Blog Action Day: It’s Our Children’s World.

I wrote the original version of this post back in July of this year and try as I might I couldn’t come up with something that said the message I was trying to get across better than that post did. Now, with the fabled Northwest Passage open for the first time, what I was trying to get across seems to be is even more valid. So I’ve moved the entire post up to the front and added the new section for October 15th’s Blog Action Day when over 15,000 blogs will be posting about issues relating to the environment. of course I had to sign up.

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

And here’s my small contribution to the cause:

Arctic Melt Opens Northwest Passage

Climate models had projected the passage would eventually open as warming temperatures melted the Arctic sea ice—but no one had predicted it would happen this soon.

“We’re probably 30 years ahead of schedule in terms of the loss of the Arctic sea ice,” said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.

“We’re on this fast track of change.”

I’m looking up at a plaque that resides upon the wall above my computer desk. It’s a relatively bad relief of a nuclear Fast Attack sub surfaced at the north pole. The name of the sub is called the USS Silversides, one of the “stretch hull” versions of the Sturgeon class of nuclear powered fast attack boats that were the workhorse of the US Naval submarine force during the 70’s and 80’s, a very volatile time of the Cold War in it’s last two decades. On this plaque is inscribed “North Pole. On Top Of It all. ICEX 81. USS Silversides”.

What we were doing up there is irrelevant but the point of mentioning this at all is that we surveyed and plotted the underwater “ice-scape” of the Arctic ice pack surrounding the north pole for a hundred miles around and more and I can assure everyone, since I was the one who initially came up with the technique for effectively plotting this strange and extremely hazardous underwater ice field, that there were no kilometer wide open areas of water anywhere within several tens of miles surrounding the North Pole. My boat had to punch through over 4 feet of ice (a “thin” spot…for a sub that is) just to gain the surface.

Now, 26 years later we have this:

(Photo source: National Geographic News)

North Pole, July 20, 2007? For most of us, swimming a kilometer (0.62 miles) in under 19 minutes is a lofty, if not impossible, goal. But swimming in below freezing water?

When British endurance swimmer and adventurer Lewis Gordon Pugh dove into the icy waters of the North Pole on Sunday, he had two goals in mind: become the first person to swim in the North Pole, and draw attention to global warming. And that’s just what he did.

Gordon swam one kilometer in 18 minutes and 50 seconds in temperatures of minus 1.8 degree Celsius (28.7 degrees Fahrenheit), ?the coldest water ever swum in.

“I hope my swim will inspire world leaders to take climate change seriously. The decisions which they make over the next few years will determine the biodiversity of our world,? Pugh told the world media after emerging from his icy dip.

Pugh, who swam in a water hole once covered by thick polar ice, said “I am obviously ecstatic to have succeeded, but this swim is a triumph and a tragedy: a triumph that I could swim in such ferocious conditions but a tragedy that it’s possible to swim at the North Pole. ”

Source: National Geographic News Photo Gallery: Week in Photos: Space Geysers, ”Fossil Fish,” More

Whether by some natural cycle of things, man-made or more than likely; a combination of both, global warming is very real and from the point of the general population, it’s not trying to slow the process down or attempt to reverse it that matters. For the average human on this globe, it’s preparing for what may turn out to be a major climatic shift. And not just for ourselves but much more importantly, preparing our children and grandchildren who will have to live in what may turn out to be a very different world than the one we know now.

Even if global warming doesn’t turn out to be as severe as some predict for the long run, we need to instill the idea into our children that it is our responsibility to take care of this world we call home and not to interfere in it’s natural processes by polluting it’s biosphere with the waste products of our apathy. This is our home and the home of countless other species as well and we, the people, are the ones who can make our world a safe haven for all life forms on this planet or we can be the ones to ruin it.

A short, cold swim for a man, a great decision for mankind. Let’s hope we choose wisely.

Technorati tags: Blog Action Day, Global warming, north pole, submarines, submariners, Cold war, USS Silversides, Lewis Gordon Pugh, northwest passage