Polar Bears Drown, Unknown Islands Emerge From Ice As Melting Continues

[hatrack]

OSLO (Reuters) - Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic 2006 summer thaw widely blamed on global warming. Signs of wrenching changes are apparent around the Arctic region due to unusual warmth — the summer minimum for ice is usually reached between mid-September and early October before the Arctic freeze extends its grip.

"We know about three new islands this year that have been uncovered because the glaciers have retreated," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental adviser to the governor of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole. The largest is about 300 by 100 meters, he told Reuters.

On a trip this summer "We saw a couple of polar bears in the sea east of Svalbard — one of them looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted," said Julian Dowdeswell, head of the Scott Polar Research Institute in England. He said that the bears had apparently been stranded at sea by melting ice. The bears generally live around the fringes of the ice where they find it easiest to hunt seals.

NASA projected this week that Arctic sea ice is likely to recede in 2006 close to a low recorded in 2005 as part of a melting trend in recent decades. A stormy August in 2006 had slightly slowed the 2006 melt.

EDIT

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2448866

[skids]

1. So what are the rules for naming islands?

If all you have to do is set foot on them, Stephen Colbert should book himself a helicopter.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. They have a Naming Committee

"On September 20, 2004, at ten past six in the evening, I discovered the new holm. Here I will found my own Lilliputian state, a republic," Hartley said.

Yngve Melvær, head of maps at the Norwegian Polar Institute, told Aftenposten that there are several hundred, perhaps thousands, of such small islands that emerge or disappear when the ice retreats or advances.

"We know this islet from a satellite image taken in 2002," Melvær said. Most of these bits of land do not have names, something Svalbard's Name Committee is working on. Nymark-holmen is likely to be the resulting verdict.

"Svalbard is Norwegian, also the parts under the ice. Alex Hartley has no obvious case for his claim to ownership," Melvær said. Melvær admitted that the islet is not on maps.

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1312316.ece?service=print

Not an entirely serious claim, though.

[Viking12]

2. Yet another benefit of warming, more cropland. eom

[skooooo]

3. it makes me weep

to think of animals suffering

[Delphinus]

4. Me too.

They have done no wrong here, yet they are reaping the consequences of our actions.

[Kool Kitty]

6. Kick.

Because this is so frightening and so damn sad.