Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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The Fox Glacier is Advancing

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Hi Jennifer,

I believed that all glaciers are in retreat due to global warming.   But then I discovered, when I recently visited New Zealand, that I had been deceived.

In September we visited the Fox glacier on the West coast.  We passed a sign some kilometres from its face telling us that this marked where the glacier was in 1750.

When we reached the face we were told that the glacier stopped retreating in 1985 and is in fact now advancing at the rate of one metre a week.

I understand that the nearby Franz Jeseph Glacier has a similar history.

So I wonder what has been happening to other glaciers in the world in the last few hundred years not just the last 100 years.   Were they also in retreat as long ago as 1750?

Doug Killeen
Seymour, Australia

Climate Activist Seeks Damage in The Hague

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THE International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.  

According to Mitchell Anderson writing at Desmog a class action lawsuit was filed last week in the ICC against national governments refusing to act on reducing carbon emissions.   The suit was filed by climate activist Danny Bloom who is asking for “US$1 billion dollars in damages on behalf of future generations of human beings on Earth – if there are any”.

Are you thinking this is sure to go nowhere? 

Well, remember in September a UK jury cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damages  accepting defence arguments that they had a “lawful excuse” when they vandalised the chimney stack because the carbon dioxide emissions from the Kingsnorth power plant are harmful to the environment of the Hoo Peninsula.   Under the UK’s Criminal Damage Act 1971 damage is condoned if it will prevent even greater damage.

Furthermore, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr James Hansen, flew to the UK to be an expert witness in the trial in support of the activists. 

Based on past form, Dr Hansen and many other high profile scientists with impeccable credentials will be lining up to support Mr Bloom.

Inuit to Cull 200 Stranded Whales

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LAST Sunday Inuit from Baffin Island, in the Canadian Arctic, discovered about 200 whales trapped in ice near Pond Inlet.  In the Arctic open water is starting to freeze-over with the onset of winter. 

Yesterday the Inuit started culling the whales, known as Narwhal, apparently on the advice of their elders and in the belief that otherwise the animals would die a slow death from starvation and/or suffocation.    

The Narwhal, Monodon monocerus, also known as ‘unicorns of the sea’, have a bizarre spiral tusk extending from their head which can be up to three metres long.   The species is not considered endangered and the normal hunting quota for the Baffin Island community is 130 Narwhal each year.

Earliest Temperature Records from Near the North Pole (Subarctic Temperatures Part 1)

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IT is generally agreed that there has been some global warming over the last 100 or so years and that this has been most pronounced in the Arctic – at the North Pole. 

There is temperature data for Hudson Bay in central Canada – not at the North Pole, or within the Arctic Circle, but nevertheless a long way north – back to 1768.  

In 1768 two astronomers from the Royal Society were sent to observe the transit of Venus at Hudson Bay (see Instrumental Temperature Records at Two Sites in Central Canada: 1768 to 1910.  Timothy Ball and Roger Kingsley, Climate Change, Vol 6. pgs 39-56. ).  

At the late John Daly’s website, Miceal O’Ronain has plotted this very early record, and subsequent records from the Hudson’s Bay Company, with data from the modern weather station at Churchill to 2002.

The earlier records suggest great variation in the temperature in the nineteenth century, but this may be an artefact of how it was measured.  The upswing at the very end of the twentieth century is probably real and corresponds with the present period of decline in the extent of sea ice at the Arctic particularly in summer.

[Click on the chart for a larger and much clearer view.]