What connects oil at $135 a barrel with last month's discovery of huge cracks in the Ward Hunt ice shelf off Ellesmere Island at the top of Canada's Arctic archipelago? And what might connect those two things with a new, even Colder War?
The cracks in the ice, further evidence that the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean is melting fast, were discovered by scientists tagging along with a Canadian Army snowmobile expedition that was officially called a "sovereignty patrol." The army was showing the flag because Canada, like the other Arctic countries, suspects that valuable resources will become accessible there once the ice melts. And the most valuable of those resources are oil and gas.
The strongest evidence for accelerated melting is the fact that more and more of the Arctic sea ice is thin "first-year" ice. Only about a meter thick, it spreads across the ocean each winter, but tends to melt the following summer.