Where there's melting ice, there's cash 11 October 05

Not everyone thinks that global warming is a bad idea. Pat Broe, for example, stands to make a mint as rising temperatures melt the sea ice off Canada’s remote northern coast. Mr Broe bought a derelict Hudson Bay port off the Canadian government in 1997 for the princely sum of $7. Now that his dream of an ice-free north-west passage is on the verge of becoming a reality, Mr Broe smells money. Lots of it. And so do a whole bunch of other entrepreneurs and chancers, all determined to make a fast buck from oil and shipping as the North Pole’s million-year-old ice-cap melts down irreversibly over the next few decades. Read the full scary story from the New York Times.

No-one’s making money down in Amazonia, however, where the worst drought for 40 years has gripped the fragile rainforest. Some experts have linked the lack of rainfall with the unusually active hurricane season in the north Atlantic – all the rising air in hurricanes descends over the Amazon tropics, suppressing rainfall. “If the warming of the north Atlantic is the smoking gun, it really shows how the world is changing,” says Dan Nepstadt, a world expert on rainforest ecology. “The Amazon is a canary in a coal mine for the earth. As we enter a warming trend we are in uncertain territory.” Read more on Reuters.