Speaker Says Polar Bears Face Threats From Chemical Pollutants

Speaker Says Polar Bears Face Threats From Chemical Pollutants
 

 

Polar bears have been in the public eye lately.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proposed listing the furry arctic denizens as threatened and subject to protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. More recently, the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that, by the middle of this century, the loss of Arctic sea ice caused by global warming will reduce the world's polar bear population by at least two-thirds.

If that news isn't grim enough, last month Norwegian scientist Janneche Utne Skaare told an audience at the Marine Environmental Research Institute that polar bears faced another threat to their survival. According to Skaare, persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) that reach the Arctic through the atmosphere are weakening the bears' immune systems and inhibiting their ability to reproduce.

POPs concentrate in the fat tissue of mammals and other animals. That means that animals higher up the food chain will tend to ingest higher levels of POPs in their diets.

For top predators like polar bears, that is a particular problem. The bears' favorite food is the blubber of the ringed seal — an excellent source of POPs. According to Skaare, the level of PCBs in the blood of polar bears has been found to be 100 times higher than that found in the breast milk of Norwegian women.

Skaare said it was wrong "to push your data" when asked if her findings meant that Arctic polar bears were endangered. That caution notwithstanding, in Svarlbard, where Skaare studied polar bears living in the archipelago lying midway between Norway and the North Pole, some evidence is clear.

Polar bears with high levels of POPs in their blood also have abnormally low levels of the primary immunoglobulin IgG. As a result, their weakened immune systems are less able to fight infections. That bodes ill for a bear population facing increased stresses from a radical change in their habitat.

The effects of high levels of POPs on the bears' reproduction are another cause for concern. According to Skaare, polar bears in Svarlbard seem to stop having cubs at a younger age than polar bears living in the Canadian Arctic, where POP levels seem to be lower than they are farther eastward. At the same time, bears on Svarlbard seem to have a faster reproductive cycle, bearing cubs two years apart rather than the normal three. With cubs staying close to their mothers for the first two and a half years of their lives so they can learn how to survive in harsh arctic conditions, the shorter time between births imposes additional stress on the bears.

There are other problems. POPs are known to affect the endocrine system and recently hermaphrodite polar bear cubs were discovered in Svarlbard where Skaare does her research.

According to Skaare, the combined effects of high levels of POPs and climate change present "a worst case scenario for polar bears."

High levels of POPs are not a new problem in the Arctic, Skaare said. The region has been threatened by POPs for at least four decades. At one time, PCBs were the major problem but since their production was banned in the late 1970s, the use of other POPs has increased. The result, Skaare said, is that while scientists have seen declining levels of PCBs in the blood and tissues of Arctic animals, there has been little or no net decline.

The news may be getting through to the world's political leaders. In 2005, the member nations to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants met in Uruguay to discuss expanded bans on the production and use of POPs.

Skaare offered some interesting insights into scientific methodology. Working with polar bears is extremely difficult. They are large — adult males weigh as much as 1,300 pounds — carnivorous and not docile. Skaare tranquilizes the bears with darts fired from on board a helicopter before taking blood and fat samples and a small tooth that reveals the bear's age, from these top-level predators.

Despite the difficulties presented by working with animals that, Skaare said, "you can't take into the laboratory," studying polar bears offers several benefits to a scientist concerned with the impact humans have on the planet.

"Nobody is interested in research on plankton," Skaare said. "My research is a wakeup to policy makers. It's also fun doing fieldwork."

Global Warming reveals Human Error with an Extraterrestrial connection

The Canadian National Newspaper: Global Warming reveals Human Error with an Extraterrestrial connection

Ancient Gnostic insights, may shed critical light on human descent into self-destruction from Global Warming. Gnostics suggest, that an awareness of demonic aliens which they observed and documented in the Nag Hammadi, is vital for human beings to be able to protect themselves from a path that would produce human self-destruction, (whether from Global Warming producing activities, or other such activities).

Gnostics, became persecuted by the organized Christian religious Establishment, that had sought to complement the reported control agenda of identified Manipulative aliens, that have been documented as visiting Earth in their UFO space craft through the Biblical era.

John Lash, a learned author and scholar on the Gnostics, documents that apparently keeping humanity ignorant of demonic aliens, was viewed to be unofficial Church Establishment policy. The article entitled "Scientific and Historical research provide critical insights into some reported encounters with intelligent Extraterrestrial life", explores as a composite, the thought-provoking historical research of Mr. Lash, Jacques Vallee, V. N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science Malou Zeitlin and Gerry Zeitlin. Mr. Lash, in particular, has documented detailed Gnostic warnings of intelligent Extraterrestrial inorganic life in our solar system. Mr Lash, documents that these inorganic life forms apparently thrive from acting as a parasite against human spiritual free will.

John Lash in a well presented manner specifically writes about Gnostic observations of Extraterrestrial inorganic life that exploits the human tendency for "error", that is a propos in a prevailing context of Global Warming and related catastrophic climate change. Mr. Lash carefully details that the cited human tendency for "error".

This "error" is presented to originate from humans, as sentient beings, having been endowed in their "organic cosmic memory" with the capacity of free will, leading themselves astray from a spiritually cognizant and self-disciplined course of thought and action in space-time.

"It might be said that Gnostics believed that only by confronting what is insane and inhumane in ourselves, can we truly define what is human. In essence, to define humanity is to defend it against distortion. Gnostics asserted that, the capacity for distortion of humanitas, or dehumanization, is inherent in our minds, but this capacity alone is not potentially deviant," John Lash documents in "Defending Humanity", LINK. "In Gnostic psychology, the noetic science of the Mystery Schools, Archons are an alien force that intrudes subliminally upon the human mind, and deviates our intelligence away from its proper and sane applications."

These Archons are not what makes us act inhumanely, for we all have the potential to go against our innate humanity, violating the truth in our hearts, but they make us play out inhumane behaviour to weird and violent extremes," documents Dee Finney in "The Archons", LINK. Human beings have been ideologically led into a Global Warming path that is resulting in the accelerated destruction of Earth's fragile ecosystem, and biosphere in general, is truly a direction of insanity.

Dee Finney further indicates that, "Left to our own devices, we would sometimes act inhumanely and then correct it, contain the aberration. Obviously, we do not always do so. In the exaggeration of our insane and inhumane tendencies, and in extreme, uncorrected deviance from our innate intelligence, Gnostics saw the signature of an alien species that piggy-backs on the worst human failings."

Mr. Lash further stipulates that, "Since we are endowed with nous, a dose of divine intelligence, we are able to detect and correct distorted thinking. We can master what Tibetan Buddhists call krol'pa, "thoughts that lead astray," mental fixations that turn us away from humanitas, our true identity. However, Gnostics also warned of an alien spin that can add a truly deviant element to our thinking."

Organized religion is in fact used as an apparent pivotal "carrier" for an alien spin, which functions as a mis-direction by Manipulative Extraterrestrials, of the human desire to seek spiritual empowerment. Through organized religion, Manipulative Extraterrestrials "trick" humanity into following the organized religions of a what Gnostics refer to as an "impostor God", that has produced countless wars, genocides, and other atrocities on Earth, which include the atrocity of destroying the vital organic consciousness of Earth, that humans depend upon for their quality-of-human survival through Global warming. In turn Manipulative Extraterrestrials then apparently seek to consume the resulting negative energy as a "food source".

Mr. Lash indicates, "The effect of the Archons is not to make us err, but to make us, largely through dullness and distraction, disregard our errors, so that they extrapolate beyond the scale of correction."

Mr. Lash further identifies that, Gnostic identified "error" in human tendencies, that was against the alien construct of "sin", which in itself, is errant. Apparently, inorganic life forms constructed "sin" to operate within the systems of inherently oppressive organized religions in order to enslave humans to a system of alien dogma, that can be used to dull and destroy vital human capacities for reason, that is critical to a course of spiritual development associated with peace, wisdom, and empathy.

Accelerated destruction of Earth's fragile ecosystem.

Living, in one with nature with empathy and in peace, is a vital wisdom that enables humans to thrive as spiritual and organic physical beings. Manipulative Extraterrestrials use dogma as a principal agency, to create a context of bigotries which are enveloped into substantively materialistic ego-driven hierarchies of power, and within which, Global Warming issues though cultivated further "error", are completely marginalized.

Intelligent Extraterrestrial Inorganic life in our solar system exploits "error" to use Humans as a food source

Once humans deviate from a self-disciplined course associated with a higher spiritual consciousness of peace, wisdom, and empathy for each other, in the context of the organic unity of nature, Gnostics observed how the intelligent Extraterrestrial inorganic life forms use that "error" for consumption purposes.

Gnostics warned that, inorganic Manipulative Extraterrestrials use the "negative energy" created from the human tendency not to correct a path of prospective error, as an inorganic "food source", in a similar way humans seek nutrition from various organic food sources.

"Error" could further be conceived to be the "psychic habitat" that humans allow to creep into a matrix of consciousness in their minds. Intelligent Manipulative Extraterrestrial inorganic life that apparently inhabits Earth's solar system use the technological means that have been created by a demonic consciousness to exploit the manifestation of human error that expresses itself in ego-driven human desires, ambitions, and aspirations.

Modern Western industrialized society that collectively ignores Global Warming, is a critical manifestation of error. This context of alien exploited human "error", according to critical Gnostic research, takes the most corrupted form in ego-driven hierarchical systems, which capitalist-oriented governments present to such Gnostic- observed manipulative aliens. In other words, based upon a critical Gnostic appreciation, the very agencies which humans are depending upon, to lead the way toward redressing Global Warming, are the most subverted by an intruded alien consciousness.

Jacques Lacarriere, a scholarly researcher, suggests that Gnostics detected the "humanized face" of the Archons in all authoritarian structures and systems that deny authenticity and self-determination to the individual.

Humans cannot therefore rely on "saving the world" from Global Warming, by seeking to place pressures on a political representatives that could be corrupted into a path of self-directed error. Based upon Gnostic insight, Global Warming is caused from by what John Lash refers to as an "alien intrusion", which has resulted in a breakdown of the organic consciousness of Earth.

Redressing Global Warming therefore requires a human spiritual awakening of its higher consciousness and purpose as socially responsible custodians of an Earth, that is linked to a creative cosmic consciousness of the true God of our universe.

Gnostics were able to critically observe as well as seek to understand and appreciate the true God of the Universe expressed. They did that by rejecting the blind "faith-based" "impostor God" or manipulative aliens that have operated through contrived organized religions, and a context of secularism, to further alienate human spiritual empowerment, and instead operate toward self-destructiveness.

Mr. Lash emphasised in his research, that Gnostics observed that Earth in fact became "trapped" in our solar system. Gnostics further refer to inorganic life forms that inhabit apparently other planets in our solar system and elsewhere in our universe, that present a specific threat to Earth as "demons from outer space and that come from the sky". Christian elites indeed sought to further censor based upon a critical Gnostic appreciation this original warming made in the Bible.

Apparently these inorganic life forms were created from a "bursting" at the time of the origins of our universe that simultaneously included positive energies, and cosmically sought aborted negative energies. These negative energies apparently resulted in intelligent inorganic Manipulative Extraterrestrials, with a demonic consciousness.

Gnostic insights. document alien demons that visit earth, and seek to perpetuate their existence in part, from consuming the negative energies that they can exploit from human beings.

In contrast, Noblerealms researchers correspondingly document that positive energies associated with a higher consciousness would repel the "feeding practices" of Gnostic documented intelligent Extraterrestrial inorganic life forms, LINK.

Negative energies, would therefore appear to make it possible for the Gnostic documented predatory inorganic life forms to be able to physically present themselves dimensionally in Earth's biosphere through various planetary UFO visitations. Gnostic research suggests the context of greed-driven materialism that is associated with Global Warming is being cultivated from an enslavement of the human spirit. Mr. Lash and his colleagues indicate that Gnostics as spiritually inspired "cosmic scientists" observed that this cultivation process is apparently aimed at exploiting and magnifying a course of human error.

Analysis of Mr. Lash's work further suggests that Global Warming could therefore be a condition which inorganic life forms have indeed exploited, as a result of humans pursuing an errant path of venality and greed. When humans having free will, entertain a dehumanizing context of venality and greed, Gnostics suggest that to "harvest" the resulting "negative energies" for inorganic consumption, inorganic life forms then use telepathic abilities to exploit the resulting context of violence, despair, fear, bigotries, oppression, and social injustice that can produce wars.

Apparently once the inorganic life forms have the opportunity to invade the human psyche by exploiting human error, they can in turn "possess" their human victims which provide "hosts" for the physical execution of their destructive tendencies. These Gnostic-documented inorganic life forms could be viewed to act somewhat similar to someone who takes some narcotic drug cocktail, in which the drug user may think that they can go on top of a building and fly like a bird. And the more a human being embodies a errant consciousness associated with greed-driven ambitions, the more that intelligent inorganic life forms can "possess" their victim like a parasite, until the point where as a result of that mental and attitudinal possession, a human being may conceivably be transformed into simply the transient physical embodiment of a Manipulative Inorganic life form.

Inorganic life forms does NOT rely on the protection of Earth biosphere for their survival. So, "apparent humans" who are "possessed" to varying degrees by Gnostic-warned inorganic life forms, would be completely impervious to any human lobbying efforts to protect the biosphere.

"In the Gnostic view of human society, the Archons are alien forces that act through authoritarian systems, including belief-systems, in ways that cause human beings to turn against their innate potential and violate the symbiosis of nature," documents Dee Finney, in "The Archons", LINK. Gnostics support the view that their documented intelligent inorganic life would simply view the resulting human suffering associated with Global Warming, as providing a "food source" of negative energies. The more negative energy that is cultivated by chaos associated with Global Warming, and related wars for "resources" further dwindled by climate change, the more "food" for intelligent inorganic life forms, and the more control that these documented reported Manipulative Extraterrestrials have to consolidate their sought control over humanity for "food" and as slaves to their demonic agenda.

Mr. Lash explores Gnostic insights, as parasitic life forms, that inorganic life forms, which lack a 'soul' and a related human capacity of free will, do not have the capacity to initiate, but seek to exploit such self-destructive contexts like Global Warming. The implications of Mr. Lash's research, and that humans can only redress Global Warming, and other immediate plights of our planet, by fully understanding and becoming aware of the apparent on-going agenda of Manipulative inorganic life forms, from an apparent hostile solar system, where these predators of human agency have been reported to exist.

According to critical appreciation of Gnostic insights, the maintenance of ignorance on UFO phenomena seems to be directed by apparent operatives of inorganic life forms, in order to maintain a collective amnesia that can be used to perpetuate a matrix of manipulation. Saving our planet Earth from Global Warming relies on a human spiritual awakening of its vital identity associated with cultivating a higher consciousness of mutuality and empathy, and away from the self-destructive context of the lower dimensional inorganic aliens, that appear to be possessing humanity as this time.

Deepest ever scientific ocean drilling could hold key to understanding earthquakes

Deepest ever scientific ocean drilling could hold key to understanding earthquakes

One of the most ambitious earth science expeditions yet mounted to gain a better understanding of the earthquake process, has begun off the coast of Japan, involving geologists from the universities of Southampton and Leicester. Dr Lisa McNeill, of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science, based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, and Joanne Tudge, of the Department of Geology, University of Leicester, are taking part in the multi-disciplinary study of a 'subduction' zone off the Japanese coast, aboard the deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu (which means 'Planet Earth' in Japanese). This is the maiden scientific voyage of this vessel, which has unique capabilities enabling it to access new regions of the Earth's crust.

Large-scale subduction earthquakes are the world's most powerful seismic events and the cause of major catastrophes, such as the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Japan, which has endured devastating earthquakes in cities such as Kobe in 1995, has made major investments in technology, including Chikyu, to learn more about seismic activity near its shores.

Lisa, a lecturer at Southampton, joins the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (or NanTroSEIZE) expedition, part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), as a scientific participant, but will also serve as a co-chief scientist on a later phase of the experiment in 2009.

PhD student Joanne Tudge is part of the Geophysics and Borehole Research Group in the Department of Geology at Leicester, which has a long-standing history of providing logging services and expertise for the IODP. Her research focuses on interpreting data from the borehole to better understand the sediments. On this NanTroSEIZE expedition she will be working to classify the rocks and understand the physical properties of the sediments in the subduction zone.

The project is ambitious in scale — the first phase alone is the longest period of scientific ocean drilling ever attempted in one area. In the second phase, colleagues will attempt to break the scientific ocean drilling depth record by targeting a fault around 3500m below the sea floor.

During the third phase, the drill ship aims to reach the main plate boundary at 6 km and place long-term monitoring tools. The experiment will take samples and install observatories to assess, for example, how strain is building up on the fault, the effects of fluid on rocks and the physical properties of sediments as they are deformed.

Dr McNeill said: 'The scale of this experiment is unprecedented and I am very excited to be taking part. This is an extremely challenging expedition but the results should give us a much greater understanding of the processes responsible for generating earthquakes and tsunami.'

Family Planning, Population, and Global Warming

Family Planning, Population, and Global Warming
 

Every year, the world's population increases by 80 million people -- with most of the growth in developing nations. As the number of children a woman bears and raises has an inverse relationshipto her -- and her children's -- life expectancy and social mobility, improving the availability of family planning options is crucial to improving both public and economic health in these nations.

It has a direct relationship to improving global environmental conditions, as well: according to The Sierra Club's online primer on the links between global population, family planning, and climate change, as the human population grew roughly four fold over the 20th century -- from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion -- the growing energy demand led carbon-dioxide emissions to increase twelve fold.

Heather D'Agnes believes it. She's head of the US Agency for International Development's (USAID) population, health, and environment program, and is promoting policies that would expand access to family planning. D'Agnes feels strongly that the more information women and families have not just about contraception, but about the negative impacts of large family size, the more likely they'll be to opt for smaller families as a result -- and her conclusions are supported by the Cairo Consensus adopted by the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, which was the first international document to recognize the connections between reproductive health, the environment, and economic development.

D'Agnes takes an integrated approach to population management and environmental protection. She recently did research in coastal fishing villages in the Philippines where family sizes were growing even as fishing stocks declined—a crisis in the making, finding that when provided with information about the linkage between overpopulation and overfishing, the village residents were eager for information about and access to family-planning services.

According to D'Agnes (quoted in an interview on Radio Australia), the economic and environmental benefits of having a smaller, healthier family "really resonate..."

In the Philippines, our experience has been that you can train community members who may have an elementary education...to be peer educators. What that means is that they go and talk to their peers, their neighbors, their friends, the people that they fish with, for example, and you can train them to deliver information about the benefits of family planning. The same time they're there in the fishing boat delivering information about why smaller families are better, or may help out their condition in life, they're also talking about the importance of not fishing in a certain area, let's say a marine protected area. So you see, they're talking about their lives.

Interestingly, D'Agnes found that even in a deeply Catholic country like the Philippines, men and women were eager to learn about and use birth control, defying the notion that villagers would blindly follow religious edicts at the peril of their families and livelihoods.

Iran: Spill, Dolphin Deaths Spark Alarm At Persian Gulf Pollution

Iran: Spill, Dolphin Deaths Spark Alarm At Persian Gulf Pollution

An oil platform near Siri Island in the Persian Gulf (file)

(Fars)

October 3, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- High levels of pollution and an oil spill in July are being blamed for the recent deaths of dolphins and whales off Iran's Hormozegan Province, on the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. The most recent ecological mishap to beset Iran's busy port of Bandar Abbas came on July 15, when oil sludge containing oil byproducts seeped out of damaged containers belonging to a contractor for the state electricity provider Tavanir. More than two months later, Iranian news agencies and the "Kayhan" and "Etemad" dailies reported that 79 dolphins washed ashore on September 25 near the smaller port of Jask. The incidents have spawned a broader debate over pollution levels in the seas around Iran. Oil? Sewage? Submarines? Iranian environmentalist Ebrahim Kahrom told the daily "Etemad"  that the Persian Gulf is 47 times more polluted than what he described as the "standard level." He suggested that "severe oil pollution" and the presence of oil slicks in Gulf waters might have killed the dolphins as well as six whales that reportedly also washed ashore near Bandar Abbas in the past month. Kahrom called the confluence of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea as "the most polluted area of the southern seas." Kahrom said the Bandar Abbas oil spill contaminated an 800-square-kilometer stretch of water. He also said the number of dead dolphins would have been lower if it were the result of general pollution and accumulated toxins. Kahrom speculated that the pod of dolphins might have surfaced in the middle of an oil slick. A deputy head of the Environmental Protection Organization, Mohammad Baqer Nabavi, suggested that the dolphins died from gradual poisoning due to "chemical pollution" or oil. "Etemad" quoted him as speculating that they might simply have lost their way, moved too close to land, and become disoriented -- even suggesting that sonar emitted by U.S. submarines in the Persian Gulf might have been a factor. Nabavi admitted that pollution levels are high, and said environmental authorities are studying the impact of the July spill in Bandar Abbas. But he was skeptical that the spill killed the dolphins, and pointed out that dolphins could have swum away from the contamination. The head of the Hormozegan environmental authority, Mehrdad Katal-Mohseni, reasoned that any of a number of problems might have caused the deaths -- including oil pollution, waste from the industrial activities at ports and jetties, sewage, or floating rubbish. He even added that the dolphins might have gotten caught in tuna nets. Environmentalist Nargues Rohani blamed marine pollution, and said that factories and petrochemical plants have been spilling unprocessed waste and sewage into the Persian Gulf for years. She said residents don't eat locally caught fish, believing it to be contaminated. Rohani noted that "the locals are intimately familiar with the disasters that have come about from contaminations, but officials continue to say nothing about all these events." She also noted the destruction of local populations of corals and fishes, and warned that Iranians could expect more environmental disasters "if officials remain silent." Increased Awareness Whatever the causes of the recent marine-mammal deaths, comments suggest an awareness that the Persian Gulf is polluted -- whether the result of navigation, oil-related activities, or the presence of military fleets and submarines -- and that pollution is killing or poisoning wildlife, including fish presumably destined for human consumption. The reaction of Iranian officials is notable, and arguably fits into a pattern among states with poor records of accountability. Reports on Persian Gulf pollution and threats to other natural areas suggest that local efforts provide the most effective response and that the environment is not a priority for the state generally. Environmental issues very rarely feature in the speeches of senior officials. Reports frequently suggest that low-level officials block potentially destructive projects or react to degradation at an initial and local stage, but do not always receive systematic backing from officials in Tehran. In Iran, when economic interests clash with the environment, money is given priority. Bandar Abbas is in the middle of the Straits of Hormuz, a key waterway for the region's oil exports (courtesy photo) Fars News Agency last month noted what it described as a "seal of silence" by officials of Hormozegan Province after the July oil spill. The agency cited "an informed source" as saying that the Hormozegan governor had ordered all provincial officials -- including its environmental chief and the investigating court -- to "remain silent" on the subject. The source suggested that probes into the spill that were initiated after legal action by local environmental authorities would be dragged out, and that their lack of progress was related to the governor's instruction not to "exaggerate" the incident. The source claimed the governor thought too much negative publicity would make the Energy Ministry look bad. Iranian officials and Iranians in general are very sensitive about the term "Persian Gulf" as the official and recognized name for the waterway separating Iran and the Arabian peninsula. They are upset when Arab states or journals do not cite it as such -- particularly when the term "Arab Gulf" is used. And yet a far smaller number of Iranians appear concerned that human activities could turn that object of national pride and diplomatic contention into a filthy pool of toxins.

Widening Arctic meltdown chills Canadian scientists

Widening Arctic meltdown chills Canadian scientists

 

Ice experts are shocked by this summer's meltdown in the Canadian Arctic, which reached yet another milestone as ice almost completely disappeared in polar regions that had previously not been seriously affected by global warming.

"The ice is no longer growing or getting old," says John Falkingham, chief forecaster for the Canadian Ice Service, the Environment Canada agency that helps ships find a way through the Northwest Passage and other parts of the Arctic.

"Ten years from now, we may look back on 2007 and say that this was the year we passed the tipping point."

  An icebreaker encounters mostly open water in the Canadian Arctic.

The tipping point is the term climatologists use to describe that moment in time when winter can no longer keep up with the meltdown that spring and summer brings. The less ice there is to reflect solar radiation back into the atmosphere, the warmer the Arctic Ocean becomes.

Until this summer, Falkingham, a 32-year veteran of the service, was reluctant to push the button as hard as other climate watchers, who have been saying that the Northwest Passage will be seasonally ice-free within 25 to 30 years.

But this summer, the ice retreated so far beyond all expectations that he was "shocked" if not "stunned" by what he and his colleagues saw.

Across the Arctic as a whole, the meltdown is where climatologists expected it would be in 2030. In Arctic Canada, 2007's total ice coverage was only a fraction below the minimum record set in 1998.

That wasn't a surprise to Falkingham because unlike the rest of the polar world, the islands in the archipelago protect the ice from the melting forces of winds, tides and storm surges.

What was surprising was the absence of ice in areas where it almost never melts.

The so-called "mortuary" of old ice that normally chokes M'Clintock Channel in the High Arctic was almost all gone. What's more, Viscount Melville Sound, "the birthplace" of a lot of Arctic ice, was down to half its normal summer cover.

"If there's very little ice in these two places, it raises questions about what's going to happen next year," Falkingham says.

Had John Franklin sailed the same route as he did back in 1845-46 when his two ships got stuck in ice, they would have had relatively clear sailing this year. All 129 men died on that expedition.

Queen's University scientist Scott Lamoureux and his colleagues got a glimpse of what all this warmth is doing to the Arctic landscape. The University of Alberta graduate was camped on the southern shores of Melville Island this past July.

It is the largest uninhabited island in the world and a place that is very likely to become a hub for future oil and gas developments in the Arctic.

Until this year, summers on the island had been left largely unaffected by the warming that has been taking place across the North. July temperatures have remained steady at about 5 C, partly because there is so much ice in the area.

But this year, Lamoureux and his associates basked in temperatures of 20 C or more. The heat was so intense that it melted the permafrost a metre below the surface.

Throughout those warm weeks of July, the scientists watched in amazement as the meltwater below lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes, clearing everything in its path and thrusting up ridges at the valley bottom.

"The landscape piled up like a rug," says Lamoureux, an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes. "It was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes. A major river was dammed by a slide along a 200-metre length of the channel. River flow will be changed for years, if not decades, to come.

"Had this happened in a populated or industrial area," he says, "the impact would have been catastrophic."

Falkingham says the rapid retreat of ice is now forcing the Canadian Ice Service to rethink its role in the future.

"A big part of our mandate is to help ships find a way through the ice. But if there is going to be so little ice in the future, it raises questions about what our role is going to be."

News from the Arctic: Are We on the Edge of a Climate-Change Cliff?

News from the Arctic: Are We on the Edge of a Climate-Change Cliff?

The recent disturbing news out of the Arctic reminded me that we are making the same dumb mistake that once almost got me killed in the mountains. I survived my mistake. It remains to be seen whether the world will be so lucky in the face of global warming that just caused a full one million square miles of the Arctic ice cap to go AWOL. In an unprecedented meltdown, an area the size of six Californias has disappeared, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

As far as we know, this is the most stunning melt in this or the previous century. Given how central the polar ice cap is to the global climactic system, not to mention the survival of the polar bear as a species, this should be more than a wake-up call. It should be cause to take stock of just how thin is the climatic ice we are skating on.

As a nation, we are repeating a little error I once made on the slopes of Mt. Rainer. It was several years ago when I was backcountry telemark skiing at about 2,000 feet above Paradise with my pal on a cold winter's day. An impenetrable whiteout moved in and blocked our vision as we headed back down the mountain. When this happens, the only thing that exists in the world is you and your skis, because there is absolutely nothing else you can see. There is no up, no down, and no horizon. It's really quite spooky to be so disoriented.

We slowed down to a crawl to be safe and took little baby steps downhill, or at least the direction our compass said was south, as you couldn't really tell if you were going downhill or uphill. We had tiptoed this way for about 10 minutes when all of a sudden I was falling -- falling straight down, something I could tell was happening only by the rush of air past my ears. I had a consciousness that this could be either a 20-foot tumble or a 400-foot disaster, and I didn't have any visual clues as to which fate the stars had in store for me. It was funny how fairly detached my immediate thought was: "Wow, it'll be really interesting to see how high this cliff is."

In any event, it was a mere 20-foot plunge, cushioned by some of Mt. Rainer's finest fall-breaking powder. It turned out to be just a good story, one that still astounds my ski partner who says I just totally disappeared, "into thin air," and he had no idea where I had gone until I landed and started yelling, even though he was just a few feet behind me when I stepped into the elevator shaft. But it could have been a much more significant event. If so, I would have deserved it, by moving at all in conditions of zero visibility with the possibility of cliff bands.

This is metaphorically just what we are doing on a global scale right now. The precipitous meltdown in the Arctic should alert us to the fact that we are cruising along on an unchecked global-warming path, with no knowledge whatsoever as to where the hidden climactic "cliffs" may be. At what point will the climactic system tip into some unknown and unknowable regime that devastates agriculture? Or melts the Greenland ice cap, inundating our coastlines? Or sparks rampant desertification? Will it be when atmospheric concentrations of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere reach 600 parts per million? 500? 400? Nobody knows.

The fact that we don't know ought to terrify us.

We are skiing along in a climatic whiteout, with cliffs in the near vicinity of unknown height and unknown location. Perhaps we have already skied over one. My little mistake -- believing that if we just slowed down, we could stop before we went over the precipice -- could have just meant one less politician in the world. A continuation of our global mistake -- to proceed with an explosion of greenhouse-gas emissions in blissful ignorance of the potential consequences -- could be a lot more serious for the globe.

I have learned my lesson and haven't made a similar mistake in the mountains since. We ought to hope and pray that we can learn the same lesson globally in time, because there won't be enough snow left in the world to cushion a fall off a global climatic cliff.

Arctic sea ice reaches record low

Arctic sea ice reaches record low

Arctic sea ice reached record low levels this year, according to satellite measurements.

Researchers at the University of Colorado claim that the melt season saw levels lower than any since 1979 when records began.

During September the average sea ice extent was 1.65 million square miles, nearly 25 per cent less than the previous low record reached in 2005.

At the end of the melt season, sea ice was 39 per cent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.

Professor Mark Serreze said that a number of factors have contributed to the decline of sea ice but "the effects of greenhouse warming are coming through loud and clear".

Scientists believe that part of the reason for the drastic decline was due to ice being at an already-weakened state before the melt season.

Other contributing factors include an unusual atmospheric pattern, with persistent high atmospheric pressures over the central Arctic Ocean and lower pressures over Siberia.

At the same time winds pumped warm air into the region, encouraging further melt.

The loss of sea ice was so great this year that the fabled Northwest Passage completely opened for the first time in human memory.

Melting sea ice is likely to have an impact on hunting and travelling in the region.

"We may well see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer within our lifetimes," said Professor Serreze. "The implications for global climate, as well as Arctic animals and people, are disturbing."

Africa: Developing Countries Need Help to Fight Climate Change, Officials Tell UN

 Africa: Developing Countries Need Help to Fight Climate Change, Officials Tell UN 

Senior officials from a number of developing countries today called for greater international cooperation to help the world's poor and vulnerable States respond to climate change - the central focus of this year's annual high-level debate of the General Assembly.

Marco Hausiku, the Foreign Minister of Namibia, said climate change is a global issue with serious implications for economic growth, sustainable development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global anti-poverty targets toward the year 2015.

"The international community has to live up to its commitment to provide resources to developing countries to adapt to the effect of climate change," he told the Assembly. "By the same token, compulsory targets must be set for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

He called for a greater sense of urgency and international action. "Namibia is not happy with the rate at which investments are made in the development of renewable and clean energy sources," he said. "I would like to call upon the private sector to join hands with governments to develop and apply technologies that can mitigate climate change."

Seyoum Mesfin, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia, said Africa is "exceptionally" vulnerable to the effects of climate change. "So many of us live on the margins that the smallest difference in climate can mean the difference between sufficiency and famine, survival and death," he said.

While acknowledging that this global challenge requires a global response, he cautioned that "the need for speedy economic development in countries such as Ethiopia, and in Africa, as a whole should not be compromised in the interest of reversing a dangerous climatic situation for the creation of which we have no responsibility."

Through effective international cooperation, it should be possible to ensure that the development process in countries such as Ethiopia will be environmentally friendly. Toward that end, he welcomed a proposal put forward by Brazil to convene in 2012 a new UN conference on environment and development.

Also urging a global partnership against climate change, the Foreign Minister of Suriname, Lygia Kraag-Keteldijk, pointed out that the countries least able to respond will be the hardest-hit. "The effects of climate change will be felt in all parts of the world," she said, "however the impact will be worse in small and vulnerable States."

For Suriname, a low-lying coastal country, sea-level rise could be "catastrophic," she said. In response, the Government has designated a large part of its land mass as a World Heritage Site monitored by the UN Educational Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), she added.

She said all countries must work for a common solution. "We call on the international community and development partners to increase their efforts and to continue their technical and financial support to developing countries to safeguard the world environment for current and future generations."

Philip Sealy, Permanent Representative of Trinidad and Tobago, said it was important that any decisions or timetable for emission reductions be implemented as soon as practicable.

"The world is already committed to an increase 1.14 degrees Celsius by the end of the next two decades" as a result of emissions from fossil fuel use and deforestation, Mr. Sealy said, adding that a strategy is needed to ensure that the long-term temperature increase is no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Concerns about climate change were also taken up by representatives of industrialized countries during the high-level debate today, with New Zealand's Permanent Representative Rosemary Banks calling for a "road map" to emerge during the global summit on the issue in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

"The road map will need to include all relevant pieces of the climate change puzzle," Ms. Banks said, calling for all economies to be placed on "low-carbon pathways over time. Market mechanisms will have a significant role to play. Individual countries will face different challenges. Different national circumstances must be taken into account."