The Blogger

Although I’ve been to the Arctic a few times now, it hasn’t lost any of its excitement. A lot of people find it hard to understand why I want to spend some of the summer in the “frozen North”. Maybe it’s coming from a country like Scotland with its “challenging“ climate that accounts for my attraction to snow and ice. Not that we ever had -40°C there, which is the kind of temperature I sometimes find myself in on “Ice Blog” kind of trips. Mongolia in February is the coldest experience I remember. Travelling in the Arctic in spring and summer is mild, by comparison.
I first visited Spitsbergen in 2007, before the days of the Ice Blog. The climate issue is more worrying than ever, especially given the widespread lack of interest and increase in scepticism amongst the general public since the Copenhagen debacle and the negative publicity given to some of the climate scientists. Then comes the realisation that it will be very difficult to reach a binding agreement of any substantial nature in the next round of UN climate talks.