Sept. 4 News: Sailboat Becomes First To Sail Through Northwest Passage, Becoming ‘Visual Of Declining Polar Ice’

First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010.

Warming global temperatures and melting polar ice caps have helped a trio of explorers go where few men have gone before. [Los Angeles Times]

The crew, which also includes Edvin Buregren, a Swede, and Nicolas Peissel, a Canadian, set out on the quest to bring awareness to the changing climate that has radically reshaped the planet’s North Pole.

“Our approach to sail across a historical stretch of water that has traditionally been frozen is meant to be a clear visual example of the extent of declining polar ice,” the group said in a statement.

The Democrats’ official platform expected to be approved at the party’s national convention on Tuesday calls for an international deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions. [The Hill]

If you look on a much grander scale, the disparity of record highs in the U.S. vs. record lows has grown wider every decade since the 1970s. [Climate Central]

It could take a week to wrestle the fire churning through the Angeles National Forest into submission, authorities said Monday as the blaze grew to 3,600 acres and injured four people, including at least two of the 500-plus firefighters who had swarmed into the hills above Azusa. [Los Angeles Times]

International pledges to reduce greenhouse gases may fail to stop global warming from rising to twice the level deemed safe by United Nations scientists, Climate Action Tracker said. [Businessweek]

Vilas Dinkar Mukane lives halfway around the world from the corn farmers of Iowa, but the Indian sharecropper is at risk of losing his livelihood for the same reason: not enough rain. [New York Times]

The last decade saw the end of cheap oil, the magic growth ingredient for the global economy after the second world war. This summer’s increase in maize, wheat and soya bean prices – the third spike in the past five years – suggests the era of cheap food is also over. [Guardian]

The drought is an ill portent for the snack food world. All across the Midwest, where rows of popcorn normally thrive alongside fields of soybeans, U.S. popcorn farmers have watched in horror as stifling, triple-digit temperatures and weeks without rain withered crops. [Reuters]

Israel has developed some of the world’s most advanced solar energy equipment and enjoys a nearly endless supply of sunshine, but when it comes to deploying large-scale solar technology at home, the country remains in the dark ages. [Daily Herald]