Hero joins campaign at the North Pole
By Jennifer Wiley, 17/05/2009
ARTIC explorer Pen Hadow is on top of the world - literally - as he proclaims his backing for the News of the World’s brilliant Go Green & Save campaign.
The adventurer has just finished a gruelling 73-day stint in the Arctic with his Catlin Arctic Survey team studying the shrinking state of the pack ice.
He was so impressed with our efforts - and those of our legions of faithful readers - he ordered a copy of the paper so he could read about it from his tent just 300 miles from the North Pole in the MINUS 10 degree cold.
He said: “I think it’s fantastic the News of the World takes its responsibilities to the environment so seriously that it is encouraging the entire country to improve our relationship with the planet. It’s showing real leadership.
‘Go Green & Save’ is a fantastic idea and there is no excuse for not to get stuck into it.
It’s killing two birds with one small stone in that you can save money at at time when we’ve never needed to be more frugal, and we can feel good about doing something that is better for the environment.
I globally launched Earth Hour - so I think it’s great that the News of the World was supporting it too. Reading the paper that day was a welcome return to civilization.
We’d heard s*d all about what had been going on in the world as we lived rough in our tent.
It was really amazing. I read about the football first. I got an eyeful of Man United up to their usual tricks.
It was like an intravenous feed into what’s hot and what’s not in the world.”
News of the World’s fabulous ‘Go Green & Save’ campaign includes paying readers cash in exchange for handing in their old mobiles. They’ve been giving out Seeds for Schools in order to plant a million trees across the UK.
Pen spent 73 days in the Arctic with researchers Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels. They expected to find that the thickness of the floating sea ice would be less than normal - but they were shocked at just how thin and sparse it has become.
Pen said: “The scientists told us to expect older, thicker sea ice, but there was none where we were. Only young, fresh ice which is highly likely to be open sea this summer.
The average thickness was 1.77metres. The scientists thought we would find a lot of ice 3 metres thick - so twice as thick. Now they are going to have to find out why their estimates were out.”
Most scientists believe the sea ice around the North Pole ice cap will not exist in the summer time in 20 to 30 years from now.
But Pen, whose expedition was completed on Wednesday, explained that the rate of ice melting seems to have been underestimated - and that could be gone in less than four years.
He said: “The white ice cap provides us with a giant heat shield. Over the last 30 years the average area of ice has shrunk 10 per cent per decade. The area we were studying is on average 7.5million square kilometres of sea ice in the summer - but in 2007 it went down to just under 4 million square kilometres, the least it has ever been.”
Scientists are still trying to understand the link between global warming and the disappearing ice, Pen said.
He said: “Scientists know that there is global warming and that the ice is shrinking, but they still need to prove the link.
There are four reasons why it the Arctic ice shrinking is bad for the planet. One is that it accelerates the rise in sea level, causing flooding and the probable displacing of more than 100 million people around the world in the next century.
Secondly, It changes the amount of rain, and therefore water supplies around the world.
The third thing is part of the food chain collapses from the smallest animals like plankton, to the other end which is polar bears and walruses and some species of seal would be threatened with extinction or a massive collapse in the population.
Finally, the permafrost - the frozen ground around the edges of the Arctic Ocean - is melting as well, because the ocean warms and the land around the ocean warms.
It is thought that methane grasses are being released from that ground - and methane is massively more powerful as a warming gas than carbon dioxide for example.”
In order to help, Pen is appealing to all News of the World readers to do their part for the environment - and to step up and back the paper’s Go Green & Save campaign.
He said: “Everyone should do their part. It’s really important that a news organisation like the News of World - a paper that can make a difference - can use it’s influence to encourage people to do something positive for the planet on this scale.”
For more info on Pen’s work with the Catlin Arctic Survey, visit www.catlinarcticsurvey.com
Article courtesy of News of the World
Tags: Ann Daniels, cas, Catlin Arctic Survey, Global Warming, Go Green & Save, Martin Hartley, News of the world, Pen Hadow
