World news
Greenland’s children paddle in the sea as
Arctic heatwave melts 12.5 bn tons of ice
By James Rothwell
and Abbie Cheeseman
BILLIONS of tons of ice in Greenland is
melting 50 years ahead of climate
change schedules, preventing inhabit-
ants from moving around the country
by sledge as rising temperatures lead to
the surreal spectacle of children play-
ing in the Arctic sea.
A heatwave gripping the Arctic
region is causing unprecedented levels
of melting ice, and has also seen global
sea levels rise, in a clear sign that cli-
mate change is taking its toll much
more quickly than predicted.
Earlier this month, in the town of
Qaanaaq in northwestern Greenland,
children were seen splashing around in
the sea and wearing T-shirts, which
would have been unheard of 10 years
ago. Some schoolgirls have reportedly
even started wearing skirts as part of
their uniform.
Climate experts said the sudden in-
crease in melting ice was caused by
greenhouse gas emissions over the past
century and the so-called albedo ef-
fect, where falling ice levels mean that
heat is absorbed by the planet instead
of being reflected back into space, cre-
ating yet more heat.
They also warned that daily lives of
Greenlanders risked being upended by
climate change, with iced areas usually
traversed by sledge or snow ski turning
into small lakes.
“We are already entering a new nor-
mal in the Arctic, and what we are see-
ing now is far and beyond what we
predicted in 2019,” said Dr Victoria
Herrmann, the president and manag-
ing director of the Arctic Institute,
which closely monitors climate change
in Greenland.
“It has also fundamentally changed
the environment of Greenland, both
for the people that call it home and for
its unique ecosystem. That will only
get worse in the decades to come,
where we will see ice-free summers in
the Arctic.”
Dr Herrmann added that climate
change had led to lakes of melted ice
appearing in Greenland, causing logis-
tical problems for its 56,000 inhabit-
ants. “The territory relies heavily on
Brazil accepts £10m from UK to fight fires New Zealand bans swimming with dolphins
By Euan Marshall in Sao Paulo
THE Brazilian government has
accepted £10 million in aid from the UK
to battle a devastating wave of forest
fires in the Amazon region.
Jair Bolsonaro, the bullish far-Right
president, had rejected a separate offer
of $22 million (£18 million) in assistance
from G7 countries, amid a war of words
with Emmanuel Macron, the French
president.
Mr Bolsonaro suggested he would
only accept the G7 funds if he received
a personal apology from Mr Macron,
who last week called his counterpart a
“liar” for promising to respect the
country’s climate commitments when
they met at the G20 summit in June.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr Bolson-
aro called a meeting with governors
from the nine Amazonian states, when
he was urged to accept financial aid.
Helder Barbalho, the governor of
Pará, claimed Mr Bolsonaro had
“wasted a lot of time” by squabbling
with Mr Macron.
Flávio Dino, the Left-wing governor
of Maranhão, warned Brazil could be
frozen out on the world stage, adding:
“If Brazil isolates itself, we risk being
exposed to severe trade sanctions.” TheAmazon rainforest has been plagued
by more than 75,000 fires this year,
drawing international criticism for Mr
Bolsonaro’s permissive stance towards
deforestation.
In Porto Velho, the capital of Ron-
dônia state, a children’s hospital has re-
portedly treated an average of 50
young people per day with respiratory
problems this month.
Meanwhile, Ricardo Salles, the em-
battled environment minister, was ad-
mitted to hospital yesterday morning.
Reports that he had suffered a heart at-
tack were dismissed. He is in intensive
care in a stable condition.By Phil Mercer in SydneyTOURISTS have been banned from
swimming with dolphins at a popular
New Zealand holiday destination be-
cause they are “loving them too much”.
Sharply falling dolphin numbers
have meant that boat trips offering pas-
sengers a chance to swim with dolphin
pods in the Bay of Islands, north of
Auckland, have been halted. The popu-
lation of bottlenose dolphins has fallen
from 270 to about 30 – almost 90 per
cent – in the space of just 20 years.
New Zealand’s Department of Con-
servation found that human interac-tion was “having a significant impact
on the population’s resting and feeding
behaviour”. Latest reports show an
alarming 75 per cent mortality rate
among the calves – far above average in
both the wild and in captivity.
Swimming with one of nature’s most
intelligent creatures has been a thrill
for many visitors to the country’s sub-
tropical North Island, where tour com-
panies guarantee a 95 per cent success
rate of finding dolphins on their excur-
sions. Some of the tour staff have even
given dolphins names.
But conservation officials think the
relationship has become too close andunhealthy and have decreed that cruise
operators may interact with them for
only 20 minutes at a time to give the
dolphins space to themselves away
from the gaze and cameras of curious
onlookers.
It is not the first time warnings have
been sounded about their well-being.
In 2016, Massey University reported
that the Bay of Islands’ bottlenose dol-
phins were “being loved into extinc-
tion” as the creatures interacted with
people to the detriment of feeding,
sleeping, or nursing their young. Tour-
ists can still swim with common or
dusky dolphins off the South Island.US space plane
completes
‘record’ two
years in orbit
By Ben Riley-Smith US EDITORA SECRETIVE US space plane has re-
portedly set a new record for consecu-
tive time in orbit after spending almost
two years on its current mission.
The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle has
now spent a 718th day in space, over-
taking the 717-day mark set by the same
type of vehicle on a previous mission.
CNN, ABC News and Air Force Times
were among the US publications to hail
the achievement as a record for time in
orbit for a space vehicle.
The plane’s mission continues and
no return date to Earth has been an-
nounced.
A US Air Force spokesman did not
comment on whether a world record
had been achieved. Little is known
about what the X-37B is doing in space,
and the US Air Force has not shared the
location of the plane while it is in orbit.
The US Air Force’s website says the
X-37B tests “reusable spacecraft tech-
nologies for America’s future in space”
and carries out experiments “which
can be returned to and examined on
Earth”.
The secrecy has led to speculation
that the plane could somehow be in-
volved in spying activities or testing
space-based weapons.
The current X-37B plane in orbit,
called OTV-5, was launched in Septem-
ber 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It
was built by Boeing. The plane’s unique
design looks like a miniature space
shuttle – it is just nine metres long and
three metres wide.
Heather Wilson, the former Air
Force Secretary, suggested in July that
the X-37B is able to modify its orbit,
frustrating adversaries in the process.
“We know that drives them nuts.
And I’m really glad about that,” Ms Wil-
son said at the Aspen Security Forum,
according to Air Force Times.
Donald Trump, the US president, has
put renewed focus on space explora-
tion and expansion, promising to cre-
ate a so-called “Space Force” as the
sixth branch of America’s military.
Mike Pence, the US vice president,
has been put in charge of progressing
the plans and gave a speech outlining
the Trump administration’s vision.
He said: “Now the time has come to
write the next great chapter in the his-
tory of our armed forces, to prepare for
the next battlefield where America’s
best and bravest will be called to deter
and defeat a new generation of threats
to our people, to our nation.”ADAM GERRARD/MIRRORPIXClimate change experts
warn of effects of rising sea
levels on the daily lives of
islanders – and the planet
Teenage boys
enjoyed the recent
heatwave by taking
a dip in the sea in
Qaanaaqland-based transport to get from one
community to the next via snowmobile
or dog sled,” she said. “But if it becomes
a big puddle of water, that makes it a lot
more difficult to see relatives, or share
the meat you have hunted, or go to a
basketball game. It disrupts regular
lives.”
The glacier-covered island is experi-
encing record-breaking temperatures
which rose to 71.6F (22C) on Aug 1.
On that same day, the severe heatcaused Greenland to lose 12.5 billion
tons of ice, a staggeringly large amount
even by Arctic standards.
Martin Stendel, a Danish climate ex-
pert, has warned that the overall
amount of ice that melted on July 31
and Aug 1 was enough to cover all of
Florida with nearly five inches of water.
Extreme cases of ice melting typi-
cally occur once every 250 years, how-
ever the enormous loss of ice on Aug 1
was the second since 2012, in a signthat the climate crisis is rapidly wors-
ening.
“Greenland has had a fire this year,
and a number over the last few years,
and there was also a landslide recently
which swept away a village,” said Dr
Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist and
glaciologist at the Danish Meteorologi-
cal Institute.
“There will be other big conse-
quences [of the heat] – we are expect-
ing more mosquitoes, for example.”‘What we are
seeing now is
far and
beyond whatwe predicted
in 2019’The Daily Telegraph Thursday 29 August 2019 *** 15
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