Mission & Justice

Adam Morton; 3/11/08

Atmospheric concentrations of methane, “a greenhouse gas more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide”, have risen for the first time in eight years, prompting concern about the pace of climate change. A global study in Geophysical Research Letters found the first increase in methane levels this century — by about 28 million tonnes since mid-2006 — was in part due to release of gas in and near the Arctic. CSIRO senior climate scientist Paul Fraser said the data was in line with predictions that rapid melting of Arctic ice would create natural wetlands, one of the most common methane emitters. “This is not good news for global warming,” he said. Over the past decade, methane emitted from wetlands, rice fields, cattle, bushfires and coalmines had been largely offset by absorption of the gas by dry soil and through atmospheric oxidation, Dr Fraser said.

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8/10/08

Environmental groups and the Bush administration yesterday reached a partial court settlement that requires the Department of Interior to designate critical habitat for polar bears by June 30, 2010. The Department of Interior in May listed the polar bear as being threatened by global warming, but did not designate any critical habitat protection. The Centre for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace,and the Natural Resources Defence Council filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force the Government to do more for the bear’s long-term survival under the Endangered Species Act. “This agreement will provide an additional layer of protection,” said Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity.

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Marian Wilkinson; 20/9/08

Thge melting of Arctic sea ice has reached a critical stage, with satellite images showing the disappearance of ice this year peaking at a level close to last year’s record. The figures put the size of the Arctic sea ice at the end of the northern summer about one-third lower than the average recorded over the past three decades. “This year further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past 30 years,” analysts at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said in their latest report.

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22/8/08

Two of Greenland’s largest glaciers lost more ice to global warming over the last month, US researchers said today. Glaciologists at the Byrd Polar Research Centre at Ohio State University observed the break-ups by monitoring daily NASA satellites images as well as time-lapse photography from cameras monitoring Greenland’s glaciers. A huge chunk of the Petermann Glacier measuring 29 square kilometres - roughly half the size of Manhattan - broke away between July 10 and 24, said Jason Box, a professor of geography at Ohio State University. Petermann, in northern Greenland, last lost a major mass of ice - 86 square kilometres - between 2000 and 2001.

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Marian Wilkinson; 4/8/08

When we arrived at the tiny community of Resolute Bay in the Arctic, the sea ice had trapped the local residents. It was too thick to take boats out to the Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker but too thin to drive over in a snowmobile. Forty years ago at Resolute Bay, protesting Inuit hunters went out on the sea ice in dog sleds and stopped an ice-strengthened US oil tanker, the SS Manhattan, which was exploring a commercial route through the Northwest Passage. The sea ice, not the Inuit, defeated the oil company. It abandoned the Northwest Passage and conceded the overland Alaska pipeline was the only way to ship oil south. Late last northern summer, the sea ice here virtually disappeared. And with advancing climate change in the Arctic, both the local Inuit and scientists are again hearing talk about how the Northwest Passage could ship the oil wealth from the north to an energy-hungry world.

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27/6/08

The US Supreme Court has thrown out the record $US2.5billion in punitive damages Exxon Mobil Corp was ordered to pay for the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. When the Exxon Valdez crashed into a reef in Prince William Sound in 1989, 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled. Picture: AFP By a 5-3 vote, the court ruled the punitive damages should be slashed to the total relevant compensatory damages of $US507.5million ($530million). The judges overturned a ruling by a US Court of Appeals that had awarded the record punitive damages to about 32,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others harmed by the US’s worst tanker spill. In the majority opinion, judge David Souter concluded the $US2.5billion in punitive damages was excessive under federal maritime law, and should be cut to the amount of actual harm. Recent soaring oil prices have propelled Exxon Mobil to record profits. The company posted earnings of $US40.6billion last year.

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Rob Reynolds; 20/6/08

There is no road to the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. To go there you fly in a small specially equipped plane with big, balloon-like tyres that allow it to land on gravel streambeds and rocky ridges. From above, the refuge is a vast sweep of brown tundra dotted with ponds and lakes. The coastal plain, stretching out toward the Arctic Ocean, is flat as a tabletop and marshy. Further south, the land unfolds into rolling hills and wide valleys before rising in the sheer wall of the snow-clad Brooks Range. At first, from above, it seems like an empty place - but as I look closer I see a land full of life. There are scattered groups of caribou here and there - the large bulls sporting impressive arrays of antlers, and the small calves leaping along behind their mothers. These are just a few of the tens of thousands that graze on the moss and lichen-covered ground of the reserve.

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Julian Borger; 30/5/08

Environment groups have denounced as a territorial “carve-up” a deal signed by five Arctic nations seeking to resolve competing claims. The agreement was signed in Greenland by ministers from Russia, the US, Norway, Denmark and Canada, and sought to cool down an increasingly heated scramble for the Arctic, driven by the prospect of oil and gas reserves and shipping lanes made newly accessible by the melting of the polar icecap. The declaration after talks on Wednesday said the five countries would abide by the 1982 Law of the Sea, which determines territorial claims according to coastlines and undersea continental shelves. But environmentalists said the closed-door meeting paved the way for a land grab by countries that have claims to the continental shelf at the pole.

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