Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one [...]

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Russia announced Monday that it is sending warships to patrol Arctic waters for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union — the latest move to increase the country’s global military presence.
Patrols by the Northern Fleet’s Severomorsk submarine destroyer and Marshal Ustinov missile cruiser will begin Thursday, Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said.
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Russia is on the hunt for a lucrative slice of the Arctic. Moscow plans to use international law to ask that a huge section of the Arctic Continental Shelf be recognised as Russian territory.
It’s the latest move in a new rush to claim the enormous natural resources believed to be under the ocean, now accessible [...]

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A high-powered group of international experts is warning a “no-holds-barred” race for Arctic resources could shape up unless countries around the world move faster to reach agreements on development, safety and environmental standards.
A new report by 40 experts from six different countries spells out four scenarios for the future of the top of the world [...]

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Russia has raised the stakes in the international scramble for the Arctic by announcing it will boost its military presence in the region to protect its “national interests”.
The defence ministry said naval vessels would be sent to the Arctic Ocean, which is believed to be home to 25 percent of the world’s untapped energy resources, [...]

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Russia’s Arctic neighbours saw the exploit as a blatant land grab, an attempt to pre-empt any new agreement on sharing the undersea resources among the littoral powers. They have already begun moves to stake their claims: Norway and Denmark are carrying out surveys and the US is organising an expedition ostensibly “in search of hydrothermal [...]

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The battle for “ownership” of the polar oil reserves has accelerated with the disclosure that Russia has sent a fleet of nuclear-powered ice breakers into the Arctic.
It has reinforced fears that Moscow intends to annex “unlawfully” a vast portion of the ice-covered Arctic, beneath which scientists believe up to 10 billion tons of gas and [...]

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QUEBEC — The Arctic Ocean could be free of ice in the summer as soon as 2010 or 2015 - something that hasn’t happened for more than a million years, according to a leading polar researcher.
Louis Fortier, scientific director of ArcticNet, a Canadian research network, said the sea ice is melting faster than predicted by [...]

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MOSCOW: Russian long-range bombers began a two-day exercise Monday over the Arctic that will include firing cruise missiles, an Air Force spokesman said, according to the Interfax news agency.
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Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — Denmark, one of five countries claiming control of North Pole waters and natural resources, called Russia’s flag planting on the Arctic seabed a “joke.”
“I see the Russian stunt as a summer joke,” Danish Minister of Science and Technology Helge Sander said today in an e-mailed response to questions from Bloomberg [...]

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Canada fired a warning shot in a new Cold war over the vast resources of the far North by announcing last night that it will build two new military bases in the Arctic wilderness.
A week after Russia laid claim to the North Pole in what is rapidly becoming a global scramble for the region’s vast [...]

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Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is poised to announce plans for a deepwater docking facility and military base in the far north of the country as part of the nation’s quest to assert its sovereignty in the Arctic.
Military planning documents, obtained by CBC news on Thursday, outline C$60m ($57m) plans to adapt an abandoned mine [...]

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Russia’s flag-planting caper at the North Pole last week captured the world’s attention. Harking back to the heady days of colonial imperialism and perhaps the success of Sputnik, a resurgent Russia dispatched from Murmansk a nuclear-powered icebreaker and a research vessel armed with two mini-submarines to stake a symbolic claim to the Arctic Ocean’s riches.
Russia [...]

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Allowing Russia to get away with a fraudulent claim to the Arctic is an abdication of U.S. national sovereignty, seriously affecting our national security in that region. FSM Contributing Editor Cliff Kincaid excoriates our State Department for failing to assert U.S. authority there.
The failure by the U.S. State Department to cite historical evidence that American [...]

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Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. said Russia planting its tri-color flag on the seabed under the North Pole doesn’t validate the former communist country’s claim to the mineral- rich Arctic territory.
“I’m not sure of whether they’ve put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor,” State Department [...]

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RUSSIA’s foray into the Arctic is an audacious geopolitical adventure, as popular at home as it is troubling for outsiders. At stake are the region’s natural riches, until now frozen both in law and in nature. But global warming is making them look more accessible. They may include 10 billion tonnes of oil and gas [...]

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As a Kremlin-backed Arctic expedition led by a Russian legislator closed in Monday on the North Pole - with plans to send a submersible craft and a flag to the ocean bottom to assert Russian sovereignty over an Ontario-sized swath of the polar seafloor - a leading Canadian expert on the Arctic urged Canada’s leaders [...]

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The race for the North Pole is on again, and this time there’s more at stake than pride at seeing a national flag fluttering on the icecap: There’s oil and gas too.
Russia is one of a handful of nations vying to lay claim to the vast untapped resources of the Arctic, and the competition — [...]

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It is not the kind of militaristic statement expected of the peace-loving Canadians. In front of a choreographed line-up of 120 sailors in their summer whites at a naval base outside Victoria in British Columbia, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, gave a warning to other nations with their eye on the potentially oil-rich Arctic.
“Canada has [...]

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