[Too cold to speak properly, teacher thinks it's your fault that the world is allegedly overheating] - ABC News
Our tiny helicopter swooped out over the wide and sunny Bering Sea, its springtime surface still frozen white. We were east of Nome, Alaska, just south of the Bering Strait, where Russia and America almost touch. After 20 minutes, our pilot found the U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy -- first a tiny black speck in the far distance.
...
More and more now, science expeditions are heading into the frozen north to study all the exotic life forms swarming in the icy waters before human-induced global warming melts the sea ice completely. Scientists expect that to happen in summer for the first time in tens of thousands -- if not millions -- of years within the next decade.
...
When they go out on the ice, the scientists always take a "Bear Guard," a young Coast Guard officer who carries a large rifle in case a hungry polar bear, looking for seals, rambles by.
...
In the belly of Icebreaker Healy, high-tech science labs serve a nonstop rotation of scientists from the U.S., Russia, China, Germany and several other countries, all joining in the scientific knowledge rush trying to discover what life forms have long lived in this remote place before the threat of extinction -- due to the vanishing ice they need to live on -- becomes reality and carries them away forever.
...
We too had noticed how the extreme springtime cold at this high latitude -- immediately south of the Arctic circle where it was sunny but way way below zero -- sometimes had a dampening effect on your speech.
Your circulation system was sending silent alarm signal signals all over your body trying to figure out how best to apportion the warming blood for whatever survival needs were at hand, and the unaccustomed brain of us greenhorns didn't always have quite the ready supply it needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment