Arctic discovery confirms impact of global warming
It’s no wonder Ottawa won’t do anything to reduce climate change. The warming Earth has made a dream come true for federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice.
“I’m elated,” Prentice is reported to have exclaimed when informed HMS Investigator, a British ship that sank 155 years ago while searching for Sir John Franklin’s doomed Northwest Passage expedition, had been found in the cold western Arctic Ocean.
Parks Canada staff had no trouble finding the well-preserved remains of the 400-tonne vessel with the ocean ice-free this summer — a situation first reported only in 2007.
Prentice is apparently an Investigator buff, and reviewed a book about its unsuccessful voyage last winter. Had the ocean remained frozen, the ship would continue to rest unseen, 11 metres below the surface.
Climate change will unseal many other Arctic treasures over the next few years. Most important — less romantic but incomparably more lucrative than an old boat — are oil and gas deposits.
This week, three fossil-fuel giants — Imperial Oil, its parent Exxon Mobil and Louisiana’s favourite, BP — announced they’ve joined forces to more efficiently look for deposits under the Beaufort Sea.
Natural Resources Canada recently revealed plans to map the seabed under Lancaster Sound, the Eastern Arctic entrance to the Northwest Passage; a task that will help to determine what resources might be there.
All this comes during a steamy summer when you’d suppose humankind has decided to embark on a grand global experiment: We’ll ignore the clear warnings and evidence and just see what happens as we keep dumping far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the planet’s oceans and other natural systems can absorb. The most recent alarm arrived last week from 300 top climate scientists, whose spokesperson stated, “The facts speak for themselves . . . and they all point toward the same conclusion: the globe is warming.”
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Source: Toronto Star
Category: News
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TckTckTck is the public campaign of the Global Campaign for Climate Action. The GCCA is an unprecedented alliance of more than 300 non-profit organizations all over the world. Our shared mission is to mobilize civil society and galvanize public support to ensure a safe climate future for people and nature, to promote the low-carbon transition of our economies, and to accelerate the adaptation efforts in communities already affected by climate change.View Author Profile
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