Northman's Fury

The edge of the ice floe along Davis Strait and southern Baffin Island has moved closer to shore this year, Environment Canada says.

Normally the ice floe edge is 400 to 500 kilometres offshore but this winter it's about half that distance, says Lionel Hache who is with the department's Canadian Ice Service.

Hunters in Pangnirtung say it's the worst year ever in Cumberland Sound, off Davis Strait.

Peterloosie Qarpik, chair of the Pangnirtung Hunters and Trappers Organization, says the ice is not safe for travel — hunters are seeing young seals falling into the water because the ice is so thin.

None of this is any surprise to me, and its not like I go out on a ski-doo hunting seals. Last year the ice in the bay broke up without the need for an icebreaker to visit, the first time in the eighteen summers I've been up here where that was the case.

On the bright side, my sealift order should arrive earlier this year.

I wasn't going to bother writing anything about the report saying humans are behind climate change. The only people who don't already realize that are part of the same delusional sect that figure the Iraq invasion was a great idea. The fact that all of the evidence is against them doesn't matter, they have faith!

However, I then noticed this article:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Not exactly the most subtle ploy, and frankly, only $10,000? Exxon/Esso made $40 billion last year. You think they could put up a bit more money than that.

Of course, you'll note they're not funding research to try and dispute the findings. They know the science is against them. They just want to pay for hacks to criticize the scientific findings. So long as they can keep people thinking there is actually some controversy over the topic, they figure they can keep on business as usual.

The unfortunate part is that they're probably right, at least for the moment. Ultimately they'll go the way of the dinosaurs whose remains fuels their profits today. One of the stupidest arguments about why we can't act on climate change is that it will cost too much and hurt too many businesses. The same philosophy kept American car makers from increasing fuel efficiency. I'm sure Ford and GM are real happy they saved all that money and let Toyota and Honda waste their resources complying with Japan's government standards.

Even if climate change was a myth, the more efficient you make your business, the less energy you waste, the more sustainable your developments, the more likely you are to succeed. Canada can continue to pour billions in tax breaks for oil companies and ignore alternative energy sources and watch the rest of the world pass us by. All that means is that we'll be paying a lot more when the time to catch up comes, and you can be sure the oil company executives won't be the ones footing the bill.