The UN can only come up with its reports that the earth is round and that our lifestyle is changing the climate. We do not think so until we see the national celodos, the glaciers, melt.
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
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Report. "The scientific evidence for climate change has been strengthening year by year."
Nobel Laureate Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Climate Panel (IPCC), said in Stockholm on Monday. The statements came during an opening ceremony ahead of the completion of the first report on climate change since 2007. In addition to an 50 number of climate scientists, over 250 delegates from 111 countries participate in the four-day plenary session at the Munich brewery in the capital of Sweden. 27. September the UN report is presented.
According to drafts that have been leaked to the press, climate scientists now believe that there is over 95 percent probability that at least half of the warming since 1950 is man-made. The figure has been revised up from 90 percent in the 2007 report. The IPCC should now also have increased sea level rise calculations by the end of this century from 18-59 centimeters to 26-81 centimeters.
But there is unfortunately little reason to believe that the UN report will lead to increased action from our politicians – not even from the four bourgeois parties that are now negotiating government power in Norway. The elected representatives have a four-year perspective on their work – and you do not have to act with a view to the future to win elections in 2015 or 2017. Most Norwegian voters seem to be limited concerned about climate change.
Opinion surveys also show that up to half do not believe that human activity is changing the climate, or that the problem is not seen. More sun on the Sun and tomatoes in Troms may have its benefits, most Norwegian voters seem to think.
There is probably little Pachauri and climate scientists can do about it. UN reports do not change skepticism. It's like poison you can not see – like in Bhopal or with enriched uranium in Iraq – you continue as before until you can do nothing else.
Ship loaded with metal
A little more may help by viewing images of satellite measurements from the Arctic sea ice, which are shrinking rapidly. When the ice was at its thickest this winter, it had a volume of just under 15.000 cubic kilometers, according to measurements from the European space agency ESA's satellite Cryosat. The satellite has been in operation for three years, during which time the ice has shrunk.
But that is not enough in itself. Or that Bellona could tell on Tuesday that the first cargo ship of 44 years is going through the Northwest Passage this week. The ship is the Danish-controlled «M / V Nordic Orion», loaded with 73.000 tonnes of metallurgical coal used in steel production. The ship is going to Ruuki Metals in Finland. But neither less ice in the Arctic nor larger floods in Kvam is enough to change the actions of voters and politicians.
Then there is perhaps more hope to be gained in what happens to the glaciers, the Norwegian national cellos. Last week, researchers from the Bjerkness Center went out and told most people on TV 2 how the glaciers are decreasing. And the consequences will be fewer tourists and less money in the future.
Glasiologist Hallgeir Elvehøy at NVE tells the newspaper Ahead: The Storsteinsfjellbreen glacier in Skjomen has become as much as 500-600 meters shorter since the 1960s. Only in the last year has the Storsteinsfjellbreen glacier withdrawn 10 meters, the front measurements show. In 2012 it shrank by a whopping 69 meters! Since 2006, the glacier in Skjomen has decreased over 160 meters, by 270 meters since 1993.
It's the closest thing people can see the glaciers melting.
There are 70 glaciers in the size of 5-10 square kilometers, only 40 glaciers in the size of more than 10 square kilometers. In total there are 2.500 glaciers in Norway, but the Storsteinsfjellbreen glacier is one of the largest in the country.
income limits
It must at least have such visible characteristics of climate change, which may affect the income of the local elected representatives, which is necessary for political Norway to stake its course on something other than oil drilling in Lofoten and Vesterålen.
It would probably be far more future-oriented and income-generating to invest in wave power, wind power and solar energy instead – but the Norwegian state money is not yet twisted there. They are rather given to the oil lobby and their friends.
Therefore, there will probably be little effect in political Norway when the first part of the IPCC's fifth main report will now be completed. Later, two other sections will be published on the effects and actions on climate change. Finally, a collector's report will be presented in Copenhagen. The goal is a new, global climate agreement at the Paris Summit in 2015.
Meanwhile, the glaciers are melting. ■
(This is an excerpt from Ny Tid's weekly magazine 27.09.2013. Read the whole thing by buying Ny Tid in newspaper retailers all over the country, or by subscribing to Ny Tid -click here. Subscribers receive previous editions free of charge as PDF.)