New York Times environment/science writer and musician Andrew Revkin has a post about the song and the changes in the arctic on his "Dot Earth" blog: A Warm Update to a Chilly Arctic Ballad, and he says there will be an item on NPR sometime today.

He says,

Earlier this month, I tuned in to NPR while driving somewhere and caught one of the "winter songs" that are a focus on All Things Considered in this chilly season. As it happened, just a couple of days earlier I'd popped over to the studio of David Rothenberg, the musician and author of books on whales, birds and evolution, to record a new take on the 19th century ballad "Lord Franklin."
...
In our new take on the song, David added whale-ish notes on his bass clarinet along with samples of the crackle and shoosh of floating sea ice and we added two new verses taking the story from the ice-locked end of the little ice age to this era of warming, melting and opening seaways.
...
I've been singing this tune pretty much since I started getting serious about guitar in college. I had a particular interest in British ballads through the music of Pentangle, Martin Carthy and others (the links go to their versions of the Franklin ballad).
...

These are his added verses:

Two hundred years since his ship went down
The ocean rises over Franklin's ground.
The planet warms, ice melts away.
The Northwest Passage flows clear as day.

Ships and whales now pass by the pole.
Soon mighty trees will grow in Arctic soil.
Warming winds thaw frozen ground.
Soon polar bears may go where Franklin's bound.

In addition to the NPR performance, the blog post includes a short video of Revkin (sans guitar) singing the song while tentbound in the arctic in 2003.

He also says,

"You can hear the song on Soundcloud or my Myspace page. You can buy it here [from cdbaby] (we're donating all proceeds to the fund for the University of the Arctic). "

There's more to read at the blog post (my link at the top). The item hasn't shown up yet at NPR; I'll post the link when there is one.

This song has been a favorite of mine in connection with my own arctic wanderings and dreams, long ago.

~ Becky in Tucson