Arctic ice melts are evidence that climate change remains “the most serious threat to humanity,” Green Party warns

22 September 2010

The Green Party today warned that governments must not take their eye off climate change while addressing the economic crisis – because global warming remains “the most serious threat to the long term stability of human society.”

James Abbott, the Green Party’s spokesperson on science and technology, said today:

"2010 is set to be the hottest year in the global temperature record that extends back 131 years, or very close to it. Arctic sea ice is also currently very close to the record minimum set in 2007. We have seen record heatwaves in many parts of the world this summer.

“Of course one year does not prove or disprove climate change. It is the long term trends that are important. But 2010 is entirely consistent with climate change forecasts and also poses some difficult questions for the sceptics who have been spreading doubt about the science and making claims that warming has stopped and that sea ice is returning to normal.

“The global economic crisis is of course a priority for the world community. But climate change has not gone away. It remains the most serious threat to the long term stability of human society and to the planet's ecosystems.

“We can both head off the worst impacts of climate change and develop a strong sustainable economy if we make the right decisions now about investing to build a green economy. We cannot risk a delay in taking the strong action necessary."

 

Climate sceptics “are cherry-picking statistics to suit their pre-determined position”

James Abbott explained:

“The summer melt of Arctic sea ice is now close to same extent as the record year of 2007 (1).

“Sea ice extent in the Arctic is currently over 1.6 million square kilometres below the 1979-2008 mean (2).

“As well as evidence for surface area melt, sea ice is thinning, which leaves ice more vulnerable to melting each spring.

“The loss of sea ice over the Arctic is a key prediction of climate change models, as the Arctic is expected to warm faster than most of the rest of the planet. But it is also a worrying impact of global warming as reduction in the amount of radiation reflected back to space (as the surface changes from bright ice to darker ocean and land), is setting up a positive feedback, accelerating warming in the Arctic still further. With 2010 on course to be one of the hottest years on record globally, the Canadian Arctic is showing the largest regional temperature anomaly on the planet (3).

“Rapid warming in the Arctic will not only impact on sensitive populations of species such as polar bears, it is already leading to plans for oil exploration as conditions become more benign. Mining the Arctic for fossil fuels will unleash both a new wave of fossil fuel burning and also threaten the highly vulnerable Arctic ecosystems, which is why Greenpeace recently disrupted an exploratory oil drilling operation off the coast of West Greenland.”

He concluded:

“Climate change sceptics have tried to throw doubt on the science by cherry-picking statistics to suit their pre-determined position, including over the extent of sea ice cover. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, one of whose leading figures is former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson, claimed as recently as June that Arctic sea ice was recovering (4).”

Green Party leader and Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas has been strongly arguing in parliament and elsewhere that the government needs to take a new approach to finding the cash to invest massively in a programme of CO2 reduction measures at the same time as tackling the deficit. The Green Party made this the central feature of its 2010 general election campaign (5).

 

Notes

1. See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png.

2. See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png.

3. See http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/.

4. See http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1139-arctic-sea-ice-recovery.html.

5. Read the party’s costed manifesto at http://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/resources/Manifesto_web_file.pdf.

 

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