NYT/Reuters: Polar Year Starts with Worries of Rising Seas

[DeepModem Mom]

Polar Year Starts with Worries of Rising Seas
By REUTERS
Published: March 1, 2007

OSLO (Reuters) - More than 60 nations started the biggest scientific investigation of the Arctic and Antarctic on Thursday amid new evidence that global warming is thawing polar ice and raising sea levels.

About 3,000 children made slushy snowmen and waved banners saying ``give us back the winter'' in Oslo, scientists met in Paris and other experts gathered on a research vessel in Cape Town to mark the start of International Polar Year (IPY).

``The polar year is important for everyone on the planet,'' Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters when asked if people living in places such as Africa or Asia should be interested in science at the icy ends of the earth.

``We are seeing climate change most clearly in the polar areas and research there can give us decisive knowledge in the fight against global warming,'' he said....

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The Norwegian Polar Institute said in a report that a melt of glaciers in Svalbard, an Arctic chain of islands about 1,000 km (620 miles) from the North Pole, was quickening.

``The melting has clearly accelerated in the past five years,'' it said. ``Therefore Svalbard ice is contributing more than before to raising world sea levels.'' Rising seas could end up threatening cities from Tokyo to New York....

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-climate-polar.html

[wakeme2008]

1. Did somebody say Polar Bears :)