Arctic Committee Report

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I often wonder why many people show little concern in the face of the impending catastrophe of global warming. I am reminded of a fundamental dichotomy in human perceptions to which Voltaire famously drew attention. In 1757, Voltaire published an influential work of social philosophy and satire under the title Candide or Optimism. It is said to have been prompted by a disastrous earthquake in Lisbon, which is estimated to have killed 60,000 people in that city alone. It raised the question of how a belief in a benevolent deity could be maintained in the face of such natural disasters, or acts of God. There are two main protagonists in the satirical story. The first is the eponymous Candide, who roams the world with various companions and is confronted by an outrageous series of disasters. Some of the disasters are acts of God and others are attributable to human malfeasance. The second protagonist is a certain Doctor Pangloss, who is unaffected by the tragedies; he refuses to allow them to distract him from his everyday concerns and he asserts, repetitiously, that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Candide represents a category of people who could be described as catastrophists or absurdists: they see disasters everywhere that are compounded by human folly and ignorance. Doctor Pangloss, on the other hand, exemplifies a category of people whom one might describe as normalisers. We can recognise both classes of people in any assembled company. However, events that people experience at first hand may eventually cause them to move from one category to the other. Indeed, most of us embody both tendencies in varying degrees.

The absence of dramatic first-hand experiences of the effects of global warming has led many people to ignore the hazards. Their recognition of them has been much delayed. A full recognition requires a first-hand experience of such events as the flooding of the Somerset levels or of the city of New York, the inundations of Hurricane Patricia or the devastation of the island of Tacloban by Typhoon Haiyan. The difficulty is compounded by the unwillingness of scientists to attribute individual events to global warming; they prefer to consider only the average effects of those events. We have every reason to fear that, when we begin to feel the full force of the effects of global warming, it will be too late to avert a catastrophe.

The dichotomy of perceptions is clearly evident in the report of the Select Committee on the Arctic, an excellent and a well-crafted document for which the clerk of the committee, Susannah Street, and the policy analyst, Matthew Smith, must take much of the credit. On the one hand, the report conveys the evidence of an impending catastrophe; on the other, it documents the processes that are the normal social, political and economic responses to the ongoing changes in the Arctic environment. The report declares in its introduction that the committee did not seek to examine the global causes, processes or consequences of climate change. Nevertheless, its first chapter clearly displays the startling evidence of climate change that can be seen in the Arctic, and which will have inevitable global consequences.

In the period from 1900 to the present, Arctic surface temperatures over land have risen by as much as 4 degrees centigrade, if one takes the least favourable base year, and by no less than 3 degrees, if one takes the most favourable base year. The rise in temperature has been twice the rate of the global average, and can be regarded as the harbinger of a global temperature increase of the same or greater magnitude. The current scientific consensus is that if the present trends continue, they will result in an utterly destructive increase in temperature of 5 degrees centigrade. If the commitments to limit emissions that are likely to be confirmed by the forthcoming Paris conference were realised, the rise in temperature might be limited to 2.7 degrees by 2100. This figure must be set beside that of a rise of 2 degrees, which we have been told repeatedly is the maximum we can allow if we are not to experience severe disruptions to our way of life.

One very visible effect of the warming of the Arctic is the reduction in the ice cover. The report contains a compelling diagram, which is a product of satellite monitoring. Since 1980, the extent of the ice cover in the North Pole region has almost halved. This is a measurement only of the area of the ice; the picture becomes dramatically worse when one takes account of the diminution in thickness. Thin ice is quickly melted in the Arctic summer. The volume of ice appears to have decreased by 75% in the past 30 years. Many predict that the ice will have gone completely by the middle of the century. The prospect of an ice-free Arctic Ocean points to the opening of viable circumpolar sea routes, which would greatly shorten the distance of sea voyages that presently pass through the Suez and Panama canals.

In such circumstances, we must also envisage a dramatic rise in the sea level. Of course, the melting of sea ice alone cannot raise the sea level, but there will be a concomitant melting of land-based ice. The rate of loss of ice from Greenland has increased by a factor of five in the past 20 years. It is currently causing a rise in sea level of 2 millimetres per annum, which seems small enough. However, if all Greenland’s ice were to melt, the sea level would rise by more than 7 metres.

The rise in temperature and the reduction in ice cover are accompanied by vicious processes of positive feedback. The reduction in ice cover reduces the albedo, or solar reflectivity, of the Arctic region, which leads to a greater absorption of heat. The melting of the Arctic tundra is giving rise to emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Mole for mole, or volume for volume, it has 20 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.

The melting of the Arctic ice has been witnessed by the members of the committee who travelled to Svalbard, a cluster of islands dominated by Spitzbergen, which is 20 to 25 degrees from the North Pole. This is the world’s northernmost area of permanent habitation. The largest settlement is at Longyearbyen, which accommodates some 2,000 permanent inhabitants. The port of Longyearbyen, which has become substantially free of ice throughout the year, is the main logistic base for the cruise industry and for the cargo supplied to the settlements on Spitsbergen. Surface temperatures in Svalbard have increased by 3 degrees centigrade since the mid-1970s. The normal processes of commerce and industry have been evolving rapidly, in step with the evolving climatic and environmental conditions. The coal-mining industry, which has been present on the island since the beginning of the 20th century, is now in long-term decline, but a booming tourist industry is taking its place. The island is envisaged as a major logistical hub for the development of commercial and maritime activities in the polar regions. It is difficult to witness such normal activities and, at the same time, bear in mind the notion of an impending catastrophe. Svalbard provides a singular instance of the difficulty of reconciling the conflicting perceptions of normality and catastrophe, and of fully recognising the dangers we face.

There is, however, one factor present in Svalbard that should serve regularly to remind us of the dangers: the international university centre that is devoted to Arctic studies. A stream of information and analysis emanates from the centre, which can leave us in no doubt of the prospects for the Arctic. Svalbard hosts a large and growing scientific community in which the British have, so far, been major participants. One of the main recommendations of the Arctic Committee’s report is that our scientific presence in the Arctic should be bolstered in order to maintain the importance of our participation. This and other recommendations have met with a favourable but lukewarm reception in the Government’s response. Given the stringent limits the Government are imposing on the nation’s limited scientific budget, I am fearful that the recommendation will not be heeded. I urge that it be given the utmost priority.

If the processes we have witnessed in the Arctic continue, there is a strong likelihood that we will be tipped into a runaway process of global warming that will wipe many of us off the face of the earth. This is a means by which anthropogenic global warming might eventually be overcome. It seems to me that an ant colony has better instincts of survival than does humankind. I have witnessed at first hand the effect on the Arctic of a rapid process of warming, and I have been alarmed by what I have seen. I wish to voice my alarm. I firmly believe that, by maintaining and increasing our engagement in Arctic matters to an extent that may far exceed what the present Government regard as appropriate, we can raise our awareness of the hazards and enhance our ability to react to them in a timely and resilient manner.