Canadian First Nations, US-based Tribal Governments and Indigenous Advocacy Groups Endorse Mass Civil Disobedience Action to Protest Canadian Tar Sands

September 21, 2011 (Ottawa, ON) – Canadian First Nations, American Indian Tribes, Territorial, Provincial and Federal First Nations Governments and Advocacy groups have added their support for a rally featuring a civil disobedience sit-in against the tar sands on September 26 in Ottawa.


"Current operations in the tar sands are violating our human and constitutionally protected treaty rights.  Our community is currently in court with some of these companies and plan to oppose any and all future development with similar legal action,” said Lionel Lepine of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation “We demand free, prior and informed consent for development in our traditional territories as recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”


Hundreds of people from across North America have endorsed the call to action for September 26, which is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in front of the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill. The action is to oppose the tar sands industry and push for a clean, green energy future that honors Indigenous rights and prioritizes the health of the environment and communities.


First Nations leaders from British Columbia, North West Territories and Alberta, three provinces most heavily affected by the tar sands development, will travel to Ottawa to lend their names and voices to raise awareness of the devastating environmental and social effects of the tar sands. US-based Native American Tribes and advocacy groups along with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Yankton Sioux Tribe have also endorsed the day of action.
"Enbridge is trying to ram its tar sands pipeline right through our territories and the lands of many other First Nations,” said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz First Nation, a member of the Yinka Dene Alliance. “We have used our laws to forbid these pipelines in our lands. We will use every means available to us under Indigenous, Canadian and International law to enforce our decision and stop the Enbridge pipeline. If we take care of the land and water, it will take care of us. If we ruin our water with oil spills and once the tar sands kill the waters of our brother and sister nations, our people will be finished."


On September 16 and 17, on the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota, an Accord was signed opposing the proposed Trans-Canada Keystone XL pipeline and endorsing the Ottawa Action.  The emergency Tribal meeting, which included Canadian First Nations and Native American Tribes affected by the proposed pipeline, focused on Tribal opposition to the Trans-Canada Keystone XL.   The Accord highlights the neglected concerns of First Nations in Canada regarding the Canadian tar sands, the industry’s disproportionate impacts on Treaty and Aboriginal rights and the detrimental health and social consequences for affected First Nations communities.


“The tar sands represent a path of broken treaties, eroded human rights, catastrophic climate change, poisoned air and water and the complete stripping of Canada’s morality in the international community,” said Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Our communities should not be sacrificed on the altar of Canada’s addiction to dirty fossil fuel; we want a new economic paradigm that protects our relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth.”


Other First Nations groups endorsing the September 26, 2011, action include: Dene Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Yinka Dene Alliance, Wet’suwet’en and Unis’tot’en Nations. 

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For more info: Clayton Thomas-Muller (English), Indigenous Tar Sands Campaigner, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), (613) 297-7515 monsterredlight@gmail.com

More: 

Mother Earth Accord 

DENE NATION BECOMES PART OF INTERNATIONAL ACCORD OPPOSED TO KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

http://www.ienearth.org/news/mass-civil-disobedience-action-to-protest-canadian-tar-sands.html

Live streaming video: Hundreds gather on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to tell Harper "No to the Tar Sands!"; first massive civil disobedience in Canada

Hundreds gather on Parliament Hill to tell Harper ‘No to Tar Sands’

Greenpeace, September 26, 2011

(Ottawa) – Hundreds of people from across North America are gathered this morning on Parliament Hill for a rally followed by a mass civil disobedience sit-in. Participants are responding to a call to action for a large peaceful protest where many will risk arrest to tell the Harper government they don’t support his reckless agenda and urge him to turn away from the tar sands and build a green energy future that promotes climate justice, respects Indigenous rights and prioritizes the health of our environment and communities.

“It is morally justifiable to risk arrest if you see and witness a crime occurring or about to occur. We are saying the tar sands industry is unlawful. We need to stop it before the damage is done. It’s worth getting arrested to send that warning out to the rest of Canada,” said Louisette Lante, a housewife from Waterloo.

The action began at 10 a.m. with a solidarity rally in front of the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill featuring a number of speeches from prominent individuals from environmental organizations and Indigenous communities directly impacted by the tar sands Following the speeches, waves of participants in groups of 20 or more will separate from the solidarity rally and choose to risk arrest by participating in a peaceful sit-in near the front doors to Centre Block.

Watch live streaming video.

“The tar sands represent a path of broken treaties, eroded human rights, catastrophic climate change, poisoned air and water and the complete stripping of Canada’s morality in the international community, said Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Our communities should not be sacrificed on the alter of Canada’s addiction to dirty fossil fuel; we want a new economic paradigm that protects our relationship to the sacredness of Mother Earth.”

A broad spectrum of people at Parliament Hill support the action including grandparents, elected and grassroots Indigenous leaders directly impacted by tar sands operations and pipelines, students, workers, environmentalists and union representatives. Environmental and Indigenous organizations along with a dozen Canadian celebrities and prominent individuals have endorsed the call to action.

“I've spent more than a decade writing reports about the benefits of a green energy and asking politely for action on climate change, while tar sands companies worked the back rooms and pollution levels went up. I'm here today to send a message about the urgency of stopping the tar sands and building a green economy in a way that can't be ignored,” said Keith Stewart, Ph.D.

Learn more about the Ottawa Action

http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/Hundreds-gather-on-Parliament-Hill-to-tell-Harper-No-to-Tar-Sands-/

Moving Planet: Coal Country: From India to the Heart of Appalachia by Nicole Ghio

Moving Planet: Coal Country: From India to the Heart of Appalachia by Nicole Ghio

byboatsieFollowforMoving Planet, Daily Kos, September 23, 2011

Share8  4 

Nichole Ghio, Sierra Club Campaign Liaison, Policy and Organizing,  reports on Day 2 of of India/Appalachia Coal Activist Exchange Moving Planet Event in West Virginia

“You are not alone.”

We are on our second day of day of cultural exchanges between Appalachian mountaintop removal coal mining communities and Indian coal activists, and if there was one theme “you are not alone” was it.

Appalachia Rising

West Virginia activist Catherine Hoffman summed up the purpose of our meeting in Oak Hill West Virginia by saying simply, “I had no idea that the same thing is happening in India as is happening here.” In both Appalachia and India people suffer because of coal mining; they are poorer and have very little chance to control their own fate. It is, in fact, all too easy for the coal industry and the media to pretend that the opposition doesn’t exist.

But it does. Across the world, local communities are rising up to oppose coal projects that evict people from their land, make the water undrinkable, destroy local economies, and pollute the air. What gives us hope is that many people in countries all over the world are in the same fight as folks here in Appalachia.

Mountain Top Removal Site

MovingPlanet@Kos is a collaborative action with the Moving Planet team, the Global Campaign for Climate Action, WiserEarth, tcktcktck, the Sierra Club, DeSmogBlog, EcoCity Builders, and Transition US. Together, we are launching a 'package' of educational and inspirational writing and art, rattling the twitterverse in a cooperative social media campaign, and sharing some of the most innovative and extraordinary 9/24 events. Visit the  Moving Planet Earthship for updates and links to news and postings as well as all Coverage@Kos.

As the discussion progressed, the same stories of corruption, intimidation, and even violence came up again and again. And every time the development and prosperity promised to the local communities never appears.

Paul Brown is a West Virginia coal man. He is the grandson of a coal miner, the great grandson of a coal miner, and the great nephew of a coal miner, and he spent 21 years as an electrical inspector in coal mines.  But he cannot support mountaintop removal mining. As a child, he saw firsthand the inequities coal brought to his community. Even though he grew up in a new home in the heart of coal country, his family didn’t have access to electricity. Instead, they burned coal oil for light.

Appalachia provides a preview of what coal will bring to India’s poor. After 100 years, the coal fields in Appalachia are still the poorest parts of West Virginia. Why should we expect that coal communities in India will fare any better in the next 100 years?

India’s Fierce Coal Struggles

Halfway around the world and a few decades later, Amulya Nayak sees the same thing happening in Orissa on an even more frightening scale. For every megawatt of power, 10 people are displaced from their homes – forced off their land to make way for coal development. Pollution from mines and power plants makes farming and fishing impossible, and with their land taken away the local people lose the livelihoods that supported their families for generations. But the plants do not provide employment for local people. Instead, companies rely on contract workers who cost little, are easy to fire, and are less likely to unionize. After sacrificing their land, their economy, and their way of life for coal-fired power, Orrisa’s poor can’t even access the electricity being generated. Despite living next door to the power plants, 90% of people in Amulya’s district don’t have access to electricity.

The situation is so critical in Orissa that communities have declared: “We don’t want electricity, we want to survive.”

Vaishali Patil put the realities communities are facing on the ground in India into cold, hard statistics. She explained that the government is forcing people off their land for the benefit of industry under the guise of development, but in reality they are only helping a small portion of Indian society to prosper while the rural farmers become even poorer. In 1962, 70% of Indians relied on agriculture, and 80% of these people owned their own land. Today, 70% of Indians still rely on agriculture to sustain them, but only 30% of farmers own their own land. She asked the audience, “how can you call these projects development? Whose development are we talking about?” How can forced land acquisition be in the national interest when the majority of people do not actually benefit?

Shared Struggles

“I’m getting tired, but I will prevail.”

This was Catherine Hoffman’s message, she and many folks from around the world are profiled in a new Sierra Club publication profiling everyday folks taking the fight to big coal (http://www.sierraclub.org/...).  Today, we gather again for Moving Planet, a nationwide day of action, to enjoy a traditional Indian meal and continue to share stories and learn from each other. But now we know that there is support in India, in China, in Australia, in South Africa, and everywhere that affected people are rising up in protest against coal projects that sacrifice their water and their air but give them nothing in return. But now they are fighting together.

Photos

First Image: (left to right)Soumya Dutta,  Catherine Hoffman, Vaishali Patil,  Debi Goenka,  Paul Brown and Ginger Danz.
2nd Image: lst Delegation
3rd Image: 2nd Delegation

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/24/1019766/-Moving-Planet:-Coal-Country:-From-India-to-the-Heart-of-Appalachia-by-Nicole-Ghio

Mother Jones' interview of Michael Mann concerning the trumpted up Cuccinelli "investigation" and harassment

Audio: Michael Mann on Ken Cuccinelli's "Climategate" Investigation

by Alison Stewart , Mother Jones, August 30, 2010

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's crusade against climate science was dealt a setback today after a judge denied his attempt to subpoena documents relating to former University of Virginia climate scientist, Michael Mann. Need to Know’s Alison Stewart spoke with Mann about the dangerous precedent the Cucinelli's case could have set and about what he calls the climate change denial "industry."

This podcast was produced by Need to Know as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/08/audio-michael-mann-ken-cuccinellis-climategate-investigation

Another masterpiece by Peter Sinclair: 2011 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum

Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair

2011 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum – the Video is here

September 26, 2011

Despite the bizarre insistence of climate deniers that, any time now, the world is going to plunge into their long-forecast “cooling,” in the vast sprawling wastes of the Arctic, reality quietly continues to unfold.

http://climatecrocks.com/2011/09/26/2011-sea-ice-minimum-the-video-is-here/

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's spokesperson, Cullen Werwie, granted immunity in ongoing John Doe investigation. Top aide Cynthia Archer's house raided by the FBI

Scott Walker's spokesperson granted immunity in ongoing investigation

byby Chris Bowers, Daily Kos, September 23, 2011

Scott Walker's chief spokesperson, Cullen Werwie, has been granted immunity in an ongoing John Doe investigation:

Gov. Scott Walker's chief spokesman has been granted immunity in the ongoing John Doe investigation of the governor's current and former aides, it was learned Friday.

Former Waukesha County Judge Neal Nettesheim, who is overseeing the secret criminal probe, said he had granted immunity to three people, including Cullen Werwie, spokesman for Walker, in this part of the case. Last year, Werwie joined Walker's campaign after the September primary and stayed with it through the transition before joing the Walker administration in January. 

"No comment, " Werwie said when reached late Friday.

Two others were granted immunity, including the chairwoman of the southwest surburban branch of the Milwaukee County Republican Party.

This investigation has previously involved an FBI raid at the home of a top aide to Scott Walker. The aide, Cynthia Archer, is an extremely high-up Walker functionary:

Until very recently, Archer was Deputy Secretary of Administration (DOA) under Secretary Mike Huebsch. In Wisconsin, Huebsch is the second most powerful man in state government after the governor. The DOA not only runs the state, it was the chief architect of Scott Walker's budget and "budget repair bill," which stripped state workers of the collective bargaining rights. But even before this key post, Archer was a Walker loyalist and essential sidekick. Archer served as the head of the Milwaukee County Department of Administration when Walker was County Executive. This longstanding relationship set her up as a rare person who never had to knock on the governor's office door before she walked in, according to capitol observers. She has been compared to Susan Goodwin, Governor Jim Doyle's chief of staff who played an outsized role in state politics during his time in office.

Because this is a John Doe investigation, very little is still known about it. Still, as the number of Walker officials involved in the investigation increases, so does the potential explosiveness of what it will eventually reveal.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/23/1019685/-Scott-Walkers-spokesperson-granted-immunity-in-ongoing-investigation

NYC police officers spray peaceful, obedient female protesters in the face with pepper spray, then cowardly walk away (good one NYPD!), during the demonstrations on Wall Street and Zuccotti Park on September 24, 2011

At time 0:18, two white police officers in white shirts march up to the orange netting. The police officer on screen right sprays the girls (who are not on the street, but on the sidewalk where the policemen told them to go) in the face, and the two officers immediately turn around and walk rapidly back across the street.


Just 2 seconds earlier, the courageous and intrepid Gail Zawacki (in black shirt) walks by between the young women and the buildings, and has the amazing presence of mind to turn around and film the girls who have instantly hit the ground in agony (see preceding post on this blog for her amazing video work).

Readers, she got it all -- Gail Zawacki's courageous and awesome video of what really happened yesterday in New York City at Zuccotti Park and Wall Street -- New York Times, you are pitiful!

Gail Zawacki's courageous and awesome video of what really happened yesterday in New York City at Zuccotti Park and Wall Street

Discombobulation

by Gail Zawacki, Wit's End, September 25, 2011

The New York Times ran a patronizing and snarky story with a ridiculous and bizarrely photoshopped picture about Occupy Wall Street, mocking the protesters who are, let's admit it, a motley crew.  But I guess yesterday will make them reconsider just a little, because the march from Zuccotti Park at noon, around Wall Street and then up Broadway and Fifth Avenue, spilled over the sidewalks and literally took over streets, while police tried in vain to confine the burgeoning crowd.  At times they looked like the keystone cops in their clumsy attempts to keep traffic flowing, and then, in fear and fury, they attacked.  Honestly, it was terrifying.  The video I took (note the dying trees!) ends when I barely snuck through the kettling, a tactic used in Europe that the NYPD is learning on the fly, just before dozens were arrested.  It turns out there is one situation where wrinkles and grey hair are an advantage. 




Link:  http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/09/discombobulation.html

Rob Painting, Skeptical Science: Ocean heat content and the importance of the deep ocean

Ocean heat content and the importance of the deep ocean

by Rob Painting, Skeptical Science, September 24, 2011

Most of the heat from global warming is going into the oceans. Covering some 70% of the Earth's surface and having a heat capacity a thousand times more than the atmosphere, it's easy to understand why the oceans are the main heat sink.

Multiple studies measuring from the ocean surface down to 700 metres show very little warming, or even cooling, over multiple years in the last decade. This is surprising given that some studies estimate that the imbalance at the-top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA), the difference between energy entering and leaving Earth's atmosphere over that time, has actually grown. 

So we might have expected the 700-m sea-surface layer to show increased warming. However, the average depth of the ocean is around 4,300 m, and in a recent SkS post, we saw that when measurements were extended down to 1,500 m, the oceans were found to still be warming, indicating that heat is somehow finding a way down to the deep ocean.

SkS has recently looked at Asian aerosols as a contributor to the 'slowdown' in warming, but a recent climate modeling study (Palmer 2011) suggests another possible cause -- that heat is able to be buried into deeper ocean layers, something the observations seem to support. The study found that there are mechanisms operating in the climate models, over decadal timeframes, which are able to distribute heat to all depths of the ocean. So only measuring down to 700 m does not give an accurate indication of the total amount of heat being absorbed by the oceans.

TOA and OHC 

To examine the relationship between the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) and ocean heat, Palmer (2011) used three generations of Hadley Centre climate models and ran multi-century simulations in which the TOA was imbalanced. Three different values for this TOA imbalance arose out the processes inherent in each model -- in other words, the natural variability in the models.

The authors found that it was necessary to integrate OHC from all ocean layers in order to understand what was going on at TOA (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1. The 90% prediction interval for decadal trend in total energy (average TOA in the models) associated with OHC from the surface to deeper ocean layers. As deeper layers of the ocean are included in measurements, the average TOA and OHC show closer agreement. See Palmer (2011) for details.

The three coloured lines represent the three climate models used. The vertical axis is the ocean depth, and the horizontal axis represents the ability of the decadal ocean heat content trend to predict the decadal TOA imbalance trend on 9 out of 10 occasions (90%). By including successively deeper layers of the ocean, the difference between the value of TOA and OHC grows smaller.   

Statistical regression analysis of the results found a weak relationship between sea-surface temperature (SST) and TOA in the climate models (Figure 2a), due to internal variability. Only when the full depth OHC trend was included in the analysis was there found to be a strong relationship between OHC and TOA (Figure 2b). In other words, to account for the heat sequestered in the ocean, we have to measure right to the bottom.

Figure 2. Plot of linear decadal trends in total energy regressed against (a) decadal trends in globally averaged sea surface temperature and (b) decadal trends in full-depth ocean heat content. Note that total energy is equivalent to to the average TOA over the same period. From Palmer (2011).

The ocean is not a bathtub

A common misconception about the oceans seems to be the idea that heat can only travel directly downwards into deeper ocean layers, as if the oceans were only one-dimensional models or perhaps a bathtub. Clearly this isn't the case -- a vast amount of heat is moved around the world's ocean via the Thermohaline Circulation, and science is steadily coming to terms with the many ocean processes which mix heat down into the depths. La Nina is a classic example of how quickly heat from surface layers can be mixed down to the deep, and this is something I'll cover in my next post.

So to sum up:

• Mechanisms exist within climate models, which are capable of mixing heat down to the deep ocean on decadal timeframes.

• Current observations of the 700-m surface layer have shown little warming, or even cooling, in the last 8 years; but the surface layer down to 1,500 m has shown significant warming, which seems to support the modeling    

• Climate modeling and observations indicate that to fully understand the global enery budget (where all the heat is going) we need to include measurements of the deep oceans. The surface layers, even down to 700 m, are not robust indicators of total OHC.
   
  http://www.skepticalscience.com/Ocean-Heat-Content-And-The-Importance-Of-The-Deep-Ocean.html

An increase in crevasse extent, West Greenland: Hydrologic implications, GRL 38, by William Colgan et al.

Geophysical Research Letters, 38 (2011) L18502;
doi: 10.1029/2011GL048491 

An increase in crevasse extent, West Greenland: Hydrologic implications

 

Key points:

• There has been a significant increase in crevassed area extent
• Crevasse drainage is less efficient in enhancing sliding than moulin drainage
• Increased crevasse extent could also potentially enhance mass loss

William Colgan, Konrad Steffen, W. Scott McLamb, Waleed Abdalati (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.), Harihar Rajaram (Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.), Roman Motyka (Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA), Thomas Phillips (Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.), and Robert Anderson (Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.)

Abstract

We compare high-resolution 1985 and 2009 imagery to assess changes in crevasse extent in the Sermeq Avannarleq ablation zone, West Greenland. The area occupied by crevasses >2 m wide significantly increased (13 ± 4%) over the 24-year period. This increase consists of an expansion of existing crevasse fields, and is accompanied by widespread changes in crevasse orientation (up to 45°). We suggest that a combination of ice sheet thinning and steepening are responsible for the increase in crevasse extent. We examine the potential impact of this change on the hydrology of the ice sheet. We provide a first-order demonstration that moulin-type drainage is more efficient in transferring meltwater fluctuations to the subglacial system than crevasse-type drainage. As enhanced basal sliding is associated with meltwater “pulses,” an increase in crevasse extent can therefore be expected to result in a net decrease in basal sliding sensitivity. An increase in crevasse extent may also accelerate cryo-hydrologic warming and enhance surface ablation.

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http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL048491.shtml

Citation: Colgan, W., K. 

Increased crevasse extent in Greenland may dampen ice sheet sliding

Increased crevasse extent in Greenland may dampen ice sheet sliding

The area covered by crevasses northeast of Ilulissat, West Greenland, has expanded by 13% over the last 24 years, according to scientists at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)—a change that may impact the sliding of the Greenland Ice Sheet and subsequent sea level rise. 

“The area covered by crevasses is increasing,” said CIRES research associate William Colgan, lead author of the study published online today in Geophysical Research Letters. 

“Theoretically, this change may cause the ice sheet to slide more slowly toward the coast or into the ocean.” 

Colgan and his coworkers, a team led by CIRES Director Konrad Steffen at the University of Colorado Boulder, investigate the slide of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the second largest ice sheet on Earth. “People typically think of a block of ice as something really solid and inflexible,” Colgan said. 

“But when a block of ice is as big as the Greenland Ice Sheet, there is sufficient pressure from its weight to cause it to flow like a really, really slow river into the ocean.”

The weight of the ice causes the sheet to flow like a viscous fluid, and water between the ice sheet and its bed means the sheet slides as well as flows, Colgan said. The flow and sliding of the ice sheet can cause more ice than normal to flow into the ocean, which can lead to sea level rise, he said. “It is really important to understand how the Greenland Ice Sheet flows, slides and melts today, in order to be able to predict how it will contribute to sea level rise in the future.”

To investigate the impact of crevasses on ice sheet flow, the team first analyzed crevasse extent at Sermeq Avannarleq, northeast of Ilulissat, West Greenland. The scientists detected crevasses in high-resolution digital images taken in 1985 and 2009 and what they found surprised them. “We initially weren't looking for changes in crevasse area, we had thought it was stationary in time,” Colgan said. “But we found that the change in crevasse area was significant.”

Several factors influence the extent of crevasses, Colgan said. The weight of ice surrounding the crevasse acts as a “closing” force on crevasses whereas tensile stress, caused by local variations in surface slope, acts as an “opening” force. Warmer temperatures, however, result in increased surface melt and a thinning ice sheet reducing the closing force. Conversely, the subsequent change in ice flow speed steepens the ice sheet, which strengthens the tensile stress. As the ice sheet melts, a third factor also contributes to the crevasses expanding, Colgan said. “Twenty years ago crevasses might have been sitting open exposed to air, but now they are filled with water which forces them open.”

The team then went on to investigate how the crevasse area increase might impact ice sheet sliding. In this study, and a companion study published online September 13 in the Journal of Glaciology, the scientists compared the drainage of water by crevasses and moulins—near-vertical chutes in the ice—and found moulin drainage to be more efficient in moving water to the bed of the ice sheet and promoting sliding. But with the increase in crevasse area, the number of moulins had decreased, Colgan said. “The crevasse fields seem to be absorbing the moulins.”

Previously, scientists had believed that as more ice melts and water accumulates on the surface of the ice sheet, more water drains though the moulin network to the underside of the ice sheet enhancing its slide into the ocean. “For the last ten years popular opinion has been more melt equals more slide into the ocean,” he said. “Some recent papers have speculated that more melt might equal no change in sliding, but ours might be the first paper that says that despite more melt, changes in the way that the water is routed to the bed might equal less slide.”

The team now intends to investigate whether crevasse area has increased Greenland-wide and, if so, determine the impact on ice-sheet sliding. While the study may have identified one previously unrecognized influence on ice-sheet dynamics, Colgan cautions it is just one of many factors which determine the iceberg calving rate. “The recent trend of increasing iceberg calving rates is unlikely to be reversed by a potential decrease in sliding, as the majority of ice movement comes from flow rather than sliding,” he said.

The study “An increase in crevasse extent, West Greenland: Hydrologic implications” was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. Coauthors include CIRES Director Konrad Steffen, CIRES student W. Scott McLamb and CIRES Fellow Waleed Abdalati. Collaborators on the project include the Aerospace Engineering and Sciences and Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering departments at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

CIRES graduate student, Daniel McGrath led the study published in the Journal of Glaciology “Assessing the summer water budget of a moulin basin in the Sermeq Avannarleq ablation region, Greenland Ice Sheet.” Coauthors of this study include William Colgan and Konrad Steffen. 

Collaborators on the project include the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Extreme Ice Survey, Boulder. 

William Colgan, CIRES, 303-735-3681, william.colgan@colorado.edu

Konrad Steffen, CIRES, 303-492-8773, konrad.steffen@colorado.edu

Jane Palmer, CIRES media communications, 303-492-6289, Jane.Palmer@colorado.edu

http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2011/crevasse.html 

Michael Mann, Scientific American: Sticking to Climate Science

STICKING TO CLIMATE SCIENCE
 

As an undergraduate physics major in the mid-1980s at the University of California, Berkeley, I knew about Richard Muller—the physics professor who was the subject of Michael D. Lemonick’s interview, “ ‘I Stick to the Science’ ”—and his controversial theory that a “death star” was responsible for major mass extinctions. Later, as a graduate student studying climate, I became aware of Muller’s work attempting to overthrow the traditional Earth orbital theory of the ice ages—that, too, didn’t pan out. To be clear, there is nothing wrong in science with putting forth bold hypotheses that ultimately turn out to be wrong. Indeed, science thrives on novel, innovative ideas that—even if ultimately wrong—may lead researchers in productive new directions.

One might hope, however, that a scientist known for big ideas that didn’t stand the test of time might be more circumspect when it comes to his critiques of other scientists. Muller is on record accusing climate scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit of hiding data—a charge that was rejected in three separate investigations. In his interview, Muller even maligned my own work on the “hockey stick” reconstruction of past temperatures. He falsely claimed “the hockey-stick chart was in fact incorrect” when in fact the National Academy of Sciences affirmed our findings in a major 2006 report that Nature summarized as “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph.”  Scientific American itself recently ran an article it billed as “Novel analysis confirms climate ‘hockey stick’ graph” [“Still Hotter Than Ever,” by David Appell, News Scan; Scientific American, November 2009].

Rather than providing a platform for Muller to cast aspersions on other scientists, Lemonick could have sought some introspection from him. How, for example, have the lessons learned from his past failures influenced the approach he has taken in his more recent forays into the science of human-caused climate change? More than anything else, the interview was simply a lost opportunity. Not only can Scientific American do better, it will need to.

Michael E. Mann
Pennsylvania State University

Gavin Schmidt, RealClimate: Greenland meltdown

Greenland meltdown

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/greenland-meltdown/

by Gavin, Real Climate, 21 September 2011

After a record-breaking 2010 in terms of surface melt area in Greenland (Tedesco et al., 2011), numbers from 2011 have been eagerly awaited. Marco Tedseco and his group have now just reported their results. This is unrelated to other Greenland meltdown this week that occurred at the launch of the new Times Atlas.

The melt index anomaly is the number of days with detectable surface melt compared to the baseline period of 1979-2010. The higher the number, the more melt days there were. While this did not match the record 2010 levels, depending on the analysis 2011 was either the 3rd or 6th year in the rankings.

Analysis of the surface mass balance via regional modelling demonstrates that there has been an increasing imbalance between snowfall and runoff over recent years, leading to a lowering of ice elevation, even in the absence of dynamical ice effects (which are also occurring, mostly near the ice sheet edge).

Figure 2. Regional model-based estimates of snowfall (orange), surface melt and runoff (yellow) and the net accumulation (Gt/yr) (blue) since 1958.

The estimated 2010 or 2011 surface mass imbalance (~300 Gt/yr) is comparable to the GRACE estimates of the total mass loss (which includes ice loss via dynamic effects such as the speeding up of outlet glaciers) of 248 ± 43 Gt/yr for the years 2005-2009 (Chen et al., 2011). Data for 2010 and 2011 will thus be interesting to see. 

While the accelerating mass loss from Greenland is of course a concern, the large exaggeration of that loss rate by Harper Collins in the press release for the 2011 edition of the Times Atlas was of course completely wrong. The publishers have issued a ‘clarification,’ which doesn’t really clarify much (Update, Sept. 22, 2011: The clarification has been clarified from the original statement.) As discussed on the CRYOLIST listserv, the confusion came most likely from a confusion in definitions of what is the permanent ice sheet, and what are glaciers, with the ‘glaciers’ being either dropped from the Atlas entirely or colored brown (instead of white). (No-one that I have seen has posted the legend from the Atlas that gives the definition of the various shadings, though in the 1994 edition I have, glaciers are (unsurprisingly) white, not brown.)

The Times is still claiming that it stands by its maps (Update: The new clarification no longer makes this claim.) This is quite silly, and presumably reflects the fact that it would be very expensive to reprint all the atlases that may have already been printed. In case this isn’t already clear, there is simply no measure — neither thickness nor areal extent — by which Greenland can be said to have lost 15 % of its ice. As a letter written by a group of scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute says, “Recent satellite images of Greenland make it clear that there are in fact still numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands.”

The push back from glaciologists on this issue was a good example of how the science community can organize and provide corrections of high-profile misstatements by non-scientists – by connecting directly with journalists, providing easy access to the real data, and tracking down the source of the confusion. In so doing it also provides an opportunity to give the real story – that change in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic is fast and accelerating. 

Update: Here is a figure showing the preliminary GRACE results for Greenland for 2010 and the beginning of 2011. The anomaly in 2010 was huge, indicating perhaps a total loss of about 500 Gt/yr:

Figure 3. The upper panel shows estimated monthly mass anomalies over Greenland from Jan. 2003 through July 2011 [as in Velicogna (2009)]; the lower panel shows the detrended monthly data (blue), plus a monthly climatology from 2004 through 2009, highlighting the exceptional mass loss in 2010 (~500 Gt-H2O).

Further Update: A more detailed analysis from the Scott Polar Research Institute in the UK demonstrates quite clearly that the Times map is wrong, and inconsistent with all other ice sheets in the Atlas:

Figure 4. The new Times Atlas map (left) together with a mosaic of two satellite images taken in August 2011 (right). Also on the right are contours of ice thickness shown every 500 m. The blue line is the 500-m ice thickness contour which is the same as the outline on the Times Map. The red line is the 0m ice thickness contour which would be a better representation of the ice sheet than the blue line. The Times Map excludes all the ice between the red and blue lines. Furthermore, it excludes all the ice caps and glaciers that are not part of the main ice sheet, visible on the satellite image but not shown on the map. (SPRI).

References

1. M. Tedesco, X. Fettweis, M. R. van den Broeke, R. S. W. van de Wal, C. J. P. P. Smeets, W. J. van de Berg, M. C. Serreze, and J. E. Box, "The role of albedo and accumulation in the 2010 melting record in Greenland," Environmental Research Letters, 6 (2011) 014005-; DOI.
2. J. L. Chen, C. R. Wilson, and B. D. Tapley, "Interannual variability of Greenland ice losses from satellite gravimetry," Journal of Geophysical Research, 116 (2011); DOI.
3. I. Velicogna, "Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE," Geophysical Research Letters, 36 (2009); DOI.