"From Disaster to Catastrophe -- What's Obama's Endgame In the Gulf?"  Fox News headline, July 15. 

The headline suggests that there is a difference between a disaster and a catastrophe, and that catastrophes are worse. I suppose most people would agree, but it's interesting to delve a little deeper into what we mean by a catastrophe. The term is derived from Greek words having to do with 'growing down' which makes sense. In biological terms, a catastrophe might be defined as a natural or human impact on a population of organisms that exceeds one or more of the physical or chemical limits within which that population can continue to exist. In a word, extinction.

Arctic Heroes #2 - North Pole 1


The first ever weather station on an ice floe was North Pole 1, set up May 21 1937 by a team of Russians and manned by four heroes.  The record of that event shows that there was more ice in 1937 than today, it was thicker, and it extended down the entire east coast of Greenland.  But thick or not, once the floe moved into the Fram Strait it was in danger of breaking up.

Arctic conditions at the time were so bad that no less than five icebreakers were involved in a chain of events when three of them got trapped in the ice.  The Malygin, Sedov and the Sadko - formerly SS Lintrose - became trapped in ice in a region near the New Siberian Islands.