On Saturday November 17th, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its synthesis report titled “Climate Change 2007.” This report is the latest installment and a synthesis for the series of IPCC Assessments that have provided the most comprehensive scientific evidence regarding the state of the Earth's changing climate. Many of us already know the picture is getting worse and that the year 2007 is at a tipping point:

• According to a recent Guardian story, the Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and sea ice levels are now at record lows.
• So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast Passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open as well.
• The giant Ayles Ice Island, once located at the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, drifted off Canada's northern shores in 2005 and then broke in two in early October this year - far earlier than expected. The island is moving south because of the small extent of Arctic ice this past summer, influenced in turn by warmer conditions.

This is why the Will Steger Foundation is working diligently to inspire, empower and educate students, individuals, elected officials and other decision-makers – whether it means hosting 25 climate activists from campuses across Minnesota at Will Steger’s Homestead in Ely; or hosting a forum with Governor Tim Pawlenty in Duluth on the impacts global warming is having on Lake Superior and the surrounding watershed; or sharing Will’s Eyewitness to Global Warming with Minnesotans in Mankato, Duluth, Moorhead, Rochester, Albert Lea, Lakeville, Roseville, Winona and Sauk Rapids and encouraging Mayors to sign onto the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement and congratulating those that have already made the commitment. This is also why we have pulled together a younger team who will travel with Will over Ellesmere Island in March – to foster international cooperation and leadership, to see firsthand the changes global warming has brought to the Arctic-changes like the Ayles Ice shelf which recently broke in twoand is moving further south, and mobilizing the next generation of adventurers and eyewitnesses toglobal warming through partnerships, expeditions, outreach and social networking sites.

We have launched www.willstegerfoundation.org - to better showcase our efforts and our vision for the future. Please visit the site. Next month you will see a new www.globalwarming101.com - redesigned for easy navigability, more global warming-expeditions and educational resources. With the new launch of this site, you will be able to meet the Ellesmere team in depth, follow Jon Bowermaster as his team kayaks close to the Larsen Ice Shelf in Western Antarctica and bring your classroom or children reliable, authentic, hands on-lessons about global warming.

Sincerely yours,

Nicole Rom

November is the month for politics, and it’s no different at the Will Steger Foundation. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty joined with Will Steger this month. The pair, who spoke about climate change at a Duluth conference on environmental issues affecting Lake Superior, said the governor will join Will early next year on a series of visits to places in the state where climate change is already showing its impact, and Pawlenty reiterated that he may rendezvous with Will when the explorers return to view shrinking ice sheets on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island next spring.  Pawlenty said he wants to "reach out with Will to convince the skeptics." Read more at Star Tribune and The Office of the Governor

A local report covering Will’s attendance at the conference from Duluth’s WDIO-TV can be seen here.

Sir Richard Branson graces the cover of Outside Magazine’s December Issue. In the featured article, Richard mentions Will and the 2007 Baffin Island Expedition, in which he and his son Sam participated in earlier this year.

Richard and Sam Branson released a new book about their experiences on the Baffin Island Expedition. Published by Virgin Books, Arctic Diary: Surviving on Thin Ice, captures the daily accounts Sam and Richard experienced while on the trail.
Read more of Sam’s perspective in The Independent

Also published recently is McDougal Littell’s Literature textbook. This 1000+page classroom textbook is written for sixth grade students studying all forms of literature. Will Steger is featured in Unit 7: Life Stories, Biography and Autobiography. Several excerpts are drawn from Will’s Over The Top of the World book. 

National Geographic Adventure Magazine’s Dec./Jan issue has a large article about Will Steger, the Global Warming 101 Expedition on Baffin Island and the recent Greenland expedition Sarah and Eric, two Ellesmere team members, completed.

Oceans 8:  Antarctica 2008:  Jon Bowermaster, Will Steger’s longtime friend and National Geographic co-explorer, is pulling together the final details for his sea kayak, sail and mountaineering expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula.  With Will Steger acting as an expedition adviser, they will explore the remains of the Larsen Ice Shelf across which Will traveled by dogteam in 1989 and which collapsed into the sea in 2002 in an event linked by scientists to global warming.   Baffin Island Expedition member Elizabeth Andre will be writing educational content for Bowermaster’s expedition website and www.globalwarming101.com.  Meet the team and see the route at www.antarctica2008.com. 

Ellesmere Island 2008
Our six team members are busy preparing for the upcoming expedition.  Canadian Eric McNair-Landry is plotting potential expedition routes, figuring distances, contacting ice scientists, tracking the positions of the floating fragments of the Ayles Ice Sheet, and locating places to drop time-lapse cameras.  Canadian Sarah McNair-Landry is busy training twenty-six dogs for Ellesmere, one of which just had two puppies.  There is not quite enough snow in Iqaluit for her to train with sleds so she is running the dogs behind an ATV.  Sarah and Toby are also writing content for the back of the Ellesmere Island Expedition classroom map.  Norwegian Toby Thorleifsson is refreshing his knowledge of polar history and researching the Inuit who assisted both Peary and MacMillian.  He believes these previously ignored heroes of polar exploration deserve more attention.  Britain’s Sam Branson is on a promotional tour for his new book Arctic Diary that he and his father Sir Richard Branson wrote about their travels with the Global Warming 101 Baffin Island Expedition this past spring.  The level of interest he encounters on his book tours excites him for the amount of attention the upcoming Ellesmere Island Expedition will attract.  American Ben Horton is working on physical training, photography and his upcoming book project and just returned from the Philippines.  Norwegian Sigrid Ekran is living in Susan Butcher's old bush kennel in the interior of Alaska training her 22 dogs and 8 puppies for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race.  She is living a subsistence lifestyle, gathering most of her food from the land.

Education Outreach

The Will Steger Foundation Education staff can be found all over the country this fall. We’re spreading the word about our K-12 global warming curriculum, teacher workshops, lessons learned from the 2007 Baffin Island Expedition, our upcoming Ellesmere Island Expedition, and the youth climate movement that is sweeping the nation. Find out more at www.globalwarming101.com.

This fall the Will Steger Foundation will take its education program to:

• Melton Foundation Fellows Conference, Twin Cities, Oct 28
• Arctic Studies Department, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Nov 12
• Snow Walker's Convention, Hulbert Outdoor Center, Fairlee, VT, Nov. 10-11
• Power Shift 2007 National Youth Summit, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, Nov 2-5
• Orono High School, Orono, MN, Nov 8th
• Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Minneapolis, MN, Nov 14th
• Discovery Club, French Immersion School, St Paul, MN Nov. 15th
• Adams School, St Paul, MN, Nov 28
  

Will Steger Foundation Education Program Manager, Abby Fenton, has been implementing our Emerging Leaders Program through the following initiatives:

High School students network across the Twin Cities to stop global warming

The first quarterly meeting of Twin Cities metro area high school environmental clubs went off with huge success! The meeting drew sixty students from eight different urban and suburban high schools to Edina High School for an energetic two-hour brainstorming session. Students brainstormed over thirty-five different project ideas to engage students and faculty in global warming solutions at the high school level. They also addressed the challenge of recruitment and brainstormed a wide variety of creative strategies to draw bigger number of students into the cause. The meeting was co-sponsored by the Will Steger Foundation and the Alliance for Sustainability with support from Great River Greening and the Minnesota Energy Challenge.

A steering committee of student leaders from at least four different schools has been established to plan and organize future meetings. Students at Hopkins High School have volunteered to host the next meeting on December 18th.

Steger Homestead Hosts Student Global Warming Summit for MN Colleges

Eighteen students from five Minnesota colleges converged at Will Steger’s Homestead in Ely, MN for a student summit on global warming in late October. Carpooling in school sponsored vans and student cars, the group came with sleeping bags and headlamps, ready to spend a rustic weekend strategizing ways to work together to move Minnesota campuses towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future. The group, self-titled ‘Team Minnesota’, created a mission statement, action plan, and strategy for continued networking and collaboration between schools. They agreed to focus their combined efforts on launching the National Campus Energy Challenge (NCEC), successfully run last year at the state level. NCEC aims to engage campus across the nation in energy conservation competitions with exciting prizes, student dialog, and global warming education integrated into the campaign. To learn more about the Campus Energy Challenge visit www.ncec08.org.

Powershift 2007 Youth Climate Summit

The Will Steger Foundation joined over five-thousand students for the Powershift 2007 youth climate summit November 2-5 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Students gathered from campuses across the United States to strategize, organize, and mobilize around global warming solutions. Luminaries from the youth climate movement, including Bill McKibben, Billy Parish, and Eban Goodstein, drew cheers and applause from a packed stadium during the evening speaker series. Student organizers planned and facilitated over 100 panels and workshops related to global warming education and activism. The weekend culminated with a lobby day and a rally at Capitol Hill. Students flooded the offices of their Senators and Representatives urging their leaders to step up and lead the nation into a sustainable future. Senator Amy Klobuchar met with the Minnesota student contingent to voice her support for the youth climate movement and pledge her commitment to addressing global warming in the legislature.

“Everyone left Powershift feeling as though we had made an impact, that this would be day one in the revolution to a sustainable country. Yet we also realized that this was only day one and that there are more rallies, more steps, and more commitment needed in order for this change to occur. It is now up to our national leaders to pass legislation that advances a sustainable nation, and it is up to the citizens of the nation to continue to demand action.” - Erik Waller, WSF Intern and University of Minnesota sophomore.

Are you a young adult between the ages of 17 and 27? Do you care about global warming? Do you want to be part of the solution? What are you doing to shrink your footprint? We want to hear from you! Share your story at yourstory@globalwarming101.com and inspire other young people around the world to do the same. Together we can build a sense of hope and create change to save our planet.

Contact yourstory@globalwarming101.com for submission guidelines.

Knock That Junk Off
New anti-junk-mail service stops unwanted catalogs for free

A new service set up by the Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and the Ecology Center called Catalog Choice can put a stop to all those unwanted catalogs clogging your mailbox. Since its debut, some 45,000 people have signed up for the service, already halting nearly 200,000 unwanted catalogs. That's a small fraction of the 19 billion catalogs mailed in the U.S. each year (made out of 53 million trees), but it's a start. Did we mention it's free? 

check out www.catalogchoice.org

Sarah McNair Landry's expedition sled dog Denali, top left, recently gave birth to two puppies. Although the pups won't be accompanying mom on the expedition, they do make the McNair-Landry kennel in Iqaluit an exciting place.