We promised to keep track of the sea ice that caused such a ruckus a couple of years ago. And in 2025 it’s doing what it typically does, bunching tightly with previous years (see for yourself here). But then we got breaking news, literally, that “Arctic Marine Response Station in Rankin Inlet open for the season” as of June 17. (Literally because we also heard that “The Canadian Coast Guard advises that the CCGS Jean Goodwill will conduct icebreaking operations in Frobisher Bay near Iqaluit, Nunavut, on or around June 23, 2026”) so apparently the fabled melting of Arctic ice hasn’t melted the Arctic ice yet. Oh, and in case you haven’t been there, we write smugly following our own Arctic trip this spring, Rankin Inlet, aka Kangiqiniq, “is the largest hamlet and second-largest settlement in Nunavut after the territorial capital, Iqaluit.” Largest here meaning just under 3,000 people because despite what you may have heard, cold is inimical to human flourishing. But the press release got us wondering, since we keep being told things like (in addition to this fabled melting of the ice) “climate change is felt most quickly in the Arctic” and “Our North is where climate change is felt first”, whether this remote iced-in station is opening earlier. How strange. It isn’t.
OK, in 2019 it opened on June 21. So you might say well, now it’s four days earlier, soon it will open in March. But in 2020 it was June 17. Same as this year. Oh, and that year it closed on Oct. 27. So the whole season is barely four months, and that only with modern diesel-powered ships breaking the ice. Or less, since in 2021 it closed on September 7, having opened on June 23.
By the way, the notice about icebreaking also explained that:
“Canadian Coast Guard icebreaking operations in the Arctic provide crucial support for commercial vessels transporting cargo and fuel. This support is vital as part of the annual northern sealift and community resupply.”
And if you’ve been up that way, we again say smugly, you’ll know the most crucial community resupply thing of all is not solar panels, wind turbines, traditional knowledge or a heat pump. It’s vast quantities of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel so people can survive and even be comfortable. Even in frosty Rankin Inlet.
Or Iqaluit, once Frobisher Bay, which now has a walloping 7,500 people though as recently as 1957 it had just 1,200. But the government has been encouraging people to move there to take advantage of free government stuff, and indeed as recently as 1991 it had only 3,552 inhabitants but then it became the capital of the territory and promptly doubled in size… not a good thing. But we digress.
The point is, it’s not even quite in the Arctic, being at “just” 63°44’ N. Nor is Rankin Inlet, at 62° 49’. And even so they’re ice-bound snowscapes, to the point that the boat crews for some reason train in Parry Sound, ON, well south of Sudbury. That reason being “due to ice conditions in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. Ayup.
As Wikipedia notes of Rankin Inlet, which is on the Canadian mainland:
“Due to the remoteness of the community and the fact that there is no all-season road to access the community, the primary mode of year-round transportation into and out of the community is by airplane.”
Those things don’t run on solar. And there’s a reason planes are preferred over, say, dogsleds across the ice, even though, we note, the Inshore Rescue Boat station (as it then was) only opened in 2022 on June 29, climate change having presumably gone into reverse or something even if the Arctic is warming 43 times faster than some other place.
The press releases don’t record what date it closed that year. They do however say that in 2023 the opening had roared all the way back to June 23. Must have been a stinker. Also it got renamed the Arctic Marine Response Station, that acronym being evidently more conducive to being rescued than a mere Rescue Boat station. Which again seems to use hydrocarbon-fueled boats not kayaks for their life-saving operations. (If any, since in 2020 they apparently responded to a total of six calls, leaving plenty of time for “Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (Inuit Traditional Knowledge) information sessions led by local elders” and “learning local Inuit place names”.)
In 2024, as the midnight sun blazed down, the gleaming new AMRS opened on June 21 and somehow they already knew it would close on Oct. 22 as it presumably did. And in 2025 it opened on June 25 so perhaps it got colder again, and was slated to close on Nov. 5.
Now you may object here that these data are ephemeral, covering only a short time span and a small area. But if that’s your reaction, and it should be, then you ought to take the same view of hysteria about rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic that in addition to covering a short time span and a small area aren’t even happening. Fair is fair.
