Canadian Arctic Not What It Used To Be

In more depressing news about the state of the Arctic, a 4,500 year-old shelf of ice has broken off from Ellesmere Island. The BBC reported that a nineteen-square-mile section, about three times the size of Manhattan, is now floating around the ocean. It's getting bad on the other islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago too. What people often forget is that not only is this a scary symptom of global warming, but these ice shelves are actually very fragile ecozones that are now in serious danger of disappearing.

I've always been fascinated with Arctic exploration. When I was a kid I loved the stories of explorers such as Hudson and Barents navigating between ice floes and having run-ins with polar bears. I loved looking at maps of the Arctic and wondering about all those islands with the strange names--Ellesmere, Baffin, Devon. I wondered what it would be like to be trekking across their huge expanses of ice. Looks like I'll never know.

Kayaking to the North Pole

What's wrong with this title? Well, you shouldn't be able to kayak to the North Pole, because there's supposed to be a bunch of ice up there! Unfortunately, the polar cap has been shrinking so quickly that star swimmer Lewis Pugh has decided to attempt to kayak to the top of the world to bring awareness to the problem of global warming.

He's got a fascinating blog about his preparations and start of his expedition. I don't know how much he'll be posting from now on, because he just left Svalbard, headed north. Best of luck, Lewis!

Oh, and if you don't "believe" in global warming, get with the program. Its existence is the closest thing to consensus I've seen in the scientific community, expect for maybe evolution. While the rate of global warming and the extent of human culpability are both debatable, it should be common sense that pumping huge amounts of toxins into our air and water supply is a bad idea.