Lynn Desjardins, Marc Montgomery, Carmel Kilkenny
Photo Credit: rci

The LINK Online Sat. April 23, 2016

Your hosts Lynn Terry, and Marc

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Polar bear swimming in the Beaufort Sea, near Tuktoyaktuk, NWT, Canada April 27, 2009. The bears can swim for long distances, but prefer not to as it uses up vital energy resources.
Polar bear in the Beaufort Sea, near Tuktoyaktuk, NWT, Apr 27, 2009. It’s April but the sea here is ice-free. The bears can swim for long distances, but prefer not to as it uses up vital energy. © A.E.Derocher Uinv.Alberta

Climate change and the warming of the Arctic is having a number of effects on the ecosystem.

One is that polar bears which must have sea ice to hunt and survive, are now being forced to swim long distances, often more than 50 kilometres to find the ice.

Some older and younger bears perish on the quest, and even for healthy adults, the swim uses up vital energy reserves

Marc spoke to University of Alberta researcher and Arctic specialist, Andrew Derocher about the rapid changes taking place in the Beaufort Sea

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The Countdown 2˚ Clock tells how long before world temperatures go up by 2C, the threshold after which scientists predict climate change will wreak havoc and become irreversible. © countdown2degrees.com

It’s a giant clock, or at least an image of the clock which will be projected onto the side of a Montreal university wall.

But it’s not just an ordinary clock, it instead is a countdown clock, counting down the time to when it is expected the Earth’s atmosphere and global temperature will have reached two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages

That’s the point at which it is expected to be a “tipping point” after which extremely serious and possibly irreversible climatic change and environmental collapse may begin.

Lynn spoke to Concordia University professor . Damon Matthews, one of the people behind the idea.

Former Senator Hugh Segal was a major figure on Canada’s political scene, having been involved in a number of special committees and investigations.

He is also an author. His latest book is called Two Freedoms: Canada’s Global Future’,

When Carmel Kilkenny spoke to him she began by asking if he wrote the book because he was disappointed in Canada’s current foreign policy direction.

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