| Story Start | Music | 00:00 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: It could be the greatest change to the planet's environment many of us will ever see. | 00:28 |
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| Within a few decades the vast sea ice that spreads over the North Pole could disappear for weeks or even months in the Arctic summer. | 00:37 |
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| The last time this happened, scientists tell us, was long before humans set foot on the earth. | 00:55 |
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| The Arctic sea ice is retreating as climate change advances. The change being felt in this fragile world is caused, in part, by us. And it's happening so fast, it's defying scientific models. | 01:05 |
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| DR TED SCAMBOS, NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER USA: What you have to remember is that even three or four years ago the scientific community was saying, this is an emergency, this is something serious. We could have an ice-free Arctic by the year 2070, by the year 2080. In the last few years those predictions have come way, way in towards the present and now we're saying maybe 2030, maybe 2020. There's a group that makes a very strong case that in 2012 or 13 we'll have an ice-free Arctic, as soon as that. | 01:28 |
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| DR MARK SERREZE, NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER USA: Well, we're looking here at a satellite animation of September sea ice extent, extending from 1979 through the year 2006. This red line that you see, that's showing where ice ought to extend to on a typical year. | 02:00 |
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| September of 2007, it was the least sea ice we'd ever seen in the satellite record. Everything we look at tells us that what we saw in September 2007 is unprecedented. It may well be the least sea ice we've seen in thousands of years. | 02:16 |
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| DR DON PEROVICH, US ARMY COLD REGIONS RESEARCH: So if we look at it, in September of 1980, the size of the Arctic sea ice cover was pretty much the same size of Australia, give or take a little bit. Now if we move forward in time to September of 2007, that's how much of Australia we've melted, to be the same equivalent a mile of sea ice melted. | 02:33 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: But just as the shrinking of the great Arctic sea ice is alarming scientists, it is triggering a new Arctic race for oil and gas that will produce more greenhouse gases, and it's reviving the dreams of an Arctic shipping route that defeated navigators over the centuries. | 02:54 |
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| If you want to see climate change happening before your eyes, scientists will tell you, go to the ends of the earth, and that's why we are here in the Arctic Circle. | 03:16 |
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| We're about to enter the fabled Northwest Passage. This is where so many early explorers lost their lives, trapped in the sea ice when they were searching for a shipping route across the top of the world. | 03:28 |
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| Last year at the end of summer, the Northwest Passage was virtually ice free the first time in recorded history. To many, that was an unbelievable event. | 03:43 |
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| Tonight, "Four Corners" goes to the Arctic to investigate whether the great sea ice melt will be a tipping point for rapid climate change. | 03:58 |
| Title: The Tipping Point |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: The Canadian Coast Guard is a regular visitor to the Arctic Circle. In July, they agreed to let us join them on the Louis S St-Laurent, the largest ice breaker in the fleet. It sailed under the command of Captain Marc Rothwell. | 04:29 |
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| We left the Dartmouth Port in Canada on a hot summer's afternoon and went north where the sea ice was breaking up, sailing past the coast of Newfoundland into what the locals call iceberg alley, then up into Davis Strait to the Arctic Circle and the entrance to the Northwest Passage. | 05:05 |
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| The Louis is not just an ice breaker, it's a scientific research vessel. These men and women work for Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans and they're trawling for data in these changing waters. | 05:40 |
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| They're just a few of the many scientists around the world working to understand the rapid changes in the polar regions during this International Polar Year. | 06:01 |
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| Robie MacDonald is one of Canada's top ocean chemists and an Arctic specialist, but he doesn't mind getting his hands dirty. | 06:16 |
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| He's pulling up muddy sediment from the sea bed, hoping it will tell the story of these waters from the past as a guide to what might happen in the future. | 06:31 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Robie Macdonald): How far do you think that will take you back in the story of this ocean? | 06:51 |
| Super: | DR ROBIE MACDONALD: Well, that's a real piece of guesswork here. But I'll say that this core has got a lot of grit in it and the only way you get grit out here -- we're a long way from land, you can't see it from here, it's 60 miles away -- so the only way you get that kind of grit and there was even a rock jammed in the shovel, is ice rafting. So this stuff is being supplied by inorganic sediment that's coming from rivers and being transported by ice out here and dropped. That process can be quite quick, so that core might have a few hundred years in it. It might be a thousand years, don't know. | 06:55 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Dr Macdonald has worked for the UN's peak scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He's worked in the Arctic for over 30 years and he sees the rapid changes first hand. | 07:29 |
| Super: | ROBIE MACDONALD: Over my lifetime it seems definitely that the ice climate has changed. It's like change is happening and I've watched it happening and I've walked along that path. But the other part is the modellers say that this ocean will be seasonally ice free for, initially they said by the end of this century, 2100. And then they said 2070 and then they said 2050 and then they said 2030. And there was a very recent one when I was up on the Amundsen a couple of months ago. Do you know what it said? Maybe by 2013. So not only do I see the change happening, but it's like they're moving the goal posts towards me and it's an amazing thing. And to put it in context, the Arctic Ocean has not been seasonably clear of ice for a couple of million years at least, maybe longer. So this is very extraordinary. | 07:46 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: A week into our journey on the Louis we crossed the Arctic Circle and hit thick sea ice. | 08:52 |
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| It was fixed along the Canadian coast across from Greenland. | 09:04 |
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| All eyes turned to the Louis' ice observer, Erin Clark. Her job is to read the sea ice and advise the captain of the best way forward, and we went with her for a first hand lesson on Arctic sea ice. | 09:26 |
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| HELICOPTER PILOT (over radio): ...363 is away with three passengers: Neil, Marian and Erin. | 09:45 |
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| ERIN CLARK, ICE OBSERVER, CCG (in helicopter, over radio): Up to this point it looks pretty good, but we are heading into some heavier concentrations. | 10:01 |
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| MALE VOICE (over radio): Okay, when you get to that spot there can you give me a lat and long? | 10:08 |
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| ERIN CLARK, ICE OBSERVER, CCG (in helicopter, over radio): Sure will do. | 10:11 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Last summer during the big melt, this ice broke up rapidly with the help of southerly winds and warm currents. A perfect storm of weather events led to that record melt, and we are wondering what will happen this year. | 10:17 |
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| To us, this ice looked thick and packed as far as the eye could see, but the Louis' ice observer saw a lot more than we could. | 10:36 |
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| ERIN CLARK, ICE OBSERVER, CCG (in helicopter, over radio): Most of what we are seeing is thick, first year ice with a trace of multi-year in the area as well. And the ice with all the melt water on it is in its rotting stage. | 10:46 |
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| So we will go through some areas of lesser concentration based on the wind patterns over the last few days, but there is ice of some concentration between here and Resolute. | 10:58 |
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| It looks like we're approaching a flatter pan of ice. There's not as much melt water on the surface and not nearly as much ridging caused by pressure. | 11:13 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: The record melt last year has left the sea ice thin. It's first year ice that froze just last autumn. We won't know until September whether the melt this year will come close to last year's record. But it's not the year to year change that matters - it's the long term trend, and already this year the sea ice has shrunk to below average levels and snow and ice scientists all over the world are monitoring the melt with intense interest. | 11:26 |
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| Before heading to the Arctic we stopped at the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in New Hampshire - once a hub of Cold War research. | 12:05 |
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| Dr Don Perovich is one of America's leading sea ice researchers. He and his colleagues believe a "feedback" mechanism is at work that is accelerating the melt as the ice retreats. | 12:19 |
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| DR DON PEROVICH: Where does the feedback come in? Well, we look here; we see the sea ice reflects around 85 per cent of the light, but as that ice melts back it exposes the open ocean and the open ocean only reflects seven per cent of the light. | 12:34 |
| Super: | It absorbs 93 per cent. So you can see there's this incredible contrast between snow covered sea ice and the ocean. Indeed if we looked at every material on earth, snow is the best reflector and the ocean is the worst, so as we melt this ice back, we're taking the best reflector and replacing it with the worst and that can be a feedback because as you melt back, you get more heat put in and you get more melting and more heat. And these feedbacks are really interesting from a climate perspective, because there are ways where you can take the climate system, give it a little nudge and have that be amplified into a big shove. | 1249 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Don Perovich): Why do we think that global warming, human induced global warming is contributing any to this? | 13:30 |
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| DR DON PEROVICH: First observe then try to understand, and the observations are quite clear cut: We're losing ice; it's a consequence of warming. Now when we try to delineate how much of that warming is perhaps due to natural variability, how much of it is due to, you know, an anthropogenic - a human induced - change, the best way to do that is through models. And there have been numerous model runs that have looked at that and basically, they can't reproduce the ice loss we've had with natural variability. You have to add a carbon dioxide warming component to it. | 13:37 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: As the sea ice melt accelerates, the debate over the role we humans are playing has been heated. | 14:14 |
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| Natural weather patterns in the Arctic play a big role in the level of sea ice, but what scientists call human induced global warming is now widely believed to be contributing to the big sea ice melt. | 14:23 |
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| The more we burn oil, gas and coal, the more we clear land, the more greenhouse gases are being released adding to the Arctic warming. | 14:40 |
| Super: | DR MARK SERREZE: Climate doesn't change just by itself. Something has to force that change. It doesn't change by just Harry Potter flicking his magic wand. Something has to force it. In the past we know that there has been climate change forced by things like solar variability, forced by volcanic eruptions. It's very clear and unambiguous that the changes we've seen over the past 50 years or so are due to increased concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, and we know without a doubt that those increases are due to our activities. They're due to us. | 14:53 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: At the International Arctic Research Centre in Fairbanks, Alaska, scientists are studying how natural forces along with global warming, affect the melt year to year. | 15:32 |
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| The critical Arctic oscillation climate pattern has brought higher temperatures and storms over much of the northern hemisphere since the 1970s. | 15:45 |
| Super: | DR IGOR POLYAKOV: We believe that there is definitely contribution of global warming in what we observe in the Arctic now. However we should not ignore another factor - natural variability. And this variability is very strong in the Arctic. If ignore this important contributor we will maybe mistaken in predicting future climate change. I believe that natural variability is still an important contributor to what we observe now in the Arctic and North Atlantic climate system. | 15:58 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: But like his colleagues, Dr Polyakov was shocked by last year's melt. | 16:31 |
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| DR IGOR POLYAKOV: I would say it was a total surprise to the Arctic community. Nobody expected such a dramatic change of Arctic ice over such a short period of time. Predictions were pretty conservative. | 16:37 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Boulder, Colorado, is home to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center that has earned a global reputation for its polar research. One of its scientists, Ted Scambos, was the first to detect satellite images of the massive break up of an ice shelf in Antarctica. | 17:00 |
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| Dr Scambos believes in the Arctic, the sea ice melt has reached a tipping point and predicting the speed of climate change there will be increasingly difficult. | 17:25 |
| Super: | DR TED SCAMBOS: The tipping point is where you've pushed a system into a state where, with no further pushing, it will rapidly change into another state. And what we're seeing right now in the last few years is that the Arctic loses so much of its ice every summer that, again, solar energy heats the water underneath it; the older ice is pushed out of the Arctic ocean so there's a very thin cover of ice; and without any further input, it doesn't have to get any warmer, it seems as though the Arctic simply can't recover. It can't replace the ice that it's lost every year because every year more heat gets deposited into the Arctic than can be radiated away in the winter darkness. | 17:39 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Before we see rapid climate change in the Arctic, the wild inhabitants of this fragile place will feel it first. It's hard to believe but the Arctic gets as much sun as the tropics. It comes in one short burst in summer. That's when millions of sea birds arrive from around the world to fatten up and rear their young. | 18:24 |
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| When we reached Lancaster Sound and saw the barren coastline, it was astonishing to discover that millions of birds find enough food here to raise a family. But it's the sea, not the land, that supplies dinner. | 18:54 |
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| One of the scientists on board the Louis is a bird watcher from the Canadian Wildlife Service, David Fifield. He's keen to see what birds are feeding here. Any changes to the waters could have a devastating impact on the birds' survival, because life in the Arctic is a fine balancing act. | 19:13 |
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| DAVID FIFIELD: Talk about the thick-billed murre for example. These guys, they nest on these steep cliffs behind us here and they lay one egg, one egg only per year. And they make absolutely no nest, so they plop an egg down on the rock and hold it against the warmth of their skin to heat it for up to, oh I think it's about three weeks before the egg hatches. | 19:40 |
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| Murre chicks leave the nest when they're about a quarter of the size of an adult, so they have no flight feathers, they have no tail feathers, just the down feathers they were born with. And they essentially, they're synchronised with the adult male and the male parent and the chick leave together. | 20:00 |
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| The parent usually calls to encourage the chick to go; and sometimes it's the other way round, the chick is ready to go and the chick calls to encourage the parent. The male will fly down to the water, sometimes with the chick, sometimes ahead of it, and the chick essentially just jumps. | 20:17 |
| Super: | These cliffs, some of them are 1000 feet high, behind me, so these little guys just flutter with their tiny, partially grown wings, they try to glide out to the water. And sometimes they bounce, so when they land on ledges below them they bounce off the rocks and most times they get up and keep going. They're tough little guys. | 20:34 |
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| What that means of course is that they have very few young. It takes a long time for two parents to replace themselves in the population. So in order for that to happen and for the population not to crash, these birds have to live a long time. | 20:51 |
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| These birds are pretty much at the top of the food chain. Changes in timing of arrival of certain fishes or changes in distribution of their food could have drastic affects. | 21:05 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: These waters are on the front line of climate change. The scientists on the Louis are starting with the basics, looking at the water's temperature, oxygen and salinity, and they're hoping their work will help them measure the impact of future changes here. | 21:18 |
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| How the waters and the fish change and adapt may determine the winners and losers from climate change. | 21:41 |
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| Marine biologist Glenn Cooper has been pulling in the tiny sea creatures who feed at the bottom of the food chain. | 21:58 |
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| GLENN COOPER: We have a tetrapod and it looks like some jelly fish and some phytoplankton, so quite a mixed bag. But mostly what I'm interested in is the copepods. | 22:08 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Glenn Cooper): What happens when and if the sea ice here retreats earlier and earlier? | 22:18 |
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| GLENN COOPER: Well for them there may be more abundant food source, because | 22:14 |
| Super: | the phytoplankton will have a better chance. They'll have sunlight access a lot earlier so they'll grow more rapidly and so then they now have a greater food source, so maybe in turn they'll have a greater ability to reproduce and multiply. | 22:29 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Glenn Cooper): So they could be a winner out of this? | 22:43 |
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| GLENN COOPER, UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA, CANADA: They could be a winner out of this, yes. | 22:46 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Glenn Cooper): And do you think there will be some losers? | 22:48 |
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| GLENN COOPER: Well certainly because they've adapted to this environment and so if the environment changes or the ocean conditions change, then maybe although there may be more food, it might not be so habitable to them so they may just actually not do as well. | 22:51 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: As the Louis ploughed through the thick sea ice we met one Arctic dweller already struggling with climate change -- the polar bear. He's right at the top of the Arctic food chain. As the sea ice shrinks, so does his world. | 23:09 |
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| MARGARET WILLIAMS: Well the polar bear is a specialist. It feeds really only on one type of food and that's ice seals, primarily ringed seals. And ringed seals also depend on the ice. They raise their young in the little ice lairs on the ice surface, they come up to the surface through ice holes that they make and the polar bears know that. | 23:36 |
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| The polar bears have amazing adaptations to living on the ice -- their insulated paws that are furry and thick; their incredible ability to smell, they can smell ice seals miles away while they're under their ice lair. | 23:55 |
| Super: | It's just amazing what they can do. So they're very well adapted to living on the ice, they can't adapt to live on land, they need that high, fatty energy that is only provided by an ice seal. | 24:07 |
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| And I think the polar bear is such a compelling symbol. People care about the polar bear and it makes them think about the connection between the changes in the Arctic and what's happening around the planet. So I do think for many reasons it's a very good symbol. | 24:19 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: In America, the US Interior Secretary was reluctantly forced to list the polar bear as an endangered species in May; the reason -- shrinking sea ice in Alaska. The US Government now estimates two thirds of its polar bear population could disappear within decades. | 24:34 |
| Super: | DIRK KEMPTHORNE: Today's decision is based on three findings. First, sea ice is vital to polar bears' survival. Second, the polar bears' sea ice habitat has dramatically melted in recent decades. Third, computer models suggest sea ice is likely to further recede in the future. Because polar bears are vulnerable to this loss of habitat, they are, in my judgement, likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future, in this case, 45 years. | 24:59 |
| : | MARIAN WILKINSON: For many the endangered polar bear is a powerful reason to stop the rate of climate change in the Arctic, but there are far more urgent reasons why scientists say we should be listening to their warnings. | 25:33 |
| Super: | For centuries the Arctic was seen as a remote frozen landscape. Early explorers feared its terrifying climate, believing it would not yield to the modern industrial world. We now know they were wrong. Climate change is happening here at an accelerating pace. But what happens in the Arctic will not just stay here. The Arctic will export change to the rest of the world and that could surprise us. | 25:49 |
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| The most immediate worry is that the melting sea ice will intensify the extreme weather caused by climate change, bringing more violent storms and cyclones to some regions and longer droughts to others. | 26:25 |
| Super: | DR TED SCAMBOS: The expectation is that we'll see more extraordinary weather in general, but in particular more frequent droughts in some of the areas that are already prone to dryness, like the south-western United States, like south-eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Seeing more severe droughts in those areas is going to put a severe burden on the water resources there and in some cases food production. | 26:41 |
| Super: | DR MARK SERREZE: What really concerns us from the view point of the climate side is the connectedness of the climate system. In other words, what happens up there in the Arctic, this seemingly far away place, can have profound influences on other parts of the planet. We could think of the Arctic as the refrigerator of the northern hemisphere climate system, just like the Antarctic is the refrigerator of the southern hemisphere. What we're doing by getting rid of that sea ice is radically changing the nature of that refrigerator. We're making it much less efficient, | 27:04 |
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| but everything is connected together, so what happens up there eventually influences what happens in other parts of the globe. | 27:40 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Mark Serreze): And that is the weather? | 27:48 |
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| DR MARK SERREZE: That is the weather, yes. And this is particularly importantly because of, for example, impacts on agriculture. Think of the American bread basket in the American west, mid-west where as much corn is grown. We start to change patterns of temperature and precipitation in ways that we're not prepared for. | 27:50 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Scientists are also worried the sea ice melt will indirectly add to the threat of sea level rise. The retreating sea ice will expose the Arctic shoreline, leaving glaciers and the huge Greenland ice sheet more vulnerable to melting. | 28:11 |
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| DR MARK SERREZE: There are concerns that the Greenland ice sheet may be close to what we call a tipping point -- a point of instability, that if we warm it up just a little bit more we could greatly accelerate the mass loss from it, the loss of ice from Greenland that contributes to sea level. Is loss of the sea ice cover a part of that? Could it help to trigger some of these accelerated mass losses? We'll have to wait and see. | 28:32 |
| Super: | DR ROBIE MACDONALD: We should care for the sake of an ecosystem that is important to us globally, like the Arctic; we should care for the residents including humans and animals; and we should care in the sense that what happens here is coming to us. | 28:58 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Over a week into our Arctic journey on the Louis, we finally entered the fabled Northwest Passage. | 29:15 |
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| We were now surrounded by the sea ice. | 29:24 |
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| For a few brief weeks last summer, this passage was virtually clear of sea ice. It was a stunning event and the Northwest Passage made headlines around the world, more than a century after it last made news. | 29:36 |
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| The search for the Northwest Passage linking the markets of Britain and China was the holy grail of Victorian explorers. The most famous was the former Governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin. | 29:56 |
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| He left England with two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, in 1845, amid a blaze of glory. | 30:12 |
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| A few months later he landed here on barren Beechey Island, where the first of his crew members perished. | 30:23 |
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| The three graves bear silent witness to what happened. | 30:34 |
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| We know Franklin wanted to leave here in search of the Northwest Passage but his ships were trapped by sea ice and ultimately Franklin and 129 men perished. Franklin's mission was to try and find the shipping route across the top of the world and with climate change today some believe Franklin's mission might be realised. | 30:38 |
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| The Louis' captain is one who thinks the Northwest Passage is no longer a dream. | 31:11 |
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| CAPTAIN MARC ROTHWELL: I've been in these waters on various vessels for about 25 years | 31:17 |
| Super: | and in that time span I have noticed quite a reduction in the amount of ice that's in this area, yeah. | 31:22 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Marc Rothwell): But a Northwest Passage operating in your lifetime - do you think that could be a reality? | 31:31 |
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| CAPTAIN MARC ROTHWELL: At the rate that things are going now I think we could see it. I could see it in my lifetime, yes. | 31:37 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Right now a Northwest Passage looks impossible but several Arctic shipping passages, including one across the North Pole, are being seriously discussed. As the sea ice retreats, not only shipping but oil and gas companies have visions of an Arctic bonanza. Some are calling it the new ‘Cold Rush'. | 31:44 |
| Super: | SCOTT BORGERSON: Well for the shipping routes what's at stake is potentially an incredible shortcut between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific that is thousands of miles, many thousands of miles shorter than going through either the Suez or Panama Canals, or for the largest of ships that cannot fit through the canals, and some that even can't fit through the Straits of Malacca to have to circumnavigate South America or Africa. So from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic it can be many thousands of miles shorter to go through this Arctic route than it would be the other routes. | 32:11 |
| Super: | MARIAN WILKINSON: The carve up of the Arctic gained world attention when Russian scientists went to plant a flag on the seabed of the North Pole last August. | 32:46 |
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| On their return home, Russia's then president, Vladimir Putin, honoured them as heroes, but the stunt appalled many in the other Arctic nations. | 33:00 |
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| SCOTT BORGERSON: Planting flags for territory went out of vogue centuries ago as a way to acquire new territory for a state. | 33:16 |
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| I also think it has a lot to do with Russian nationalism, a resurgent Russia that's feeling stronger and emboldened from its resource wealth, and a Russia that has a strong Arctic identity, that's looking north again to assert itself in that part of the world. | 33:22 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON (to Scott Borgerson): Was it also that the Russians are interested in the oil and gas up there? | 33:38 |
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| SCOTT BORGERSON, US COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well they are absolutely interested in the oil and gas in the Arctic. | 33:42 |
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| The Russians estimate that the Arctic might hold as much as 586-billion barrels of oil equivalent, which is both oil and natural gas, that if actually discovered would be twice of Saudi Arabia's proven reserves. | 33:45 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Canada is acutely sensitive to the power plays in the Arctic. The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been reasserting his nation's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage and the importance of his northern territories. | 33:59 |
| Super: | STEPHEN HARPER: Canada's new Government has put the north higher on the domestic policy agenda than it has been for half a century. All Canadians need to recognise there is a convergence of economic, environmental and strategic factors occurring here that will have critical impacts on the future of our country. | 34:18 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Canada is bolstering its presence in the Arctic and it's seeing climate change not just as a threat, but also an opportunity as the sea ice retreats. The Commander of Canada's Joint Task Force North, Brigadier General Millar, explains. | 34:39 |
| Super: | BRIGADIER GENERAL DB MILLAR: I see overall that with global warming, the opening up of the Northwest Passage, that that is going to generate tremendous interest, and already has in industry -- whether it's oil and gas, whether it's diamonds, whether it's the natural minerals that we have in the north, and even fishing, as fishing migrates to the north because of the warmer waters. Naturally people come with that, and a part of people coming north, then you're going to have the opportunity for more environmental hazards or natural disasters or requirement for humanitarian assistance. | 34:58 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: The disappearing sea ice is now expected to open up more oil and gas prospects for the five Arctic powers -- Norway, Russia, Canada, Denmark and the US. | 35:32 |
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| The US geological survey just last month reported that 13 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 per cent of the undiscovered natural gas can be found in the Arctic. | 35:48 |
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| But those already concerned about climate change are watching the developments with growing anxiety. | 36:04 |
| Super: | MARGARET WILLIAMS: There is currently a major race to the Arctic by oil companies, by gas companies, by coal, mining, all kinds of industry suddenly seeing the Arctic as a new opportunity. With a combination of globalisation and the opening access to the Arctic because of sea ice change, there is suddenly this huge flood of industry into the area. And for people trying to protect the sustainability of the planet it was extremely frustrating. | 36:13 |
| Super: | SCOTT BORGERSON: I think people see the contradiction, but I think in the globalised economics of oil and its consumption and demand and the fact that you see record prices for oil, that energy companies, until the rules of the game change, are going to follow the oil, even to previously hostile environments and terrains like the Arctic. So until we have possibly a global cap and trade for CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions to change how energy is used in this world, I think... in the Arctic you'll find energy companies and countries going to all kinds of the ends of the earth in search of these resources. | 36:43 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: But just as the cold rush takes off, a new threat from the warming Arctic, once thought buried, is surfacing. Here in Alaska, under the vast forests, much of the earth is permafrost, frozen solid. | 37:23 |
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| In cities like Fairbanks, the permafrost sometimes melts in patches under hot bitumen roads and bike paths, and when it does, the ground literally gives way. | 37:41 |
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| DR VLADIMIR ROMANOVSKY, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA, USA (referring to path): Now permafrost thawing and ice, running with water, and creating these dips where more ice, whereas less ice, there is kind of bumps... | 37:54 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Vladimir Romanovsky has been studying permafrost since he was a student in Moscow. | 38:05 |
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| As temperatures rise in the Arctic regions, there are fears climate change could cause widespread melting of the permafrost. Dr Romanovsky tells us if that happens, millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases now trapped in the permafrost could be released into the atmosphere. | 38:12 |
| Super: | DR VLADIMIR ROMANOVSKY: It is a potentially very significant source of carbon dioxide or methane into the atmosphere, and so far it is kind of laying there and not doing too much. But suddenly the crossing this threshold of thawing permafrost will release this methane and this bomb will explode. | 38:36 |
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| The amount of carbon which is sequestered in permafrost is at least the same as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. So releasing this carbon into the atmosphere can easily double the amount of say carbons, say carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. | 38:59 |
| Super: | DR TED SCAMBOS: What will happen I think is that we'll get this whole new source of CO2 and methane from the thawing permafrost that we won't easily be able to shut off, even if we get our act together. That's a real concern to me because that sets us down the road of a much warmer planet where all of the game has changed in terms of how you live, where you live. | 39:17 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: Nearly one quarter of the northern hemisphere is covered in permafrost. The drunken trees of Alaska are caused by small patches of permafrost melting naturally, but large areas of Alaska's permafrost are within just one or two degrees of thawing. If Arctic temperatures rise even this much, vast areas will begin to sink. | 39:39 |
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| DR VLADIMIR ROMANOVSKY, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA, USA: So in this area is one of the oldest permafrost in interior Alaska. It is at least 100,000 years old and right now it is warm as well. It's within about minus one degrees Celsius so it's within one degree of thawing. So if this permafrost will start to thaw it will mean that it will be thawing first time during the last 120,000 years. And it's very close to that. It's not thawing yet, but it's very close. | 40:09 |
| Super: | DR DON PEROVICH: You might say well, okay what if we have an ice free summer Arctic? Is that a big deal? As near as we can tell looking at the historical record, there's been ice in the Arctic in the summer for at least 16-million years, so this would be a big difference. | 40:45 |
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| MARIAN WILKINSON: As we left the sea ice in the high Arctic at the end of our journey, we had as many questions as answers. | 41:15 |
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| No-one can predict the future of this unique place with certainty, but the great sea ice is disappearing faster than all predictions. It will change the planet irrevocably. Not only are we partly to blame, but we are continuing to push the Arctic towards its tipping point. | 41:23 |
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| DR TED SCAMBOS, NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER USA: In the past the earth has warmed and cooled. Geologists especially like to talk about how the earth goes through cycles, how these things represent natural processes in the earth. Yes, it has gone through changes in the past, but this time it's different. This time we've embarked upon a warming trend that won't end until we do something about ending it. People talk about what sort of anticipated temperature we'll have by the end of the century, the year 2100. I'd like to point out that the earth doesn't end in the year 2100. | 41:48 |
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| Eventually we have to quit producing these greenhouse gases and putting them in the atmosphere or we will see warming continue until levels that are much more dire. | 42:19 |
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| We'll see increasing difficulty in making enough food, having enough water to keep six, seven, eight-billion people on earth alive and happy. Eventually these things will become critical, will become things that people are willing to go to war over. And that's I think the ultimate threat, that it will destabilise the world because we'll be in such a fight for our very lives, our existence, based on the changes, based on the re-partitioning of all the resources that we thought we had, due to climate change. | 42:29 |