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April 8, 2005

Circumpolar world mourns
Pope John Paul II

Leaders throughout the circumpolar nations hailed John Paul II as a powerful proponent of peace and unity.

Josef Motzfeldt, member of the Greenland home rule cabinet, said even though religion and politics often are separated, Pope John Paul II never stopped protesting against social, ethnic and political unfairness. Motzfeldt said the late pope would be remembered for his fight for tolerance between religions.

The death of John Paul II prompted grief among Finland's small, 9,000-strong Roman Catholic community, reports the Helsingin Sanomat. A special series of services was held in St. Henry's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Helsinki, and books of condolence were opened to the public for signing.

In Norway, thousands of the country's Catholics attended special services over the weekend and flags waved at half-mast at Catholic churches and organizations.

John Paul II is remembered in Norway for his visit in June 1989, his first visit to a country with a Lutheran state church. He conducted part of his masses in Norway in Norwegian, and the Aftenposten says the Pope sought out a Norwegian living in Rome to teach him more of the language.

In Norway, the late pope was often criticized for his conservative views.

"He was both a radical and a reactionary," said former Oslo Bishop Gunnar Stålsett. "He took the pulse of contemporary life around him, but opened up for strongly conservative theological and political forces, in such a way that in many ways it's now a weakened Catholic Church that seeks a new leader."

Across Russia, candles for the Pope were lit both in Catholic cathedrals and Orthodox churches.

In his message of condolences, Russian president Vladimir Putin called the late pontiff an "outstanding figure of our times" and praised his pursuit of a noble goal, namely "to establish society on the principles of humanism and solidarity."

Goose Bay radar project in trouble

Plans to put an X-Band radar in Goose Bay, Labrador for the NORAD defence system are now up in the air since Canada's decision in February not to participate in the Ballistic Missile Defence Program.

The BMD missile shield would use X-Band radar to track incoming enemy missiles headed to North America and rely on missiles to shoot them down.

Recently, U.S. officials cancelled an information briefing on a proposal to install the missile defence radar in Goose Bay.

The radar would be able to spot incoming missiles from the Middle East three minutes more quickly than U.S.-based radar.

The construction of the radar would have created 340 short-term jobs and 100 permanent positions.

Happy Valley-Goose Bay councillor Dean Clarke said in the Labradorian the base's closure would cause "devastating effects and serious social implications."

John Efford, regional minister for Newfoundland and Labrador, said "everyone is on edge in Goose Bay... and the Government of Canada is going to do everything possible to keep the base operational."

Since NATO nations that train at the Goose Bay air base have said they intended to pull out, Canadian defence officials have been scouting for new customers.

Explorers' logs show climate change may be a recurring phenomenon

Dr. Chad Dick, a Scottish scientist working at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, says the next five to 10 years will be a critical period in understanding sea ice and the impact of long-term global warming.

"Cycles of 60 to 80 years have been identified before in atmospheric temperature records in the Arctic. The old records that we recovered from ships' logs and other sources may show that similar cycles are present in sea ice," Dick told The Scotsman.

"I've this gut feeling that within 10 years from now we'll know for certain whether we're losing sea ice long term or whether it's coming back. If it doesn't come back it shows we are in serious trouble. Sea ice has a whole lot of effects on climate and it is pretty important."

The Scottish Arctic explorer Sir John Ross and his nephew Sir James Clark Ross were among the hundreds of mariners whose records Dick looked at.

Sir James discovered the magnetic North Pole in 1831 after earlier accompanying his uncle to the Arctic in 1818. He then began to explore the Antarctic, giving his name to the Ross Sea, Ross Island and the Ross Ice Shelf.

Greenland's hunters a dying breed

Greenlanders are turning their backs on sealing, whaling, and fishing: the traditional hunter occupation is dying out and could disappear in the next decade, says new research by Denmark's Roskilde University.

Its findings show the numbers of active hunters are down and that Greenlanders are having an increasingly difficult time making a living from hunting.

The number of seal hunters fell by about 60 per cent between 1993 and 2003, from 6,560 to 2,713. The average age of a seal hunter also became much older during this same period.

"I'm astonished by the falling numbers," the research study's author, Rasmus O. Rasmussen, told Greenland's National Radio KNR. "If you calculate into the future, the occupation will disappear within the next 10 years."

Rasmussen said even the few remaining hunters are telling their children not to follow in their footsteps.

"They find it hard to recommend because work conditions are harsh and the economic results are very limited," he said.

Call up for country food in Nuuk

Dried whale meat, muskox, whale mattak and dried shrimps have recently been added to the menu at Ane Sofie Hardenberg's Greenlandic food take-out in Nuuk. Hardenberg is well known in Greenland for hosting Greenlandic food TV-shows, where she uses local products and native flowers and spices.

Greenland elects municipal leaders

Election posters covered Nuuk. (PHOTO BY JACK HICKS)

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Voters in Nuuk, Greenland re-elected Agnethe Davidsen as mayor on Tuesday.

Davidsen beat Per Berthelsen, the deputy mayor, by slightly more than 100 votes.

The final results were: Agnethe Davidsen, Siumut Party, 1,279 votes, with 20.68% of the vote; Per Berthelsen, Demokraatit, 1,108 votes, 17.91% of the vote; Malînánguaq Marcussen Mølgaard, Inuit Ataqatigiit, 477 votes; and Doris Jakobsen, Siumut, 263 votes.

The social democratic Siumut Party was the big winner overall in Nuuk's municipal elections, with its candidates receiving 37.35% of the total vote in Nuuk. They were followed by the newly formed Demokraatit party, Inuit Ataqatigiit ("united Inuit") and the Atassut ("solidarity") party.

Overall in Greenland, the Siumut Party won 212 municipal seats and 40.68% of the vote, followed by the Atassut with 156 seats and the IA with 153 seats.

However, candidates from the Demokraatit Party - a conservative voice - had the largest increase: it was up by more than 13 per cent.

Duo abandons polar trek

According to the Aftenposten newspaper, Liv Arnesen of Norway and her American partner Ann Bancroft had to call off their ski trip over the North Pole when Russian authorities failed to assure their stream of supplies.

"After two years of preparations, they're understandably disappointed," Einar Glestad, Arnesen's husband, told the Aftenposten.

He said they were even more disappointed that it wouldn't be possible to continue an educational program tied to their trek.

"Their thoughts go out to the 12 million school children who were following the expedition over the Internet," Glestad said.

Arnesen and Bancroft had to call it quits when their French sponsor decided it couldn't rely on the Russians to take over supply responsibilities for the trek.

The expedition had been plagued by troubled relations with Russian officials and Arnesen and Bancroft also had to delay their departure from a Siberian town when local authorities refused to let them be flown over Russian polar territory.

Easter in Iceland for chess champ

Eccentric chessmaster Bobby Fischer arrived in Iceland last Thursday, only days after Iceland's parliament voted to grant Fischer citizenship.

Fischer last visited Iceland more than 30 years ago, in 1972, when he beat Russian chessmaster Boris Spassky in Reykjavik.

Fischer, 62, had been held in Japan since July, awaiting deportation to the United States for violating economic sanctions against the former Yugoslavia where he played a chess match in 1992, and for trying to leave Japan on a revoked U.S. passport.

The Associated Press news service says Fischer, after being freed from nine months' detention in Japan, called the U.S. "an illegitimate country" and maintained the charges against him were groundless.

Arctic foxes plunder Aleutian seabirds

The introduction of Arctic foxes to about 100 islands in Alaska's Aleutian Islands has caused the seabird population to decline so much that grasslands have been reduced to tundra, new research suggests.

"One of the things this underlines is how much of an impact introduced species can have on island ecosystems," said Dan Croll, co-author of a recent study published in the journal Science. "By far and away, most of the extinctions have been of island species, globally. And one of the biggest causes is introduced species."

The study suggests the introduction of predators can cause other harm as well because Arctic foxes are cutting off the flow of nutrients to the islands by killing the "delivery agents," seabirds such as puffins, auklets and gulls.

As a result, the foxes have completely changed the environment from tall grasses dependent on nutrient-rich bird droppings to tundra with dwarf shrubs and herbs.

Foxes first arrived in the Aleutians as replacements for declining sea otter populations. By the time the introductions were stopped in the 1930s, foxes were living on more than 400 Alaskan islands.

The study compared the bird populations of nine islands with foxes living on them to those on nine islands where the predators are absent. The results suggested that fox-free islands had an average of 688 breeding birds per acre.

With the foxes, the number dropped to just under nine birds per acre.

On one 2,000-acre island, researchers calculated a breeding seabird population of 1.7 million. On a similarly sized fox-filled island, researchers counted a population of 7,000.

Seal hunt starts in Norway

Norway's seal hunt is underway, with the first foreigners arriving in the coastal community of Vega to take part in the hunt.

Local supporters of the hunt, who hoped the hunt would attract tourist money, are disappointed because only about 18 foreign seal hunters have signed on.

Maritime authorities in Norway gave a green light to the seal hunt at the end of January, despite a massive international protest.

"The biggest response has come from the media," seal hunter and outfitter Roger Eidem told the national Norwegian broadcasting company earlier this week.

"The Norwegian seal hunt has received as much attention as a state coup would. The worst is that it's being portrayed as barbarian, especially in the foreign press. It's been said we beat the animals with picks that were used in the old days, and that we kill newborn seals."

Greenpeace had threatened to mount protests over this year's seal hunt, but in Vega they've seen no signs from Greenpeace yet.

Arctic expeditions stranded in Russia

The Aftenposten newspaper says a power-play among Russian bureaucrats has stranded three expeditions that planned to trek over the North Pole this spring.

Liv Arnesen of Norway and her partner Ann Bancroft of the United States are among those stuck in the Siberian town of Khatanga.

Bancroft and Arnesen want to ski and ski-sail over the frozen Arctic Ocean and around the North Pole.

But Arnesen told the Aftenposten newspaper that she and Bancroft have become pawns "in a bigger game" that involves powerful players in Moscow who are vying to control tourism in parts of the Arctic.

The Norwegian Embassy in Moscow has tried to intervene, and Russian authorities issued all the papers and permits needed to make the part of the polar expedition that goes over Russian territory.

But in mid-March, Russian soldiers carrying Kalishnikov weapons surrounded the two helicopters Arnesen and Bancroft planned to use to fly to their starting point of Cape Arktichesky.

The soldiers showed up, Arnesen said, after they had loaded their equipment into the helicopters.

"Military authorities in Murmansk have, after orders from someone in Moscow, called the airport and given orders that we can't fly north," said Arnesen.

Arnesen said the 2,750-kilometer expedition around the North Pole to Ward Hunt Island should have started by February 25.

They need to reach the North Pole by the end of April to get back over the ice to Canada.

Two other expeditions are also stuck in Khatanga, one involving a British woman going solo and another with adventurers from the Netherlands, the U.S. and Norway.

Canada's melting glaciers raising sea levels

Recent research conducted by NASA scientists says Canada's ice caps and glaciers have a large influence on Earth's changing climate and are already causing the global sea level to rise.

Canada's Arctic is covered by approximately 150,000 square kilometers of ice. While this land area is tiny compared to Antarctica's 113.5 million square kilometers, and Greenland's 1.7 million square kilometers of ice coverage, it is still quite significant, says NASA.

Waleed Abdalati, head of the Cryospheric Sciences Branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center published research recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research showing that Canada's Arctic ice is already one of the most important sources of global changes in sea levels.

Abdalati and his colleagues say Canada's Arctic ice is important because the huge area covered by these ice caps and the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Arctic climate in recent years.

Over the next century, melting glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica are expected to raise global sea levels by 20 to 40 centimeters.

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