The Star‘s Peter Calamai brings more word today in the paper’s Monday edition on his adventures “embedded” in a Coast Guard crew and its scientific complement aboard the ice breaker CCGS Amundsen. He’s spending weeks out there in and around his nation’s Arctic Ocean archipelago. The series gathers in quite a bit on not only the big-picture oceanography, marine biology, and climate science under pursuit, but the daily vexations of field science. Today’s is largely about trying to hold one’s location when a meddlesome sheet of winter sea ice wants to (and does) take the ship elsewhere.
While print stories come out less frequently, Calamai blogs almost daily. It’s one of the better such reporters’ notebook exercises going with its confident and good-natured style. The whole bunch is linked in the story, or go straight to it here. One post The Tracker enjoyed particularly recounts Peter’s success at convincing the skeptical ship’s officers to note Earth Hour – that brief, Sydney, Australia inspired lights-out exercise in hundreds of communities over the weekend to briefly shrink fossil fuel and power use. The Star was Earth Hour’s regional sponsor. Its northernmost correspondent sure did his part.
Speaking of blogs by newspaper people and the Arctic:
NYTimes‘s Andrew C. Revkin‘s Dot Earth ran an item yesterday on cheerfully pessimistic James Lovelock and his dire climate views. Andy leads with a vignette on an idea for polar cities – climate refugia – by a Lovelock acolyte, Dan Bloom (The name may look familiar. He is registered with KSJTracker and puts in an occasional comment) .
*UPDATE (Apr 2): Speaking further of newspaper bloggers, and of Earth Hour, Nashua Telegraph‘s Dave Brooks reports in his Granite Geek site that he checked with New England utilities to gauge the impact of the observance on the region’s wattage. Answer: Nothin’ to notice. But he and his family sat in the dark for the nonce. Maybe some other household turned on ALL its lights just to be contrary.
-CP
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