Drawing on new data on the rate of melting arctic ice
released
Wednesday by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), leading
scientific experts and environmental campaigners upped the level of
alarm and issued a renewed call to action by calling the growing reality
of climate change a "planetary emergency".
"We are in a planetary emergency," said NASA climate expert James Hansen (Photo: Greenpeace/Danile Beltra) The
NSIDC reports shows that the melted areas of Arctic sea ice had not
only hit a record low this year, but that it had dramatically receded to
levels not previously anticipated. NSIDC director Mark Serreze
expressed shock by the center's data, declaring “
we are now in uncharted territory”.
Kumi Naidoo, the international head of Greenpeace, which held a
public forum on Wednesday in New York to discuss the climate change
crisis, described the efforts to curb greenhouse emissions and the race
to save the Arctic as "
the defining environmental battle of our era".
The ice report from NSIDC, coupled with reams of growing evidence
about human-caused climate change, said Naidoo, "represents a defining
moment in human history."
"In just over 30 years we have altered the way our planet looks from
space," he said, "and soon the North Pole may be completely ice free in
summer. Rather than dealing with the root causes of climate change the
current response from our leaders is to watch the ice melt and then
divide up the spoils."
"Rather than dealing with the root causes of
climate change the current response from our leaders is to watch the ice
melt and then divide up the spoils." —Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace
Naidoo was joined by other prominent figures, including author and co-founder of
350.org
Bill McKibben, who said the global response to the rapidly melting ice
of the arctic ice sheets and glaciers has been exactly opposite to
what's needed. Instead of responding with "alarm, or panic, or a sense
of emergency" he said, the response "has been: 'Let's go up there and
drill for oil'. There is no more perfect indictment of our failure to
get to grips with the greatest problem we've ever faced."
It was fellow panelist and NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who called the current reality a "planetary emergency".
"It's hard for the public to realize," Hansen said, "because they stick their head out the window and don't see much going on."
The science, Hansen added, is "crystal clear" and lamented the
distance between what scientists understand about what's happening in
the arctic and around the world and what the average person might know.
"If we burn all the fossil fuels, we create certain disaster," he said.
As Naidoo indicated by his group's focus on the melting arctic, the
dramatic reduction of ice there has been a focus of many scientists
because they understand that changes in the polar regions has important
implications for global climate system as a whole.
"Between 1979 and 2012, we have a decline of 13 percent per decade in
the sea ice, accelerating from six percent between 1979 and 2000," said
oceanographer Wieslaw Maslowski with the US Naval Postgraduate School,
speaking at the Greenpeace event.
"If this trend continues we will not have sea ice by the end of this decade," said Maslowski.
"'Let's go up there and drill for oil' —
There is no more perfect indictment of our failure to get to grips with
the greatest problem we've ever faced." Bill McKibben, 350.org
Dr. Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist at the NSIDC, is currently
aboard a Greenpeace ship in Svalbard, Norway in the Arctic having just
returned from conducting scientific research into the region’s record
breaking ice melt. She said:
“This new record suggests the Arctic may have entered a new climate
era, where a combination of thinner ice together with warmer air and
ocean temperatures result in more ice loss each summer.”
“The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic
atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the Northern
Hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as
droughts, heat waves and flooding.”
Bringing the arctic issue to the local level, Caroline Cannon, a
leader of the Inupiat community of Alaska and recipient of the Goldman
Prize for her environmental activism, told the audience that her
indigenous community depends on Arctic fishing and hunting for survival.
"My people rely on that ocean and we're seeing dramatic changes," said Cannon. "It's scary to think about our food supply."
The panel, as
Agence France-Presse reports, stressed "that a
string of recent extreme weather events around the globe, including
deadly typhoons, devastating floods and severe droughts, show urgent
action on emission cuts is needed."
And AFP
added:
The extreme weather include the drought and heat waves that struck the United States in the summer.
One consequence of the melt is the slow but continuous rise in the ocean level that threatens coastal areas.
Another result is the likely release of large amounts of methane -- a
greenhouse gas -- trapped in the permafrost under Greenland's ice cap,
the remains of the region's organic plant and animal life that were
trapped in sediment and later covered by ice sheets in the last Ice Age.
Methane is 25 times more efficient at trapping solar heat than carbon
dioxide, and the released gases could in turn add to global warming,
which in turn would free up more locked-up carbon.
Greenpeace, led by their
Save the Arctic
campaign, is calling for the creation of a sanctuary in the uninhabited
area around the North Pole and a ban on unsustainable industrial
activity in the remainder of the Arctic.
"I hope that future generations will mark this day as a turning
point," Kumi Naidoo summed up. "When a new spirit of global cooperation
emerged to tackle the huge challenges we face. We must work together to
protect the Arctic from the effects of climate change and unchecked
corporate greed."
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