According one of the ministers for the Northwest Territories, the Canadian government needs to come together and gather the political will to make sure that the $16.2 billion dollar natural gas pipeline planned for the Mackenzie Valley is built. more »

A university of Alberta biologist says that if Canada truly wants to understand the North and predict changes north of 60, more research needs to be conducted in the Arctic year round, not just during the very short Arctic summer. more »

As a joint effort by Canadian and American icebreakers approaches the end, researchers on the project that set out to map parts of the Arctic are reporting that they have found some things of interest, including some undersea volcanoes. more »

Individuals and groups who are opposed to further development and building of oil rigs in the Arctic have yet another reason for concern: it seems that the oil rigs that are going up in the Arctic are helping various predators prey on the nesting birds in the area. The big oil rigs are providing the prey with housing that allows them to prey easier on the birds.

A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that the preying birds and animals are building nests and dens in and around the oil rig infrastructure. They are also supplementing their diet with garbage from the rigs. But of more concern is the fact that they are feeding on the nesting birds in the area.

Some of the prey that is taking advantage of what the oil rigs have to offer are the Arctic fox, seagulls and ravens, which all like to feed on nesting birds. Drilling platforms, rod culverts and other aspect of oil infrastructure are providing the perfect places for these prey to nest and den.

Joe Liebezeit, who is with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and also the lead author of the study said, “This is the first study specifically designed to evaluate the so called ‘oil footprint’ effect in the Arctic on nesting birds. The study was also unique in that it was a collaborative effort among conservation groups, industry, and federal scientists.” 

The authors of the study monitored almost 2,000 nests for a four year period. The nests belonged to passerine and shorebird species. During their research, they found that the Lapland longspur had a significantly higher number of lost nests closer to oil development when compared to their nesting grounds further away. In fact, nest that were further than 5 km away from oil development were untouched by predators.
The full study is published in the September issue of the Ecological Applications.

Another Arctic marine mammal is one step closer to being listed as an Endangered Species. Due to the effect of global warming on their habitat, a petition asking that the Pacific walrus be listed as an Endangered Species passed its first review on Tuesday. more »

A new international study that traces past temperatures in the Arctic back further than ever before claims that the Arctic is warmer than it has been at any other time in the past 2,000 years.

The study was published in last Thursday’s edition of the journal Science and gives not only mathematical climate models that indicate greenhouse gases are behind global warming, but also provides real world evidence to back up the claims.

Profession Darrel Kaufman, the lead author on the paper, said, “There are no other forcing factors at work other than the greenhouse gas composition of the atmosphere that could explain the dramatic warming that took place.”

Nearly three dozen scientists, along with Prof. Kaufman, studied data from lake sediments, tree rings and glacial ice deposits located at 23 different sites around the world in order to track the average summer temperature for each decade in the past two millennia. The time frame they chose to study is 1,600 years longer than any other study has looked at.

While the study shows that from Year 1 to around 1900 the Arctic summer temperatures were actually decreasing by about 0.2 C every 1,000 years, as soon as we hit the 20th century, things started to heat up in the Arctic. The research conducted suggests that four of the five warmest decades seen in the Arctic happened after 1950, with the warmest decade being 1999-2008.

Prof. Kaufman said,” The warming that we detected, particularly during the second half of the 20th century, is especially dramatic considered against the background of the previous nineteen.”

While he admits that there are still many unknowns about Earth’s climate, Prof. Kaufman thinks that the correlation between the results of his study and computer models gives more weight to the general consensus in the science community that greenhouse gases are the main cause of global warming.

 “Our study is among many others that have documented the dramatic change in climate that has taken place in the last 50 years. The evidence that humans play a role in climate change is now overwhelming. It’s time for policy makers to act decisively on regulating carbon emissions.”

Canada’s Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl announced yesterday that the federal government will be conducting a $975,000 feasibility study to see if the Arctic communities of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, located in the Northwest Territories, could possibly be linked to one another year-round by building a new 140-kilometre highway between the two communities. more »

Despite Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent trip to the North and the unveiling of Canada’s Arctic strategy, the NPD feels that a lot of what the Prime Minster claims, as far as defending Canada’s Arctic sovereignty goes, is all for show. Particularly after the Prime Minister’s silence on the United States recent fishing moratorium in the Beaufort Sea. more »