The Bleakest Outlook In The World - Two New Books On The Arctic, Fate Of Polar Bears - The Economist

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On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear. By Richard Ellis. Knopf; 416 pages; $28.95. Buy from Amazon.com

After the Ice: Life, Death and Geopolitics in the New Arctic. By Alun Anderson. Smithsonian; 304 pages; $26.99. Virgin Books; £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

THE Arctic is changing faster and more dramatically than any other environment on the planet. The ice that defines it is melting with alarming speed, taking with it life that can survive nowhere else. Oil, gas, shipping and fishing interests have been heading into the newly open water, with diplomats, lawyers, and now authors, in their wake.

In “On Thin Ice” Richard Ellis, a writer and illustrator, paints a natural history of the icon of the north, the polar bear. Well-versed in the complicated history and politics of whaling, he describes the long tradition of Arctic explorers who proved themselves by taking on the white bear. Admiral Nelson’s encounter as a plucky 14-year-old midshipman fighting only with the butt of his musket is surely a myth, but others are true.

Young bears, captured as they swam after the bodies of their newly killed mothers, were caught and sent to zoos and circuses. One early 20th-century big-top act featured 75 polar bears at once. Even today, zoo enclosures are still typically a millionth of the area of a wild adult’s range. The climate is rarely suitable: the resident polar bear in Singapore has turned green from algae growing within the hollow hairs of its coat.

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Not that scientists have all the answers. Neither atmospheric scientists nor oceanographers can adequately account for the speed of the changes. It is not for want of trying. Fridtjof Nansen’s pioneering journeys at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century first hinted at the whirling of the ice pack. Cold-war submarines then mapped the shifting ridges running beneath it. Satellite surveys and large arrays of iceberg-mounted probes are a useful addition, but much is still done by hardy individuals camped out in the cold. Mr Anderson looks in on the extraordinary, tiny world of the tributary system within the Arctic ice, formed by trickles of briny water which gets squeezed as it freezes. But from the bear above to the microscopic wonders within, all are doomed once the summer ice goes, which is expected to happen at some point between 2013 and 2050.

Ed. - emphasis added to show obligatory Economist-added false uncertainty.

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http://www.economist.com/culture/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15063888

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