Expedition team reports unusually thin Arctic ice. - 3 Jun 2010  

Expedition team reports unusually thin Arctic ice.
A group of three British explorers collecting data on ocean acidification for the UK’s Catlin Arctic Survey returned from a 60-day trip to the North Pole, reporting the unexpected and unprecedented finding of enormous areas of precariously thin ice.

Expedition leader Ann Daniels also said that due to the lack of mass, the ice drifted very quickly southward, which caused the team to cover 500 nautical miles rather than the 268 initially planned.
At times the team also had to swim across too-thin ice or open water, sometimes traversing ice sheets that were only 3-4 inches thick.

At one point, the ice floe broke upon which their tent was set up, with everyone fortunately escaping harm.
According to David McGuire of the US Geological Survey and other researchers, the Arctic region is melting twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

Moreover, as the Arctic sea becomes more saturated with carbon dioxide, its ability to function as a natural sink for up to 15% of the Earth’s carbon diminishes.

This could lead to the Arctic becoming a source of greenhouse gases, which would dangerously accelerate global warming.

Our appreciation Dr. Daniels and other Catlin Arctic scientists for your first-hand observations that inform us about the area’s perilous course.  Let us all respond by quickly adopting lifestyles that preserve the delicate and vital ecosystems of our planet.

In a June 2009 video message, Supreme Master Ching Hai spoke of the alarming shifts in this important polar region as well as how to halt them.

Supreme Master Ching Hai : The change in Arctic ice cover is dramatic, with climatologists saying that only 10 percent now is older and thick ice, while over 90 percent is newly formed and thin.

Now, many of these areas where we are seeing such devastating effects of climate change, such as Arctic melt, are all directly related to the Earth’s temperature increasing.

So, we must cool the planet, first and foremost. To cool the planet most quickly, we have to stop consuming meat in order to stop the livestock raising industry.

If everyone in the world would adopt this simple but most powerful practice of an animal-free diet, then we could reverse the effect of global warming in no time.


Extra News
The United Kingdom's national weather service Met Office forecasts that global warming could result in a five-fold increase in the number of hot nights in urban centers, also causing increased fatalities from heat exhaustion.

In the United Arab Emirates, 100,000 people and organizations participate in the elimination of all non-essential paper printing and copying during Paper-Less Day to reduce use of the resource for environmental protection.

Prolonged heat and drought in the state of Rajasthan, India has caused the complete disappearance of some water reservoirs and the drying of others, which in turn has cost the lives of wild animals such as monkeys, chinkaras and cheetal deer.