Polar bears drown, islands appear in Arctic thaw

Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic 2006 summer thaw widely blamed on global warming. "We know about three new islands this year that have been uncovered because the glaciers have retreated," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental adviser to the governor of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about 1,000 km from the North Pole. The largest is about 300 by 100 meters, he told Reuters.

"We saw a couple of polar bears in the sea east of Svalbard - one of them looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted," said Julian Dowdeswell, head of the Scott Polar Research Institute in England. He said that the bears had apparently been stranded at sea by melting ice.

"The Arctic is likely to warm more than any other part of the world" because of global warming, said Dowdeswell. Darker water and soil, once exposed, soaks up far more of the sun's heat than mirror-like ice and snow. The melt may also open up the Arctic to more exploration for oil, gas and minerals, increase fisheries and open a short-cut shipping route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

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