Twin Cities Cancel Winter Festival Event - Ice Too Thin For Crowds

[hatrack]

The Power Ice Auger World Championships on Pelican Lake were canceled last weekend because the ice wasn't thick enough to support hundreds of people and their equipment. The St. Paul Winter Carnival organizers called off plans for an ice-fishing contest on White Bear Lake and will instead offer St. Paul children the chance to try something called "snow fishing."

Balmy weather is even posing troubles for those "polar bear" swimmers whose foolhardiness isn't nearly as newsworthy in a winter when you can get by with a light jacket. But that's nothing compared to actual polar bears. They've really got problems. In fact, for the first time, wildlife biologists in Alaska have documented the drowning of polar bears whose habitat is literally melting away.

EDIT

Of course, the plight of the polar bear is just one of the many signs of global climate change, including hurricanes and other extreme weather, and warming trends across the continents. (Did you notice it's 16 degrees warmer than usual this winter?) Even those little Emperor penguins everybody loved in "March of the Penguins" have seen their population cut in half in the past 50 years, due to a warming trend in the 1970s that scientists link to global warming.

But until the dots start to connect to something we really care about, there may not be much political will to change global climate change. Close as we are to Canada, polar bears still don't hit that close to home.
Of course, if continued warm weather means they have to call off the big pond hockey tournament at Lake Calhoun this weekend, it might be time to start paying attention.

EDIT

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/13641326.htm

[Sal Minella]

1. I live on a lake where people used to have ice-shacks out after Thanks-

giving 25 years ago. Right now we've got open water out there.