Saturday, November 27, 2010

One scientist's hobby: recreating the ice age



by ARTHUR MAX
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 27, 2010; 4:31 AM

CHERSKY, Russia -- Wild horses have returned to northern Siberia. So have musk oxen, hairy beasts that once shared this icy land with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Moose and reindeer are here, and may one day be joined by Canadian bison and deer.


Later, the predators will come - Siberian tigers, wolves and maybe leopards.
Russian scientist Sergey Zimov is reintroducing these animals to the land where they once roamed in millions to demonstrate his theory that filling the vast emptiness of Siberia with grass-eating animals can slow global warming.
"Some people have a small garden. I have an ice age park. It's my hobby," says Zimov, smiling through his graying beard. His true profession is quantum physics.


Climate change is felt most sharply in the Arctic, where temperatures are warming faster than anywhere else on the planet. Most climate scientists say human activity, especially industrial pollution and the byproducts of everyday living like home heating and driving cars, is triggering an unnatural warming of the Earth. On Monday, negotiators representing 194 countries open a two-week conference in Cancun, Mexico, on reducing greenhouse gases to slow the pace of climate change. Zimov is trying to recreate an ecosystem that disappeared 10,000 years ago with the end of the ice age, which closed the 1.8 million-year Pleistocene era and ushered in the global climate roughly as we know it.


He believes herds of grazers will turn the tundra, which today supports only spindly larch trees and shrubs, into luxurious grasslands. Tall grasses with complex root systems will stabilize the frozen soil, which is now thawing at an ever-increasing rate, he says.


Herbivores keep wild grass short and healthy, sending up fresh shoots through the summer and autumn. Their manure gives crucial nourishment. In winter, the animals trample and flatten the snow that otherwise would insulate the ground from the cold air. That helps prevent the frozen ground, or permafrost, from thawing and releasing powerful greenhouse gases. Grass also reflects more sunlight than forests, a further damper to global warming.
It would take millions of animals to change the landscape of Siberia and effectively seal the permafrost. But left alone, Zimov argues, the likes of caribou, buffalo and musk oxen multiply quickly. Wherever they graze "new pastures will appear ... beautiful grassland."


The project is being watched not only by climate scientists but by paleontologists and environmentalists who have an interest in "rewilding."
"This is a very interesting experiment," said Adrian Lister, of the Natural History Museum in London. "I think it's valid from an ecological point of view to put back animals that did formerly live there," he told AP Television News. He disapproved of suggestions to rewild nonnative species - for example, relocating elephants and rhinos to the American plains.


Zimov began the project in 1989, fencing off 160 square kilometers (40,000 acres) of forest, meadows, shrub land and lakes. It is surrounded by another 600 square kilometers (150,000 acres) of wilderness.


It is an offshoot of the Northeast Science Station, which he founded and where he has lived for 30 years. Already icebound by October, the park is 40 kilometers (25 miles) inland from the station, accessible only by boat in summer and by snow vehicles after the rivers freeze.


A 32-meter (105-foot) tower inside the park gives constant readings of methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor. The data feeds into a global monitoring system overseen by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.


Zimov's research on permafrost, greenhouse gas emissions and mammoth archaeology has attracted world scientists to his laboratories, a small cluster of cabins and a tiny chapel on a rocky bluff above a channel of the Kolyma River. A 20-bed barge is used for field trips in summer, and a $100,000 hovercraft is on order. Zimov sometimes uses an old Russian tank to bring supplies from the Chinese border, 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away.
Part of the station's attraction - and deterrence - is its remoteness. It is 6,600 kilometers (4,000 miles) and eight time zones east of Moscow. The nearby town of Chersky, with some 5,000 people, has few amenities, and the nearest city, Yakutsk, is a 4-1/2 flight. Many researchers, particularly Americans, prefer to work in Alaska or northern Canada, which are more accessible "Most of the Arctic is in Russia, and yet most of the Arctic research isn't," said Max Holmes, of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, director of the Polaris Project, which has sent undergraduates to the station for the last three summers.


Zimov started the park with a herd of 40 Yakutian horses, a semi-wild breed with a handsomely long mane that is raised by Yakuts and other native people for their meat. Short, sturdy and broad-backed, they survive harsh Siberian winters with the help of a furry hide, thick layers of fat and the ability to paw through a meter (3 feet) of snow to forage.


Of his first herd, Zimov said 15 were killed by wolves and bears, 12 died from eating wild hemlock that grows in the park, and two slipped through the perimeter and made their way back some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to their original pastures.


But he bought more. Now the horses have learned to avoid poisonous plants and to resist predators. Over the last three years, more colts were born and survived than horses lost.


The challenge is to find the right balance between grazers and predators, and how to help his animals get through their first winters.
His workers still give occasional buckets of grain to the horses to supplement their diet with salt. About half the horses come regularly to the cabin where a caretaker stays year-round. The other half are rarely seen except for their tracks.


Zimov also has had problems with the moose that he brought inside his enclosure. Moose still live in small numbers in surrounding forests, and the males jump back and forth over the 6-foot-high fence.


In September he traveled to a nature reserve on Wrangel Island, about five hours by boat across the East Siberia Sea, and brought back six 4-month-old musk oxen. One died a few weeks later. The others are kept in a small enclosure and fed hay until they can fend for themselves.


His objective is to see whether a thriving population of grazing animals will regenerate grasslands that disappeared long ago, which would slow and even halt the accelerating pace of permafrost thaw. So far, he says, the results are encouraging.


Today he has 70 animals in the park. He wants thousands to restock Siberia. To bring 1,000 bison from North America would cost $1 million, Zimov says, a small price to pay.


"If permafrost melts, 100 gigatons of carbon will be released this century," he said. "What's $1 million? One regular grant."
---
AP Television News producer Siobhan Starrs and APTN cameraman Dmitry Kozlov contributed to this story

Friday, November 26, 2010

Man makes fourth Antarctic trip

A POTTSVILLE carpenter will trade boardshorts and thongs for thermal underwear and a jumpsuit as he makes his fourth expedition to Antarctica early next month.


A POTTSVILLE carpenter will trade boardshorts and thongs for thermal underwear and a jumpsuit as he makes his fourth expedition to Antarctica early next month.
Peter McCabe will take up the tools to preserve heritage-listed huts erected 99 years ago by Sir Douglas Mawson and the first Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) team.
The 30-year-old has “ice in his veins”, a condition that took hold on his first trip to the continent in 2005, during 14 months at Australian research base Casey Station.
“Once my first trip finished I was pretty much already looking for an avenue to head back down there,” he said.
“The term they coin for it is ‘You get ice in your veins’ ”.
The Mawson’s Hut Foundation gave Mr McCabe an opportunity to return south through its work restoring the historically significant huts Mawson and the AAE team built at Cape Denison, one of the windiest places on earth.
Much of the past decade’s work has been restoring the main hut where the team lived, but this time an astronomical observatory called the “transit hut” is the focus.
The transit hut was first managed as a standing ruin and left alone to age and deteriorate naturally, but that has changed.
“In the last few years its condition has worsened dramatically and it is getting to the point where we could go down there one year and it will be completely gone,” Mr McCabe said.
“Once we realised the condition it was in every-one involved said we need to reconsider how we manage this building.
“All of a sudden the standing ruin classification wasn’t appropriate. We couldn’t let this thing blow away, we had to do something.”
Next year’s centenary of Mawson’s 1911 voyage is expected to bring a lot of visitors to the site, and Mr McCabe said “we need to make sure it is all ready for the big show”.
Two carpenters and a doctor will make up the team. They leave Hobart on December 8 and the journey to Antarctica will take six days across seas as high as 10m.
“Mawson was a really bad traveller at sea – that is what I tell myself when I am laying in the bunk feeling seasick,” Mr McCabe laughed.
Mawson was a man of remarkable achievement and it is hard not to be inspired by his exploits and the stories of the first AAE expedition.
The most disastrous, yet incredible, tale is about the trek Mawson took with Xavier Mertz and Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis.
Ninnis fell through a hidden crevasse with almost all of the trio’s food and the other two started walking home.
Mawson somehow managed the marathon trek back alone after Mertz died, but when the ship arrived to take the rest of the team, Mawson had not returned.
Six crew volunteered to stay behind and wait for him, even though the boat would not return for 12 months and there was no guarantee he would ever return.
Mawson arrived back at Cape Denison only hours after the ship had sailed and he could still see it in the distance as he walked home to the hut.
“When you walk into the hut you see a lot of things sitting untouched like a pair of one of the men’s overalls hanging up on a nail and a frozen piece of seal steak sitting on a shelf – you can see all these little moments of history sitting there.
“You learn a lot about what all the men did in their time down there, and I have got a lot of admiration for all of them and what they went through.”
The crew will mark Christmas with a game of cricket on the ice and will watch the midnight sun for New Year’s Eve.
Mr McCabe said he would miss his new fiancee, Katrina.
“Due to extremely expensive phone costs we will only be able to get 20 minutes a week conservation time.”
Strange encounters with penguins and the sheer beauty of the icy coastline are some of Mr McCabe’s fondest memories of the Antarctic.
Last trip a penguin launched itself out of the water and into a zodiac Mr McCabe was driving.
“He hung out with us for a few minutes and when he thought it was time to go he jumped back in the water.”
You can keep updated on Mr McCabe and his team’s progress by visiting the expedition blog at http://www.mawsons-huts.org.au/cms/blog/.

Centenary of Scott's ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic

FOOTSTEPS: Antony Jinman
ONE of the greatest adventures in human history began 100 years ago today with a Plymouth man in charge.
On November 26, 1910, Captain Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic set sail from New Zealand.
It ended in tragedy in March 1912 when Scott and his four companions died of starvation and frostbite on their way back from the South Pole.
The anniversary is marked today as Plymouth explorer Antony Jinman begins a blog reflecting on Scott's daily diaries and detailing his own preparations for a memorial expedition in the Plymouth hero's footsteps.
Mr Jinman said: "100 years ago, even getting to the Antarctic was a dangerous adventure that few people have achieved.
"They sailed through the stormiest and most remote seas in the world. Scott's party was hit by terrible storms and they had to throw some of their supplies overboard to save the ship.
"There was a real danger they might not make it."
Mr Jinman's memorial expedition in 2012 is the highlight of a series of local, national and international commemorations, which is already under way.
He will lead a party on foot to the site where Scott died. There they will be joined by relatives flown in for a service of remembrance.
Events in Plymouth include a conference and arts shows in June next year.
Engaging all ages in the city, particularly children, is a key goal in the programme. One part of that is series of Polar Fun Days with science and art, which will begin at Devonport Guildhall on February 22 and 23 and then tour the city.
Mr Jinman said: "We want this (the Scott commemorations) to have a social impact, particularly targeting children who will be starting primary school next year. We want all children to know about Scott and be inspired by him and have aspirations of their own."
That spirit of adventure could change their employability and boost entrepreneurism in a city currently heavily dependent on the public sector, he said.
Scott and his team battled 800miles on foot across the ice to the southernmost point on Earth only to discover they had been beaten in the quest to be the first to the pole by Norwegian Roald Amundsen's party.
Scott and companions returned through freak weather and died only about 11 miles from safety. The story of their bravery and spirit remains one of the greatest tales in the history of human exploration.

Hang gliding 'LOOP' perfection by John Heiney in Mazatlan Mexico

Hang gliding looping in Mazatlan México. John Heiney from San Diego CA. give us a good show.Official Guinness World Record Holder('88-'98) for Consecutive Loops (52) 4 times world hang gliding acrobatic champion


Wednesday, November 24, 2010

PlanetSolar TURANOR continues underway... update November 24 2010

CONTINUING SAGA OF PLANETSOLAR's 'TURANOR'.... NOTE ADDITION OF SOLAR PANELS HANGING OVER DECKS... APPEARS TO BE A MISCALCULATION OF REQUIRED PANEL SURFACE TO ACHIEVE ENOUGH POWER - YOU WOULD NOT NORMALLY PLACE OVERHANGING ELECTRICAL AT RISK OF SEA DAMAGE (REMEMBER THIS IS A ONE-OFF CUSTOM DESIGN FROM SCRATCH - NOT AN EXISTING VESSEL MODIFICATION)... ALSO NOTE THAT THE PROPELLER IS POSITIONED FLAT AGAINST A BULKHEAD AND UNABLE TO DUCT CLEAN UNDISTURBED SEAWATER INTO PROP - NOTE EXTREME DISTURBED WATER FROM PROPELLERS IN PICTURES BELOW (OOPS... LOST ENERGY CONVERTED TO MECHANICAL NOISE)... AND THE LIST OF TECHNICAL QUESTIONS GOES ON AND ON... I HAVE SENT EMAILS ASKING FOR CLARIFICATIONS BUT WITHOUT ANY REPLIES FROM THE OWNERS OR THE WEBMASTER... WHICH LEAVES YOU TO THINK THEY ARE EMBARRASSED BY SUCH BASIC MARINE ENGINEERING OVERSIGHTS AS TO NOT REPLY... OR DO THEY REALY CARE AT ALL?  MAYBE BOTH?

WISHING YOU A SAFE TRIP - BON VOYAGE !

Ms Tûranor




THE FIRST SOLAR SAILING EXPEDITION AROUND THE WORLD

The TÛRANOR* PlanetSolar is a pioneer in renewable energy technology used for marine navigation.Not something like this has been achieved in the field of mobility to this day. This solar-powered catamaran uses advanced technologies available on the market. The intention is to demonstrate that through innovative use of materials and technologies available, performance of high rank can be achieved today.

CHALLENGES
  • The Energy Management: Moving should not use more energy than that provided by the sun.
  • Efficiency: The motorized and solar is efficient only if the costs are reasonable and competitive.Therefore, we mainly use materials and technologies available today that creates a potential for mass production, thus considerably reducing the cost and operational costs over time.
* The name means TÛRANOR "The power of the sun." This name comes from the saga of Lord JJR Tolkien "The Lord of the Rings."


Dear Friends PlanetSolar,

Here about a month since we left Las Palmas. We traveled over 3,000 miles (6,000 km) across the Atlantic. When we get to Miami we walked the first 10,000 miles that first sail around the world with solar energy.
PlanetSolar track
The team Thalassa who followed us for several days has carried a story about the adventure "PlanetSolar. It will air this Friday, November 26 on the television channel France 3 at 20:30. Do not miss this excellent documentary that tells the incredible story of this adventure solar.
If the start of the Atlantic crossing happened in good weather, the second part was more technical, mostly because of Tropical Storm "Tomas" which décidt rise north-east on our way and disrupted trade winds yet installed. We therefore had to play with adverse winds and sunshine weaker than expected. But what amazing experiences to discover this new kind of navigation, and move closer to the Pacific Ocean.
Tropical storm Tomas
During this journey, we all had a lot of work between shifts organized for every 4 hours in pairs, the management of navigation, boat maintenance, preparation of meals and rest periods. Time passes relatively quickly on board. Technically the ship works very well. However we had some problems with the desalination system. We will use our next stop to change defective parts. But what is very heartening to note is that the innovations of TÛRANOR PlanetSolar our 536 m2 of panels and solar control technology and our electric propulsion system works perfectly.
PlanetSolar engine
Our entire team to land more than a dozen people now work in the preparation of our arrival on the American continent. This complex is essential for achieving the goals of our project. demonstrate what is achievable today with renewable energy: to achieve this goal we must reach a wide audience.
PlanetSolar crew
Hopefully we only have a few more days of sailing before joining Miami Coast. Incredible moment to review the relief on the horizon, smell the smells of vegetation warmed by the sun. The whole crew is delighted to ask again alighted on the new continent and enjoy being able to walk on land or to eat an ice cream.
Last Thursday, TÛRANOR PlanetSolar made a lightning stop in St. Martin to save the record for crossing the Atlantic on solar power. TÛRANOR covered the distance from Las Palmas to St Martin-in 26 days, 19 hours and 10 minutes (Sun21 in 2007, had set a time of 29 days, 8 hours and 30 minutes).
PlanetSolar à St-Martin
Join us in the "minute PlanetSolar" to follow the adventures of our last two weeks aboard the largest solar boat in the world.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The End of the World as We Know It?

The End of the World as We Know It?

A Q&A with Barry Zellen on his new book, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic

Alaska Report: Tell us about your new book, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom?Near Kotzebue, Alaska
Barry Zellen: Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom considers the geopolitical transformation taking place at the top of the world as the polar ice cap thaws and a new sea emerges from beneath the ice pack  and opens up to maritime commerce and naval activity.

It looks at the history of the Arctic as a strategic theater throughout history, from the imperial era when Russia and Britain sparred for control of the Far North, through World War II when Japan grabbed the western Aleutians and sought to divide our Pacific fleet and gain a launching pad to mainland North America for la later invasion, and the Cold War, when Alaska become a forward base abutting the Soviet Far East, and became of increasing strategic importance to strategic stability. After the end of the Cold War, a general strategic withdrawal took place as Russian military power declined, easing tensions across the Arctic basin.

With climate change and recent rapid ice melt trends suggesting we might witness the emergence of what I call the “post-Arctic world,” interest has been rekindled as the promise of vast reserves of natural resources long beyond the reach of resource developers, and new shipping lanes and sea lines of communication, refocus attention on the top of the world for the first time in a generation. My book examines these strategic opportunities as well as the challenges associated with what some call the “Big Thaw.”

Alaska Report: What inspired you to write Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom?

Zellen: I lived in the Western Arctic during the 1990s where I worked on issues of indigenous cultural renewal and survival, language preservation, and efforts to reconcile tribal and state interests along frontier regions where traditional tools of national power are least effective and therefore largely absent.

Back then, the Cold War’s rapid end and the disappearance of the “Ice Curtain,” the Arctic’s equivalent of the Iron Curtain, introduced an era of intense political/structural innovation as new models of regional and local governance were developed to enable indigenous self-governance to increase in a manner consistent with national security and constitutional order. Even then, some early and very prescient observers began to speculate about what might happen if climate change did accelerate, and affect the largely frozen geophysical environment, and around 1992, I became intrigued by both the theoretical implications as well as the broader strategic implications of a thaw. And so I dived into it, working on this issue ever since. My first book, Breaking the Ice: From Land Claims to Tribal Sovereignty in the Arctic focused on these processes of political empowerment and indigenous structural innovation.

More recently, as popular interest in climate change increased, crossing over from obscure and little read science to a pop-cultural phenomenon thanks in part to the hard work of former Vice President Al Gore, who’s maintained a steady interest in the topic since well before Earth in the Balance and culminating in An Inconvenient Truth as well as his Nobel Peace Prize, I became concerned with what looked to be a politicization of the climate issue, as well as pervasive pessimism that presumes the “Big Thaw” is inevitably a “crisis” and to many activists, a “catastrophe.”

More optimistic and open-minded analysis became marginalized by the dominance of this single paradigm, and the many intriguing strategic opportunities of a polar thaw were not being widely discussed at conferences or in the media as a result of the dominance of this dogma. So I decided to contribute to the discussion and to present a theoretical analysis that left open the possibility that a polar thaw might create many new opportunities and was not just a crisis defined by risk, hoping in part to enrich the debate and also prepare for what will surely be a unique geo-strategic opportunity.

Alaska Report: In the announcement of your book’s release, it says you consider the importance of the Arctic region through the “bifocal lenses of neorealism and geopolitics.” What do you mean by this, and how does neorealism and geopolitics relate to climate change?

Zellen: Neorealism is the branch of international relations theory that applies a structural framework to the study of world politics, and generally presumes that cause and effect is driven largely by systemic forces inherent in the structure of world politics. For instance, during the Cold War there was a bipolar structure of international politics with much of the world divided into two competing military blocs with their own largely autonomous economic systems. When communism collapsed, we entered into a transition period and for many years people grappled with the riddles of the emergent world order.

Was it going to be a multipolar global structure, a hemispheric or inter-civilizational structure, a transcendent unipolar system, or some sort of hybrid model? Or with the rise of China, might we again see a bipolar structure emerge? And while it’s been a generation, the jury is still out and much debate continues on the structural foundations of world politics, largely because today’s world seems so much more chaotic than during the Cold War period.

In my book, I postulate that geopolitics, a much earlier theory of world politics that fell out of favor during the post-World War II period in part because it had been so vociferously embraced by the losing side of that conflict, is in fact an ideal theory for the post-Arctic world (and indeed the post-Cold War world), since it’s an antecedent to neorealism. Before humanity erected structures of international politics, economics, diplomacy and military power, nature ordained the world with fixed geographical and geological attributes, and these, according to the geopoliticians, were a primary driver of cause and effect in world history, more so than the more ephemeral systems created by political man.

To me, geopolitics represented the ideal “systemless systems theory” if you will, one that operated globally but which endured regardless of the political order that defined world politics, and indeed shaped some of the macro trends in the development of international politics. Such features as the Eurasian heartland, the Euro-Atlantic rimland, and the lesser-known isolated “Lenaland” of the Far North, seemed to be especially relevant in defining the world order after the bipolar structure of international politics collapsed. Indeed, if you look at the strategic calculations made during the Cold War, and efforts to secure the heartlands of both superpowers through extended deterrence linking European security to both Eurasia and North America, you can see geopolitics driving cause and effect even during the Cold War era.

So in addition to viewing an interconnection between geopolitics and neorealism, I saw their fusion as an intriguing theory for the post-Cold War period, and one that might help to guide us during the coming post-Arctic world as strategic competition extends into the polar basin.

Alaska Report: We hear a lot about the environmental consequences of climate change, but why do you believe it’s important for people to be as concerned about the geopolitics of the polar thaw?

Zellen: The political and environmental consequences are very closely interconnected. As the “Big Thaw” takes place, there are numerous regional challenges relating to the direct environmental consequences: a less stable ice pack affects the hunting abilities of the Inuit, and could contribute to an increase in hunger and impact on health security as well as on traditional subsistence hunting cultures of our northernmost communities; coastal erosion and a melting of the permafrost is already causing damage to infrastructure, affecting the stability of roadbeds, airport runways, and damaging the physical plant of commercial and residential structures.

Addressing these issues is costly, and most of the northern communities have very limited economic resources already. As the ice continues its retreat, we’re seeing increased resource exploration and development, a rise in maritime traffic, the northward migration of southern fisheries and wildlife populations, and longer term can expect to see a demographic shift as new economic opportunities attract workers from farther and farther south.

All of these trends will have political, economic, social, and ecological consequences that will need to be managed. For millennia, we’ve enjoyed a unique buffer at the top of the world – a massive, continent-sized barrier of ice. This has essentially divided the world in two, between an East and a West, like a vast desert, enabling both the Eurasian heartland and the North American heartland to maintain their isolation from the rest of the world, and this isolation had a stabilizing effect on world politics.

When the polar ice cap melts, this geopolitical barrier will disappear, taking with it many of our concepts of geopolitics; the result of the post-Arctic geopolitical fusion of East and West will require a new vocabulary, as we adapt to a new geophysical structure. It’s quite a remarkable transformation. So while there are many environmental unknowns and certainly all sorts of risks, the opportunities, of an open polar sea, and a true unification of East and West, are quite compelling.

So as we begin to think about the post-Arctic world, and to prepare for it, it’s important that we think about not just the environmental risks and challenges, but the strategic consequences as well.

Alaska Report: What do you hope readers will learn when they read Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom?

Zellen: I’m hoping that readers find the Arctic to be of increasing interest to strategic and security studies, and also that they, in the words of Herman Kahn, the colorful and controversial nuclear age theorist, begin to “think about the unthinkable,” and explore the many fascinating, complex, and no doubt difficult challenges of the new, post-Arctic world – as they search for solutions, and develop new policies and doctrines, to ensure the post-Arctic world remains a stable and prosperous world.

I also hope they come away from the book with a renewed sense of optimism, that the changes unfolding at the top of the world, while epic in scale, are not beyond our means to manage wisely and creatively.

Alaska Report: Do you have any other books in the pipeline?

Zellen: My next volume on the transformation of the Arctic is just now out: On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State, and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty. It discusses the increasing role of the Inuit in the formulation of defense, security, and sovereignty policies in the Far North, and grapples with how states can most effectively assert sovereignty over a domain where national tools of power have been largely muted by the region’s harsh climate and remote geography.

It also considers aspirations of Inuit independence, and what the restoration of Inuit sovereignty might look like, something that might occur in Greenland in the years ahead and which could inspire a similar movement in Arctic Canada and Alaska.

Now that it’s been published, I’m starting work on the next project: “2041: The Age of the Antarctic,” on the colonization of Antarctica as mankind’s last, best hope for survival in a post-Arctic World. It grapples with modernizing the Antarctic treaty so that it can better meet the needs of mankind if some of the more worrisome scenarios of the Big Thaw do unfold, and considers the historic opening up the entire southern continent to human settlement in a modern day, twenty-first century exodus.

Alaska Report: Environmentalists must really hate you! Do worry that Al Gore might not send you a Christmas Card this year?

Zellen: It's important to stand up and challenge some of the dogma that's passing itself off as scientific truth out there, especially on how a polar thaw must necessarily be a human catastrophe. It will surely present new challenges, most big changes do. But neglecting the opportunities, and refusing to consider creative ways to adapt to these changes, only does a disservice to mankind.

In my book, I note how ironic it is that Gore criticizes President Bush for using the "politics of fear" in his 2007 book, Assault on Reason; and yet the year before, in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore masterfully wages his own campaign based on the politics of fear. Machiavelli would be proud! But even if it means not getting a Christmas card from Al and Tipper, I thought this still worth pointing out.

While I disagree with Gore’s inherent pessimism, I do appreciate his commitment to this issue. Not every politician out there has spent so many decades trying to educate the public on climate science, and while his efforts have invariably become politicized, they have also provided inspiration to young people around the world to take interest in these issues, and to try to make a difference. And that is certainly commendable.

The challenge is how do we maintain interest in, and passion for, an issue, without overly politicizing it? How do we avoid the dogma, and foster a truly open, mutually respectful, debate between differing viewpoints? I hope my book helps to shift things back in this direction, so that we can start to “think about the unthinkable” without experiencing the sorts of scientific McCarthyism currently under fire, as revealed in the public release of the CRU documents last week. Now maybe we can have a fair and balanced debate!

Alaska Report: Thanks, Barry. We look forward to hearing all about your next book.

Zellen: My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity!
Barry Zellen is author of Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic (Praeger Books, October, 2009) and On Thin Ice: The Inuit, the State, and the Challenge of Arctic Sovereignty (Lexington Books, November 2009).