Today is the first day of the 4th International Polar Year, perhaps a fitting end or a new beginning for Climate Commons. As many of the posts here have discussed, the poles play an important role in global climate. A major goal of this IPY is to study these linkages in greater detail and make the public aware of them. You can learn more about IPY at www.ipy.org and get a 3D tour in Google Earth at www.earthslot.org/ipy . It’s been a pleasure participating in this commons, and I encourage you all to continue the sorts of discussions we’ve had here as part of IPY.

Cheers,
Matt

When I wrote my new book on global and arctic climate change, I chose to call it The north pole Was Here because scientists had posted a goofy sign on the sea ice near 90 Degrees North with that phrase on it — marking the fact that the camp was drifting 400 yards an hour. It also referred to the idea that the north pole of our history could soon going to be history, given the changes afoot in climate up north. Now both computer climate simulations and fresh measurements of sea-ice trends are both pointing to a much quicker transition to open water around the Pole in summers than earlier studies had projected — possibly by 2040.

I have a story in today’s New York Times on that new work. There are some links in the piece to animations generated by the model and more.

It’s worth tracking discussions on Weds. Dec 6th, when Senator James Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Environment and Public Works committee, holds a hearing examining media coverage of global warming.

Sen. Inhofe has claimed that catastrophic human-caused warming is a “hoax,” while many climate experts see human-caused warming as the keystone environmental issue of the century. Inhofe had criticized my new book on global and arctic warming, The north pole Was Here, in a senate floor speech on climate alarmism, while crediting me with questioning some of the overheated coverage this year.

What I’ve been saying is that, amid all the talk of real-time catastrophe or hoax, people should not forget there’s a huge amount of consensus on on the basics: more CO2= warmer world= less ice= higher seas & shifting climate patterns.

I’ve been working on an interdisciplinary collaborative hybrid art/research project for the last year and a half. Its called Arctic Listening Post and includes a series of works that explore our cultural imaginary of the Arctic, particularly focusing on climate change. This networked conversation, Climate Commons, began as I spent a year in a research blog project, Deepnorth, a virtual expedition to the North Pole, in which I gathered from the internet each day an image, a fact, or a story, and slowly accrued a kind of narrative mapping of the representations of the North Pole, from science, history, sports feats, mass media, art, fiction, and politics.