If you haven't already seen the 2008-2009 Annual Report for Greenpeace, please explore it! After months of working on it, picking the highlights from 2008 and trying to pick out a few photos from the amazing ones we have,  like this one:

The Annual Report is done! I couldn't be happier! 

One week from today, the largest live film event in the world will take place for the global premiere of The Age of Stupid. As you no doubt have inferred from the many tweets and blogs we've posted, Greenpeace has partnered with the filmmakers to promote the film, mobilize moviegoers, and make the global premiere a green event to be remembered for all time.

The Age of Stupid has been called a docu-drama-animation hybrid, which probably means nothing to you, but there it is. It's also been called "the next, far hipper An Inconvenient Truth." The movie stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the global warming-ravaged world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and desperately wondering: Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

Here's a sneak peek at one of the coolest animations from the movie:

On September 21st, communities around the world will be gathering in movie theaters, community centers, stadiums, and even on beaches where makeshift screens will be set up so that people can view the movie and be inspired to call on their leaders to act.  In New York City, a "green carpet" premiere will take place, with celebrities arriving by sustainable transportation (bike, rickshaw, train, boat, etc.). There are also several cities around the US having "simulcast" events, you can find locations and buy tickets here.

To give you a small taste of what you might expect at the premiere events, as well as the reason we think this movie is so important, here's a video of Eric Philips, polar explorer on board the Arctic Sunrise, which was used to open the Australian premiere of the film:

The Arctic Sunrise left Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord on August 30 and has been motoring north up the east coast of Greenland since then. It's been a palette of greys outside — grey water, grey sky, grey fog. It's nothing like the unbroken weeks of sunshine we experienced in northwest and southeast Greenland. Here on the northeast coast all we've seen since leaving Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord is shades of grey. We haven't seen any clear skies, sea ice or icebergs to break the monotony of greys.


Click the image to view more "Climate Impacts" pics from the Arctic Expedition 2009 on Flickr.

Until this afternoon, when Arne, our ice pilot, alerted us to the presence of an “ice blink” on the port side of the ship. An ice blink is a bright stripe of white on the horizon between sea and sky that indicates sea ice, it’s actually the reflection or glare from sea ice onto low clouds. I have no idea why it’s called an “ice blink,” and neither does Arne, who is a walking dictionary on sea ice. Perhaps it has something to do with shutting your eyes most of the way — as if you’re blinking — and only having a thin strip of vision? Or maybe the word is derived from a Norwegian or Danish term that has to do with ice or glare? I have no idea. All I know is that the ice blink means sea ice, and sea ice means happiness.

Why does sea ice mean happiness? Because it tamps down ocean swells and waves and guarantees the Arctic Sunrise can motor along without the trademark rolling, pitching and corkscrewing of this keel-free icebreaker. This ship is built like an egg, and it's famous for making even the heartiest sailor seasick. For some reason I avoided getting seasick since leaving Amsterdam on June 12, but all that ended on August 31 when the ship hit some swells and winds that caused her to corkscrew – a motion that caused just about everyone on board to succumb to seasickness.

And seasick I got. In spades. At one point I could not even make it to the toilet down the alleyway, I just hunkered down on the floor of my cabin with a bowl. It was miserable, I tell you, and I swore to myself that I would never, ever step foot on a Greenpeace ship again. If there was a way to jump ship and get to land I would have taken it, I felt that wretched. It kept up through lunchtime yesterday, September 2 when the seas flattened out and, in the words of our Russian doctor on board, Valeriy, “I finally found the meaning of true happiness.”

The appearance of the ice blink this afternoon signals calm seas and means the worst of the transit from Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord to 79 Glacier is behind us. It also means we’ll soon arrive at 79 Glacier and the independent scientists on board will be able to continue their research on the complex interactions between climate change, oceans and glaciers in east Greenland. It also means we’ll soon be able to send more pictures, videos and eyewitness accounts of the impacts of climate change on Greenland’s glaciers to the public, media and policy makers, which in the end, is what keeps us all going. We can’t expect world leaders to come up with a fair, ambitious and binding climate policy in Copenhagen this December without us, the public, putting pressure on them to deliver the goods. And bearing witness to the Arctic meltdown provides the impetus for the pressure.

With so much at stake and so many people all over the planet doing so much to pressure their heads of state to make the right decisions in Copenhagen, the least I can do is to put up with a bit of seasickness. Looking back, it was over in a blink, anyway.

Greenpeace's icebreaker-class research ship, the Arctic Sunrise, is currently on an expedition to document the impacts of global warming on Greenland's glaciers, polar bears, and native peoples.

But, as California burns and another major hurricane barrels toward the West coast, we can say with some certainty that we are already witnessing the effects of global warming in our very own backyard.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared states of emergency in several counties as eight separate wildfires continue to ravage The Golden State.  One of the fires in the mountains north of Los Angeles has exploded to more than triple its size since Sunday, scorching over 121,000 acres of forest and putting at least 12,500 homes at risk.

The governor has ordered mandatory evacuations in all of the affected areas as thousands of firefighters work to contain the wildfires.  Many have been injured and, over the weekend, the inferno claimed the lives of two men who were bravely battling the flames.

 

 

While the causes of the California wildfires remain unknown, their unrelenting ferocity is being blamed on recent temperatures, which have been in the triple-digits in some inland Los Angeles areas. Hundreds of thousands of acres have already burned this summer, the worst damage in years, and researchers expect that figure to rise well above average before the season is over.

California is also in the middle of one of its most active hurricane seasons in decades.  There have already been ten named storms this summer, seven of which have occurred during the month of August.  As thousands flee the wildfires, Hurricane Jimena is spinning its way toward the Baja California coastline.  The storm is currently listed as a Category 4, with powerful winds over 155 miles per hour, but some are predicting that Jimena will reach Category 5 before it hits land.

Scientists have been telling us that, as the planet continues to get warmer, we can expect an increased frequency and intensity of both summer forest fires and hurricanes.  It is now painfully clear that global warming is upon us, whether we like it or not. 

We have been warned that the only way to stop runaway climate change and prevent the worst impacts of global warming is with a new international climate treaty that would reduce global warming pollution 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

But, despite his inaugural pledge to “return science to its rightful place,” President Obama has put the full support of his administration behind a climate bill that gives billions to the coal industry – the number one source of global warming pollution in the U.S. – and only calls for a 4% reduction in emissions by 2020.

We now have less than 100 days until the U.N. Climate Convention in Copenhagen, where the new international climate treaty must be agreed upon.  Please TAKE ACTION now, and tell the President to become a leader in the battle against global warming.

Today is August 22. We are mid-way through leg 2 of this Arctic Climate Impacts Expedition in Sermilik Fjord. We have been wildly busy since arriving in Tasiilaq on August 17, but things are going really, really well. We’ve been incredibly lucky: none of the problems that could have thrown a wrench in to our well laid plans - fog grounding the helicopter, heavy ice impeding the ship’s transit, scientific equipment breaking down – have happened. I chalk this up to “the luck of the Irish” since four of our crew are Irish - the chief engineer, media officer, helicopter pilot and videographer.

Since things are going so smoothly, I’m taking a few moments out of my busy day and have taken my laptop up to the bridge to churn out a blog. Here’s a bit of a running description of what’s going on from my vantage point.

The helicopter is about to take off to take a TV crew back to Tasillaq after they spent the night on the ship. The helicopter will pick up another TV crew in Tasiilaq, and bring them to the ship for their night on board. It’s 9am now and this is the helicopter’s third flight. The helicopter first started flying at 5:30am to take a team of glaciologists to Helheim Glacier to retrieve GPS units that are recording the glacier’s flow speed (an indicator of its melt rate, and in turn, the pace and intensity of global warming here in Greenland).

Off on the starboard side of the ship a team of oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led by Dr. Fiamma Straneo, are conducting “CTD casts.” “CTD” stands for “conductivity, temperature, depth,” three indicators in the deep waters of Sermilik Fjord that will help them to understand the complex dynamics of currents and how they deliver warm water to Helheim Glacier at the head of the fjord. The CTD cast is done with a device that is lowered through the water column on a metal line, using a winch that’s been welded to the deck just for this purpose. The fjords here in Greenland are very deep, and the CTD casts often go to depths of 2,300 feet. As one of the oceanographers described it, Sermilik Fjord is like a submerged Grand Canyon.


Here on the bridge, Captain Pete is trying to maneuver the ship through waters that are completely covered by ice at the surface. Huge icebergs float amongst the smaller pieces of ice, and as the ship moves through the ice, it sounds like a huge gin and tonic (Ok, Pete says it is more like a frozen daiquiri, but I maintain the gin and tonic comparison). He can take the ship through the smaller pieces of ice, the ship shoves them aside, but it’s impossible to shove or move the larger icebergs. When I went to grab my laptop out of my cabin I looked outside the porthole and just a few feet away was a solid wall of ice, the port side of the ship was sitting next to an iceberg that measured about 50 high. And that’s a small iceberg. We’ve seen icebergs that are so huge that they look like tremendous walls of ice, or small glaciers themselves. It’s unreal.

Because there is so much ice in the fjord, moving the ship is very slow going. The CTD casts are conducted in lines across the fjord in order to get a picture of water currents and movement. The ship is trying to follow straight lines across the fjord that are drawn on the chart, but in reality, it’s impossible to follow them due to all of the giant icebergs in the water. The ship’s actual course is a zigzag on the chart, not a straight line.

It is crazy beautiful here. After close to two months without sunrises and sunsets, it’s nice to be at a latitude where we can enjoy them again. We have been very lucky with the weather and the skies have been clear, so when the sun sets at night it casts a pink and orange glow on the ice in the fjord. Two nights ago we saw some faint northern lights that was also a treat.

After today we have three more days in Sermilik Fjord before departing Tasiilaq at the end of the day on August 25 and heading north toward Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, and then on to 79 Glacier even further north up the east coast of Greenland. This period in Sermilik Glacier is our busiest, most hectic time on the entire three-month expedition, and so far it is going swimmingly well, better than I ever expected. The factors that guarantee a successful expedition in the Arctic are a good crew, and lots of luck. We’ve got an amazing team on board, even after almost three months on board together everyone is working hard and doing great work. All we need is for our “luck of the Irish” to continue to hold.

The Arctic Sunrise is currently in transit from the west to the east coast of Greenland. We said goodbye to the on-board science team in Nugatsiaq on August 9, and to two Chinese journalists and a campaigner from Greenpeace China in Sisimiut on August 11. Our next port-of-call is Tasiilaq on the southeast coast of Greenland.

You can follow our Arctic Expedition tour on this handy Google map:


View Arctic Tour in a larger map

An independent science team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts will join the ship in Tasiilaq. The team, led by Dr. Fiamma Stranneo, will undertake a variety of oceanographic measurements in Sermilik Fjord, just east of Tasiilaq, from August 19-25. Their goal is to determine if warm, sub-tropical waters are coming into contact with glaciers in the fjord, and to determine the processes that control the variability of ocean conditions where the glaciers meet the sea.

Why is this important? The IPCC’s estimates for sea level rise by the end of this century contain very little contribution from the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica because the dynamics of the melt are so poorly understood. As scientists conduct research and begin to unravel the complicated dynamics that govern and influence the melt of the enormous ice sheets at opposite ends of the planet, their predictions for the rate of sea level rise increase. The IPCC’s 2007 estimate for sea level rise by 2100 is 20-60cm (8-24 inches). Since then, scientists have predicted sea levels will actually rise one to two meters (3.3 to 6.6 feet). That’s a significant jump in just two years’ time, particularly since so many of the dynamic forces that affect ice sheet melt and flow rate are not yet understood.


The Arctic sunrise is pictured here amidst cracked and drifting ice in front of the Petermann glacier (out of shot to the left). This is the zone where the glacier's front meets the sea and starts to break up. This is the furthest point that the ship can get to the front of the glacier to begin research via helicopter, inflatable and perhaps by foot/skis. © Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace

Dr. Stranneo’s science program in Sermilik Fjord is well-organized and very ambitious, so we are prepared to support her team’s research around the clock, 24/7 if need be. However, scientific research is not the only activity that will be underway in Sermilik Fjord. Although it’s pretty remote, Tasiilaq is relatively easy to reach by air from Iceland and Denmark, so we are able to host a number of VIPs and journalists from around the world while the research is taking place in Sermilik Fjord. This is the one leg of our expedition where a VIP or journalist can join the ship for just a night or two. As a result, we will be hosting a crew from CNN, three German TV crews, one French TV crew, and one Indian TV crew. The ship can only accommodate so many people per night, so additional news crews (AP print and TV, a French newspaper, The Economist) and a Spanish politician will stay in Tasiilaq and be ferried out to the ship for the day.

All told, we’ll have about 20 people cycling on and off the ship as overnight guests, and another ten or so as guests during the day. This may not sound like a lot, but trust me, it is. Each person and their gear must be transported to the ship via a small boat or the helicopter. Ice in the fjord may scuttle our plans to use small boats, and fog (very common in these parts) will keep the helicopter grounded. Every person who joins the ship, even if it’s just for one night, will need to be briefed on safety protocols as well as ship do’s and don’ts. But most importantly, our goal is to provide each guest with a firsthand account and explanation of the work that Dr. Stranneo and her team are conducting, as well as background information on how it relates to the upcoming climate negotiations in December. We want them to leave the ship understanding the urgent need for deep, mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to increase the chance that the message gets to heads of state who are going to be negotiating a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

The media are an important avenue for getting our message out into the general public. Greenpeace puts its money into its campaigns; we simply can’t afford to spend billions of dollars on advertising to get our message out (unlike Big Oil and its allies, who have spent $82 million already this year lobbying against climate legislation). We rely on a variety of other tactics – from our website to public speaking to newsletters and talking to people on the street. Our tactics may be numerous, but media coverage is a great way to get our message out to many people – including politicians – in one fell swoop. So we are very excited to be hosting so many top-notch journalists during our time in Tasiilaq.

We have a couple of days of “calm” left before the managed chaos that will ensue in Tasiilaq. I for one am looking forward to it. It will be challenging, hard work, but in the end, the rewards will be measurable.

And it’s always a treat to see someone’s face when they come aboard a Greenpeace ship for the first time. I'll have more updates for you soon, so check back!

After spending more than five weeks at the Petermann Glacier, the Arctic Sunrise began its transit down the west coast of Greenland at around midnight Wednesday night. Our primary goal at Petermann Glacier was to document the calving of the glacier — an ice island about 100km2 is expected to fall into the sea any day now — with remote time-lapse cameras perched on 1000 m cliffs overlooking the glacier. Even though the ice island has not yet calved, our time-lapse cameras remain in place, ready to document the glacier's disintegration should it happen this summer.


The Arctic Sunrise reaches 'the ice bridge' in the Robeson channel, at 82.4 North, near the border between Greenland and Canada. This is the Southernmost extent of the summer sea ice which usually extends much further south into the Nares Strait, but has receded dramatically in recent years. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

People have been asking if I’m disappointed that Petermann Glacier did not calve a large ice island while we were there. My honest answer is no.

From the early stages when we first started planning this expedition, I was keenly aware that ice conditions in Nares Strait meant that the ship had only a 50/50 chance of reaching Petermann Glacier in the first place. In reality, our passage north was virtually clear of sea ice – we sailed right to the top of the strait, reaching the ice bridge that is holding back the Arctic Ocean’s thick, multi-year sea ice on June 29th, just 445 nautical miles from the North Pole. The fact that we actually reached Petermann Glacier at all, and then had more than five weeks to conduct research into the dynamics that influence its (and nearby Humboldt Glacier’s) sensitivity to global warming, was truly an unexpected bonus. Together, Petermann and Humboldt glaciers drain a full ten percent of the ice that flows from the immense Greenland Ice Sheet into the sea, with serious implications for sea level rise the world over.

The independent science team on board the ship gathered a lot of important data in a part of the world that is remote and challenging to reach. With the support of the Arctic Sunrise and her crew, the scientists were able to conduct glacier and oceanographic studies that will help fill the gaps in their own and the greater scientific community’s understanding of how Greenland’s glaciers and the ice sheet react to global warming. In the last seven years, the Greenland Ice Sheet's contribution to sea level rise more than doubled, due to a surprisingly rapid and unpredicted loss of ice. There is still so much that scientists do not understand about how Greenland’s glaciers and ice sheet are reacting to global warming. It’s a stunning example of how the impacts of global warming on the ground are outpacing scientific models, which is the case throughout the Arctic and in much of the world.


The 'whirlpool' and crack on the Petermann glacier. Geophysicist Dr Richard Bates, of the Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St. Andrews, takes 'casts' of temperature pressure current and salinity. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

Ironically, while the Arctic Sunrise was conducting research on glaciers in northwest Greenland, the Waxman-Markey bill was being further weakened by Congress and fossil fuel industry lobbyists whose goal is to protect business as usual at the expense of protecting the climate. The bill reflects a huge gap between what US lawmakers are willing to do and what climate science is saying the planet needs. It’s clear that no one in the US government, including President Obama himself, is prepared to do what’s necessary to prevent climate catastrophe.

Any bill that does not include science-based targets of at least 40 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 falls far short of what is needed. Even emissions reductions of 20 or 30 percent by 2020 won’t cut it; it’s just not possible to save the climate a little bit at a time. Obama and Congress can’t shut their eyes and hope this issue will somehow go away. It won’t. In coming years and decades we will all wonder what the heck they were thinking when they failed to address the problem with meaningful action.

I know it’s naïve, but I wish President Obama could spend just one day with us on board this ship, talking with the independent scientists on board about how climate change is affecting Greenland’s glaciers and ice sheet, and in turn, what it means for the US and the rest of the planet. He would leave the ship understanding that anything less than science-based targets in US and global climate policy condemns the world to the worst impacts of climate change, which, by the way, will ravage the economy and health care system in incalculable ways. The economic problems caused by sub-prime mortgages, irresponsible lending and bank failures will seem like child’s play compared with what continued and unabated global warming will cause.

The Arctic Sunrise is now heading south toward the next stages of this expedition. Independent science teams will be joining us to conduct research on Greenland’s east coast glaciers as well as sea ice. We will continue our work here in Greenland, using every tactic we can to amplify the voices of scientists who are on the cutting edge of global warming research. Our hope is that both their work and voices will form part of the impetus for Congress and President Obama to take real action on global warming in the four months that remain before the Copenhagen climate talks in December.

Pete Willcox has been sailing on Greenpeace ships for 28 years. He's currently our skipper on the Arctic Sunrise off the coast of Greenland. This is the second in a series of Captain's Blogs that we'll be publishing throughout the three-month expedition to bear witness to the Arctic Meltdown caused by global warming.


The bow of the Arctic Sunrise, barely visible on the left of this image, works its way through the sea ice © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

The helicopter gets off the deck at 0800. The ship's main engine starts 20 minutes later. We are headed south at 0900, and the engine needs a while to warm up. The helicopter gets delayed, but at 0901, Eric has cast off our line, and we are underway.
 
The Arctic Ocean pack ice has invaded Nares Strait. It is old (called multi-year) sea ice, and averages six meters thick. This is way thicker than anything we can break with Arctic Sunrise. So before it can trap us in Hall Basin, we escape south. The crew all walks around telling each other that this is good, as we are all bored with Petermann.

This is, of course, a big joke. All of us feel incredibly fortunate to have spent the last two and a half weeks here. It has felt like being on a high mountaintop I imagine. You spend weeks climbing, and minutes on the top. We have been able to spend weeks here, and it's been a real treat.

The sea ice is chasing us into the bay of large icebergs. The east side of Kane Basin is the Humboldt Glacier. Being a grounded glacier, the pieces that break off are huge. As a result, Kane Basin is littered with icebergs. There are maybe 70 that we can see from here. It's a real contrast to Petermann, where the glacier is floating. From a distance the glacier ice breaking off from Petermann does not seem very different from the sea ice that forms over the winter. But these icebergs from Humboldt are ten to twenty meters high.

The helicopter gets delayed a couple times on its mission. We don't need to wait, as they are... quite a bit faster than we are. Ten times faster. When they land, Jason comes up to the bridge to show us pictures of the pod of narwhals they flew over on he way back. Narwhals are attributed to starting the unicorn legend. The males (mostly, not exclusively) have a long tusk coming out of their forehead. Nobody is sure why. Maybe it's just to look cool.

We are trying to get to the far northeast corner of Kane Basin. The further northeast we can go, the closer we will be to Petermann. Every five days or so for the next two to three weeks, we will have to service our cameras at Petermann. The closer we can get, the easier the flight.

On the way in we pass our first group of walrus. As I am looking up the ice for a lead, I notice a large brown mass. Too large and brown to be seals. When one lifts up his head, and I see to tusks sticking out the front of his face, I know it is walrus. Melanie says walrus have tusks to hold their heads off the ice so that they do not drown in their own shit, which they lay around in. I think she is being tough on walrus, but then she has seen about a thousand more than I have.

For the first time in this trip we do some real icebreaking. The ice is mostly first-year sea ice, sprinkled with pieces of glacier ice, which is much harder. It does not look very thick, and seem to be 50% melt pools, some of which go right through. At first, it is pretty easy going. With 90% power on, we are just able to break through the 50cm ice. Then we have to stop, back up one ship length, and charge at it again. And again. And again. As we cut alongside a large ‘berg, I understand Arne's explanation of ice under pressure. Here is ebb tide is pushing the floating sea ice against the grounded berg. The ice stops cracking ahead of us. We have to back up every boat length, and ram it again.

This explains Arne's first rule of icebreaking. Avoid it. Always look for a lead or a way to get around it. Icebreaking is time consuming and sucks down tons of fuel.

"Hey Arne, look out for the rock", I say. Normally this would not be necessary, and would refer to a rock on the chart below the water. In this case a pretty large boulder has rolled down the nearby cliff, and during the winter, rolled a quarter mile out onto the ice. And in this case, the warning is a joke, which we all laugh over. Our passage sends the rock down to the bottom.

After an hour we get through, and follow a lead up along the shore under the cliffs. A few minutes later we anchor in 75 meters of water. Our guys in Amsterdam added three more shots (one shot is 27.5m) to our starboard chain, giving us nine shots. Use the European formula for anchoring, the number of shots of chain needed is equal to the square root of the depth in meters, we put 8 shots on deck and call it a night.

Note to my friends from Castine. This anchoring formula is intelligent. I first learned it in Arne's (are you getting a picture yet?) bridge manual from 15 years ago on the MV Greenpeace. Notice that when you anchor in 64 meters of water, it gives you a scope of 3.4 to 1. When you anchor in 16 meters of water, it gives you 6.8 to 1. This is much smarter than just using a scope of 7 to 1 for all depths.

The other thing I did that you sailors might be interested in is use the Bowditch " Distance by Vertical Angle" tables to help figure out the height of the nearby cliff. I have very rarely used those tables, and never to determine elevation. But the surveys are so inaccurate up here that I think we got some useful data. According to Nobletec (our electronic chart), we anchored on top of the 500 metre hill top last night.

- Pete

Pete Willcox has been sailing on Greenpeace ships for 28 years. He's currently our skipper on the Arctic Sunrise off the coast of Greenland. This is the first in a series of Captain's Blogs that we'll be publishing throughout the three-month expedition to bear witness to the Arctic Meltdown caused by global warming.


Captain Pete Willcox looking at Petermann Glacier from the bridge of the Arctic Sunrise. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

There is never a bad time to go out for a walk on the deck and enjoy the scenery. Because the sun is always up, there are some times that are better than others. And speaking of time, longitude up here in the Arctic, it ain't what it used to be. At the equator, where we were this winter sailing the Amazon, a degree of longitude was 60 nautical miles. Up here it is nine.

Around midnight, the sun is in line with Petermann's glacier wall, and behind us. This causes the sun to cast long shadows on the face of the canyon surrounding the glacier. The canyon walls are stratified limestone, with many colors and shades. They are connected by the undulating white glacier below them. The canyon walls are 1000 metres high, and the floor of Hall Basin (the sea bed) seems to be between 500 and 1000 meters, which means the whole canyon is... bloody big!

Looking at the glacier from our level on the bridge of the Sunrise, it does seem perfectly white. But even from the ship, when you look down at the near by melt pools, you can see black stuff on the bottom. In many places the back stuff heats up and melts further down into the glacier, sometimes in perfectly round circles. Most of the melt lakes that you see from the helicopter have black mud on a portion of them.

The black stuff is carbon from dust storms, wild fires, manmade pollution, and cosmic dust. I suspect that our scientists are having a bit of a laugh on us with the cosmic debris story, but at the moment they are sticking to it. Melanie, our fearless campaigner, went into one of the ponds the other day to collect some of the black mud. It will be sent to labs in Italy and the U.S. for analysis. I stuck my hand into one of the pools the other day. The stuff feels like sand, but is completely black.

The loss of "reflectivity" is one reason why the Arctic is changing so much faster than elsewhere. Obviously the sea ice reflects most of the warmth of the sun. The much dark ocean water does not. When the glaciers get turned to a color from cosmic dust or man made pollution, they melt much faster. Some of the black gunk is natural. Some is not. Our chemical testing of it will help us figure out how much is natural and how much is manmade.

The last week we have had a few days with temperatures up to 5C (40F). This has produced a number of waterfalls off the high cliffs along the glacier. I have been eyeing the clifftops for the last couple weeks. We have several cameras posted on them, and periodically they need servicing with the helicopter. My chance comes, and I jump at it. I like high places. Maybe it comes from working at a place – the ocean- where the biggest "mountain" is eight to ten meters. When I lived on Mallorca, one of my favorite things to do was to run up the hill behind the village. By the time I would get up to the ridgeline, I felt I was someplace special. I have the same feeling on the cliffs on the edge of the glacier, without the satisfaction of having gotten there on my own feet.

It's quiet. A gentle breeze is blowing. For the first time I realize that the part of the glacier where the ship is tied up to is sticking out much further than the parts touching the canyon walls. Jason named the open part on the southwest side Manhattan Bay. The piece we are tied to is of similar size: about the size of Manhattan. I imagine the lower tip of Manhattan with the old Twin Towers. They would stick roughly half way up the side of the canyon walls. Midtown Manhattan would stick up roughly a third. Manhattan is seven miles long. The floating part of Petermann Glacier is fifty miles long. If you laid down on the floating section of Petermann, Manhattan would represented by your head. Petermann Glacier is about to be decapitated.

Nineteen years ago I sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon, feet hanging into space, drinking a bottle of wine with some friends. The cliff was not as high as that above Petermann. Here you can look strait down 2600 feet or 760 meters. At the Grand Canyon we were looking down about a third of that. But if you fall, after the first 50 meters, what's the difference?

Here on Petermann, I do not walk up to the edge and sit down. I get on my belly and crawled until my nose was hanging in space. I grab a stone from near by and launch it. It goes down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and crashes and ricochets further. A second later I can hear the crack of the first bounce. I ease my way back from the edge, and realize I have had all the cheap thrills I will need for the rest of the week. Martin, our pilot, does not need any cheap trills of this nature, stands well back from the edge smoking his pipe and smiling away.

Being a helicopter pilot is not Martin's first career. Rumor has it on the ship that he was a welder. This sparked my interest, as I have not known many welders that went on to be helicopter pilots.

Turns out that while Martin knows how to weld, he was a tool and die maker with an invention to his credit. Calling a tool and die maker a welder is sort of like calling Formula One champion Michael Schumacher a taxi driver. Having come close to starting an apprenticeship in tool and die making, I have great respect for the trade. And it is no stretch of the imagination to imagine switching from one trade to the other.

We stop on the ice on the way back. If you are into contour lines, you could die happy here. In between the melt steams, lakes, ponds, and rivers, the glacier is constantly different. Though it looks like snow, it feels like a crust that you cannot break through. It would make a challenging golf course. Hard to hit the fairway, though.

Then I hear a noise. It's way too familiar. I look up and see the New York - Moscow express rumbling by on schedule (this is a joke, I really don't know where it going). But I am disappointed. This is the first of anybody other than my shipmates I have seen in over three weeks.

You might have read in a previous post ("Something afoot in the Arctic") that the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, is currently at the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland as part of a 3-month expedition. The crew on board the Arctic Sunrise, which includes many respected scientists, is examining the effects of climate change on the Arctic. Specifically, they're bearing witness to the imminent loss of a 100 sq. km. ice island that is part of Petermann glacier. This video serves as an introduction to the ship tour and what they've found so far.