Wednesday, August 11, 2010

If they're hoping to earn our trust, should "objective" scientists travel to Greenland with Greenpeace activists on a Greenpeace ship?

Giant iceberg could pose threat to oil, shipping | Stuff.co.nz
It's been a summer of near Biblical climatic havoc across the planet...
If it makes it into the strait before the winter freeze - due to start next month - it would likely be carried south by ocean currents, hugging Canada's east coast until it enters waters busy with oil exploration and shipping off Newfoundland.
...
The Canadian Ice Service estimates the journey will take one to two years.  [If it's so hot up there, why should we be worried about gigantic, unmelted icebergs hanging around in our busy shipping lanes?]
...
Greenland's glaciers pump out thousands of icebergs into Arctic waters every year, but scientists say this is the biggest in the northern hemisphere since 1962.
...
The behaviour of Greenland's glaciers, which have accelerated in recent years, is one of the least understood pieces of the climate puzzle.

A team of climate scientists who visited the Petermann glacier last year, expecting it to crack then, is now planning another trip within weeks.
...
Box and two British researchers travelled to the glacier last year with Greenpeace activists who offered space aboard their ship, the Arctic Sunrise, to scientists studying climate change.

They were hoping to capture the event with cameras rolling, which would have been a powerful image just months before the Copenhagen climate talks that failed to produce a binding treaty to reduce heat-trapping gas emissions.

"It would have been nice if it had broken off last year,"  said Melanie Duchin, who led that Greenpeace expedition. "I mean ice melting, it doesn't get any simpler than that."

No comments: