The Arctic Circle. On Thin Ice

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Description

For thousands of years, the only threat to polar bears came from humans. Nothing has changed-except now it is fossil fuel consumption, not spears and guns, that pushes Ursus maritimus toward extinction. Depicting the hapless species as the proverbial canary in a coal mine, this program studies the intensifying impact of climate change on the Arctic region. Viewers learn how the entire Arctic food chain, from tiny zooplankton to the ringed seal to the mighty polar bear, is under stress from ice depletion-and how severe drops in sea-ice thickness are related to the alarming appearance of meltwater channels and crevasse-like pits across glaciers in Norway and Greenland. Animated views of these anomalies help illustrate what is happening to the frozen landscape.