World Politicians See Antarctic Problems For Themselves

Ministers for the Environment from over 12 countries, including the UK’s Hilary Benn and ministers from Russia, China, and the U.S, travelled to an Antarctic Norwegian base to meet scientists who had spent two months slogging across 1,400 miles from the South Pole.

Ministers from Finland, Algeria, Sweden, Norway, and the Czech Republic also participated, along with negotiators and policymakers from other countries.

They will experience the immense scale of the Antarctic and its part in global warming, the Environment Ministry of Norway believes.

During a bright 17-hour day at the end of summer, at minus 20 degrees Celsius, they travelled on snow tractors over the ice sheet, 500 metres deep, looking in wonder at Judulsessen, a range of high peaks in the Gjelsvik Mountains.

Ted Scambos, a US glaciologist explained to the visitors that after analyzing ice drilled during the team’s trek, there is some warming in eastern Antarctica.

The Ministers listened attentively since this year they will be negotiating a new international agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The trek was a major part of the 2007-2009 International Polar Year, engaging more than 50,000 experts from over 60 countries in Arctic and Antarctic research over the last two summers via icebreaker, surveillance satellite, submarine and on the ice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believes there could be a 23 inches rise in sea levels during this century caused by heat melting ice on land, if the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases are not reduced.

It did not include the warming of the ice at the poles in its respected 2007 analysis of climate change, since so little data is available

The preliminary findings from Antarctic expeditions underpin the study, deriving trends in temperature by comparing data from satellites with that from the few weather-stations in Antarctica.

Deep drilling into the ice enabled the trekkers to collect critical data on how much snow has fallen over time which, with satellite data, will permit an assessment of the rate of melt and the speed and amount of increases in sea levels

90% of the earth’s ice is in the Antarctic but the relationship between sea and atmosphere is little known.

The West Antarctic ice, where glaciers are melting fast, could tip the balance dangerously during this century, said James Hansen of NASA, a climatologist.

He finds the possibility of rises in sea levels terrifying and catastrophic for coastal areas around the world.