October 15, 2009
Blog Action Day
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web. This year's topic: Climate Change. Here is my message in my story in my blog.
On June 8th 2006, I was 38 days into a history-making expedition to the North Pole.
From my expedition journal, "Up ahead the Arctic Ocean sea ice roughens into jumble of rafted pressure, cracks and open water and I am forced to veer from our northward bearing. I recheck my compass. The needle spins for a while then settles. For the past 100 yards, I've been traveling southeast - the exact opposite direction we need to be traveling. It's my last shift skiing in lead and the last hour of the day. Physically, I'm exhausted but mentally I am stretched to my breaking point.
My head falls and my shoulders sag. Lonnie Dupre and I have been inching our way over ice and water for over a month now, trying to become the first ever expedition in history to reach the North Pole in summer. It hasn't been easy. The farther north we've traveled, the more severe the conditions. Large sections of open water (leads), thin ice, soft snow, pressure ridges and white outs have sapped any initial optimism. Nearly gone is the any aspiration of the North Pole. Now, we measure success in hour and a half increments.
I want to end my day in the middle of a mile wide sheet of ice. Is that too much to ask? Casually skiing up to another level spot in an infinite expanse of flat ice. Instead, I am skiing toward the equator in the most fractured ice we have seen to date. I am very scared and question whether it is possible to cross safely. Frustrated, tired and hungry, I have no energy for this. Any veneer of toughness has long sloughed off and all that remains are raw emotions.
Which way to go? I waffle for way too long and imagine that Lonnie is growing impatient with the delay. Looking over my shoulder, I see he is sitting quietly on his canoe-sled head in his hands, resting. He doesn't even look up when I start skiing.
I parallel a five-foot wide crack hoping to find a spot where the ice narrows enough to cross. Suddenly, my sled-canoe slips, falls off the ice ledge then pulls me backwards with enough force to snap me out of my ski bindings. I fall back in soft wet snow and flounder for a full minute trying to get back up. A silly mistake. Had I slipped a few feet to my right, I would have fallen into an icy slushy ocean. What then? Hypothermia at best. I try to reflect on my apparent luck, but all I can muster is a perfunctory glance at my watch. Forty minutes left in the day.
Later in the tent I wearily page through a small dictionary to pick out a word to describe my day. Brinkmanship, I find. Pursuing a course to the point of disaster."
In 1991, I was a junior at a small liberal arts college in Minnesota. I love to learn and enjoyed the atmosphere but for me, college was just time between camping trips. Still, I managed to find enough classes to engage my interest in nature. In a few rare instances, there were even opportunities to go outside. That semester, I enrolled in a class called Global Climate change where we studied the coevolution of climate and life.
We analyzed the different mechanisms affecting world climate. How the earth's orbit and axis changes over time, the effects of different chemical concentrations in our atmosphere, the rise and fall of ice ages over hundreds of thousands of years and much more. I was fascinated by how scientists spent months in Antarctica drilling ice cores then measured small changes in concentrations of oxygen isotopes and carbon dioxide to construct a record of the earth's climate over the past 400,000 years.
At that time, we were on the tail end of the warmest decade on record the 80's. Therefore, it seemed more than relevant to discuss the theory of Global Warming - a human caused warming of global climate due to increase burning of fossil fuels.
Over the past decade, skeptics have challenged the basic science behind the theory of Global Warming. "After all," they postulated. "It's just a theory."
Humor me for a minute while I digress. In everyday lexicon, theory often implies conjecture or opinion. However, scientists use the term as a mathematical description or proven model to explain a phenomenon. Take for example, the theory of gravity. That's right, theory. No one has ever seen gravity, yet it is generally accepted as fact. Why? Because scientists have created a logical explanation based on reproducible experiments and models.
While scientists may have been using vacuum tubes, divining rods and tin cans to initially describe Global Warming, it is hardly the hypothesis of hacks. Today the most powerful computers in the world are employed with one simple charge: model the Earth's climate. Any disagreement between scientists about the reality of Global Warming exists only within complex physics behind these models.
On a recent visit to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Co Dr. Walt Meier, Research Scientist commented, "the [climate] models predict that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free by 2040 in the summer, but visual evidence suggests it may be sooner."
My first real expedition was in 1994 to the tundra north of Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. For nearly a month, we dog sledded through an area equal to the size of the state of Montana. It was an unending vastness of snow and ice that we had all to ourselves. At night, northern lights stretched from one horizon to the next. It was amazing and it didn't take long before I was hooked. I wanted more and more and more - an addict in the truest sense of the word.
Broke with no health insurance, I imagined myself as an artist of winter. But if snow was my palate, then my dog sled was the brush. Over the next 10 years, the dogs and I painted pictures to express our love of cold, hard work and wilderness with ephemeral strokes across some of the more remote corners of North America.
By 2002, I still hadn't had much financial success. When I told my sister how much money I made that year, she suggested that I go on welfare. More important to me, however, was the amount expedition experience I had gained. In Grand Marais, I met Lonnie Dupre who had just finished circumnavigating Greenland. He wanted to go to the North Pole. After much deliberation, the One World Expedition was born.
Pulling and paddling specially modified canoes, we would travel over 600 miles of shifting sea ice and open water of the Arctic Ocean. The main goal of the expedition: to highlight the growing crisis of global warming and the plight of the polar bear. For me, it was the perfect marriage of environmental advocacy and adventure.
The story that follows is really of little consequence. 62 days to the pole, white outs, thin ice, vast stretches of open water, a visit from a polar bear. My importance in any of this stems only from my ability to tell other people what I have seen. The Arctic Ocean is melting. An area equal to twice the size of Texas has already disappeared. In 2004, scientists recorded a new minimum extent of sea ice. In 2005, a newer minimum record, the thickness severely decreasing all the while.
Polar bears live and hunt from the sea ice. With freeze ups coming later and thaws happening earlier, the amount of time bears spend on the ice hunting is decreasing dramatically. Because of this, polar bears in the Hudson Bay area are starving to death. Already the population has decreased by almost 20% and the animals that remain are roughly 15% underweight. It is an alarmingly simple equation. No sea ice equals no polar bears.
While we are seeing the effects of Global Warming most severely in the Polar Regions, this is definitely an issue that us all. Rising sea levels, warming oceans, increase frequency and severity of storms, species extinction, heat waves, droughts, red tides, changes in annual precipitation, irregular weather patterns, melting permafrost are just some of the many consequences of inaction. We do not have the luxury of time. The worst effects of global warming will take place in the years to come.
As Americans we are only six percent of the world's population, yet we produce over 25% of the world's carbon emissions. Stopping the crisis of Global Warming and saving the polar bear does not require rocket science. Instead, each one of us to reduce our carbon emissions.
"I don't care what you do just do something." I often say. Because the other option, doing nothing, is quite simply brinkmanship. This is a BIG problem. Begin with one step has become my motto.
In November of 2009, I will be continuing the story of the last great frozen places left on the planet with major expeditions to the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Mt. Everest. Please follow this journey at www.savethepoles.com
On June 8th 2006, I was 38 days into a history-making expedition to the North Pole.
From my expedition journal, "Up ahead the Arctic Ocean sea ice roughens into jumble of rafted pressure, cracks and open water and I am forced to veer from our northward bearing. I recheck my compass. The needle spins for a while then settles. For the past 100 yards, I've been traveling southeast - the exact opposite direction we need to be traveling. It's my last shift skiing in lead and the last hour of the day. Physically, I'm exhausted but mentally I am stretched to my breaking point.
My head falls and my shoulders sag. Lonnie Dupre and I have been inching our way over ice and water for over a month now, trying to become the first ever expedition in history to reach the North Pole in summer. It hasn't been easy. The farther north we've traveled, the more severe the conditions. Large sections of open water (leads), thin ice, soft snow, pressure ridges and white outs have sapped any initial optimism. Nearly gone is the any aspiration of the North Pole. Now, we measure success in hour and a half increments.
I want to end my day in the middle of a mile wide sheet of ice. Is that too much to ask? Casually skiing up to another level spot in an infinite expanse of flat ice. Instead, I am skiing toward the equator in the most fractured ice we have seen to date. I am very scared and question whether it is possible to cross safely. Frustrated, tired and hungry, I have no energy for this. Any veneer of toughness has long sloughed off and all that remains are raw emotions.
Which way to go? I waffle for way too long and imagine that Lonnie is growing impatient with the delay. Looking over my shoulder, I see he is sitting quietly on his canoe-sled head in his hands, resting. He doesn't even look up when I start skiing.
I parallel a five-foot wide crack hoping to find a spot where the ice narrows enough to cross. Suddenly, my sled-canoe slips, falls off the ice ledge then pulls me backwards with enough force to snap me out of my ski bindings. I fall back in soft wet snow and flounder for a full minute trying to get back up. A silly mistake. Had I slipped a few feet to my right, I would have fallen into an icy slushy ocean. What then? Hypothermia at best. I try to reflect on my apparent luck, but all I can muster is a perfunctory glance at my watch. Forty minutes left in the day.
Later in the tent I wearily page through a small dictionary to pick out a word to describe my day. Brinkmanship, I find. Pursuing a course to the point of disaster."
In 1991, I was a junior at a small liberal arts college in Minnesota. I love to learn and enjoyed the atmosphere but for me, college was just time between camping trips. Still, I managed to find enough classes to engage my interest in nature. In a few rare instances, there were even opportunities to go outside. That semester, I enrolled in a class called Global Climate change where we studied the coevolution of climate and life.
We analyzed the different mechanisms affecting world climate. How the earth's orbit and axis changes over time, the effects of different chemical concentrations in our atmosphere, the rise and fall of ice ages over hundreds of thousands of years and much more. I was fascinated by how scientists spent months in Antarctica drilling ice cores then measured small changes in concentrations of oxygen isotopes and carbon dioxide to construct a record of the earth's climate over the past 400,000 years.
At that time, we were on the tail end of the warmest decade on record the 80's. Therefore, it seemed more than relevant to discuss the theory of Global Warming - a human caused warming of global climate due to increase burning of fossil fuels.
Over the past decade, skeptics have challenged the basic science behind the theory of Global Warming. "After all," they postulated. "It's just a theory."
Humor me for a minute while I digress. In everyday lexicon, theory often implies conjecture or opinion. However, scientists use the term as a mathematical description or proven model to explain a phenomenon. Take for example, the theory of gravity. That's right, theory. No one has ever seen gravity, yet it is generally accepted as fact. Why? Because scientists have created a logical explanation based on reproducible experiments and models.
While scientists may have been using vacuum tubes, divining rods and tin cans to initially describe Global Warming, it is hardly the hypothesis of hacks. Today the most powerful computers in the world are employed with one simple charge: model the Earth's climate. Any disagreement between scientists about the reality of Global Warming exists only within complex physics behind these models.
On a recent visit to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Co Dr. Walt Meier, Research Scientist commented, "the [climate] models predict that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free by 2040 in the summer, but visual evidence suggests it may be sooner."
My first real expedition was in 1994 to the tundra north of Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. For nearly a month, we dog sledded through an area equal to the size of the state of Montana. It was an unending vastness of snow and ice that we had all to ourselves. At night, northern lights stretched from one horizon to the next. It was amazing and it didn't take long before I was hooked. I wanted more and more and more - an addict in the truest sense of the word.
Broke with no health insurance, I imagined myself as an artist of winter. But if snow was my palate, then my dog sled was the brush. Over the next 10 years, the dogs and I painted pictures to express our love of cold, hard work and wilderness with ephemeral strokes across some of the more remote corners of North America.
By 2002, I still hadn't had much financial success. When I told my sister how much money I made that year, she suggested that I go on welfare. More important to me, however, was the amount expedition experience I had gained. In Grand Marais, I met Lonnie Dupre who had just finished circumnavigating Greenland. He wanted to go to the North Pole. After much deliberation, the One World Expedition was born.
Pulling and paddling specially modified canoes, we would travel over 600 miles of shifting sea ice and open water of the Arctic Ocean. The main goal of the expedition: to highlight the growing crisis of global warming and the plight of the polar bear. For me, it was the perfect marriage of environmental advocacy and adventure.
The story that follows is really of little consequence. 62 days to the pole, white outs, thin ice, vast stretches of open water, a visit from a polar bear. My importance in any of this stems only from my ability to tell other people what I have seen. The Arctic Ocean is melting. An area equal to twice the size of Texas has already disappeared. In 2004, scientists recorded a new minimum extent of sea ice. In 2005, a newer minimum record, the thickness severely decreasing all the while.
Polar bears live and hunt from the sea ice. With freeze ups coming later and thaws happening earlier, the amount of time bears spend on the ice hunting is decreasing dramatically. Because of this, polar bears in the Hudson Bay area are starving to death. Already the population has decreased by almost 20% and the animals that remain are roughly 15% underweight. It is an alarmingly simple equation. No sea ice equals no polar bears.
While we are seeing the effects of Global Warming most severely in the Polar Regions, this is definitely an issue that us all. Rising sea levels, warming oceans, increase frequency and severity of storms, species extinction, heat waves, droughts, red tides, changes in annual precipitation, irregular weather patterns, melting permafrost are just some of the many consequences of inaction. We do not have the luxury of time. The worst effects of global warming will take place in the years to come.
As Americans we are only six percent of the world's population, yet we produce over 25% of the world's carbon emissions. Stopping the crisis of Global Warming and saving the polar bear does not require rocket science. Instead, each one of us to reduce our carbon emissions.
"I don't care what you do just do something." I often say. Because the other option, doing nothing, is quite simply brinkmanship. This is a BIG problem. Begin with one step has become my motto.
In November of 2009, I will be continuing the story of the last great frozen places left on the planet with major expeditions to the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Mt. Everest. Please follow this journey at www.savethepoles.com