I’m back! And as is so often the case, there’s a lot waiting to be done that didn’t disappear while I was on holiday. So for today,I’d like to draw your attention to some people who have been looking after the icy regions of the planet while the ice-blogger was still on holiday.
IUCN and WWF jointly produce a podcast called Wild Talk.
In the latest edition, one of the topics is the 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty. There’s an interview with Carl Gustav Lundin
head of the IUCN Global Marine Programme about the Treaty and the state of the Antarctic today. Worth a listen.
Ministers from the Arctic Council and the Antarctic Treaty states held their first ever joint meeting in Washington on April 6 celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Antarctic Treaty. WWF provided the ministers with recent evidence from both the north and south poles that clearly demonstrates global temperature increases must be kept well under two degrees Celsius.
“A global average temperature rise of 2 degrees is clearly too much for the poles,” says Rob Nicoll, Manager of WWF’s Antarctic and Southern Oceans Initiative. “Scientists are already unpleasantly surprised at how quickly the impacts of warming such as sea ice loss are showing up in the polar regions, exceeding recent predictions.”
Global average warming due to climate change since the late 1800s is showing severe impacts at less than one degree, as the Arctic is warming at about twice the global average and parts of the Antarctic are also outstripping the global average. The polar regions themselves have profound and not yet fully understood impacts on climate globally, and there are fears that polar tipping points could trigger abrupt change around the world.
A forthcoming report on Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research is expected to up previous estimates on Antarctica’s expected substantial contributions to sea level rises. Marine food chains of global significance are also under threat from warming in the Antarctic.

I’m feeling rather envious – or at least I’m getting itchy feet.
My colleague Stefan Nestler is on his way to the North Pole via Spitzbergen.
Mind you, he’s with an expedition that’s walking, skiing and towing all the necessary rations and equipment on their sledges.That is going to be quite a feat.
His Nordpolblog (in German, but there will be great pictures, I’m sure) looks fantastic.
Visit the North Pole Blog
Meanwhile, I have been doing conference duty here in Bonn, following the UN Climate Secretariat meeting trying to make progress towards an agreement to be signed in Copenhagen in December.
Fred has posted a comment asking what I think of all these conferences and their chances of success, and Obama’s role.
Well sometimes I think these giant meetings (more than 2 and a half thousand people at the UN meeting here until April 8th) produce enough “hot air” to raise the temperature of the planet considerably. But if we don’t get all the major players to agree on binding commitments, we have no chance.I don’t know if they really need that many people. And a bit more video-conferencing would save a lot of travel emissions.
Talking to the delegates to the UN meeting, I certainly get the feeling the change of US administration has given a boost to morale and the feeling that we might get there somewhere after all. But there are those who warn against expecting too much.
Let’s give the guy and his team a chance. And let’s see what comes out of this round of talks, and Obama’s special climate summit in April.
Meanwhile, I’m off on a break until after Easter. I’ll leave you with another link to the latest iniative by the online community connect2earth. They’ve launched a new campaign, supported by celebrities like Skandar Keynes (from Chronicles of Narnia – ha! bet you were wondering when Narnia was going to come in to it. Jack, you probably thought it would involve the lion…)
They want to encourage people to debate with the world’s top environmental experts. Check it out yourselves, here’s the link:
Join the green online community?
Check the Ice Blog again around April 14th please!

We haven’t heard a lot about the iron fertilisation controversy in the Antarctic for a while – at least not in the mainstream media.

(The German research vessel Polarstern, belonging to the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, conducting the research with Indian partners).

– See blog entries of 9.-15-1-2009 for the background –
Are you surprised to hear that the controversial experiment did not produce the desired results? Artificially fertlizing the ocean with iron is not a way to substantially reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere!
It seems the scientists on board the Polarstern were surprised by what did actually happen during the German-Indian experiment.

WWF has just announced the meeting has actually come up with a resolution linking the future of the species to urgent global action on climate change. You might think that’s stating the obvious -but’s its actually an important step forward in building up pressure for climate action.

(Erik Malm Photography, Courtesy of WWF)

Well, the parties to the polar bear conservation treaty have been talking for a couple of days now. It seems to me the main thing that will come out of a conference like this is publicity for the plight of the bears and the desperate need to take action on climate change, rather than any concrete measures.Climate change is the real issue here, and the polar bears have become one of the main symbols of the negative effects. The parties need to come out with a strong message to the Copenhagen climate meeting in December.
WWF were understandably upset, to put it mildly, when the five Arctic states participating decided at the start to exclude ngos, an Indigenous organization and other observers from the key sections of the meeting relating to climate change and an action plan.
“We do not know what these countries have to say about protecting polar bears that cannot be shared with the world”, were the words of Geoff York, polar bear coordinator for WWF,interviewed earlier for the ice blog.
(You might also like to hear this report on Living Planet, including Geoff York and scientists working on sea ice development in the Arctic)
WWF and other parties had actually been invited officially to the meeting and given observer status. The Norwegian government wanted them there, but evidently some other countries have their own agenda and were not so happy to have the conservationists on board.

Polar bears depend on the sea ice to hunt their prey (seals in particular).

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Their situation is already getting so bad that some of the experts have observed increasing cannibalistic tendencies amongst smaller, less robust bears.
Andrew Derocher, chair of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, an international network of researchers, is quoted as saying "we don't have hard evidence about climate change, but we have evidence about the numerous symptoms of climate change on polar bears."

With the ice season considerably shorter than it was even just 30 years ago, the bears have problems if they can’t hunt seals, their primary source of food and an essential source of fat to last them through the summer.R esearchers in Alaska have reported several incidents of bears killing and eating other polar bears.N ews agencies are quoting Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the US Geological Surcey. He says some bears have been attacking female bears in their denning area. There’s also an increasing trend for polar bears in northern Alaska, to build their den on land.
Geoff York told me in the interview there was no chance of polar bears, who are specialized to the Arctic eco-system with its sea-ice, adapting completely to life on land, because climate change is moving too fast to allow natural adaptation, and because there’s too much competition there. So combatting climate change is the only way to save our white Arctic symbol

(All these great pics from Erik Malm Photography, Courtesy of WWF)