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Friday, 26 July 2013

From the cosy carpeted rooms of the White House, to the bone-chilling tundras of Greenland, Carlos Duarte is working frantically to understand how the Arctic will respond to current pressures.

The ice in the Arctic Circle is melting at a frightening rate. Scientists now estimate that as soon as the northern summer of 2015 - that is, in two years' time - there may be no sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The Director of UWA's Oceans Institute and one of the world's most eminent ocean scientists, Professor Duarte was one of 16 scientists to attend a three-day meeting in the White House recently to try to provide the scientific underpinnings to predict the likely futures of the Arctic.

Following an expedition in April, his research team completed field work in the Arctic region again in June and he will be working in Greenland in the next two months.

"The Arctic is suffering from dangerous climate change," he said. "In March 2007, peer-reviewed scientific literature predicted that, by 2100, two thirds of the summer ice would be gone from the Arctic Ocean.

"Even before this projection was ratified by the United Nations in October 2007, it had become obsolete. Change is happening so rapidly that the predicted loss of ocean ice has been brought forward by 85 years.

"In the past six years, the future has come up to our doorstep."

The more ice that melts, the more methane is released into the atmosphere, and climate change is propelled further.

"The Arctic paradox is that the Arctic nations - The US, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway - all declare they are worried by the rapid changes, but they are all preparing for mining and extraction of oil and gas that were not accessible before the ice started melting," Professor Duarte said.

Australian mining companies have applied for 40 per cent of the mining permits filed to the Greenland government.

"But we can't start mining in this delicate region without a huge amount of research. We have insufficient understanding of how the Arctic works, to be able to provide guidelines for exploration, mining or development.

"The scientists who met in the White House agreed that we need to vastly accelerate our research so we can understand the Arctic and let science inform the laws and decisions," he said.

The world's leading scientists are ramping up their research and the tiny regional government of Greenland is taking a stand against mining in the Arctic.

"Greenland is heavily subsidised by Denmark," Professor Duarte said. "And the only way they can achieve independence is with economic growth, which could be theirs with an international mining industry.

"But the newly-elected Greenland Social Democratic government has put a stop to all exploration and is not issuing permits.

"They may be missing out on a chance of economic independence but they have a future," he said. "There were already plans for airports, pipelines and thousands of workers from China, but these have all been cancelled because the Greenlanders have chosen not to trade their independence for activities that will threaten their culture and values.

"There are only 58,000 people in Greenland - fewer than some of the big mining companies employ - but their courage and responsibility is encouraging to the scientific research community which no longer feels alone in its struggle to guide the region to a better future."

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