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Section:GDN BE PaGe:1 Edition Date:090901 Edition:01 Zone:S

Sent at 31/8/2009 20:48

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Very hard centres How chocolate-coated diamonds bankrolled British communism
This section Page 13
£0.90 Tuesday 01.09.09 Published in London and Manchester guardian.co.uk

When graffiti becomes art The public gets to vote
This section Page 3

From the melting frontline, a chilling view of a warming world
Patrick Barkham Sermilik fjord, Greenland
It is calving season in the Arctic. A flotilla of icebergs, some as jagged as fairytale
castles and others as smooth as dinosaur eggs, calve from the ice sheet that smothers
Greenland and sail down the fjords. The journey of these sculptures of ice from glaciers
to ocean is eerily beautiful and utterly terrifying. The wall of ice that rises behind
Sermilik fjord stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400km) from north to south and smothers
80% of this country. It has been frozen for 3m years. Now it is melting, far faster
than the climate models predicted and far more decisively than any political action
to combat our changing climate. If the Greenland ice sheet disappeared sea levels
around the world would rise by seven metres, as 10% of the world’s fresh water
is currently frozen here. This is also the season for science in Greenland. Glaciologists,
seismologists and climatologists from around the world are landing on the ice sheet
in helicopters, taking ice-breakers up its inaccessible coastline and measuring glaciers
in a race against time to discover why the ice

Public figures and business sign up to climate drive
David Adam Environment correspondent
An unprecedented coalition of scientists, companies, celebritie s and organisations
spanning the cultural and political spectrum will today commit to slashing their
carbon emissions as part of an ambitious campaign to tackle global warming. The 10:10
campaign, which will be launched at London’s Tate Modern this afternoon, aims to
bolster grass roots support for tough action against global warming ahead of the
key global summit in Copenhagen in December. Those signing up for the campaign, which
is supported by the Guardian, pledge to make efforts to reduce their carbon footprints
by 10% during the year 2010. Groups committed to the 10:10 cause range from Tottenham
Hotspur football club, online grocer Ocado, the Tate galleries and the Women’s
Institute to dozens of schools, universities and NHS trusts. Four of the major energy
companies, British Gas owner Centrica, E.ON, EDF and Scottish and Southern, have
promised to help customers hit their 10:10 targets by providing information on how
their energy use compares with past consumption. The campaign is backed by public
figures ranging from the climate change expert Lord Stern to Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox,
chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Delia Smith, screenwriter Richard Curtis, directors
Richard Eyre and Mike Figgis, designers Nicole Farhi and Vivienne Westwood, TV presenter
Kevin McLeod and actors including Samantha Morton, Jason Isaacs, Pete Postlethwaite,
Colin Firth and Tamsin Greig. A clutch of Britain’s most eminent artists including
Anish Kapoor, who has produced a special cover for today’s G2, Anthony Gormley
and Gillian Wearing, have pledged to cut their emissions as have several literary
heavyweights including Ian McEw an, Sarah Waters, Continued on page 2 ≥ The Sermilik
fjord, where hundreds of icebergs are calving from Greenland’s vast ice sheets
Photograph: Philippe Roy/Getty



The proportion of the world’s population – 600 million people – living in areas
vulnerable to a one-metre rise in sea levels

in Greenland is vanishing so much faster than expected. Gordon Hamilton, a Scottish-born
glaciologist from the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, is packing
up equipment at his base camp in Tasiilaq, a tiny, remote east coast settlement only
accessible by helicopter and where huskies howl all night. With his spiky hair and
ripped T-shirt, Hamilton could be a rugged glaciologist straight from central casting.
Four years ago he hit upon the daring idea of landing on a moving glacier in a helicopter
to measure its speed. The glaciers of Greenland are the fat, restless fingers of
its vast ice sheet, constantly moving, stretching down into fjords and pushing ice
from the sheet into the ocean, in the form of melt water and icebergs. Before their
first expedition, Hamilton and his colleague Leigh Stearns, from the University
of Kansas, used satellite data to plan exactly where they would land on a glacier.
“When we arrived there was no glacier to be seen. It was way up the fjord,” he
says. “We thought we’d made some stupid goof with the co-ordinates, but we were
where we were supposed to be.” It was the glacier that was in the wrong place.
A vast expanse had melted away. When Hamilton and Stearns processed their first measurements
of the glacier’s speed, they thought they had made another mistake. They found
it was marching forwards at a greater pace than a glacier had ever been observed
to flow before. “We were blown

Five ways you can support the 10:10 campai e campaign


Find out more about 10:10 and what it would take to cut 10% of your own emissions
in a special issue of G2 with a collectable cover designed by Turner-prize winning
sculptor Anish Kapoor.



Commit individually or sign-up your school or other organisation to 10:10 at www.1010uk.org
≥ w.1010uk.org


Be a 10:10 pioneer by taking part in the mass sign-up event at London’s Tate Modern
from om 4pm-7pm today. You’ll get t a free 10:10 tag, made from m recycled airliners
and a free ee glass of champagne courtesy tesy of Ocado if you are one of the first
1,000 people make your pledge. to m There Th will also be a free ree concert featuring
Revco everend and the Makers er ers and a Stornoway.

S Share your experience of e trying to live a t lower c carbon life and get advice
from our adv living experts at green li guardian.co.uk/10-10 ≥ guardia


Open evening
Thursday 3 September 2009, 4–7.30pm
Royal National Hotel, Bedford Way, London WC1H 0DG



I If you want to help the camh paign financially p you can: donate at ca www.1010uk.org/
www donate ≥ donat

London’s evening university 0845 601 0174 www.bbk.ac.uk/guardian

Continued on page 10 ≥