Time and again I am asked whether I already have noticed anything of this much discussed climate change during my work in the Arctic. Sometimes I hear the desire for appeasement, reassurance - "no, don't worry, you can't see a thing of it yet" - but unfortunately I can't help you out with that. In fact, I see significant changes from year to year, although these can of course be caused by short-term fluctuations. Unfortunately, the tendency over the last few years goes very clearly in one direction: mass (height) losses of glaciers, retreat of glacier fronts wherever you look. But much more frightening than the current changes are the traces of what has been going on for decades.
On this picture taken in summer 2018 more than 500km north of the arctic circle, we see a glacier that extends from a height of approximately 1500 meters down to the sea. However, I should say "had extended", because there is practically nothing left of the once large glacier. The non-eroded, semi-circularly pushed up lateral moraines look as if they were left by the ice in a great hurry. Of course this did not happen overnight, but also not in the usual glacial periods.
From exactly this area I was told that a few decades ago, such glaciers were still used in winter from the frozen sea for dog sledding across the mountain ranges into the neighbouring fjord. But without ice this does not work any more.
This is how strikingly such a completely disappeared glacier first caught my eye in 2018 - but since I know what to look for, I have found a lot of it and many more drastic signs of the Arctic in a state of flux.
It is quite obvious: we have been in the middle of the climate change for a long time. And our remaining time is running out. Every ton of carbon dioxide that we blow into the atmosphere today will remain there for a very long time. There is only one really viable way to escape the catastrophe - to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions sustainably and massively.
We (the industrial nations) have been living on credit for a long time, which we have granted ourselves arbitrarily at the expense of future generations. And we have concluded a Paris Climate Agreement, the honourable goals of which cannot even come close to being achieved with the "climate package" recently adopted in Germany. Not even theoretically and with a huge portion of super-optimism. Just the good old "keep it up", adorned with a little greenery.
This is what I call malignant acting - in view of what is at stake for us all! And I think to myself every day: How can someone call himself "conservative" or even "Christian", who is so indifferent to our planet? After all, it is still the only one we have.