My Ice Breaker is Stuck - Where’s the Global Warming?
One of the world’s most spectacular animals, the estimated 20,000-25,000 polar bears are in danger of losing their habitat and becoming extinct over the next 50 years.
Indeed, scientists around the world are greatly concerned about the polar bear’s future, due to global warming and melting sea ice, which polar bears depend on to hunt and den.
Senator Barbara Boxer - Boxer Statement: Oversight Hearing on Polar Bear Listing
From the Barents Observer, July 24, 2008:
New data from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute shows that there is more ice than normal in the Arctic waters north of the Svalbard archipelago.
In most years, there are open waters in the area north of the archipelago in July month. Studies from this year however show that the area is covered by ice, the Meteorological Institute writes in a press release.
In mid-July, the research vessel Lance and the Swedish shp MV Stockholm got stuck in ice in the area and needed help from the Norwegian Coast Guard to get loose.
The ice findings from the area spurred surprise among the researchers, many of whom expect the very North Pole to be ice-free by September this year.
and from Watts Up:
I am on the bridge of the massive Russian icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, and the tension is palpable. We have hit ice - thick ice.
The ice master studies the mountains of white packed around the ship while the 24,000-horsepower diesel engines work at full throttle to open a path. The ship rises slowly onto the barrier of ice, crushes it and tosses aside blocks the size of small cars as if they were ice cubes in a glass. It creeps ahead a few metres, then comes to a halt, its bow firmly wedged in the ice. After doing this for two days, the ship can go no farther.
The ice master confers with the captain, who makes a call to the engine room. The engines are shut down. He turns to those of us watching the drama unfold, and we are shocked by his words: “Now, only nature can help this ship.” We are doomed to drift.
What irony. I am a passenger on one of the most powerful icebreakers in the world, travelling through the Northwest Passage - which is supposed to become almost ice-free in a time of global warming, the next shipping route across the top of the world - and here we are, stuck in the ice, engines shut down, bridge deserted. Only time and tide can free us.
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