Polar bear. Arcticphoto

On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear. By Richard Ellis. Knopf; 416 pages; $28.95. Buy from Amazon.com After the Ice: Life, Death and Geopolitics in the New Arctic. By Alun Anderson. Smithsonian; 304 pages; $26.99. Virgin Books; £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk THE Arctic is changing faster and more dramatically than any other environment on the planet. The ice that defines it is melting with alarming speed, taking with it life that can survive nowhere else. Oil, gas, shipping and fishing interests have been heading into the newly open water, with diplomats, lawyers, and now authors, in their wake. In “On Thin Ice” Richard Ellis, a writer and illustrator, paints a natural history of the icon of the north, the polar bear. Well-versed in the complicated history and politics of whaling, he describes the long tradition of Arctic explorers who proved themselves by taking on the white bear. Admiral Nelson’s encounter as a plucky 14-year-old midshipman fighting only with the butt of his musket is surely a myth, but others are true. Young bears, captured as they swam after the bodies of their newly killed mothers, were caught and sent to zoos and circuses. One early 20th-century big-top act featured 75 polar bears at once. Even today, zoo enclosures are still typically a millionth of the area of a wild adult’s range. The climate is rarely suitable: the resident polar bear in Singapore has turned green from algae growing within the hollow hairs of its coat. Mr Ellis draws on the accounts of other writers and historians, and often returns to the threat that hunters pose to the survival of the species. Although banned in Norway, America and Russia, the killing continues in Greenland and Canada, where hunters in helicopters and skidoo-riding Inuit Indians both use high-powered assault rifles to bring down their quarry. Ironically it is in the waters towards the north of those two hunting nations that the ice will last longest. In his new book, “After the Ice”, Alun Anderson, a former editor of New Scientist, offers a clear and chilling account of the science of the Arctic and a gripping glimpse of how the future may turn out there. …

The bleakest outlook in the world via Apocadocs