In a jaw dropping effort to get leaders to take action on global warming, endurance British explorer and endurance athlete Lewis Gordon Pugh has done the unthinkable - swim in the open waters at the North Pole.

Lewis Gordon Pugh swam Sunday for 18 minutes and 50 seconds in temperatures of –1.8 degrees in just a Speedo, cap and goggles.

“I am obviously ecstatic to have succeeded, but this swim is a triumph and a tragedy,” the 37-year-old British lawyer said after coming out of the water.

Are we gettting the message yet? In case the point needs to be belabored further, if Pugh was swimming in open water at the top of the planet, it means that a lot of ice is melting. That melt includes land base ice in Canada's North, in Greenland, Antarctica and alpine glaciers. It means the oceans are rising. It does not mean that selling swimming trips to the arctic is a new business opportunity, and it doesn't mean that global warming is a good thing.