From Melanie, campaigner on board the Arctic Sunrise:
A few hours after arriving at 82.31 degrees north latitude, a polar bear was sighted wandering not too far off the ship’s port beam. As you can imagine when someone shouts out “polar bear!” a fair bit of mayhem ensues, we drop what we are doing, grab our cameras and run out on deck. My cabin mate, Faye, is on watch from 12-4 so she was asleep, but she’d given me explicit instructions to wake her if a polar bear was sighted. I crossed my fingers and hoped the polar bear would remain in sight for at least a few minutes more while I ran down below to wake Faye.

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Posted by Dave at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The crew of the Arctic Sunrise is on top of the world today, for many mindblowing reasons. As I write this, the ship is nudged up against the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean at 82.5 north – a latitude higher than any Greenpeace ship has achieved before, as far as we know. A couple of hours after we arrived, and had barely finished breakfast, a young polar bear loped past, seemingly curious and indignant about us unfurry humans gawping at it from our inedible green ship. It had been prowling along the ice edge, looking for seals for breakfast. We later saw evidence that it may have been successful, but I’ll spare squeamish readers the details. After such a short time here, it’s incredible that we’ve seen one of the world’s most formidable animals, one that is at risk from the lost of sea ice caused by climate change.
 
Where are we anyway? To the west, in the distance are mountains in the north of Ellesmere Island, and we can just about see the Canadian base at Alert. To the east, the mountains Greenland’s top end lie on the horizon. To the south, Nares Strait – the route to Baffin Bay by which we arrived, and to the north – well, there’s really only frozen ocean between here and the geographic North Pole.

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Posted by Dave at 1:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Barack Obama knows we're not happy

"I think that the Waxman-Markey bill represents a great start. And I suspect that the Senate is going to come in -- that there's going to be a strong overlap, but not perfect overlap; the final legislation that emerges is probably not going to satisfy the Europeans or Greenpeace. On the other hand, I think that when you've got corporate leaders like Jeff Immelt, legislators from coal regions like Rick Boucher, and Al Gore all agreeing that this is worth doing, that's a pretty good coalition to work with."

Keep the pressure on here

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Greetings from Baffin Bay! As I write this from the campaign office on board our ship, the Arctic Sunrise, blue and white icebergs appear through the sea mist. We’re just south of the wonderfully named Disko Island, or Qeqertarsuaq, off the west coast of Greenland. A seal just popped its head up, to check out who is passing by. And we just crossed the Arctic Circle.

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Posted by Dave at 1:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No sooner does a government suggest that it might make CCS compulsary on existing power plants than we learn that this might mean they have to close down.

Which makes you wonder - if it's not going to work in the UK, how on earth is it going to be made to work right through China and India?

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently Sainsbury's - a UK supermarket - have worked out how to generate electricity from all the cars visiting their shops. The cars drive over a plate in the ground, the energy created is turned into power and the shop suddenly no longer needs an electricity bill.

Makes me wonder if this couldn't have much wider applications.

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Association of Small Island States, many of which face oblivion as the ocean levels rise had this to say at the end of the Bonn climate negotiations.

"As we consider our approach for the next sessions let us be mindful of the words of Martin Luther King Jr - “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late…We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late.”"

Posted by Martin Lloyd at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)