The annual summer retreat of the sea ice cloaking the Arctic Ocean appears to have ended with the ice not quite matching last year's extraordinary recession, polar scientists said.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Leading ice specialists in Europe and the United States for the first time have agreed that a ring of navigable waters has opened all around the fringes of the cap of sea ice drifting on the warming Arctic Ocean.

By many expert accounts, this is the first time the Northwest Passage over North America and the Northern Sea Route over Europe and Asia have been open simultaneously in at least half a century, if not longer.

Listening to the earth scientists at the Tallberg Forum speaking about the likely calamities caused by global warming, I had the sensation of entering a parallel universe. It is a universe where an adaptive and inventive human race has grown to over six billion people, created bountiful and rich civilisations built on fossil fuels, and has emerged as the most important specie to geologically alter the planet. Man-made greenhouse gas has placed the earth in a slow cooker. In this parallel universe, the phrase

The primary contributors to the sharp rise in global temperatures are humans in a sea-ice region of the Arctic Ocean, scientists have observed polar bears stalking, killing and eating other polar bears. Many species of plants across the middle and higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere are now flowering earlier than a few years ago. Migratory birds in Europe, Asia and Australia are arriving early. And the population of Emperor Penguins in parts of Antarctica has dropped by half over the past 50 years.

even though the earth is heating up there could be some relief, say recent studies. And we have to thank the Atlantic Ocean for this respite. Researchers at Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences,

While studies indicate that global temperatures may not increase over the next decade, there is no respite for the Arctic sea ice, this year at least. There are very high chances, about 60 per cent,

by Daniel Howden Denmark is to launch an effort to calm the scramble for the Arctic, bringing together the five coastal nations competing for what are believed to be the largest unclaimed reserves of oil and gas left on the planet.