seeing Al's An Inconvenient truth on a pirated DVD to know that two weeks before a world event to take these types of measure is like draining the Pacific Ocean one thimble at a time. It also puts those who need the money out of work for the duration while China puts its best face forward to the world. Earlier this year, ordering everyone ride a bike or walk in Beijing was deemed a big success, but had no lasting effect on the air quality nor an increase in subway riders or other public shared transportation.

What is more exasperating is the utter denial and overindulgence in groupthink by Chinese bureaucrats as to the cause of the smog. The official word lists the gray cruddy air as fog at this time of year. Problem is the fog/smog is getting worse. It is no secret that China is one of the top three polluters on the planet, along with India & America, as they strive for first world status economically through manufacturing and exporting the goods to the world on behalf of multinational companies, many in the USA. America is encouraging this and the seeds sewn won't be clear because the air is so thick. Imagine NBC trying to get a distance shot in this for a marathon or other outdoor events involving longer ranges.

Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing city Environmental Protection Bureau, said at the weekend: “Good air quality does not necessarily mean blue sky. You might not be able to see things in a bathroom, but you would not conclude that it’s due to pollution.” He added: “We should judge whether there is pollution by scientific statistics, not by what our eyes can see.”

But the pollution readings make for grim statistics. A week ago, it looked as if the slew of drastic measures taken by the capital to try to clear the air before the Olympics open on August 8 might be having some effect. With half the cars taken off the streets, construction ordered to halt and many factories closed for miles around, the air pollution index for particulate matter – a major airborne pollutant – was at a reasonable 67.

The Beijing billboard on the bottom blocks the view in the distance. (AP)

The humidity is topping 70%, mixing the air vapor with the toxic chemicals in the air. People with respiratory issues are hearing recommendations to stay indoors and not over exert in these conditions. Now, recommendations of bans for 90% of the cars in Beijing to be ordered idle. Some Beijing residents don't quite see the problem, cough, even though in 11 days, the Olympics begin and George Bush is coming to see the Opening in a sea of smog, er, Chinese fog.

Air out or brush up on the causation and other factors in China's Environment and the Challenges of Sustainable Development. Kristen A. Day gives an early look at the issues besetting or forestalling China's ability to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

Russian Scientists in Space & on Thin Ice

Russian cosmonauts, tethered and floating above the ISS in the final frontier have taken two spacewalks in the past week. Sergei Volkov the commander and flight engineer, Oleg Kononenko, were brave space virgins on walking outside their 17,000 mph Earth orbiting metallic space condo. July 1oth was a high risk affair, yet necessary walk on the wild side due to an explosive space bolt that was the suspected culprit causing returning Earthbound Russian Federal Space Agency's Soyuz capsules to land beyond the intended targets. The last two times those capsules carted humans and put real fear into them. On a scheduled the rockets park or dock at the International Space Station ferrying up necessities, mail and tools. Fresh water is exceedingly heavy and beginning the installation of a water purification system that takes essentially urine and cleanses and purifying water will be of great import for the ISS's continued expansion.

Dressed in their Sunday best Orlan space suits the preparation begins for installing the new lab module due to arrive in 2009. A docking station and removal of a prior biological experiment that collected results of solar radiation with Zero gravity on microbes and other small organisms are on tap for the cosmonauts second fling outside the space lock. There is a lot riding on the Russians in space as they install one of their own experiment, Vsplesk, expected to yield data on the seismic effects of high energy particles. Sort of like a micro mini space collider in space.

Many forget that the first person in space was Russian, Yuri Gargarin in 1961. In 1963, the first woman blasted into space was Valentina Tereshkova. Those space firsts, accredited to the USSR, fanned the flames of the space race to command the starry heavens and load them up with Russian, Chinese, American, Nigerian, Japanese - among others - space junk, science experiments and super secret spy satellites as well. Now, in theory, its all about international space cooperation and the need to rely on other nations to build in the capacity to do intricate space walks and set their own experiments to add to the body of science.

Both spacewalks have required the cosmonauts to exit from
the Pirs docking compartment, which also represents the only passage between the space station and the Soyuz spacecraft that serves as an emergency lifeboat. U.S. astronaut Greg Chamitoff will once again spend the entire spacewalk sitting inside of the Soyuz, so that he does not get cut off in the unlikely event of a crisis.

Kononenko will install the docking target by riding the long arm of the Strela hand-powered crane to the Zvezda module. Volkov will operate the hand-powered crane and move his fellow astronaut to the target location.

Next, the cosmonauts will use a spacewalker's ladder and move to a different part of Zvezda to inspect some bolt holes. The holes will serve as the location for a future antenna adapter that will serve the Kurs automated docking system.

Meanwhile, the advent of global warming put other Russian scientists at risk of sinking beneath the frigid waters as their lab sits atop unstable melting polar ice. Those land bound scientists put out an Ice May Day call and await an early rescue as sloshing and mush and breakaway ice is occurring at an accelerated pace. Global warming is causing the early evacuation of North Pole-35 station where two mutts live in huts with 21 researchers and scientists scurrying to pack up specimens and other tools. To the rescue is a nuclear powered ice breaking ship, Artika, which will cut a path for another ship, Mikhail Somov that will take them back to the critical Russian port city of Murmansk. Polar politics is en vogue and heating up this season along with the Earth.

Russians were studying the flora and fauna that survive and thrive in those geological conditions while making a point to the US primarily about who owns what is still contentious. Unfortunately they started with 3 square miles of ice to explore, build a winterized camp with room for the dogs and their acreage has melted down to a wee bit under 3/4 of a mile.

North Pole-35 is the 35th time Russian scientists have floated across the Arctic since 1937. On previous missions, they’ve helped define Russia's claims to Arctic territory, including the rich oil deposits believed to lie beneath the northernmost ocean. The current expedition started in September 2007, and most last at least a year.

The early rescue is yet another sign that the Arctic sea ice is rapidly disappearing. It worries climate scientists because the impacts of the North Pole melting are unknown. They could include changes in the amount of rainfall and snow across the northern hemisphere. Still, it is of a piece with U.S. ice experts’ predictions that the Arctic could be ice-free as early as September of this year— a situation unknown in recorded human history—thanks to an early start to the melting season and a record retreat last year that left weaker ice in its wake. Russian scientists’ ability to go with the floe in future may be in doubt.

In space and on ice, Russian scientists and explores seem to be having a thrilling time in the name of science.


After the stunning world debut of Sputnik, author Brian Harvey looks at historical and current trends in the Russian space program. His book with a long winded titled, but chock full of arresting information is The Rebirth of the Russian Space Program: 50 Years After Sputnik, New Frontiers is a pretty expensive paperback worth the time and effort.

Santa's House IS Melting!

Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas with all his aliases, is having a severe climate crisis at his winter house with flooding and potential destruction from titanic-sized moving ice flows. Endangered polar bears, seal colonies and elves are at a loss about what to do as the ice melts beneath their feet, erasing the only way of life they have ever known. The north pole, True North sits (sat) upon thick floating ice as it is in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Antarctica is a continent with land (Mars has similar) beneath Earth's South pole.

For the first time in modern history, the North Pole may be iceless this summer. Scientists say it's an even bet that sea ice in the region will completely disappear in the next few months, perhaps as soon as August.

"If the North Pole melts, then you don't have to worry about the Northwest Passage. It will still be significant, but going on top of the globe would be politically easier," Mahoney said.

A UN panel is supposed to decide on control of the Arctic by 2020. Last year, Canada's Conservative government announced plans to acquire up to eight Arctic patrol ships and to build an army base in Resolute Bay and a naval station in Nanisivik.

(Inter)National security is also at stake as nations do legal battle and put ships to sea in the wake of the ice breaking apart to own the future shipping lanes as well as the vast mineral resources located in the northern polar region. Big oil, already making windfall profits, is bound and determined to go to work to mine and drill the region. After the decade old debacle of the Exxon Valdez epic environmental disaster, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in its hat tip to big piggy oil profits, reduced $2,000,000,000 US off the maritime penalty they ignominiously merited in destroying the Alaskan indigenous peoples water in Prince Williams Sound, their homes and live in harmony with nature way of life, it removes any fear big oil has about accountability on future spills. Whoever controls the never before opened Northwest Passage, controls the economic engine. Russia, Canada nor US is ceding anything to each other while the UN dithers on a decision until 2020 . In 2007 from Murmansk, Russia tested its nuclear powered ice breaker, 50 лет Победы, transliterated as 50 Let Pobedy or NS (Nuclear Sub) Fifty Years Since Victory. Ice shelf melting pushes the resource race to a higher level of insecurity. (Trio Photo by Martin Jakobsson Associated Press)

All (sic, nations) are studying the underwater geology to try to increase their claims. Under international law countries have exclusive economic rights to the sea within 200 nautical miles of their coast. If, however, they can prove that the continental shelf extends beyond that limit, the rights can stretch to 350 nautical miles.

Others have a different dream for a warmed-up Arctic – as a new cradle of civilisation. Trausti Valsson, professor of environmental planning at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, believes that as rising temperatures make many lower latitudes uninhabitable, so the lands around the Arctic will evolve into “the new Mediterranean”, with towns and cities springing up in Arctic Canada, Alaska and Siberia.

Such a scenario may seem unlikely now but an ice-free Arctic would have many attractions – not least being the Northwest Passage itself, which would immediately cut 5,000 miles from shipping routes between Europe and Asia via the Suez canal and whose development would prompt pressure for new ports along Canada’s northern coast.

However, most climate researchers view such thinking with despair. “It is a great irony,” said Serreze, “that the melting of the ice cap could give us access to yet more fossil fuels that will accelerate climate change even further.

“I suspect the only thing that is going to stop humanity wrecking the planet is when we get hit by some serious ecological disasters, and by then it may well be too late.”

So, in the weirdest bit of economic irony, the theory of Santa Claus cemented in commercialism and run amok cash capitalism squeezing every dime and bit of blinking plastic goo gaws out of the season of giving, may be helped by global warming by building a tourist laden frozen Disney mecca at the home of Santa Claus, degrading the environment further, while making more global warming bad case scenarios. The Northern Lights are already gorgeous beyond belief, a marketing campaign around them just makes me cringe. Slaps forehead...

To learn about the Northwest passage which lured all manner of ice ships towards it like a beacon, look no further than great nonfiction adventure stories like Martin W. Sandler's Resolute: The Epic search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin and the Queen's Ghost Ship. The serious business of oil exploration and the threats is found in Oil, Globalization, And the War for the Arctic Refuge authored by David M. Standlea.