" Chief " posted this from the VNN forum ( Are you on this list yet,
Chief? )
The part in Chief's post about Ivory Gulls appearing in the area for the
first time ever makes a person wonder, too. Don't those gulls need a nearby
land mass, like maybe one at the opening to a hollow world?
In Nansen's log book he was surprised to find land birds so far away from
land:
Page 99: " We had almost reached 78* I seemed to me that there might be
land at no great distance, we saw such a number of remarkable number of
birds of various kinds. ... They were probably on their passage from some
land in the North. ... Again, later, we saw small flocks of snipe,
indicating the possible proximity of land. "
He was at about 139* East longitude.
Dharma/Dean
Sunday, 20 August, 2000, 02:16 GMT 03:16 UK
North Pole ice 'turns to
water'
Arctic ice has become a mile-wide ocean, say scientists
An American scientist says the ice cap at the
North Pole has melted.
Dr James McCarthy, an oceanographer, says
he found a mile-wide stretch of open ocean on
a recent trip to the pole.
Some experts believe it is the first time in more
than 50 million years that the North Pole has
been covered in water rather than ice.
They point to it as further evidence of global
warming - but other scientists say movements
in polar ice regularly create gaps in the ice cap
- including at the North Pole itself.
Dr McCarthy told the
New York Times
newspaper that he
found the new patch of
ocean during a trip
earlier in August on
board a Russian
icebreaker.
"It was totally
unexpected," he said.
Another scientist on
the cruise,
palaeontologist Dr Malcolm C McKenna, said
the ship was able to sail all the way to the
North Pole through only a thin crust of ice, and
arrived on the spot to discover no ice at all.
"I don't know if anybody in history ever got to
90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not
ice," Dr McKenna was quoted as saying.
"Some folks who pooh-pooh global warming
might wake up if shown that even the pole is
beginning to melt at least sometimes."
Ivory gulls
The lecturers say the ice cap in the whole
area was so thin that the ship had to sail for
another 10 kilometres (six miles) to find ice
thick enough for the tourists to leave the boat
and walk on the ice cap, as they had been
promised.
The party also saw ivory gulls flying overhead,
which ornithologists say is a first for the area.
Dr McCarthy, who is working on studies for the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), says has previously found the North
Pole covered in some 3 metres (9 feet) of ice
during the summer.
Shrinking
Despite the lack of agreement over whether
the North Pole stretch of water was as a result
of melting or ice movement, scientists do
agree that the ice cap in general is shrinking.
Satellite studies have already suggested that
the ice cover in the Arctic has thinned by more
than 40% over the past 50 years.
Some scientists say it could disappear
altogether by the end of the 21st century.
Campaigners want tougher controls on
pollution to try to slow down the global
warming which they say is causing the
changes.
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