------ forwarded message ------
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 09:12:55 +0100
From: info <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Antarctica 'Melting before our eyes'
------ forwarded message ------
Subject: [Crisis!] Antarctica 'Melting before our eyes'
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 10:28:21 -0800
From: Andy Caffrey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Climate Crisis Action <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Earth First! alert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Antarctica 'melting before our eyes'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, In Nairobi
11 February 2001
Antarctica is melting faster and further than ever before, environment
ministers meeting in Nairobi were told last week in a dramatic phone call from
the frozen continent.
The explorer and yachtsman Sir Peter Blake called the ministers attending the
governing council of the United Nations Environment Programme to say that he
had just sailed 100 miles through open water that had been frozen for hundreds
of thousands of years. The King George VI ice shelf at the base of the
Antarctic peninsula was breaking up, he said.
The call came as ministers from 80 countries were considering how to rescue
international negotiations on combating global warming in the face of attempts
in the US and oil-producing countries to delay and kill them. I was the only
journalist to witness the call, and Sir Peter spoke to me exclusively after
talking with the ministers.
The New Zealand-born sailor - who was standing on an ice floe in King George's
Sound at 69 degrees south - gave his warning to David Anderson and Marian
Hobbs, the environment ministers of Canada and New Zealand respectively. Both
countries are members of the hard-line group of nations - including the US -
that is pressing for loopholes in the international treaty agreed to fight
global warming.
Sir Peter said: "I am speaking from an area of water that has never been water
before. It has always been frozen solid. It is uncharted. There are no depth
readings on the map because no ship has ever been able to measure them. No one
has ever been anywhere near where we are now.
"We have sailed for the last 100 miles through open seas in an area that in
the past would only have been accessible to the biggest ice-breakers. Now it
is clear water."
Sir Peter - who skippered the winning boat in the 1990 Whitbread Round the
World yacht race and in 1994 broke the world record for circumnavigating the
world non-stop under sail - was on an expedition partly to monitor the state
of the ice for the UN Environment Programme.
He added: "Today we went to see what has happened to the King George VI ice
shelf that normally fills the channel between Alexander Island and the
mainland at the base of the Antarctic peninsula. We were not able to make it
to the face of the ice shelf because it is dropping so much ice into the sea
as it recedes. The indications are that it has receded dramatically,
especially over the past eight to 10 years. "There is no question in my mind
that major changes are taking place."
Professor Klaus Töpfer, the executive director of the UNEP, explained that
scientific measurements showed the Antarctic was warming up and that ice
shelves further north in the Antarctic peninsula had already collapsed.
Mr Anderson, who is presiding over the Nairobi meeting, told Sir Peter: "We
are experiencing the same kind of changes in conditions in the Arctic as you
are seeing in the South Pole region. We are seeing dramatic changes that
affect permafrost and sea ice.
"For Canada this underscores the urgent need to take action on climate change.
We are taking action domestically but we need awareness and movement on the
international front as well."
But Canada, with the US, has been insisting on widening loopholes in the
Kyoto Protocol, agreed three years ago to reduce emissions of the pollution
that causes global warming. This was one of the sticking points that brought
the negotiations to collapse in The Hague last November.
Sir Peter replied: "The problem has to be addressed right now, whatever the
economic consequences. We are doing more harm now to the world than ever
before. This is about the whole ecology of the world, which it has taken
hundreds of millions of years to get right. We are blowing it."
The conversation took place as attempts to restart the negotiations are
coming under new threats. The one thing that the Hague meeting did agree on
was to resume talks in May. But now President Bush, who repeatedly attacked
the Kyoto Protocol during his election campaign, has asked for this to be
delayed until July while he develops his policies and appoints the relevant
officials. British ministers believe this to be reasonable, but the European
Union is more sceptical.
"The joint EU attitude is that in fact we do not like it, but that we will
have to accept that they want to delay the talks," said a top Swedish
negotiator, Bo Kjellen, last week. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is lobbying
developing countries to try to put back the talks for a year.
More ominous still are the actions of Joe Barton, a Texan Republican
congressman. The chairman of a House of Representatives subcommittee on
energy and air quality, he is urging the President to move to kill the treaty
altogether so that he can propose "alternatives".
Mr Barton said that the Kyoto Treaty "is never going to be satisfactory to
the economic interests of this country".
But Sir Peter told the Independent on Sunday that there should be no delay:
"This must be addressed on an emergency basis. If we delay much longer it
will become unstoppable, and it will be too late."
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