Gordon Shepherd, WWF international policy and Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic research, at Geneva climate conference
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-quarter of the world’s population is likely to be affected by rising ocean levels provoked by melting Arctic ice, a WWF study released 2 September shows. The Arctic is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, the new Arctic Climate Feedbacks report shows. As a result, the level of oceans can be expected to rise by one metre by the end of the 21st century, twice as fast as current predictions suggest.
The report pulls together the most recent data covering the Arctic and its impact. It includes the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in global sea level projections, which were not included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2007 assessment of the Arctic, widely relied on. The addition of these areas appears likely to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the new data shows.
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
The Arctic holds twice as much carbon as the rest of the world and the study indicates that as warming speeds up, carbon released by warmer soils could reach significant levels.
”Simply put, if we do not keep the Arctic cold enough, people across the world will suffer the effects,” says Martin Sommerkorn, the WWF’s senior climate change advisor who covers the Arctic.
The WWF has issued the report in the run-up to world leaders meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009, where they will negotiate a new treaty on carbon emissions.
”If we can convince the politicians who represent people that climate and people are the same thing, then maybe we will get somewhere in Copenhagen,” Gordon Shepherd told a group of science experts at the World Climate Conference (WCC-3) in Geneva to whom the report was presented.
WWF experts on YouTube, on issues raised by rapid Arctic ice melt that is more rapid than expected
News story, GenevaLunch, 2 September 2009.
Filed under: Featured story, International organizations
Tags: Arctic Climate Feedbacks report, Arctic ice melt, climate change, Copenhagen, Denmark, global warming, Gordon Shepherd, Martin Sommerkorn, oceans rising, study, WCC-3, WMO, WWF, YouTube
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7 Responses to “WWF warns that arctic ice melt rate doubling”
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September 3rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
What a strange thing it is that the Arctic and Antarctic ice is melting at such a fast rate when the “scientists” employed by the fossil fuel industries have been informing us for so long that we are actually entering an ice age! I thought that in an ice age the extent and depth of the ice would increase and not diminish at such a fast rate. It looks as though they may have got that one wrong.
Perhaps they are also wrong in assuring us that our excessive use of fossil fuels and our cutting down more and more forests have nothing to do with climate change.
The implications for us humans and for the rest of the life on this planet of the extent and speed of global warming is so horrific that it is really amazing to see the inaction of governments. Australia’s plans, for instance, are so inadequate that one cannot help but despair.
What we are facing is an emergency situation that is so serious that all of us need to respond to it as a red alert scramble rather than as the laid back way that this problem is being tackled. No stone should be left unturned, no effort spared to achieve zero greenhousegas emissions as fast as possible, preferably today.
With the “tipping points” like the release of methane from the melting permafrost regions most likely already irreversible, even the best that we can do will not prevent huge dislocations and a “megadeath”. However, if we do scramble as fast as we can, we may be able to save some life on earth. Maybe even some life as we know it.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Ah yes, the earth that changes, but let’s not look too closely as the Great Heater itself, old Sol?
Disingenuous at the least, and downright hubristic, the display of great swathes of ice-blue water, in the context of an article of vicious warming: are these new? are they puddles that accumulate EVERY summer? Or are they just pretty pictures that support the conjecture?
MOREOVER, the extent of sea-ice, if one is to believe NASA and the other agencies that regularly measure such things, is not significantly different today than it was decades ago. We have years where there is less, years where there is more. So what?
BUT the main science that is higgly-piggly on its head is the idea that melting ice in the Arctic is going to raise sea levels. ALERT, hubrists! When solid water melts, its density INCREASES, its volume shrinks!!! You can prove it with nothing more sophisticated than a glass filled with party ice and water. Fill about 3/4 the way up, put a piece of tape on the outside where the water level is. Let it melt. Look at the water level.
I KNOW … the hubrists are quick to retort that it is Greenland’s and the Antarctic’s great ice sheets that, if they come unglued and slip into the sea, the sea level will rise markedly. That would be nice and good, would that the great ice sheets of our earth be sitting on downward sloped basement rock. They aren’t. They’re all in deep basins, and only flow from pressure migration, not lubricated flow. (Except at the margins, but that’s always been the case).
WE DEFINITELY are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rather prodigeous rate, to be sure. Yet, its effect as a greenhouse gas is all but saturated. If (in the infrared) the atmosphere was a bucket of black paint, adding more black isn’t going to make it blacker. Yes, the pigment is a good absorber of light, but adding more to the saturated (black) mix, isn’t going to increase its absorption.
I MAKE NO ARGUMENT against conservation of our resources, or against deploying alternative energy production systems, or in reforestation projects, or the application of laws at sea that conserve the use of the oceans. In fact, I advocate the same … but not backed by the hubris of a warmer earth.
LIKE IT OR NOT, whether we’re exemplary citizens, separating our plastics, bottles, cans, newspapers, greenstuff, electronica, and so on, even if we do all that, one only has to look at the REST of the world, the 10 million square kilometer “Pacific Trash Patches” (there are 2 of them), hosting billions of tons of the same kind of wastes, not-conserved, not-separated, just “thrown away” … to know that our own efforts are pathetically prosaic in the light of the Great Unprincipled Third World.
FOR THE THIRD WORLD will repeatedly lobby that they are “po’”, and how dare we in the West chagrin their ideas and ideals of self-determined growth and profligacy? How dare we? After all, we have had the last 150 years to pollute, destroy, clear and change our lands, rivers and oceans … and now we’re the big Tunas, ya know? Shouldn’t they too have a chance to suck it all up, chew it all up, and pump out those foetid green-brown oil slicks into the sea? No? Why not?
THATS THE POINT: We can whisk ourselves at 800 kilometers per hour, flight after flight, to Kyoto (or Mumbai, or Nairobi, Johannesburg, Berlin, Beijing, Ottowa or Buenos Aires) … we, the representatives of the United States, or any of the participating countries, to earnestly discuss the voluntary reductions that the West (exclusively) must make to prevent the conflagration of our precious Planet … and we can agree to use less, to conserve more, to buy more curly fries made in responsible canola oil, to buy more curly lightbulbs to consume less juice (from the Chinese, of course), and so on, while the same producers of the Great Pacific Trash Pool … go on consuming MORE oil, MORE coal, MORE gas, and producing MORE shit, MORE trash, MORE poisons, wastes, noxious dusts, aerosols, teratogens, opportunistic pathogens, (and frankly, more shiploads of shitty products) …
I know I sound cynical, but I’m convinced of only one thing: UNTIL SUCH TIME as all countries and all peoples of the world are held in equal bond for their transgressions, then there is little point in the hubris that demands only one side to continually “do its share” and more. Its stupid, actually, to entertain any rational idea that (supposing it really is bad), that the West can cure the “problem” of excessive carbon dioxide production solely.
INDEED, all you have to do, no matter what you think, is look at the oil, gas and coal production worldwide. Since 99% of it becomes carbon dioxide ultimately, then every ton, barrel and therm is going to produce more CO2, no matter WHO uses it. It is a law of physical chemistry.
SO, our best bet might most reasonably be (again, supposing that CO2 is an issue, which I and many fellow scientists are disinclined to entertain) might most reasonably be to use the “carbon credits” exclusively to build up the biosphere, to grow WAY more plants, to green the desert sands, to reforest the stripped tropics, to limit the rainforests destruction, to pay people to live in cities …
FAT CHANCE? Well then, just listen to the hubrists … They’re like the cocky swains of the 1960’s who foretold that the world was going into an Ice Age … but who hadn’t a clue as to why, or how, or when.
SO, as an act not of defiance, but of admission, I don’t separate the trash, I don’t worry about the green waste, or the plastics from the bottles, from the newspapers. I know full well that all that separated stuff goes to a big dump, where it is piled topsy-turvey, where it is rolled down assembly lines populated with the Low of the Low of our society, vacuous, limp, half-assed, laconic, torpid and morobund. It is RE-separated, and choice pieces are set aside for plastic 2-by-4s and other marvels of our age. It becomes fleece jackets, more newspaper, cardboard, and additional grit for our highways. But 75% of it (yep, its that much), just goes to landfill, anyway.
THE POLITICIAN / SCIENTIST who mandates that we need to develop ultra-high speed robotics that can separate the trash, minutely, accurately and reliably … is the woman who I believe really will change things for the better. And we’ll all be able to dump ALL our trash into a single unified bin again. That’s how we change the world, by leadership, not by minionship. Likewise, we change our energy use patterns to follow the sun, our natural diurnal friend, and then put zillions of solar power plants everywhere to make the resource available during the same hours. Atomic power is good, especially if we get off our butts and look at the deep-cycle alternatives. Wind, sure … but not ridiculously. It is better to use the Sun, as it is here, every day. We’ll have to solve the problems of portable storage compactness (energy density), but I daresay with hundreds of thousands of ill-employed scientists and engineers, the fine resources of the governments of the First World ought to be able to solve this one. Then, and only then, will the consumption of oil, coal and gas product decline. ONLY THEN.
GoatGuy
September 5th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Well said GoatGuy!! So what’s that make these men? Fear-mongers( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,300539,00.html ) ? Surely they’ve observed ice melt in a glass of this or that. I’m only 21, but the lack of reallity or truth really show’s through on this one.
So I suppose one has got to wonder: How the hell did we get here??!
September 5th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Repetition of Easter Island, exploitation
till Doom-day
September 5th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
So tell me..
If global warming is all man-made, then why are all the other planets (except mercury?) warming up also?
This is old news. Dump the cap ‘n’ trade.
Here’s a link : http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html
… and if that isn’t enough, just ask Google questions like “How much Co2 does a volcano release?” – and compare that with work industry, and you start to formulate another picture about carbon cycles.
… also, Every self respecting scientist knows Al Gore’s suppositions about temperature following carbons patterns is wrong – its the reverse! Carbon follow temperature.
Maybe that’ll get you thinking for yourself a little, and start to question the world we live in. How can we be preached to about global warming, and yet it all be based on lies?
- another one for you. Try and find out how many scientists on the IPCC (International Pannel on Climate Change) actually have qualifications and credentials relating to climatology.
You might not like the answer.
Is your world beliefs crashing down around you yet?
If you’re looking for the truth, it may only just have begun.
September 6th, 2009 at 8:38 am
The sky in Beijing & man-made climate change.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
New record low for Arctic Ice recovery. The first week of November 2009 sees ice recovery less than record setting 2007, thus supplying further evidence that arctic melt is increasing at a record pace.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
The real rate of melt may be higher than evidence suggests. Sun spot activity is currently at a minimum in an 11 year cycle. That makes the sun cooler. Sun spots are predicted to increase over the next 5 years making the sun hotter and may well give us more record breaking arctic melts.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
(See: The Maunder Minimum)