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Early this morning, activists started blocking the loading of a coal ship in Svea, Svalbard - 75 degrees North. Two climbers are hanging down the crane used to load the ship as I write. They are calling for the end of coal as we know it.
The Arctic region, where Svalbard lays, is at the frontline of climate change. Glaciers and sea-ice are melting faster than scientists are predicting. So little is understood about ice movements up here, but what we do know shows that we are reaching a tipping point. Yet, in the same place, coal is mined and exported to Europe to be burnt. Coal is responsible for one third of CO2 emissions on the planet. That makes it the single most important source of carbon dioxide.
It is simply absurd that coal is mined here. For a long time, the mines in Svalbard were mainly subsistence mines. The one in Longyearbyen, the main village of Svalbard, only serves to power the town. Svea, however, is another matter. In the last ten years, the Norwegian government, which owns the mine, decided to boost production, in order to ensure its sovereignty over Svalbard isn't disputed. Next year, approval might be given to open yet another mine.
Coal isn't needed in Svalbard. I only need to look out the window and watch the seals play in the water to know that tourism could get an even bigger boost if the Norwegian government committed to it. Scientists are coming in from all over the world to discover Svalbard and study this incredible environment. Right now, mining represent one third of the activity in Svalbard, more as a political decision to keep the other ones reined in.
The Norwegian government, as well as those of all countries receiving coal from Svea - Netherlands, France, Portugal, Denmark, Germany - have to show their commitment for the climate. It's time to quit coal, and get a strong, fair and binding treaty in Copenhagen.
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I arrived in Svea, Svalbard this morning. It's absolutely beautiful here. My camera has been working overtime, and I have way too many pictures of fjords and snowy mountains already.
Going over Svalbard by plane was surprising. I expected it to be white all over, but it's mainly brown - at least in the southern part. I could see beaches and lagoon-like colors around them. If I didn't for a fact what the temperatures are like, I would have been tempted to go for a swim. There's much less snow than I expected so far.
It was strange yesterday evening to be in Longyearbyen, and see what was happening half a world away, in Canada. Activists stopped the tar sands yet again. When you know the effect industrial projects like these have on the climate, and on the Arctic region where I am right now, it is good to know that people are stepping up and taking action.
I started to be sea sick about 30 seconds after we set off last night. Looking at a computer isn't the best way to fight off nausea. An hour later, I was just hoping to be sick and get over it. I went to bed very early - not much you can do once you're at sea, with no internet, sea-sick, and tired.
I woke up in yet another beautiful place. We were still on our way to Svea. The sea was very calm - so much that when I first awoke, I thought we were already anchored. We did anchor, around 11, near Svea. We're in the middle of a fjord. It's been snowing lately, so the mountains around us are white.
Everything looks (and is) so pristine around here. I don't think I've ever been to a place with such a low population density - there are more polar bears than humans in Svalbard. It shows. No houses, no road, no human traces, besides the ship - and the place where we arrived today.
There's a coal mine about 100 meters away from me. As we arrived, we met a coal ship that had just left the mine, and from what the mining company told us, there's another one arriving tonight. During the summer season, there's always ships arriving and leaving. It's much harder for them to make it through the fjord when it's icy, and in the dead of the winter, it's simply impossible. That makes Svea quite active in the summer for such a small settlement.
Next to the coal mine is a polar bear trail. It represents very well the paradox of Svalbard: the incredible nature, and devastating coal activities. There is actually enough tourism and scientific activity to keep the economy going here. Coal used to be essential - now, it is becoming a side activity. The main reason the Norwegian and Russian governments keep mining here is to prove their sovereignty and their rights. As two of the countries at the frontline of the Arctic Meltdown, they should definitively know better.
As I started this blog, Dima from Greenpeace Russia walked in and said he saw a white whale in the distance. I pretty much jumped from my seat and ran outside. I managed to see its back for half a second, but unfortunately, Mr Beluga was shy, so that's all I got. I'm crossing fingers to see another one.
More later,
Juliette
Despite what the blog says, this entry was not written by Dave
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I started writing this on Friday afternoon in Fram Strait, the body of water lying the north end of Greenland and the archipelago of Svalbard, in the Greenland Sea. Up on the bridge, Pete and Bob guide the ice-covered Arctic Sunrise through some scattered sea ice, while fulmars freewheel past on the wind.
There may not be very much sea ice where we are right now, at around nearly 80 degrees north, and just over 4 degrees east, but we're soon heading back into the thick stuff again. Earlier in the week we experienced lots more, when the ship was pack bumping and grinding its way deep in the ice pack. We left the town of Longyearbyen, in Svalbard on Sunday afternoon, September 13th having deposited our group of oceanographers and glacialogists, Gordon, Fiamma, Leigh, Jim and Dave, along with some members of the crew, like Eric and Steffan. Joining us, we had a team of polar oceanographers led by Dr Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge, and Frida, a campaigner who works at Greenpeace Nordic in Oslo. I've wanted to visit Svalbard for years; my brief glance sailing in, and then departing on a beautiful evening didn't disappoint – stunning mountains and glaciers, huge skies, and apparently, more polar bears than people. By Monday we were into start of the sea ice, and by Tuesday, really in the thick of it. Peter and his team were looking out for a good ice floe to work on. Later, he joined his colleagues Keith, Steeve and John to deploy an ice mass-balance buoy to measure how fast the ice of the Arctic Ocean is melting. The buoys temperature measurements that take a temperature profile through the ice along with collecting data heat conductivity, and then transmit that data back to the laboratory via satellite. This is all part of a study to try to understand the rate of melt of sea ice in the Arctic, including why sea ice here is disappearing so fast, and why certain kinds of sea ice are disappearing faster than others, such as pressure ridges. While the Arctic Sunrise was pushing slowly through the sea ice a few days ago, it was sobering to learn that there used to be an awful lot more of it. On Friday, the NSIDC in the United States announced that the minimum area of summer Arctic sea-ice extent had hit the third lowest level in recorded history, after 2007 and 2008, and was 1.61 million square kilometers (620,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum and 1.28 million square kilometers (490,000 square miles) below the thirty-year 1979 to 2008 average minimum.
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