arctic Archive

• 

  Indigenous climate change conference

  
  
  
  Jeanette has blogged today on the Emissions Trading Scheme submissions from iwi and hapu. She talked about how it is necessary to treat Treaty settlement land and resources differently under the scheme, particularly forestry. This is a crucial point, especially in light of the issues discussed at the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change [...] read more
  April 29, 2009 9:30 am - 10 Comments
• 

  Climate change and the economy

  
  
  
  After 28 years of doing nothing significant on climate change National and Labour are now positioning the climate and the economy in opposition to each other.  ‘We can’t do anything about the climate now,’ they say, ‘the good times are over and it’s time to bunker down and protect the economy’. Luckily it’s not an [...] read more
  October 21, 2008 3:15 pm - 2 Comments
• 

  The methane time bomb

  
  
  
  Scientists have recently documented the ticking of the biggest climate change time bomb of them all – methane frozen for millennia beginning to melt in the Arctic. Indeed, the tipping point that the IPCC fears the most may already have been reached. The Independent reports the bad news: In the past few days, the researchers have [...] read more
  September 24, 2008 11:02 am - 32 Comments
• 

  The island

  
  
  
  It seems you can now sail around the Arctic if you should want to.  The ice has melted enough that there are, for the first time in recorded history, sailing passages around both the north of Canada and Russia allowing boats to circumnavigate the ice. Of course, for some this is a good thing: Shipping companies are [...] read more
  September 1, 2008 4:04 pm - 7 Comments
• 

  Dirty ol’ Arctic

  
  
  
  According to the American National Science Foundation coal burning, primarily in North America and Europe, has contaminated the Arctic and is potentially affecting human health and ecosystems in and around Earth’s polar regions. Detailed measurements from a Greenland ice core showed pollutants from burning coal–the toxic heavy metals cadmium, thallium and lead–were much higher than expected. Luckily [...] read more
  August 21, 2008 11:07 am - 1 Comment