911review/environment

So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month.

If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver, said: "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice."

The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

Dr Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our childrens' lifetimes."

The new figures show that sea ice extent is currently down to 4.4m square kilometres (1.7m square miles) and still falling.

The previous record low was 5.3m square kilometres in September 2005. From 1979 to 2000 the average sea ice extent was 7.7m square kilometres.

The sea ice usually melts in the Arctic summer and freezes again in the winter. But Dr Serreze said that would be difficult this year.

VP Nominee Sara Palin belongs to a group that hunts wolves from planes.
Dive bombing at wildlife doesnt sound like fun to me.

So lets kill wolves so we can have more Moose to shoot at ?

IDIOTS !!!

read about it here
alternet.org/environment/97207 [alternet.org/environment/97207]
grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm [grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm]

From the page: "Most people had never heard of Sarah Palin when she was named the Republican VP nominee. But I'd been hearing her name all too often, because I belong to a group called Defenders of Wildlife -- and in her time as governor of Alaska, Palin has used her position as governor of Alaska to ruin the Alaskan wilderness in every way she could.

Her most recent "victory" came on Aug. 26, when Alaska's voters defeated Measure 2, an initiative that would have banned hunting wolves from airplanes for sport.

Palin organized a campaign against Measure 2 and funded it with $400,000 of state money. For most of us, the idea of zooming around in a private airplane over snowbound wilderness just for the chance to spot a terrified wild dog and blow it apart with a high-powered rifle is insane. But there's a whole culture out there in love with the idea. Palin did her part by playing the tired old Alaskan pioneer card, saying that lower-48 naysayers who dared to object to the idea of dive-bombing wildlife didn't "understand rural Alaska."

Alaska isn't really very hard to understand. It consists of a minority that loves the wilderness and an overwhelmingly Republican majority that wants to squeeze all the cash it can get out of the state before the oil dries up, the fish die out and the wildlife disappears. Nowhere else does the Republican formula of manipulating the suckers by playing on their silly hatreds and even sillier vanities play out more clearly than in Alaska."

PlusMiss. River at New Orleans Shut After Fuel SpillMiss. River at New Orleans Shut After Fuel SpillThe Associated PressA stretch of the Mississippi River at New Orleans could be closed for days as crews clean a 12-mile oil slick caused Wednesday when a tanker and barge collided, officials said. (July 23)This video contains ONLY natural sound. No script is available.

Mccain said today that there was not one drop of oil spilled after Hurricane Katrina
Bobby Jindal said the asme thing days ago, so did someone in McCains camp

From the page: "Katrina oil spills may be among worst on record

The oil pollution in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could be among the worst recorded in North America, officials trying to coordinate the clean-up say. The US coastguard, which is responsible for the marine environment, said yesterday more than 6.5 million gallons of crude oil had been spilt in at least seven major incidents. The previous worst spill in US waters was the 11m gallons in Alaskan waters from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

"This is a major event," said Lieutenant Colonel Glynn Smith of the coastguard in New Orleans. "Things are going well, but three-quarters of the oil from the spills has not yet been recovered."

The figure does not include petrol and oil spilt from up to 250,000 cars which have been submerged, or that spilt from hundreds of petrol stations. The coastguard says it has received almost 400 reports of spills, the vast majority of which have not been assessed.

President Bush attempted to regain the political initiative with an address to the nation pledging an unprecedented federal effort to help rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf coast. The prime-time speech from New Orleans was timed to confront growing doubts over his leadership abilities, after the stuttering federal response to Katrina's impact.

A poll published by the New York Times and CBS found 53% of the population disapproved of the way Mr Bush was doing his job; 63% thought the country was "on the wrong track", and 65% thought he had been too slow to respond to the hurricane."