GREENLAND Hands Across the Sand

This report was provided by Dr. John Van Leer after the UPG Hands Across the Sand Rally in Ilulissat, Greenland.

This was the Furthest North site on 6/26/2010.

Photo: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30687727&id=1225707658

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Report from Ilulissat Protest on the day after

Janie Graulich and John Van Leer proudly held the Hands Across the Sand banner on June 26th at noon Miami time and were photographed by a German couple sympathetic to our cause. There are practically no beaches here due to constant glacial scouring. The one pocket beach was off limits due to tsunami wave danger from calving glacial icebergs. So we stood on the windy headland west of the ancient, UNESCO world heritage site, the 4,500 years old Inuit settlement of Sermermiut, overlooking the massive icebergs, up to ½ a mile high, which are stranded on the 300 meter deep moraine, guarding the entrance of the Jakobshvn Fjord.

The accelerated melting of Greenland’s glacial ice is due to global warming caused, in significant part, by the burning of fosile fuels, such as the oil being spilled in the Gulf of Mexico. Even if the spilled oil is not burned it will likely be oxidized by bacteria and continue to release CO2. Vast methane leakage is also occurring at the blown out well.

40 cubic kilometers of icebergs come out of Jakobshvn Fjord each year plus a greater amount of glacial melt-water. Warm salty Atlantic water is now flooding the bottom of Greenland’s fjords, greatly speeding up the melting and calving of glacial ice into the sea. Melting on the surface of the Greenland was evident on the flight from Iceland. Numerous bright blue lakes and rivers were seen which disappear into moulons, which tunnel down to the base of the ice, to lubricate its slippage toward the sea. Coastal Florida’s beaches, where the Hand across the Sand protests were held, will likely be flooded in 50 to 100 years by rising sea levels from melting glacial ice in Greenland and Antarctica. The Greenland icecap contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 8 meters.

Gravity data taken by the Grace satellites show the ice is melting 5% faster each year compared to the year before both in Greenland and in Antarctica. The coastal rocks are rising about 1 cm. per year as the melting ice unloads the edges of Greenland.

Our photos of the event came out ok but could not be downloaded because I brought the wrong camera cable. Will send them if I find one.

Best regards

John C. Van Leer and Janie Graulich