Adventurer looks for climate change
Local adventure traveller Chris Cooper saw plenty of snow and ice on a recent excursion to Baffin Island, as you would expect.
Cooper, who has made numerous trips to Canada's arctic, was curious whether the massive frozen island had experienced signs of global warming, a much talked about topic of conversation during the past couple of years.
He talked to Inuit people who lived there, and they told him a different story than the one often heard in the media, that the ice is melting in the Earth's northern regions.
"The people living up there visually can't see anything up there at all," said Cooper, sitting in his Pitt Meadows home after completing his seventh arctic journey.
He couldn't see any signs of global warming during the group's 200-kilometre journey - Cooper said the glaciers were huge and frozen.
"You would never know there's global warming up there," said Cooper.
Global warming is certainly occurring, Cooper believes, but the degree to which it is happening has been blown out of proportion.
"It's way over the top," he said.
Global warming wasn't really a concern until about two years ago, said Cooper.
"But now we hear about it all the time on the news," he said.
Cooper travelled to Baffin Island, the world's fifth largest island, as part of a group of eight people. They skied, hauled a heavy load, and camped out during most of their time there.
"I just feel a fascination to do these sorts of things," said Cooper, who took some some spectacular photos of the frozen northern land during the adventure.
He finds the people as fascinating as the place's geography. The people of Baffin Island were outgoing, accommodating and kind, said Cooper, and they were equally curious about the lives of their southern visitors.
Cooper wouldn't have been able to afford to go if he hadn't had 25,000 Aeroplan points to redeem. The airfare would have cost him about $4,000.
On previous trips to the North, Cooper has had corporate sponsors. He also took travellers on a couple of commercial trips in the 1990s.
Cooper's adventurous spirit will next take him to Great Britain, where he is scheduled to embark next year on a canoe trip around part of Great Britain's coast for six months with Canadian and British paddlers.
He is to complete the second half of that adventure in 2009.
published on 07/06/2007
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