Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to NY Times, the Arctic Council has been unable to agree a statement on the alleged climate threat in the Arctic because of pressure from the Trump administration.
U.S. Pressure Blocks Declaration on Climate Change at Arctic Talks
By Somini Sengupta
May 7, 2019ROVANIEMI, Finland — Under pressure from the United States, the Arctic Council issued a short joint statement on Tuesday that excluded any mention of climate change.
It was the first time since its formation in 1996 that the council had been unable to issue a joint declaration spelling out its priorities. As an international organization made up of eight Arctic countries and representatives of indigenous groups in the region, its stated mission is cooperation on Arctic issues, particularly the protection of the region’s fragile environment.
According to diplomats involved in the negotiations, at issue was the United States’ insistence not to mention the latest science on climate change or the Paris Agreement aimed at averting its worst effects. The omission is especially notable because scientists have warned that the Arctic is heating up far faster than the world average because of rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Foreign Minister Timo Soini of Finland, the council’s outgoing chairman, made it clear, without naming names, that resistance to climate action was a minority opinion.
“A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience,” Mr. Soini said in his 10-page statement.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/climate/us-arctic-climate-change.html
The Arctic Council statement is available here. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was the US Signatory.
I’m surprised at the apparent upset. Lack of US support for climate action cannot be that big a deal, I mean surely other members of the Arctic Council aren’t planning to sit on their butts doing nothing until the USA agrees to hand out lots of climate cash?
The country with the largest Arctic land presence of course is Russia. For Russia, climate change is pure lip service. So they’ll do anything to hobble the other countries in the Arctic region using “climate action” to hinder others countries developments in the region.
Russia already is well-known for pushing aggressively to claim mineral rights far out into the Arctic Ocean on the Lomonosov Ridge, which is huge encroachment of Denmark-Greenland’s clear rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomonosov_Ridge
And the Finns, well they’ve got to be very worried about getting on Putin’s bad side. The Finns can never forget the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact which handed huge portions of Finland to Russia. Portions that remain in Russia’s recognized territory to this day. SO the Finns have to be careful not to antagonize Putin, and they’ll play the useful idiot role to make the US look bad on what everyone knows, that climate change is simply a wedge politically and diplomatically as means to other ends.
“One day after visiting the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic, Putin claimed that icebergs had been melting for decades and suggested that global warming was not mankind’s fault.
“The warming, it had already started by the 1930s,” Putin said in comments broadcast from an Arctic forum held in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk. “That’s when there were no such anthropological factors, such emissions, and the warming had already started.”
Quote from, wher else than Sth China Morning Post.
Neither Russia or China are bothered by global warming, actually Russia would benefit greatly from 1.5C rise, especially since apparently the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest.
He has been building big Nuclear ice breakers. WUWT?
because theres a need for them..for rescue and other jobs like exploration for oil etc.
seeing as usa has ONE functional icebreaker and 2 U/S ones they seem to stripping for parts and Russians tend to go help out fairly willingly, I’d be glad they at least ARE making sure they have the means to clear ice and get shipping through, if it does get a lot cooler and icier up there then everyone will be needing icebreakers more often.
wasnt it the russians saved the ship of fools?
Correct me if I’m wrong… but isn’t this the first time the Arctic Council
has tried to fold “climate change” language and mandated action ($$$) into
their group pronouncement?
Note that it’s the “diplomats” who seemed to be tasked with writing
these statements.
“…the Arctic is heating up far faster than the world average because of rising greenhouse gas emissions.”
It is interesting that they assume the warming of the Arctic has only one cause. The data on the temperature of “the Arctic” doesn’t correlate very well at all with the CO2 concentration. Has anyone else noticed?
It increased from about 250 to 290 over a period when the Arctic warmed 15 C with some uncertainty (1 deg C per 2.5 ppm) , and since then it rose from 290 to 350 the temperature increased about another 3 degrees with great uncertainty (1 degree per 20 ppm) . Since then it rose from 350 to 410 it hardly warmed at all, maybe 1 C with high uncertainty (1 C per 60 ppm).
See a trend here?
The natural variation happened until 1950, whereafter human steel and cement industries and power generation really got going.
That the Arctic warming is because of “human activity” is highly uncertain. The mechanism is not warming air, it is warmer sea water entering the Arctic, which is caused by solar insolation, not CO2 nor IR back-scatter.
Central Canada benefited enormously from the ~15 degree warming of the past 15,000 years as the ice sheets and permafrost melted to be replaced by vast forests and lakes and animals including millions of bison and deer. To consider the Arctic “endangered” because of warming is odd because everything we know about a glaciation is negative. Absolutely nothing good happens during a glaciation. All the surviving animals are driven south into a much more contested area. Enormous areas of forest are lost – tens of millions of square kilometres of forest are devastated and locked in a grip of death that only ends tens of thousands of years later.
The high Arctic is a wasteland, barren of life for almost 100,000 years at a time. If this can be permanently ended by increasing the CO2 concentration, so be it. But I have serious doubts that this is the controlling mechanism. The effect is too weak, and there is no empirical evidence that it has such a powerful effect.
It seems the “preservationists” wish the world to remain the same as in some version of reality in the North that exists in their minds. How many people do they wish to have to survive on raw meat, blubber and uncooked fish? All of us?
Some want to preserve the frozen hell, others want to make it colder. A pox on both their houses.
BTW Mercutio was effective in his hexing of those two houses.
The most serious logical flaw in Climate Change is the unchallenged assumption that warming is net detrimental to the planet and humanity.
It has clear benefits to humanity and the biosphere that the scammers have always suppressed, while only emphasizing potential negatives.
And even if the CO2-control knob hypothesis is accepted uncritically, why would we want to live in the colder climate of end-of-LIA period circa 1850-1870?
What about giving us at least some credit for all the good work we have done in the past? For example, how many of the current members of the Arctic Council provided any useful contribution to this?:
“The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large‐scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages.” NY Times, July 18, 1970
According to the Times, there were a number of interesting issues that the U.S. was to study, at least one of which might still be worth looking into: “Among the hypotheses to be assessed is one that attributes ice ages to the absence of pack ice on the Arctic Ocean. Winds off that ocean are very dry and drop little snow on Northern lands, but if the sea were open the snows would be heavy and ice sheets would begin to form, the hypothesis holds.”
Also potentially useful to understand, just in case…. “Other scientists have proposed that, by sprinkling coal dust on the pack, or through other manipulation, it would be possible to melt the ice, open the ocean to navigation and ameliorate the northern climate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/18/archives/us-and-soviet-press-studies-of-a-colder-arctic-us-and-soviet-press.html?searchResultPosition=1
“According to diplomats involved in the negotiations”
Diplomacy:
– the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations
– skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility
Science debate ? Who needs science ?
Diplomat: “a person sent abroad to lie for his country”
The Arctic Council said “No one seriously expected the member countries to spend their OWN money did they? – we need the US”
Is there an Antarctic Council pleading for a global warming budget?
It’s back!!
“Scientists and environmental groups warn that the retreat of Arctic sea ice threatens polar bears and marine species, but also contributes to rising sea levels, adding to the risk of coastal flooding.”
Melting sea ice raising sea level!!!!! How come this nonsense is still out there and being repeated?
The NSF apologized for making the same assertion back in 2011. They apologized in 2011 SIX YEARS after making the assertion.
When polar bears hunt for seals from the sea ice they contribute to sea rising level. Hence, if all sea ice is melted or alternatively all polar bears became extinct the see levels would fall, not a joke but a true science fact!
Good point. So the healthier and more numerous the Polar Bears get the greater the sea level rise. Seals must make no difference as they are already in the water and according to Archimedes lesser known principle and if a Polar Bear eats a Seal then sea level will neither rise or fall as water displacement stays the same now that the weight of the Seal is inside the Polar Bear. x
The ‘x’ was an accident and not meant to be taken as familiarity.
What were Russia’s views?
The NYT article said in part ‘According to diplomats involved in the negotiations, at issue was the United States’ insistence not to mention the latest science on climate change or the Paris Agreement..’.
If I remember correctly, what Trump did was to insist on not using the words ‘climate change’ and ‘Paris Agreement’, so this quote misrepresents Trump by adding the words ‘the latest science’ before the words ‘climate change’ (no surprise there). What the article doesn’t appear to explain is why exactly the Artic Council could not (or would not) issue a statement.
It was -30C in Chicago in February and that air came from a much colder Arctic basin. So what if its warmed up 3C. It’s warming is concentrated in the winter and at night.