Helping the world plan for Polar Meltdown

World leading polar explorer and environmentalist, Pen Hadow, announced an

international scientific endeavour to predict the meltdown date of the North

Pole permanent ice cap more accurately, thereby helping governments around the

world to prepare for the significant consequences.

Hadow (45) is leading the Vanco Arctic Survey to capture the most detailed

and accurate data ever recorded on the thickness of the North Pole ice cap which

floats on the Arctic Ocean. This unique data will help scientists determine how

long an ice cap will remain around the North Pole. Its disappearance will cause

accelerated climate change, rising sea levels, and even geo-political conflicts

over resources which will affect almost every region of the world.

Scientists' current predictions for the melting of the ice cap vary wildly,

from 100, to just 16, years from now. The ice at the North Pole is currently

decreasing at a rate of 100,000 square kilometres per year due to global

warming.

Setting out next February, 2008, the Vanco Arctic Survey team - comprising

Hadow, leading polar explorer Ann Daniels, and specialist Arctic photographer

Martin Hartley - will undertake a 120 day, 2000km crossing of the ice cap in

temperatures as low as minus 50ºC. The survey team will depart from Point

Barrow, Alaska, pulling 'sledge-boats', and on occasions even swimming

across stretches of open water, reaching the North Geographic Pole in June.

Vanco, the global telecoms company, is the title sponsor

of the project, but is representing the Telecommunications Industry as a whole.

Vanco believes that the Telecommunications Industry has a unique and vital

role in developing a sustainable world where economic growth can go hand in hand

with environmental protection. ETNO, the European Telecommunications Network

Operators Association, indicated in its 2006 Sustainability Report that if 20%

of business travel in a major European country was replaced with an alternative,

such as video conferencing, CO2 emissions would be reduced by over 5 million

tonnes. Multiplied across tens of thousands of multinational businesses across

the globe, the impact of meeting electronically rather than physically is

substantial.