UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 5, 2010 (IPS) – The frozen cap trapping billions of tonnes of methane under the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean is leaking and venting the powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, new research shows. It is not known if this may be one of the first indicators of a feedback loop accelerating global warming. Researchers estimate that eight million tonnes in annual methane emissions are being released from the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which is equivalent to all the methane released from the world’s oceans, covering 71 percent of the planet. On a global scale of methane emissions from the land-based sources – animals, rice paddies, rotting vegetation – the newly measured emissions from the Siberian seabed are less than two percent. “That’s still very significant,” Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, told IPS. “Before, it was assumed that this region had zero emissions.” Methane concentrations measured over the oceans are currently about 0.6 to 0.7 parts per million (ppm), but they are now 1.85 in the Arctic Ocean generally, and between 2.6 and 8.2 ppm in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, an area roughly two million square kilometres in size, said Shakhova. Shakhova, and her University of Alaska colleague Igor Semiletov, led eight international expeditions to one of the world’s most remote and desolate regions and published their results in the Mar. 5 edition of the journal Science. Global methane levels have risen each year since 2007 after being constant for a decade, reports Ed Dlugokencky of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, which is run by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “We saw an increase in CH4 (methane) growth rate in 2007 in the Arctic… but it did not increase in 2008,” Dlugokencky, an expert on atmospheric methane told IPS via email. He suspects Siberia’s subsea emissions are not new but have been underway for some time, and he also says Shakhova’s estimate of eight million tonnes needs to be verified by other means. However, he acknowledges this study represents the first direct measurements ever done in the region and stresses the urgency for more investigation. In the last few years, researchers have been shocked to see Arctic Ocean “on the boil” in places as gases from deep below come bubbling to the surface. Large parts of the Arctic Ocean floor along coastal areas is actually permafrost that was flooded thousands of years ago after the big melt from the last ice age. Permafrost is frozen soil and contains very large amounts of carbon and methane. The extremely cold waters of the Arctic and its ice cover kept the subsea permafrost cold enough so it has been melting extremely slowly. Until now. Surface temperatures over much of the Arctic landscape and the Siberian landscape, particularly in summer, have jumped six to 10 degrees C above normal in recent years. That has lead to a massive increase in the flows of the many rivers that terminate in the Arctic Ocean. Shakhova and colleagues believe this substantial increase of warmer water into the shallow East Siberian Shelf has accelerated the melting of the subsea permafrost, in effect fracturing the frozen cap and allowing methane to escape into the atmosphere. “Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilisation already,” she said in a release. “If it further destabilises, the methane emissions may not be teragrammes, it would be significantly larger,” she said. A teragramme is a trillion grammes, or one million tonnes. Methane – a greenhouse gas approximately 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide – is commonly called methane hydrates when it is frozen in permafrost or under the sea. The total volumes are unknown. “The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to three to four times,” Shakhova said in a release. “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict,” she said. Shakhova’s study is just one of at least a dozen others that clearly show the Arctic region is not only melting but also emitting more carbon and methane. Permafrost spans 13 million square kilometres of the land in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe. A new Canadian study documented that the southernmost permafrost limit has retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years ago in Quebec’s James Bay region. Another Canadian study released last year showed that the region was getting darker and absorbing more heat in the summer because of a significant shift in plant growth from grasses and lichen to larger shrubs over the past 30 years due to warmer temperatures. A permafrost “retreat” has been observed over much of the southern fringe of the permafrost zone and could result in emissions a billion tonnes of carbon per year – human emissions are seven to eight billion tonnes – by mid-century, a University of Florida study estimated. Without major reductions in those human emissions, mainly burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, the top two to three metres of permafrost across the entire Arctic region could thaw by the end of this century, warned a major report, “Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications”, released by the World Wildlife Fund last September. Should that happen, the volumes of carbon and methane released could be many times higher than what is presently in the atmosphere, driving up the global average temperatures by six, eight, or even 10 degrees C. The consequences are unimaginable. “The changes we are (currently) seeing are not entirely unexpected, they are just happening far sooner,” said Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the U.S. state of Colorado and co-author of Arctic Climate Feedbacks report. If the methane hydrates start to melt or large areas of permafrost “that will be very bad news for humanity”, Serreze told IPS in September. “The world is a very small place and we have not been good stewards. Climate change is symptom of this poor stewardship,” he said. “The way we’re going right now, I’m not optimistic that we will avoid some kind of tipping point.”

Arctic Melt To Cost Up To $24 Trillion By 2050: Report

Date: 08-Feb-10
Author: Timothy Gardner, Reuthers

WASHINGTON – Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.

“Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs,” said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called “Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away.”

He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world’s great weather makers.

“The Arctic is the planet’s air conditioner and it’s starting to break down,” he said.

The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.

The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.

Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun’s energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels.

While much of Europe and the United States has suffered heavy snowstorms and unusually low temperatures this winter, evidence has built that the Arctic is at risk from warming.

Greenhouse gases generated by tailpipes and smokestacks have pushed Arctic temperatures in the last decade to the highest levels in at least 2,000 years, reversing a natural cooling trend, an international team of researchers reported in the journal Science in September.

Arctic emissions of methane have jumped 30 percent in recent years, scientists said last month.

Thin ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a powerful ice-melt next summer, a top U.S. climate scientist said this week.

And early findings from a major research project in Canada involving more than 370 scientists from 27 countries showed on Friday that climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice.

Goodstein’s study did not look at worst-case scenarios Arctic melting could have, such as warmer temperatures that trigger massive releases of crystallized methane formations in Arctic soils and ocean beds known as methane hydrates. It also did not look at sea ice erosion troubling people in the Arctic.

Shackleton’s Whiskey Found Buried Near South Pole.

Lauren Frayer
Contributor to aol.com
(Feb. 6, 2010) — It’s probably the most sought-after scotch in history – crates of whiskey buried in Antarctica by the famed explorer Ernest Shackleton a century ago. He abandoned them on a failed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, and they’ve been on ice – literally – ever since.

Researchers from New Zealand found the crates while restoring a hut Shackleton built and used during the expedition. He and his team were forced to cut short the trip and abandon supplies, including their booze, to sail away before winter ice trapped them there.

The New Zealand team first spotted two crates underneath the hut’s floorboards in 2006, but they were too deeply embedded in ice to be salvaged. Researchers returned to the site this past week, and finally extracted the crates after drilling into the ice around them. The surprise was that there were three more crates than expected – one more of whiskey and two of brandy.

The second trip was backed by the same Scottish company that distilled Shackleton’s whiskey, Mackinlay’s Rare Old Scotch. It could be the longest booze run in history. The Whyte and Mackay distillery hopes to replicate the whiskey, which hasn’t been made in a lifetime after the original recipe was lost.

“Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history,” the company’s master blender, Richard Paterson, said in a release posted on the company’s Web site. He called the find “a gift from the heavens” for whiskey lovers.

“If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated,” Paterson said.

Experts will try to extract the historic brew delicately. Some of the crates have cracked and ice has formed inside. Icebergs surrounding the crates smelled of whiskey, and there may have been leakage, according to Al Fastier, a restoration expert with the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust who made the find.

He told the BBC he heard the slosh of liquid inside the crates when they were moved, and is confident that much of the liquor is still inside.

Shackleton’s expedition ran short of supplies on a long trek to the South Pole that began in 1907. He had to turn back about 100 miles from the pole in 1909. The team had to move quickly to escape as winter ice began to form, so they were forced to abandon all but essential equipment and supplies – including their whiskey. No lives were lost.

A Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, was first to reach the South Pole two years later, in 1911.

As for what the future holds for Shackleton’s whiskey, there are international treaties preventing the removal of artifacts from Antarctica, but Paterson wrote on his blog that he hopes to get his hands on at least a sample of the whiskey, if not a couple bottles.

“What you all want to know is: How will it taste?” Paterson wrote. “To which the answer is: Cold.”

GLOBAL WARMING IGNITES BORDERS AS WELL

By Manuel Manonelles, BARCELONA, (IPS) Posted by Other News January 3, 2009.

Little by little, it is being confirmed that the melting of the polar ice caps, whether in Antarctica or the Arctic, is happening significantly faster than initially predicted. The consequences of this for peace, one of the main victims of climate change, are enormous.

Glaciers and areas of high-altitude mountains that were previously considered zones of perpetual snow are now melting. A paradigmatic case is that of the alpine border between Switzerland and Italy where during a recent routine verification, certain sections of ice or perennial snow that had been on the map since 1861 were found to be missing. In this case, the two countries have enjoyed long periods of peaceful coexistence and are approaching the problem in a logical and cordial fashion, forming a commission to find a technical solution.

However, the possible implications of cases like this in other geographical areas are very worrisome. The destabilising potential of a similar development on the India-Pakistan border would be enormous, particularly in the zone of Kashmir or the Siachen glacier, where more than 3000 soldiers of both countries have died since 1984. The same is true of the tense China-India border, or the deeply problematic border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will grow increasingly porous with melting, contributing to a rise in destabilisation in what are already two of the most unstable countries on the earth.

Another major effect of global warming is the gradual opening of major global shipping lanes in areas that had previously been impassable because of ice. The Northeast Passage along the north of Russia, used recently for the first time in history, shortens travel between the ports of China, Japan, and Korea and Hamburg, Rotterdam, and South Hampton by 4,000 kilometres. With the Northwest Passage along northern Canada, travel between the China and the ports of the eastern United States is similarly shortened.

The opening of these new routes will completely change the dynamics of intercontinental trade and might render irrelevant places that until now were considered geostrategically essential, such as the Panama and the Suez Canal.

Add to this the draw of massive reserves of raw materials expected to be present in the Arctic, ever more accessible as the ice recedes, which is provoking a race for control of the area – including an arms race – and is stoking tensions particularly between Russia, Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The Russian news agency TASS has calculated oil reserves in the area at over 10 billion tonnes. Last year Canada approved an extraordinary 6.9 billion dollar arms bill to strengthen its military presence in its arctic zone, while Russia has resumed tactical flights of nuclear bombers in its polar region, triggering the protests of numerous countries.

This also explains, in part, the speed with which the European Union is processing the application for EU membership of bankrupt Iceland, which would place the body in the best possible position for future negotiations and territorial claims in the area with regard to future access to the “Arctic banquet”.

The melting of the ice caps is also the major cause of rising sea levels, which have other irreversible territorial, social, and economic consequences, such as the physical disappearance -partial or total- of certain small island states of the Pacific likely to occur within a few years -the Maldives, Samoa, Kiribati, among others. Obviously the implications are vast, including – in addition to the personal, environmental, cultural, and national trauma – the political and legal status of future states that have no territory. The principal components of the global infrastructure, from ports and refineries to airports and nuclear plants, are also seriously at risk, and will find themselves near or at or even below sea level.

It is important to note in this context that the majority of the global population lives in areas close to the sea, starting with megacities like Mumbai, London, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, and densely-populated areas like the Ganges delta in Bangladesh, where rising sea levels are already wreaking havoc in the form of water pollution and related effects. Recent studies indicate the possibility of some 200 million new environmental refugees in coming years -refugees who would only increase the already considerable humanitarian pressures and tensions in these areas and exacerbate existing or latent conflict.

The Global Humanitarian Fund issued a report this year that shows unequivocally that climate change today is responsible for some 300,000 deaths per year. Numbers for the medium and long-term are even higher. In this context, the urgency of fighting climate is a pre-condition for a peaceful future. Therefore, the international community has no other option, specially after the fiasco in Copenhagen, to spring into action as soon as possible. It is about climate, but also about peace and human lives.

—————-

This and all “other news” issues edited by Roberto Savio can be found at http://www.other-net.info/index.php

SWIMMING WITH THE POLAR BEARS originally performed Off-Broadway in April 2009 as part of a 3-day Earth Day benefit for The Climate Project.
Swimming with the Polar Bears is a funny, poignant, and devastatingly personal look at the dangers of global warming. Actor Mel Englandvideo and images by National Geographic’s Tristan Bayer – and, in the end, we find we are all Swimming with the Polar Bears.

SWIMMING WITH THE POLAR BEARS
11 December 2009 at 20:00
DGI-byen
Tietgensgade 65

DK – 1704 Copenhagen V
DGI-byen is located in the heart of Copenhagen, right behind the Central Station.

Thinking of Climate Change, and Copenhagen, I found this week-end Financial Times (November 28-29, 2009) quite amazing:

page 3 of Life & Arts section (- why that section? -) had the “Waving and Drowning” article about the very active President of the Maldives, who won elections last year replacing the longest ruling dictator in Asia, and since shot up to become the leader of the Small Islands Developing States in matters of climate change.

Rahul Jacob, the interviewer for the FT, subtitled the article – “Afternoon tea with the FT: Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, is determined to draw the world’s attention to the threat his country faces from rising sea levels, even if it means holding cabinet meetings under water.” I knew what he was talking because just last night, on the NOW program on CNN TV, David Broncacio showed a meeting of this underwater cabinet as they were preparing their document for the Copenhagen Conference. The FT describes the Presidential menu in the Male office included Fish rolls, Fishcakes, Tuna sandwiches, doughnuts and Lipton tea. The whole event was clearly courtesy of the melting ice at the two global poles.

The FT page had a small area – bottom left – on four ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS – one worse then the other. The fourth was: RE-ICING THE ARCTIC as a plan to save the world presented by Hazel Sheffield. The suggestion for the re-icing process is to spray salty water over the shores of Greenland.

But that was not all! page 5 of the same section was titled: “WHITE CHRISTMAS” and the point was that that YOU DRINK WHITE WINE IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A WHITE CHRISTMAS. Now I am convinced that we near deep trouble – under water covers, no ice and no red wine!

Will Copenhagen scratch at the problem?

 

Climate Change Adaptation: It’s about Water! 
— Global Water Partnership’s contribution to the climate change dialogue

Water is central to the world’s development challenges. Whether it is food security, poverty reduction, economic growth, human health—water is the nexus. Climate change is the spoiler. No matter how successful mitigation efforts might be, people will experience the impacts of climate change through water.

The Global Water Partnership is participating in ‘Water Day’ at the climate change negotiations in Barcelona. GWP Executive Secretary Dr Ania Grobicki will be the lead speaker on water and transboundary issues on Tuesday, November 3. The venue is the Fira Congress Hotel, opposite the conference centre. The opening session starts at 9 am and lunch will be provided.

Recently, the GWP’s Technical Committee released its 14th Background Paper: “Water Management, Water Security and Climate Change Adaptation.” It argues that investments in water are investments in adaptation. The paper can be downloaded on www.gwpforum.org or ordered free at gwp@gwpforum.org.

Climate Change: How can we Adapt? – a one-pager about GWP’s key messages on this subject – is available here: http://www.gwpforum.org/gwp/library/GWP_Briefingnote_climatechange.pdf.

GWP has been accepted as an Inter-Governmental Organisation with Observer Status at  COP 15 in Copenhagen in December and has submitted an article to the delegate publication. But more information on that will follow later. 

More resources about climate change and water and more information on GWP’s involvement in the global dialogue on climate change is available on this page: http://www.gwpforum.org/servlet/PSP?iNodeID=205&itemId=442.

 

——————————————————–Steven DowneyHead of CommunicationsGlobal Water Partnership (GWP)Drottninggatan 33SE-111 51 Stockholm, SWEDENPhone:   +46 8 522 126 52Fax:      + 46 8 522 126 31E-mail: steven.downey@gwpforum.orgWebsite: www.gwpforum.org
A water secure world – the mission of the Global Water Partnership is to support the sustainable development and management of water resources at all levels.

Mountain Is Reflected In A Bay That Used To Be Covered By The Sheldon Glacier On The Antarctic Peninsula

Date: 20-Jan-09
Country: ANTARCTICA
Author: Alister Doyle

Photo: Staff Photographer

A mountain is reflected in a bay that used to be covered by the Sheldon glacier on the Antarctic peninsula, January 14, 2009.

The glacier has shrunk by about 2 km since 1989, probably because of global warming. Picture taken January 14, 2009.

Science Proves Warming of Antarctica.

By Adrianne Appel*

BOSTON, Nov 12 (Tierramérica) – The Antarctic holds the world’s largest amount of fresh water in its icy grip, and it is most certainly warming as a result of greenhouse gases, say new scientific studies.

“We’re able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences,” said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia, in Britain, who led the study.

Evidence of global warming, caused by the release of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air, has been found on almost every continent on Earth. The exception was the Antarctic, which holds 90 percent of the world’s ice and 70 percent of the world’s fresh water.

Antarctica, about 1.4 times as large as the United States, has just 20 weather stations from which to gather data, and for this and other reasons, less has been known about the icy continent.

Scientists can see that the warmer parts of Antarctica, including the Western Antarctic and Antarctic Peninsula, which juts north toward South America and is home to millions of seals and penguins and other birds, are seeing temperature increases.

But the frigid East Antarctic, with ice 2,226 metres thick, has seen no significant change in air temperature during the past 50 years — in fact it has shown evidence of cooling — and this has made overall conclusions about the greenhouse gas effect inconclusive.

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that Antarctica was the only continent where human-caused temperature changes had not been detected, possibly due to insufficient data and observation.

Gillett’s work “demonstrates convincingly what previous studies have suggested: that humans have indeed contributed to warming in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions,” said Andrew Monaghan, of the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research, a close colleague of the researchers.

The team used all data available from 1900 to 2000 from the 20 research stations, and complex computer predictions to reach its conclusions.

The scientists created four computer models, including one that included the impact of greenhouse gases and one that did not. The model with the greenhouse gases produced predictions that matched actual temperature observations up to this point in time, according to their report, “Attribution of polar warming to human influence”, in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

Taking averages across all of Antarctica produced findings of “overall warming” of a few tenths of a percent, Gillett said.

But the team found temperature increases on the Antarctic Peninsula of up to 3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, among the largest increases on Earth, Monaghan said. Still, the average monthly temperature is 1 degree to minus -15 degrees C.

Several large glaciers in the West Antarctic are melting and contributing to a rise in global sea levels, due to warmer ocean currents that are hitting the ice sheets. The average monthly temperature there is -12 C to -35 C.

“This melting of ice shelves has implications for sea level rise,” Gillett said. In 2002, a huge ice shelf on the Peninsula, called the Larsen B, broke apart and melted. It was 3,250 square kilometres in size, he pointed out.

In addition, the team noticed data pointing to a warming along the coasts of East Antarctica, and they expect this warming to accelerate.

Gillett hypothesised that the South Pole cooling may be due to a severe loss of ozone in the Pole’s atmosphere, due to pollution.

He believes that because of his research, scientists can draw a more accurate picture of what the future may look like for Antarctica. Calculations about the melting of ice can now include the impact of global warming.

“We won’t see anything catastrophic in the next century if things continue at the current rate. But the melt could accelerate,” Monaghan said.

The IPCC was unable to include complete and accurate predictions of global sea rise because it did not have adequate Antarctic data. It predicted an increase of between 18 and 59 cm, Gillett said.

In January, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri made a personal plea to scientists to step up their research on Antarctica and Greenland.

“My hope is the next [IPCC] report, if there is one, will be able to provide much better information on the possibility of these two large bodies of ice melting, in what seems like a frightening situation,” Pachauri said.

Research about warming in the Antarctic Peninsula has been building.

Earlier this year, Eric Rignot, of the University of California, reviewed satellite images from 1996 to 2000 and found that ice is definitely melting on the Antarctic Peninsula and in the West Antarctic.

West Antarctica lost about 132 billion metric tons of ice in 2006, compared with about 83 billion metric tons in 1996, Rignot said. The Antarctic Peninsula lost 60 billion metric tons in 2006.

The ice melt would have been enough to raise the world’s sea level by 0.5 mm, if not for a simultaneous ice accumulation in frigid East Antarctica, Rignot said.

Research that shows humans are causing global warming may help bolster efforts to slow the emission of greenhouse gases, primarily by the United States and China, said Meg Boyle, a climate change expert with the environmental watchdog group Greenpeace.

“In the United States, we have a small percentage of the world’s population but we produce 25 percent of the world’s global warming pollution. It is time for us to step up,” she said. She expressed hope that United States President-elect Barack Obama will be more willing to participate in global climate agreements.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.)

Melting ice in the Arctic, but the lure of resources is just too strong. Europe’s Arctic adventure – The new cold rush for resources.
LEIGH PHILLIPS, the EUobserver, November 7, 2008. THIS ARTICLE FROM TROMSO, NORWAY.

EUOBSERVER / TROMSO – PART ONE – There’s this grizzled old guy in the hospital with worsening lung cancer. The doctors can’t tell him whether it’s fatal yet, but each new test shows a rapidly deteriorating condition.

He’s been a heavy smoker all his life, although he’s trying to quit, but one day, while he’s wandering the corridors, he comes across a long-abandoned storeroom and it’s rammed to the gills with cigarettes, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco of every brand and region. There are Cuban cigars, Moroccan apple-flavoured nargileh tobacco, Swedish snus and jars of aromatic pipe shag. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of tobacco left over from the days when hospital cafeterias still sold cigarettes, and the nurses and security staff are nowhere to be seen.

The man briefly thinks that he should just forget he ever opened the storeroom door and get back to the business of quitting, but he’s dazzled by the hoard and instead stuffs as much of it into his pyjamas as he can to take back to his bed and puffs his nicotine-addled brains out.

There’s no tobacco hoard in a cupboard somewhere in the Arctic, but there is however a quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas now within reach as a result of the far north rapidly melting.

Like the old man in the hospital, the European Union and countries on the shores of the Arctic sea have said to themselves: “There may be a chance that we can slow down and reverse global warming, so we really should give up our addiction to fossil fuels. But how can we turn our backs – and our wallets – on such a bonanza, even if it’s full of the very stuff that caused the problem in the first place?”

Or is such an environmentalist caricature unfair to the people of the northern regions, for the most part long shut out from the industrial development and the wealth of the more southerly parts of Europe, Canada, Russia and the United States?

Many of those living in the Arctic are aboriginal people, who have historically borne the double burden of underdevelopment in their regions and racial prejudice. And until recently very little has been available to anyone up north apart from far-from-bountiful farming and the occasional mine that inevitably closes down.

Can we really say “No” to improving the standard of living in the north through development, especially if it can be done sustainably?

With recent months in particular seeing both a cascade of truly alarming news on how fast the Arctic is changing and pronouncements from the European Union and other circumpolar powers on plans for exploitation of newly accessible resources, the EUobserver decided to visit Europe’s patch of the Arctic, the northernmost tip of mainland Norway – still outside the EU, but very much Brussels’ advance guard up in the high north – to find out the reality behind the headlines about the coming “scramble for the Arctic”, and look at all sides in the debate over the Arctic’s future.

***

Methane burps:

The situation at the top of the world has taken a sharp turn for the worse just in the last few weeks.

On 6 September, leading European and American ice specialists at the US National Ice Center reported that for the first time, a ring of navigable waters around the Arctic ice cap opened up the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic archipelago – the maritime Holy Grail of a faster trade route from Europe to Asia sought for centuries by explorers – and the Northern Sea Route, also known as the Northeast Passage, over Eurasia, at the same time.

Then, in late September, Swedish and Russian scientists found the first evidence that millions of tonnes of methane – a gas that is 20 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide – is bubbling up from beneath the Siberian Arctic seabed.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is greater than the world’s remaining global stores of coal and it is now rising up from the bottom of the ocean through “methane chimney” discovered by scientists aboard the research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Days later, British scientists aboard the James Clark Ross found hundreds of plumes of methane burping up from the Arctic seabed to the west of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, says that the release of methane clathrates from permafrost regions and beneath the seabed will unleash powerful feedback forces that could produce runaway climate change that cannot be controlled – the so-called methane time bomb – a prediction of radical environmental transformation far worse than the worst-case scenarios theorised by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Then on Tuesday (28 October), the European Space Agency reported that Arctic sea ice was thinning at a record rate, with the thickness of sea ice in large parts of the Arctic having declined by as much as 19 percent last winter compared to the previous five winters.

***

Last days of the ‘ice bear:’

“The Arctic is warming at two times the rate of the rest of the world,” says Nalan Koc, a senior scientist with the polar climate programme at the Norwegian Polar Institute, in Tromso, explaining why all of this is happening.

Tromso, in the far north of Norway and home to the world’s northernmost university, at the same time is preparing itself for the economic bonanza that the melting will bring.

Nalan Koc, however, is not as excited as other Tromso inhabitants. In a Power Point presentation of this Arctic apocalypse, she starkly lists the myriad ways in which the environment is fundamentally altering. “Amplified by positive feedback, the Arctic is seeing increased precipitation, declining snow cover, rising river flows, thawing permafrost, melting glaciers, retreating summer sea ice, rising sea levels, and ocean salinity changes making the water less saline.”

The talk, despite its subject, is deceptively banal. Where are the four horsemen? A moon turned blood-red? Instead, the end of days is being announced not by skeletonous biblical heralds but in bullet points and embedded videos that take three minutes to load.

The permafrost is melting under tundra that previously was stable, she explains, buckling roads and highways as the ground beneath them gives way.

In the marine environment, sea temperatures are rising and the ice cover is melting. Ice-dependent species such as the polar bear, which the Norwegians more accurately call “isbjorn” or “ice bear,” as well as the walrus and the ringed seal all face an uncertain future. Some scientists believe the polar bear will be extinct by mid-century.

“When you’ve been around up here for as long as I have, you begin to see it with your own eyes from year to year,” she says. “You can feel it in your bones.”

Last year saw a record low extent of Arctic sea ice cover – 4.3 million square kilometres – more than 40 percent below averages in the 1980s and more than 20 percent below the previous record low in 2005. “But more important than the extent is the volume of the ice. Most of the older thicker ice is not surviving from one summer to the next. As of 2007, most of the ice was three or four-year-old ice. As of 2008, most ice is just one year old.”

The massive ice loss and thinning is forcing scientists to quickly ratchet lower even their worst expectations – the 2007 melting came some 30 years ahead of model predictions.

In 2004, it was predicted that the ice would have melted sufficiently to allow commercial traffic in the Arctic Ocean by 2090. In 2007, it was predicted that commercial traffic would be able to cross by 2040. As of 2008, the predictions are for some time in the next five years, with the first start-up possibly in 2009. Models now predict an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer some time between 2013 and 2040.

The last time the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in the summer was over a million years ago.

Her colleague, Kit Kovacs, the Biodiversity Research Programme leader at the institute says: “The changes are happening so rapidly that scientists are having trouble processing it all. From initial tests to publishing papers takes at a minimum months or a couple of years, but change is happening much faster than that.

“The biodiversity loss is just as profound as if there were a loss of the Amazon rainforest within the space of five years.”

***

Oil and gas bonanza:

What looks like the end for the polar bear, however, looks like Christmas for resource companies and European energy security concerns.

Johan Petter Barlindhaug, the chair of North Energy, a northern-Norway-based oil-and-gas start-up currently exploring energy sources on the Norwegian continental shelf, says the melting Arctic could offer northern peoples, who have historically lived in a very much underdeveloped region, a chance to have similar standards of living as those who live in the cities and towns further south.

“Climate change poses lots of threats, but it also opens up a range of possibilities,” he says.

Oil companies like North Energy and Norwegian energy giant Statoil Hydro believe the Arctic holds as much as 25 percent of the worlds undiscovered oil and gas deposits – as much as the combined reserves of Canada and Saudi Arabia.

Russia’s Gazprom already has approximately 34 trillion cubic metres (113 trillion cubic feet) of gas under development in the Barents Sea and Moscow is claiming territory in the Arctic that contains an estimated 586 billion barrels of oil.

Mineral resources may also abound, particularly coal, iron, lead, copper, nickel, zinc and sulphides, as well as precious minerals such as gold and diamonds. Recent diamond discoveries in the Canadian Arctic have made the country, which previously didn’t produce any of the stones, the third biggest exporter of diamonds in the world.

On maps that place the North Pole at the centre of the world, instead of the equator, Mr Barlindhaug shows how a melting Arctic also opens up three different shortcuts for shipping goods between Europe and Asia – routes that will save shipping firms, exporters and importers, and the world’s navies and smugglers – billions of euros.

The shipping industry is hoping for a 20 percent saving, he enthuses, with still greater savings for the megaships that cannot fit through the Suez or Panama canals and have to sail round the tips of Africa or South America.

Although Mr Barlindhaug believes that the third shortcut – straight across the pole – offers the most potential.

“The Northwest and Northeast Passages aren’t as important as building ports on Iceland and in Norway and Russia,” he says. “This is because the Canadians view the Northwest Passage as domestic, and there’s something of the same with the Northeast Passage, which is within Russian borders.

“In any case, international waters closer to the North Pole provide routes that are much shorter. But it’s also a matter of speed and cost. Between the Canadian or Russian islands, you can’t pick up much speed while you’re navigating through them. It’s too narrow.

“But at 20-25 knots across the pole, then you’re really saving some money. It would take just five days to cross from the Bering Sea to the Barent Sea. It doesn’t need to be completely ice free.”

He then moves on to the expanded fishing opportunities and potential for discoveries of new medicines derived from invertebrates living in extreme polar environments that round out the economic bounty becoming available as the climate warms up.

Some 10 percent of global white fish stocks swim through the waters of the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and near Iceland, offering catches worth billions of euros.

Nonetheless, “bio-prospecting” for new medicines is by far the greater catch, believes Mr Barlindhaug: “These invertebrates are chemical factories that will produce the next generation of medicines. They’re far more important than the fish that is up there.”

In a visit to brand-spanking new labs at the University of Tromso, Jeanette Andersen, of Mabcent-SFI, a public-private bio-prospecting outfit launched last year with €20.5 million (180m NOK) in funding, explains the potential for new treatments and cures coming from molluscs that poison passing fish or colourless mini-starfish that love the cold.

“The marine environment in the high Arctic is unparalleled with respect to combination of temperature and light regimes,” she says. “This implies evolution of organisms with unique physiological and biochemical adaptations.”

She says that the potential is enormous, from antibiotics, chemotherapy, and painkillers to anti-bacterials, anti-oxidents, anti-inflammatory medicines, but Mabcent also hopes to discover creatures that have cosmetic and industrial applications, and even better food and drink preservation.

“But all high-profit,” she enthuses, describing how her biologist and chemist colleagues dive off into the depths of the Arctic Ocean like a team of submariner Indiana Joneses, before they race back to the university to freeze the hundreds of different specimens. They then grind them into a pulp that is investigated by viking boffins at stupidly expensive machines who identify the wild new molecules produced by the exotic biochemistry of these nigh-on alien creatures.

“Living in environments that range from 1.8 to 8 degrees celsius, these organisms are adapted to cold temperatures. As you warm up the metabolism, you speed up the effectiveness of enzymes, so the thinking is that enzymes existing at these temperatures will work faster in warm humans.”

However, some of the different industries opening up as Arctic waters open up pose a threat to others.

Pooh-poohing the idea that oil and gas exploration threatens the environment, North Energy’s Mr Barlindhaug reckons it’s a massive expansion of unsustainable fishing practices and illegal fishing that pose the greatest threat, particularly to bio-prospecting.

“Bottom trawling is much more damaging than oil and gas exploration, as the you find oil all over the rocks and sand on the sea bed. These creatures are used to it – there’s nothing to worry about from oil and gas exploration.

“Bioprospectors should be more scared about increased fishing activity. That’ll damage these organisms much more,” he insists.

Jeanette back at Mabcent is not so sure: “We need to be worried about oil and gas exploration. What Mr Barlindhaug said is too easy an answer to the question of oil spills. Some organisms will adapt, yes, but others are very vulnerable.”

In the second part of the EUobserver’s look at the politics and business of the melting Arctic, appearing on Monday, we look at Kirkenes, a small harbour town sometimes called ‘Little Murmansk’ for its 10 percent Russian population, and how it is set to be transformed by the oil and gas bonanza opening up as the ice disappears.

Untapped energy source fuels a paradox.

By MICHAEL RICHARDSON, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008, The Japan Times.
SINGAPORE — Ice that burns? It sounds like a magician’s trick. So do some of the exotic names given to gas hydrate — “flammable sorbet,” “crystal gas” and “burning ice.” But recent scientific surveys and test drilling in Asia and elsewhere have proven that this substance exists in massive, potentially recoverable quantities and that it could be an important commercial energy source for the future.

Indeed, some of the world’s biggest economies and energy users, including the United States, Japan, China, India, South Korea and Canada, are racing to develop production techniques and equipment to tap gas hydrate and bring it to market within the next decade. For all of them, except energy self-sufficient Canada, the ability to tap new domestic sources of natural gas offers the prospect of substantially reducing dependence on expensive gas imports.

Hydrate deposits up to several hundred meters thick are generally found in two places: on or beneath the deep ocean floor, or underground close to the Arctic permafrost layer, where high pressure and cold temperatures turn natural gas (methane, ethane and propane) into semi-solid form.

Gas hydrate looks like ordinary ice, although it is sometimes discolored. But when brought to the surface and allowed to warm, it can be lit with a match. It then burns with a soft orange flame. One cubic meter of gas hydrate releases as much as 164 cubic meters of natural gas, in which methane is usually the chief constituent.

While global estimates vary considerably, the U.S. government’s energy department says that the energy content of methane in hydrate form is “immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels,” meaning coal, oil and conventional gas.

The presence of hydrates has been inferred from seismic surveys and subsea sampling along most of the world’s continental shelf margins. Some of the biggest deposits so far found are on the ocean floor off Japan, South Korea, India and China, and on and off U.S. and Canadian Arctic land territory.

Japan’s economy, trade and energy ministry announced last year that there were over 1.1 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrates in a Pacific Ocean trench, called the Nankai Trough, some 50 kilometers from the coast of Honshu, the main Japanese island. This reserve is equivalent to 14 years of gas use by Japan, which imports nearly all the oil, gas and coal needed to run its vast economy, the world’s second-largest after the United States.

Three years ago, the Japanese government said it believed commercial exploitation of methane hydrate was economically viable when oil traded above $54 a barrel, less than half its present price. In November 2007, the government in Seoul said it had found enough gas hydrates in the sea between South Korea and Japan to meet 30 years of demand. Six months earlier, China announced that it had for the first time managed to tap into seabed sediment containing gas hydrates in the northern part of the South China Sea. It said initial estimates indicated that the find contained the equivalent of more than 100 million metric tons of oil — about one-third of China’s annual oil consumption.

In doing so, China became the fourth country after the U.S., Japan and India to achieve this technological breakthrough in the deep sea search for energy. India announced in 2006 that it had made several huge discoveries of gas hydrates off its east and west coasts.

Since last April, the U.S. has signed separate agreements with India, South Korea and Japan to cooperate in hydrate research, exploration and production. Japan, the U.S. and Canada, working in close collaboration, have achieved several days of continuous extraction of methane from underground hydrate reserves in the Arctic permafrost. Large-scale production tests are planned in the Canadian Arctic this winter and in the U.S. Arctic next year.

Test production from offshore Arctic finds is expected to lag by three to five years, because marine deposits are less well documented than those on land. Sea sampling and drilling are also much more expensive. Japan said recently it plans to start test drilling in the Nankai Trough in 2012, possibly leading to commercial production by 2016. Korea has a similar production timetable.

However, apart from the high costs and technical challenge, all the hydrate explorers face another possible danger — environmental disaster. While governments are attracted to an abundant clean fuel, scientists are concerned that drilling when combined with global warming risks disturbing the seabed and triggering an uncontrolled release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The British government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, warned recently that one big unknown about global warming is the stage at which dangerous tipping points may be reached that lead to runaway heating of the planet. He cited as an example the release of methane hydrate deposits in the Arctic.

Some evidence suggests that a catastrophic release of methane from the ocean 55 million years ago, possibly caused by undersea volcanic explosions and landslides, was responsible for making the earth much warmer.

The modern hydrate quest is built on a paradox. When released to the air, methane is a greenhouse gas that traps around 20 times more solar heat in the earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. But when burned, methane releases up to 25 percent less carbon dioxide than combustion of the same amount of coal. It also emits no nitrogen and sulfur oxides, which poison the air and human health when coal is burned without effective filters.

The world’s abundant methane hydrate deposits have been safely stored for thousands of years in the ocean depths and Arctic permafrost. Those who now seek to exploit what is probably the world’s greatest reserve of new fossil fuel must therefore be sure that in doing so they improve, not harm, the global environment.

Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is an energy and security specialist at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

The Methane Time Bomb.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008, by Steve Conner, The Independent UK.

In the past few days, researchers released that the sub-sea layer of permafrost has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide.

***

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia’s northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

***

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden, one of the leaders of the expedition, described the scale of the methane emissions in an email exchange sent from the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.

“We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night,” said Dr Gustafsson. “An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These ‘methane chimneys’ were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments].”

At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. “This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean,” he said. “Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.

“The conventional thought has been that the permafrost ‘lid’ on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane… The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed.”

***

The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane “hotspots”, which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.

Dr Semiletov has suggested several possible reasons why methane is now being released from the Arctic, including the rising volume of relatively warmer water being discharged from Siberia’s rivers due to the melting of the permafrost on the land.

The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.

Russia says it must stake claim to Arctic resources.

By Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters, from Moscow, Friday, September 12, 2008.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia must stake its claim to a slice of the Arctic’s vast resources, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council said on Friday at an unprecedented session of the council held on a desolate Arctic island.

Russia, the world’s second biggest oil exporter, is in a race with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States for control of the oil, gas and precious metals that would become more accessible if global warming shrinks the Arctic ice cap. (At www.SustainabiliTank.info we expressed earlier that we expect China to take up the cause of the rest of the world and claim that these resources belong to all – that is not just to those closest to the source. China already had submarines putting down their flag like Russia did!)

Underlining Russia’s claims to the region, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev assembled the defence and interior ministers and the speakers of both houses of parliament for the meeting on the Arctic island, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia, the world’s biggest country, says a whole swathe of the Arctic seabed should belong to it because the area is really an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.

“The Arctic must become Russia’s main strategic resource base,” Russian news agencies quoted Patrushev as saying. The Council usually meets only in Moscow.

***

Patrushev, formerly Russia’s powerful domestic spy chief, said competition from other Arctic powers was increasing and that Russia must strengthen transport links across its Arctic regions to drive development.

Canada, Norway, Russia, the United States and Denmark — which governs Greenland — all have a shoreline within the Arctic Circle, and have a 200-mile (320-km) economic zone around the north of their coastlines.

Russian officials say they are entitled to a bigger share. They base the claim on the contention that the Lomonosov ridge, a vast underwater mountain range that runs underneath the Arctic, is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.

Under the United Nations Law of the Sea treaty, any state with an Arctic coastline that wishes to stake a claim to a greater share of the Arctic must lodge its submission with the U.N.’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

Russian geologists estimate the Arctic seabed has at least 9 billion to 10 billion tonnes of fuel equivalent, about the same as Russia’s total oil reserves.

Last year a submersible with a senior Russian lawmaker on board planted a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed. The crew were greeted as heroes when they returned to Moscow.

Russian news agencies said the special Security Council session was held at the Nagurskaya base, Russia’s most northerly border outpost. The base is on Alexandra’s Land, part of the Russian-controlled Franz Josef archipelago.

[Comment] Transport – go green or go under.
RUPERT WOLFE MURRAY, from Romania – an Olinion on EUobserver, September 10, 2008.

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT – Are there any political leaders in the EU who say we must (urgently) move towards renewable-energy-transport and that road-building can no longer be our top transport priority?

The issue is getting urgent and we must prepare for the risk of oil depletion and global warming, which could result in a six-metre rise in sea levels.

(Rupert Wolfe Murray is an independent consultant based in Romania.)

Even a small risk of oil running out should be enough to make us urgently review our transport sector. The economic arguments are powerful: There is big money to be made by “electrifying” Europe’s transport fleets and the car industry is indeed quietly moving towards the electric car. But the political will is missing.

The “Peak Oil Theory” of global oil supplies “peaking” in 2012 was not taken seriously by the mainstream until recently. That attitude is starting to change. Shell Oil recently sponsored an advert in Time Magazine that quoted a former US energy secretary as saying: “We can’t continue to make supply meet demand for much longer. It’s no longer the case that we have a few voices crying in the wilderness. The battle is over. The peakists have won.”

If oil did peak, the consequences for our transport system, food supply and economic system would be devastating. Although there is growing interest in renewable energy, it is still considered somewhat marginal, uncompetitive and untested. There is no sign of a “rush to renewables” that could be compared to the “dash to gas” that took place in the UK during the 1980s. We are still tinkering at the margins.

The EU’s new transport policy must be based upon renewable energy. The first challenge is a conceptual one: People need to understand that a transport system can function on electricity just as efficiently as it now does on oil. The case for a renewable transport system needs to be communicated to the public and a massive investment plan worked out.

It is becoming increasingly clear that a combination of wind, solar, hydro and nuclear power could provide us with a carbon-free power supply. The most exciting developments seem to be taking place in the solar energy industry, where prices are falling rapidly.

***

European electrical grid to northern Africa:

A German utility recently commissioned a study into extending the European electrical grid to northern Africa – a potential major supplier of solar energy. Apparently Morocco could provide all of Europe with electricity if three percent of the country was covered with solar panels. Cost is a major barrier here, but if we consider that global companies will spend $3.4 trillion on IT this year according to Gartner, a consultancy, it is clear that the cash is available.

Another barrier to the development of electricity as a replacement fuel is the challenge of storing electricity. The electric car could provide a solution to this problem. The concept is simple: electric cars would charge up at night, when electricity is cheap, and during the day the grid could draw off some electric power from individual cars, when extra power is needed.

According to the Zero Carbon Britain group, if Britain’s car fleet became electric, it would provide the grid with more than enough reserve energy to meet any surges in demand.

Electric cars, bicycles and improved public transport could take care of almost all transport requirements at the urban level. But what about long distance transport? There is talk of biofuel and hydrogen fuelled planes, but the future for these fuels does not look promising.

***

The train from Naples to New York:

A strong transport policy would confront the energy and transport lobbies and phase out aviation altogether, replacing it with high-speed trains and wind-powered ships. A French train recently broke the 500-km-an-hour speed record.

If the Russians and Americans took the plunge, they could build an “Intercontinental Peace Bridge” across the Bering Straits and it might be possible to one day get a train from Naples to New York.

What about freight? Our economic system has become so dependent on big trucks that it is hard to think what could replace them. Europe’s freight-train infrastructure has become so neglected – with the exception of Germany – that upgrading it would cost trillions of Euros.

But there is another alternative: the airship. Interest in airships is currently growing and scientists say that future “freight airships” could pick up containers directly from a factory yard, fly across the world and deliver inside another factory yard. We need to urgently develop these future forms of transport before it is too late.

Rupert Wolfe Murray is an independent consultant based in Romania and author of the blog: www.productive.ro/blog

———–

Melting ice cap pushes Arctic up EU agenda.
New transit routes across the Arctic present great commercial opportunities and enormous environmental risks.
LEIGH PHILLIPS, EUobserver, September 10, 2008.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The rapid melting of the polar ice cap in the Arctic offers Europe a “first-time opportunity” to access new trade routes and massive oil and gas deposits, the European Commission has said – developments that are pushing the EU’s polar strategy up the policy agenda.

Speaking in Ilulissat, Greenland, on Tuesday (9 September) to a conference of the Nordic Council of Ministers dedicated to Arctic issues, the EU’s fisheries and maritime affairs commissioner Joe Borg said: “As the ice recedes, we are presented with a first-time opportunity to use transport routes such as the Northern Sea Route.

“This would translate into shorter transportation routes and greater trading possibilities, and will provide a better opportunity to draw upon the wealth of untapped natural resources in the Arctic,” Mr Borg told the council, an intergovernmental forum for co-operation between the Nordic countries established after the Second World War.

The Nordic Council brings together EU member states Denmark, Finland and Sweden alongside Norway and Iceland – both outside the bloc – as well as the autonomous territories of Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Aland Islands.

:

In his speech, Mr Borg also highlighted a document published earlier this year by the commission jointly with the EU’s chief diplomat, Javier Solana, that mapped out the latest thinking from Brussels on the security implications of climate change.

The seven-page paper authored by Mr Solana and commissioner for external relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, distributed to EU government leaders in March, argued that the European Union should boost its civil and military capacities to respond to “serious security risks” resulting from catastrophic climate change.

The paper, Climate Change and International Security, underlined the risks and opportunities presented by the melting Arctic, alongside concerns about increased numbers of migrants, territorial disputes, water shortages in Israel and decreases in crop yields in the broader Middle East. Political radicalisation as a result of climate insecurity, sea-level rises and extreme weather events also present security challenges, according to the report.

Commissioner Borg emphasised the centrality of the Arctic in EU security thinking: “This document highlights the growing geopolitical importance of the Arctic region … [with the] opening up [of] new waterways and international trade routes, and the increased accessibility to the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region.

“This accessibility, in conjunction with territorial claims, is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region with potential consequences for international stability and for European security, trade and resource interests,” he added.

Regional governance:

Later this year, the commission is to present a communication dedicated to the Arctic region that will tackle issues related to climate change as well as regional governance.

The communication is to propose three main actions. Firstly, the commission is to propose measures supporting scientific research and monitoring with the aim of safeguarding the Arctic environment.

The commission is also interested in the exploitation of Arctic resources such as hydrocarbons and other commodities. The commissioner underscored that this must be done in a sustainable manner, but he also said that the communication hopes to outline how all regions that border the Arctic could gain equal access to such bounty.

“We should seek to apply the principles of a level playing field and reciprocal market access in the Arctic,” he said.

The commissioner also said the EU should seek to ensure equal access to any new fishing opportunities via new regulation and work towards an international fisheries conservation and management scheme for the Arctic – something which has never been implemented.

The third element of the commission’s new thinking on the Arctic is developing the governance of the region.

Noting that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and work performed by the Nordic Council, the Arctic Council and other bodies have already played something of a function in this area, the commissioner said: “Nevertheless, we should be open to develop this system further,” he said, adding that international environmental treaties that apply to the Arctic should be revisited.

In June, the Nordic Council published an extensive study of EU-Arctic policies, and called on the bloc to establish a self-standing Arctic-dedicated unit within the European Commission. The document also suggested the EU needed to “establish, intensify and possibly formalise international co-operation with Arctic regional bodies”.

‘Crazy situation’

Environmentalists agree with the commission that the melting ice cap is a brute fact and that in the absence of appropriate governance, there could be a ‘scramble for the Arctic’ without movement by the EU in this direction.

“There is no environmental management framework for the Arctic,” Neil Hamilton, the director of the WWF’s Arctic programme.

“There is overlapping legislation in various countries, but nothing Arctic-specific, with a result that everyone is looking to Arctic exploitation instead of sustainable development.

“We have a crazy situation where every one is rushing to get into fishing, shipping and oil and gas, but no one’s looking at the manner in which it will occur.”

“It’s not that there should be no exploitation at all,” qualified Mr Hamilton. “Instead, there should be effective management, which we take to mean collaborative management between the different countries.

“Done right, it could be a model for oil and gas extraction for the world.”

But green groups are clear that the emphasis should be on sustainable development, rather than the rush for resources.

“On the other hand, if you open up shipping routes, it could have significant global implications.

“The worst-case scenario would be oil spills in the Arctic, which are impossible to clean up, given the conditions there. And a spill in the Arctic would be catastrophic.”

Arctic Oil and Gas Rush Alarms Scientists.

Stephen Leahy, IPS, from UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 8, 2008, (brought to our attention by Roberto Savio).

As greenhouse gas pollution destroys Arctic ecosystems, countries like Canada are spending millions not to halt the destruction but to exploit it.

Late last August, Canada announced a 93.7-million-dollar prospecting programme to map the energy and mineral resources of the region. There are “countless other precious resources buried under the sea ice and tundra,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said during the announcement. The government’s mapping effort is expected to trigger 469 million dollars in private sector resource exploration and development.

“It is estimated that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas lies under the Arctic,” Harper said.

This scramble to exploit some of the most environmentally delicate regions of Earth has alarmed international experts who are meeting this week in Iceland to make recommendations to the United Nations and world governments on how to protect the polar regions.

“Many experts believe this new rush to the polar regions is not manageable within existing international law,” says A.H. Zakri, director of the United Nations University’s Yokohama-based Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), co-organisers of the conference with Iceland’s University of Akureyri.

***

“Pressure on Earth’s unique and highly vulnerable polar areas is mounting quickly and an internationally-agreed set of rules built on new realities appears needed to many observers,” Zakri said in a statement.

In Iceland, leading scholars will detail fast-emerging issues in international law and policy in the polar regions caused by such developments as the opening up of the Northwest Passage. They will identify priorities for law-making and research and offer their best advice to governments about what they should be doing now and in the future, said conference chair David Leary of UNU-IAS.

“Climate change is the number one issue for the polar regions. Iceland experienced its hottest day in history this summer,” Leary told IPS from Akureyri in northern Iceland. “I expect some strong recommendations on climate change to come from this meeting.”

***

As climate change opens the Arctic Ocean to shipping, fishing, and other resource exploitation, pollution will pose another major threat to the region, he said.

“Arctic sea routes are among the world’s most hazardous due to lack of natural light, extreme cold, moving ice floes, high wind and low visibility,” said Tatiana Saksina of the World Wildlife Fund’s International Arctic Programme.

The Arctic marine environment is particularly susceptible to the effects of pollution and cleaning up oil spills would be extremely difficult if not impossible. “Yet there are no internationally binding rules to regulate operational pollution from offshore installations,” Saksina said in a statement. “Strict standards for the transportation of Arctic oil are also urgently needed.”

Saksina also noted that overfishing, often illegal and unreported, is already occurring in the Okhotsk and Bering Seas.

Ships also bring foreign species in their ballast waters. These “invaders” can push native species into extinction and fundamentally alter aquatic ecosystems, and have done so in many parts of the world. Arctic waters are particularly vulnerable and therefore very strict standards for ballast water exchange will be needed, said Leary.

Internationally-binding standards for construction, design, equipment and manning of ships are needed since many tourist ships plying the Arctic and Antarctic are not ice ships, he says. Tourism is driving up the number of ships visiting both poles — the once-remote Antarctic region now sees more than 40,000 tourists every year.

“Accidents are going to happen. How will an oil spill be cleaned up? Who will rescue crew and passengers?” asked Leary.

***

Last November, a tourist ship carrying more than 150 people capsized off the tip of Antarctica after hitting some ice. Fortunately, other ships were close by and everyone was rescued. There was no oil spill. However, not all accidents will be so fortunate, he said.

“There is an urgent need for a comprehensive international environmental regime specially tailored for the unique arctic conditions,” noted the WWF’s Saksina.

The urgency stems from the reality that the ice in the Arctic is melting quickly, leaving the region without a solid-ice cover in summer starting just five years from now, according to some estimates. Without international environmental rules, unplanned and unregulated development is likely to damage the very resources most necessary for a sustainable future in the Arctic, she said.

“There is no time to waste and no reason to wait,” Saksina concluded.

[Comment] Who will look after the Arctic?
Arctic resources should be used in a sustainable manner that preserves biological diversity

By LISBETH KIRK, EUobserver Comment/Opinion, September 9, 2008.

 The vulnerable Arctic Region is vital to the global climate and environment, but its future is dependent on striking a delicate balance between conservation and use.

The geographical position of the Nordic countries entails a special responsibility for ensuring that national interests are not allowed to get in the way of the international community making a difference in the Arctic. The Nordic Region must take the lead in promoting sustainable development in the Arctic – and it is a matter of the greatest urgency.

Since much of its territory, both on land and at sea, falls within the Arctic Circle, the Nordic Region is heavily committed to addressing the issues faced by this unique yet vulnerable area.

The Nordic countries already work together to support the Arctic population’s social, economic and cultural development, however, as a political unit, the Nordic Region would also like to make sure that Arctic resources are used in a sustainable manner that preserves biological diversity.

It is equally clear, however, that the Nordic Region will not be able to achieve all of this on its own, and will require the help of the entire international community.

Many of the environmental threats facing the Arctic originate from far away. The build up of hazardous materials such as mercury and pesticides shows the impact on this area of production and consumption in Europe, the USA, Russia, China and India.

The globalised economy’s demand for oil and gas resources, as well as its desire for shorter and faster transport routes through the Arctic, also contribute to the pressures upon this vulnerable place.

Although the global economy creates new challenges for the people of the Arctic, it also provides them with new opportunities. It is vital that we make the most of these opportunities to raise the standard of living in the area in a sustainable manner.

***

It is essential that the EU also assumes a high degree of responsibility for the Arctic Region. Under the Danish EU Presidency in 2001, the Arctic Window became part of the union’s work on the Northern Dimension, which in turn received a further boost under the Finnish Presidency in 2007.

The Nordic Region still needs to draw greater attention to Arctic issues in the EU, however, especially those relevant to the integrated maritime policy and the EU’s leadership role in international climate negotiations.

To this end, the Nordic Council of Ministers has just published a report on the impact on the Arctic Region, direct and indirect, of the EU’s many policy areas. Its findings reveal that although the EU already exerts a major influence in the Arctic Region, it does not have a coherent policy for the area.

In order to involve the EU, its member states and other important stakeholders in Arctic questions, the Nordic Council of Ministers is organising a conference, “Common Concern for the Arctic,” in Greenland, beginning on Tuesday (9 September).

***

One positive development is that the EU, under the current French Presidency, is working on an Arctic communiqué to be published in the autumn.

Sweden, which holds the Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2008, the Presidency of the EU in autumn 2009 and the Presidency of the Arctic Council 2011–2012, has a key role to play in promoting international responses to the challenges facing the Arctic.

The Nordic Region has strong traditions of promoting sustainable development, but it is vitally important for the Arctic Region that the EU and the other Arctic states such as Russia, the USA and Canada also play an active role.

The Nordic environment ministers have also launched an initiative to improve the planning, management and protection of the marine environment in both the Nordic Region and the Arctic.

But active commitment to the Arctic is required from the EU and the rest of the international community – and it is a matter of the greatest urgency.

***

The Arctic’s global significance must not and shall not be underestimated. The Nordic Region, along with the people of the Arctic, must lead the way and strike the right balance between conservation and use. We cannot do it on our own, however. We need to bring other stakeholders on board.

Cristina Husmark Pehrsson is Minister for Nordic Cooperation in Sweden and Halldor Asgrimsson is Secretary General of The Nordic Council of Ministers

Arctic Melting Shows Global Warming Serious – Expert.

CANADA: September 4, 2008

OTTAWA – The incredibly rapid rate at which Canada’s Arctic ice shelves are disappearing is an early indicator of the “very substantial changes” that global warming will impose on all mankind, a top scientist said on Wednesday.

Researchers announced late on Tuesday that the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in the Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, had shrunk by 23 percent this summer alone.
The largest shelf is disintegrating and one of the smaller shelves, covering 19 square miles (55 square km), broke away entirely last month.

“Climate models indicate that the greatest changes, the most severe changes, will happen earliest in the highest northern latitudes,” said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

“This will be the starting point for more substantial changes throughout the rest of the planet…. Our indicators are showing us exactly what the climate models predict,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Global warming is forecast to generate more damaging weather extremes such as hurricanes, cyclones and floods.

Vincent, who has visited the ice shelves along Ellesmere Island every year for the past 10 years, said the impact of higher temperatures this year was “staggering”.

His team had estimated that the shelves would lose eight square miles this summer. The true figure was 83 square miles.

“What was extraordinary was just the vast quantity of open water … you could see open water to the horizon in an area that is typically ice-covered throughout the season,” he said.

The Markham Ice Shelf split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. Two large chunks totaling 47 square miles have broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.

The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, at 155 square miles the largest of the remaining four shelves, is disintegrating.

“Clearly the long-term viability of that ice shelf is now actually short-term,” said Vincent.

The peak temperature the team recorded was 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit (19.7 degrees Celsius), far above the average of 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

***

Vincent said he had no doubt that global warming was caused in part by human activity.

“I think we’re at a point where it is not stoppable but it can be slowed down. And if you think about the magnitude of effects on our society, then we really need to buy ourselves more time to get ready for some very substantial changes that are ahead,” he said.

Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

Scientists say the shelves, which contain unique microscopic ecosystems that have not yet been studied, will not be replaced because they took so long to form.

“More and more, we’re realizing that it is microscopic life that really dominates the biodiversity of planet Earth … we really need to understand what that biodiversity is,” said Vincent.  

BBC News – Arctic Map, prepared by Durham University, shows dispute hotspots.

Maritime jurisdiction and boundaries in the Arctic region.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/staging_site/…

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pd…

British scientists say they have drawn up the first detailed map to show areas in the Arctic that could become embroiled in future border disputes. A team from Durham University compiled the outline of potential hotspots by basing the design on historical and ongoing arguments over ownership.
Russian scientists caused outrage last year when they planted their national flag on the seabed at the North Pole.

The UK researchers hope the map will inform politicians and policy makers.
“Its primary purpose is to inform discussions and debates because, frankly, there has been a lot of rubbish about who can claim (sovereignty) over what,” explained Martin Pratt, director of the university’s International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU).

“To be honest, most of the other maps that I have seen in the media have been very simple,” he added.
“We have attempted to show all known claims; agreed boundaries and one thing that has not appeared on any other maps, which is the number of areas that could be claimed by Canada, Denmark and the US.”

Energy security is driving interest, as is the fact that Arctic ice is melting more and more during the summer. Martin Pratt, Durham University.

The team used specialist software to construct the nations’ boundaries, and identify what areas could be the source of future disputes.

“All coastal states have rights over the resources up to 200 nautical miles from their coastline,” Mr Pratt said. “So, we used specialist geographical software to ‘buffer’ the claims out accurately.”

The researchers also took into account the fact that some nations were able to extend their claims to 350 nautical miles as a result of their landmasses extending into the sea.

Back on the agenda:
The issue of defining national boundaries in the Arctic was brought into sharp relief last summer when a team of Russian explorers used their submarine to plant their country’s flag on the seabed at the North Pole. A number of politicians from the nations with borders within the Arctic, including Canada’s foreign minister, saw it as Moscow furthering its claim to territory within the region.

Mr Pratt said a number of factors were driving territorial claims back on to the political agenda.

“Energy security is driving interest, as is the fact that Arctic ice is melting more and more during the summer,” he told BBC News. “This is allowing greater exploration of the Arctic seabed.”

Data released by the US Geological Survey last month showed that the frozen region contained an estimated 90 billion barrels of untapped oil.

Mr Pratt added that the nations surrounding the Arctic also only had a limited amount of time to outline their claims. “If they don’t define it within the timeframe set out by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, then it becomes part of what is known as ‘The Area’, which is administered by the International Seabed Authority on behalf of humanity as a whole.”

__________

Countries in the area are Russia, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Canada, the US (Alaska).

We believe that 200 miles sovereignty (that is with exclusion of guaranteed maritime passage rights) from the shores of their land-mass is a foregone conclusion.

Any claims to the extension of those sovereign waters should be rejected. Those further sea-bed rights belong to the International Seabed Authority on behalf of humanity as a whole. We believe that no exception to the above should be allowed. We wrote several times that we expect China to step in and make this point stick.

We believe that this is China’s chance to declare its leading role for the 21st century.

From:      jeh1 at columbia.edu
Subject: Complete Trip Report.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Date: August 4, 2008

- July 3, 2008: Dear Prime Minister Fukuda: A letter to the leader of Japan before the G8 meeting
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2…

- July 2008: *Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy*
Slides for presentation given July 4 at United Nations University in Tokyo, available in PDF and Powerpoint.
 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…

 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/Tokyo…

Above is a summary of the State of the Science and a hint to the State of the Politics.

The links are here and we will post this also in our data base.

Opinion: Polar Race.
Monday 28 July 2008
by: Guy Taillefer, Le Devoir
 http://www.truthout.org/article/polar-ra…

Guy Taillefer argues in Le Devoir that the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation of the polar depths – that they contain 412 billion barrels of oil, or a third of the planet’s proven reserves – will put additional strain on the already-fragile international understandings with respect to polar sovereignty and development.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …”
Four hundred and twelve billion barrels of oil. A third of the planet’s proven reserves. That’s what the depths of the Arctic contain, according to the US Geological Survey’s most recent evaluation. One may count on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to take advantage of the opportunity to reassert Canada’s “unquestionable” sovereignty over the North – and to reduce the debate over the development of the circumpolar world to a war of flags and icebreakers.
Last Wednesday, after four years of research, the US Geological Survey, the American scientific agency specialized in hydrocarbons, delivered the first exhaustive estimate of potential oil and gas situated north of the polar circle: 90 billion barrels of crude, three times as much natural gas, 20 percent of the probable global reserves of liquefied natural gas…. The news is guaranteed to have a strong impact, given the present context of tightening energy supplies, surging prices at the pump, and the extraordinary growth of demand in developing countries. Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts…. If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases.
Moreover, quite by chance, the US Geological Survey estimates were made public one year, almost to the day, after two little Russian sailors dove to a depth of 4,000 meters in the beginning of August 2007 to plant a flag on the North Pole. This striking gesture – without any legal effect, however – relaunched the debate on the subject of sovereignty over the Arctic in great style.

Cut to the quick, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay decreed that the region Russia coveted was “unquestionably” Canadian.
Unquestionably? That remains to be seen. Experts from the UN, guarantors of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, will say between now and 2013 which between Ottawa and Moscow has the better-founded pretensions from a scientific perspective. At the moment, however, it seems that Russia is better placed to prove geologically that the Lomonossov Dorsal, a chain of undersea mountains that cross the Arctic, is the prolongation of the Russian continental plateau, and not of the Canadian plateau.
Politicians, unfortunately, don’t bother much with such scientific details in their communications with the electorate, preferring to play a nationalistic rhetoric that is easily digested. So the bad scenario would be that, in this race for the summit of the world, the sharing of the Arctic will be less the result of a UN judgment and multinational dialogue than of power struggles between the five countries involved – Canada, Russia, the United States, Denmark, and Norway. That scenario is altogether plausible.
“The Canadian Arctic is at the heart of our national identity,” Stephen Harper declared last year. He has announced, among other military measures in the last year, an investment of $7 billion over 25 years for buying naval patrol boats. A depressing prospect: that Canada seeks to take on its northern identity is laudable, that it proposes to get there by emphasizing military defense to the detriment of social, ecological and diplomatic initiatives, is much less so. It is difficult in any case to imagine that pugnacious Prime Minister-President Vladimir Putin will allow himself to be intimidated.
Nonetheless, the Harper way remains very questionable, in that it is a thousand leagues from the Canadian Way – based on dialogue and cooperation. Still, the most recent decades have demonstrated that it’s by balancing its own interests with those of its circumpolar neighbors – and not by sticking out its chest – that Canada has succeeded in preserving its Arctic sovereignty.
Moreover, in order to calm tensions, the five held a big meeting last spring, which ended in the participants’ commitment to settle any litigious question “in an orderly way,” to “strengthen their cooperation based on mutual trust and transparency” and to “assure the protection and preservation of the fragile marine environment of the Arctic Ocean.” Empty phrases? The future will show how these beautiful promises that we’d like to see kept will withstand the lust for 412 billion barrels of oil.
———————

We posted several days ago: “Reuters Reports That China Is Planting its Flag in the Arctic and Antarctic Regions. Actually they started already at least in 2003, so this is not just a reaction to the Russian Flag-posting of August 2007.”

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 27th, 2008
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

So, face up to it – China is also in this game. And why should not Nauru or Grenada also be entiled to some of the profits? if they cannot afford the expense of drilling – bet you Brazil or Japan, even Korea and India, and who knows who else – can!

OK – Now Let Us Sit Down And Talk. For Once We Are Behind China and Expect The Dragon To Stand Its Ground.

The North Pole. Guy Taillefer writes, “Northern governments and oil companies have never salivated to quite the same extent over the Arctic, which becomes all the more hospitable to them as the ice melts … If one were a cynic, one would say that in this instance it is altogether to Ottawa’s advantage to drag its feet in the fight against greenhouse gases …” (Photo: NASA GSFC Direct Readout Laboratory / Allen Lunsford).