That makes the Arctic a textbook illustration of the commons-despoiling tragedy that climate change is.
To maintain a romantic notion of the Arctic as a place time has forgotten where life is simple and basic would be an insult to the people that call it home and be a mistake.
Why should the melting Arctic, a product of man-made global warming, be any different?
But more importantly, I'm leaving the Arctic with a sense that its communities are at a crossroads.
According to both groups of researchers, most areas of the world had higher than average temperatures in 2012 while the Arctic experienced a record breaking ice melt.
Since the Arctic as a whole is responding to climate change earlier and more acutely than the rest of the planet, we should think of it as an early warning system -- a proverbial canary in a coalmine.
Naval war games last fall anticipated security challenges in the near future: how to deal with terrorists in the Arctic, how to deal with a rogue ship carrying nuclear weapons in the Arctic, how to move a U.S. fleet around the top of the planet, how to help clean up an oil spill.
Now the permanent observers are being joined by China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore and Italy, meaning that all of the key Asian economies now have a seat at the Arctic table, even though they will not have a vote on the Arctic Council.
An arbitration panel ruled that TNK-BP , BP's Russian venture, which is half owned by Mr Blavatnik and other Russian shareholders, must be included in a proposed project by BP and Rosneft to explore energy fields in the Arctic, if a related share-swap deal between BP and Rosneft is to proceed.
He is proud of having been a youthful deckhand on an Arctic salvage boat and a roustabout in the Alberta oilfields.
Don Gautier, who works for that agency, retorts that it has never done a systematic study of the Arctic, or put a figure on its energy riches.
According to a recent paper by Francis and Vavrus in Geophysical Research Letters, the preferential warming of the Arctic, with a concomitant decline in late-summer sea ice, results in a more meandering jet stream, which is why Sandy shifted westward, rather than being shoved out to sea by the normally strong westerlies associated with the jet.
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Even if it meant nothing for sea levels, though, a melting Arctic (see video-graphic) still means a lot for the ecology of the region.
Jock Dempster, who was 85, received the Arctic Star during a ceremony at Downing Street in March.
The strait is the exit route from the Arctic Ocean, a current carrying the floes south into the Atlantic.
Arctic Island - a broker-dealer and very active in developing for the space.
His struggle ended in success when Prime Minister David Cameron presented the newly-created Arctic Star to a group of 40 veterans.
Epstein discussed his findings on the Arctic Sunrise, a 164-foot-long (50 meter long) icebreaker operated by Greenpeace, and moored in Boston Harbor.
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The Canadian Arctic Archipelago is a vast area, comprising some 36, 000 islands.
The US Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic has around a quarter of the world's undiscovered and recoverable oil and gas reserves.
The most controversial provision, however, would allow drilling in the Arctic reserve, a proposal that has drawn the ire of many environmental groups.
The cost of extra safety investment may slow Arctic drilling for a while, especially as we are in a glut of cheap shale gas.
For Royal Dutch Shell, maybe the action needs to stretch out to 2028 to take the risk out of an Arctic platform or a transcontinental pipeline.
The Arctic is already a big source of minerals, including zinc in Alaska, gold in Canada, iron in Sweden and nickel in Russia, and there is plenty more to mine.
Warming Arctic seas and a marked decline in sea ice during the summer months made it likely, they concluded, that numbers would fall by one third within three generations (45 years).
For the next three years Drifting Apart hopes to generate vibrant, competitive and sustainable communities, by expanding the capacity of unique growth initiatives and opportunities in the Northern and Arctic regions in a resource efficient way.
For Royal Dutch Shell (nyse: RDSA - news - people ), maybe the action needs to stretch out to 2028 to take the risk out of an Arctic platform or a transcontinental pipeline.
However, although the sea ice is shrinking -- covering less total area as well as becoming thinner -- the Arctic is still a world ruled by ice, a lesson well learned when the Polar Pioneer encountered heavy pack ice between Svalbard and the eastern coast of Greenland, forcing the captain to divert the boat and drop speed to just a few knots.
Under different circumstances, Arthur McKechnie would have been one of those people you read about in the newspaper: the schizoid boy who jumps out of a window thinking he can fly, the mad explorer who crosses the Arctic with nothing but a rucksack and a pair of crampons.
The U.S. Navy is staging the aquatic-equivalent of a dog-and-pony show in the Arctic Ocean this month with a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
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