From: Susan Clark, The Ecologist, in ENN.com More
from this Affiliate
I don't want to be told
that thanks to Global Warming - now accepted by the majority (77%) of Americans
and so therefore, in my opinion, a new Tipping Point - strawberry plants can
now survive a Greenland winter.
I don't want to see neat
little rows of budding lettuce plants growing outside a polytunnel. OUTSIDE a
polytunnel; over-wintering under the snow but come the Spring, still alive and
sprouting new shoots; cabbage and potatoes to follow.
And I don't want to hear a Greenlander livestock farmer telling me that (once again, thanks to Global Warming) he now has enough newly ice-free pasture land to double the size of his 20,000-strong flock of sheep.
None of this is what I
want to hear or see. But if I thought that was bad, the worst moment in the
whole 60-something minutes of the new CNN film Greenland: Secrets in the Ice
was the moment when presenter, Fred Pleitgen tells me that after strawberries
and lettuce and pasture fields bulging with ever more sheep, it will be the
miners moving in - looking for the huge reserves of diamonds, gold, uranium,
gas and oil they believe to be hiding under the ice.
"Mining companies
are hoping for a bonanza here, if the ice continues to retreat," Fred
adds.
Some are already
drilling.
In other words, we can
look on the bright side because as the Earth warms and the Artic ice melts,
someone, somewhere can push the business-as-usual 'growth/greed' agenda and
make some more money. Lots more money.
This programme - a kind
of idiot's guide to why we might want to think twice about destroying our
planet - follows Polar 6; an ice survey research plane now mapping the alarming
rate of ice-melt across Greenland which is the world's largest island.
As it flies over clear
blue pools of ice-water melts, Fred tells us that recent NASA images have shown
an unprecedented level of surface ice melt there: 97 %. I think I have misheard
that so I rewind and play it again. 97% says Fred. Can that be right? I rewind.
Again. 97 %. "Twice the usual amount." he notes solemnly.
In fact, the Arctic ice
sheet is losing mass at an alarming rate: close to 300 square kilometres
(115 square miles) a year.
The Polar 6 researchers,
who are from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute
for Polar and Marine Research, explain that the Secrets in
the Ice (from the title) they are looking for are in fact those pieces
of information that make up a kind of frozen archive of information about
previous climatic conditions including temperature, ash (from volcanoes)
precipitation levels and dust particles present.
A solidly-preserved
record, if you will, of the climate that goes back 100,000 years. And for this
they drill down deep into the ice covering the middle of mainland Greenland.
Cold. Hostile. Gigantic.
An ice sheet more than
twice the size of Texas.
A frozen winter
wonderland.
Now that's what I want
to hear when someone tells me about the ice sheet that covers vast tracts of
Greenland making it the second biggest ice mass in the world.
Until the rest of it
melts ....
I switch off. Depressed.
I turn the TV back to the UK's good old BBC where a couple of gents have just
won the Pointless Quiz Show Jackpot of £20,000.
"What will you do
with the money?" asks that presenter.
"Oh travel, of
course," says one.
"To the
Artic," adds his mate. "Yes, we like a cruise."
"Better get on with
it then," I found myself shouting. "Or else the only thing you will
see will be oil rigs and strawberry fields ....Forever!"
Greenland valley
courtesy the Alpinist.
Read more at ENN
Affiliate, The Ecologist.