'We need to make sure their
role in causing the climate crisis is not forgotten,' reads a petition from
350.org
Climate campaigners have a
name proposed for a huge iceberg researchers say is about to break off from an
ice shelf in Antarctica: the #ExxonKnew Iceberg.
The calving, as the break-off
is called, is happening on the Larsen C ice shelf in West Antarctica. According to the
U.K.-based Project Midas, which is keeping track of the rift's progress, it
could be one of the largest icebergs on record.
According to 350.org, the
soon-to-be Delaware-sized iceberg presents an excellent opportunity to remind
the public of Exxon's role in fueling climate change.
"With one of the world's
biggest ice shelves at a breaking point, this destruction should bear the name
of its greatest perpetrator: Exxon," said Aaron Packard, 350.org's Climate
Impact Coordinator. "People deserve to understand the devastation of
Exxon's decades of climate deception, and realize fossil fuel companies for the
climate criminals they are."
The group's petition to
the U.S. National Ice Center—the body that names
icebergs—says the fossil fuel company "deceived the public, misled their shareholders,
and robbed humanity of a generation's worth of time to reverse climate
change," referring to the ExxonKnew scandal.
"We need to make sure
their role in causing the climate crisis is not forgotten," says the
petition, which the group says has garnered over ten thousand signatures.
350.org also posted this video to accompany the petition:
Writing Friday, Project Midas
said that "the iceberg remains attached to the shelf by a thin band of ice,"
adding: "When it calves, the Larsen C Ice Shelf will lose more than 10
percent of its area to leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever
recorded; this event will fundamentally change the landscape of the Antarctic
Peninsula."
Still, "we do not need to
press the panic button for Larsen C," says
Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography:
Large calving events such as
this are normal processes of a healthy ice sheet, ones that have occurred for
decades, centuries, millennia—on cycles that are much longer than a human or
satellite lifetime.
At the same time, she noted:
There is plenty going on that
merits concern: Antarctic ice shelves overall are seeing accelerated thinning,
and the ice sheet is losing mass in key sectors of Antarctica.
Added
Jonathan Kingslake, an assistant professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory: "Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is linked to human
activity and probably triggered the collapse of two more northerly ice
shelves." Larsen A and Larsen B collapsed in 1996 and 2002, respectively,
after icebergs broke off.
As Packard sees it, "The
Antarctic Peninsula is a window into a distressingly plausible, not-so-distant,
future where the relatively stable climate the earth has thrived on enters
meltdown mode. "
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