Author Description

A new race to the North Pole is underway but not on sleds by bearded and wild-eyed adventurers looking for new challenges. The latest pioneers tend to be clean-shaven, hard-nosed salesmen in scheduled aircraft flying in to make money out of a bleak landscape. Cold is the new hot for Big Business and the melting ice caps have triggered a flurry of oil drilling, ore digging and bulk shipping. The chilly waters off Alaska, Siberia and Greenland have all been earmarked for new energy exploration. Mega-mines, such as the Mary river ore deposits in Canada and 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle, are being prepared for exploitation.