So, I was boopin’ around on the web tonight. I plopped to my usual iGoogle home page and gasped at an article entitled, “Ice-free North Pole… maybe” by TG Daily’s Humphrey Cheung. Of course, I clicked and read. I could not believe my eyes. Apparently, scientists are saying that there is a 50/50 chance that the North Pole may melt this summer.

My first concern was *of course!* Santa and his workshop. And his reindeer. They’ll have to move to the South Pole, I guess.

Then I remembered a little thing called global warming. You know, one of the major reasons why I started this blog- the huge reason why I want to be green and want to help other people incorporate little green choices into their day-to-day lives.

Think about what the Earth would look like when the northern cap is melted. You could feasibly row from Scandinavia to Newfoundland by taking a shortcut through what-once-was Santa’s newlywed palace with Mrs Claus. Of course, I’m no Magellan– rowing that far would be exhausting, but jokes aside- this is a serious issue.

Okay, who did it? Here are some possible suspects…

1. Dark Ice: “Soot from cars, forest fires and factories could be causing the snow and ice to melt faster. Pure ice and snow is white and reflects light and heat, but the ice turns grey or even black when soot falls onto it. According to Charlie Zender, a climate physicist at University of California, Irvine, this so-called dark ice could be the cause of 94 percent of Artic warming.”

2. Underwater volcanoes.

3. The natural warming of the planet (aside from global warming being exacerbated by CFC emissions).

4. CFC Emissions and the climate crisis.

What does this mean? (aside from Santa becoming a hobo…)

1. Polar bears are in MAJOR trouble.

2. There is now a Northwest passage between Europe and North America.

3. This whole heating up of the planet is moving a bit too fast for my liking.

The NOAA has set up a live webcam so you can watch the icecap melt which must be about as exciting as watching paint dry and as terrifying as watching the movie 1408 (look, don’t give me a hard time, I found that film TERRIFYING).

At the end of his article, Cheung tells us that Arnold Schwarzenegger is planning to slash Cali’s emissions levels to the values recorded at 1990 by the year 2020. His quip at the end kind of made the article for me:

“Perhaps ‘Mr Freeze’ will save us?”