The New Zealand Government is failing to act as an Antarctic ice shelf threatens to collapse, Greenpeace says.
A British Antarctic survey showed the Wilkins Ice Shelf, the ice bridge of which shattered on Saturday, was drawing closer to collapse and the New Zealand Government had done nothing towards progress on a climate deal in Germany, Greenpeace political adviser Geoff Keey said.
Delegates meet in Bonn for the first stage of United Nations climate talks. The talks end tomorrow.
''Wilkins provides us with one of the starkest reminders of just how fast climate change is occurring and yet the New Zealand Government still refuses to face facts,'' Mr Keey said.
New Zealand refused to agree to a proposed national emission reduction target, he said.
Greenpeace said the New Zealand Government should commit to a target of 40 per cent emissions reductions by 2020. The Government target is a 50 per cent reduction by 2050.
When asked in Parliament about the Government's target, Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues (International Negotiations) Tim Groser said it was a matter of balance between environmental and economic objectives.
Mr Groser said, ''I believe we are making a contribution in Bonn to help shape international thinking on the objective and fair approach to sharing the effort on reducing emissions, taking account of different countries' national circumstances.''
He said New Zealand's presentation was well-received by everyone ''except, of course, by Greenpeace''.
Glaciologist David Vaughan, with the British Antarctic Survey, said it was ''amazing how the ice has ruptured''.
Two days ago the ice bridge was intact, he said. ''We've waited a long time to see this.''
The Wilkins, now the size of Jamaica, is one of 10 shelves to have shrunk or collapsed in recent years on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Nine other shelves have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly, like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002.
Cores of sediments on the seabed indicate that some of these ice shelves had been in place for at least 10,000 years.
A study based on rare, preserved stalagmites in a coastal cave in Italy has provided a timeline of sea level rises during warm periods of the earth's history, indicating that the world's ice sheets might melt faster than previously thought.
Australian and European researchers have calculated the stalagmites are about 190,000 to 245,000 years old, during which time there were three warm periods, reflected in three peaks in sea level.
The study's lead author, Australian National University academic Andrea Dutton, said, ''One of our goals is to understand how quickly the ice sheets melt and how quickly sea level rises in response to increases in temperature and atmospheric CO2.
''The importance of this work is that the lag time between changes in temperature and sea level response may not be as long as previously thought,'' she said.
That means ice sheets are capable of responding quickly to increasing temperature and CO2. NZPA/AAP
Email a friend