The North Pole: majestic, wild, disputed ... A hundred years ago the Pole was at the centre of a bitter dispute between the two men who claimed to have got there first: Dr Frederick A Cook and Robert E Peary. These gentlemen rivals indulged in the most vicious mudslinging in the history of exploration. Until Robert E Peary finally came out the winner. But today his own records cast doubt on his claims. North Pole Conspiracy, 2010
We need to save the Arctic not because of the polar bears, and not because it is the most beautiful place in the world, but because our very survival depends upon it. Lewis Gordon Pugh
In the Arctic, things are already getting freaky. Temperatures have warmed three times faster than the global average. Jeff Goodell
The most important thing for people to know about the governance of the Arctic is that we have a chance now to act to maintain the integrity of the system or to lose it. To lose it means that we will dismember the vital systems that make the Arctic work. It’s not just a cost to the people who live there. It’s a cost to all people everywhere. Sylvia Earle
Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green. Madame Helena P Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine II
‘Oh!’ said Pooh again. ‘What is the North Pole?’ ‘It's just a thing you discover,’ said Christopher Robin, not being quite sure himself. A A Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926
We need to be realistic. There is very little we can do now to stop the ice from disappearing from the North Pole in the summer. And we probably cannot prevent the melting of the permafrost and the resulting release of methane. Prince Charles, lecture November 2008
Jim, just how much do you know about Ice Station Zebra? Ice Station Zebra 1968 starring Rock Hudson & Ernest Borgnine & Patrick McGoohan & Jim Brown & Tony Bill & Lloyd Nolan & Alf Kjellin & Gerald S O'Loughlin & Ted Hartley et al, director John Sturgess, boss to Hudson
Today, this morning, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre reports that the Arctic has less sea ice at winter’s end now than ever before. Noam Chomsky, lecture CIS Starr Forum March 2017, ‘Race to the Precipice’
The Canadian Arctic: an extraordinary natural wonder … frozen solid for over half the year … Unbelievably, people live here. Earth’s Natural Wonders I: Surviving the Extreme, BBC 2018
In the Spring of 1892 a charismatic Norwegian explorer called Fridjtof Nansen announced a daring plan to venture into all this: the Arctic, unmanned and unconquered. At the top of the world was the ultimate goal – the North Pole. Voyages of Discovery s1e3: Fridtjof Nansen, BBC 2006
The most extraordinary voyage in history. ibid.
Nansen’s crew now faced years alone in the Arctic. ibid.
Cadbury’s sponsored the expedition. ibid.
His voyage of discovery had failed … His obsession would not die. ibid.
Nansen had an extraordinary new plan. To leave the ship and ski the remaining 600 kilometres to the Pole. ibid.
You can lose over four litres of liquid a day … Melting as much snow as he needed … His remarkable talent for invention served him well. ibid.
They were almost going backwards. It was a gut-wrenching blow. ibid.
Man has fought wars in many terrible places over the century, but never has he fought in a place as terrible as this. This is where the men who ran the Second World War Arctic convoys went to work, among not just the German submarines and planes but Nature at her most brutal. PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster, Jeremy Clarkson reporting, BBC 2019
Codenamed PQ17 it was the largest [convoy] that had ever sailed … The biggest naval disaster of the 20th century. ibid.
The task of delivering these supplies to Russia would fall to the men of the merchant Navy. ibid.
In the first 12 convoys to make the voyage there were 103 ships and only 1 was lost. ibid.
Lapland is Europe’s last great wilderness. It stretches across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, way above the Arctic Circle. The far north of Finland is home to the Sami, Europe’s only indigenous people who still live off the land. But life for the Sami people is changing: Climate Change is affecting the Arctic more than any other part of the Earth. The melting ice is opening up opportunities for shipping routes, and there’s talk of a new railway, which could threaten the Sami’s way of life. Our World: Fighting for Lapland, BBC 2019
What happens what a frozen world locked away for millennia starts to thaw? In 2014, a helicopter flying over Siberia discovers something mysterious: a crater more than 80 feet wide and deeper than a 15-storey building. Sinkholes are nothing new but this is no ordinary sinkhole. More Siberian craters have since been discovered. There’s even evidence they may be appearing in Alaska. And they show no sign of stopping. Nova: Arctic Sinkholes, PBS 2022
Are the craters warning shots for our climate future? ibid.
Across the world gaping sinkholes have appeared due to water or erosion weakening the ground beneath, swallowing cars whole.
‘So this is a huge bomb. Methane bomb.’ ibid. expert
But the Arctic is warming faster. It’s currently heating up around twice as fast. ibid.
In some regions, the permafrost has started to thaw. ibid.
On July 5th 2018 an unprecedented event took place in Northern Siberia, along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, which has triggered all the alarms: a heatwave made temperatures soar 25 degrees Celsius above normal on those summer days to a record-breaking temperature of 33 degrees Celsius. Melting Point, Netflix 2018
2012: 97% of the frozen surface of Greenland started to thaw. ibid.