O aquecimento global está virando uma obsessão na Europa e nos EUA: talvez seja o momento de enfrentar esse touro...

29/06/2021: 

By Ishaan Tharoor with Claire Parker  Email  It’s the climate change, stupid A thermometer reads 116 degrees Fahrenheit during a heatwave in Portland, Oregon on June 28. (Maranie Staab/Bloomberg) In only the first month of summer in much of the Northern Hemisphere, the records are already tumbling. The Pacific Northwest and Canada are in the grip of an unprecedented heat wave. Major cities such as Portland, Ore., and Seattle broke their all-time records for hottest days by wide margins. Thousands lost power; roads buckled as their asphalt cracked amid the heat. On Monday, the temperature in Lytton, British Columbia, soared to 120 degrees Fahrenheit — a degree higher than the city record posted by Las Vegas far to the south. The British Columbia Coroners Service said Tuesday that it has seen “a significant increase in deaths” in recent days that appear to be linked to the heat. “It’s warmer in parts of western Canada than in Dubai. I mean, it’s just not something that seems Canadian,” Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told CTV News on Saturday. But on a warming planet, it does seem increasingly par for the course. “Many have expressed shock about this unprecedented heat wave. Yet the writing has been on the wall for decades,” wrote the Capital Weather Gang’s Jason Samenow. “Since the 1970s and 1980s, climate scientists have warned that global warming would make heat waves more frequent, long-lasting and intense.” Still, the current wave is startling. “Meteorologists estimated that a heat dome of this size and scope is so rare it should be expected only once every several thousand years,” wrote my colleagues. “But human-caused warming makes extremes like this more common, scientists say. Unless people drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years, this heat wave doesn’t represent a ‘new normal’ but rather a worrying taste of the effects to come.” Of course, in other parts of the world the reality is all the more stark. Amid another searing heat wave, Iraq is also enduring repeated power outages. On Monday, the Iraqi electricity minister resigned as the country’s cash-strapped neighbor, Iran, halted its power supply to Iraq after Baghdad had fallen into arrears. The development comes as temperatures in southern Iraqi provinces average 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures in nearby Kuwait, Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan this month have climbed even higher. As my colleagues noted last year, studies suggest whole regions in the Middle East and South Asia may become virtually uninhabitable for parts of each year. The Daily Telegraph recently reported from the Pakistani town of Jacobabad, notorious for its humidity and heat, including temperatures that can reach up to 126 degrees. “People are aware that the heat is getting up and up, but they are poor people,” a local market trader told the British newspaper. “They can’t go anywhere, they can’t leave their places.” Far to the north in the Russian Arctic, records in some towns were broken this past week. Warming temperatures in Siberia have led to the astonishing melting of layers of permafrost. (In Alaska, too, high temperatures have caused sinkholes to emerge in the northern state’s interior.) The degrading ground conditions are creating huge challenges in the region — a recent Russian government study suggested that the damage to critical infrastructure may cost more than $67 billion by the middle of the century, while the country’s minister of natural resources and environment said last month that some 40 percent of all buildings in the north of Russia were experiencing structural deformation. The broader scientific consensus on the forces at play is clear: “Climate change is loading the weather dice against us,” Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at the Nature Conservancy, an environmental organization, told the Guardian. “We always have a chance of rolling a double six naturally, and getting an intense record breaking summer heat wave. But decade by decade as the world warms, it’s as if climate change is sneaking in and taking one of those numbers on the dice and turning it into another six, and then another six. And maybe even a seven. So we are seeing that heatwaves are coming earlier in the year, they are longer, they are stronger.” Yet while the visceral effects of climate change are being felt more intensely and widely, political action is nowhere close to catching up. “The current heat wave is another visceral reminder that the world is not moving fast enough to curtail the use of fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions,” the Los Angeles Times noted in an editorial. “To prevent the worst effects of climate change will take dramatic change on the part of the world’s industrialized nations, most especially the United States.” “There is a way out of this nightmare of ever-worsening weather extremes, and it’s one that will serve us well in many other ways, too,” climate action advocates Michael Mann and Susan Joy Hassol wrote in the New York Times. “A rapid transition to clean energy can stabilize the climate, improve our health, provide good-paying jobs, grow the economy and ensure our children’s future.” But there’s no consensus in Washington on making that transition. Republican and Democratic lawmakers are squabbling over an infrastructure bill that, is in part, intended to inject billions of dollars into climate mitigation efforts and the renovation of the country’s aging transit systems, roads and other critical infrastructure. In a Tuesday op-ed, President Biden acknowledged that a compromise package agreed to with a coterie of Republicans was “missing some critical initiatives on climate change.” On Monday, the European Council adopted a climate change law that legally obliges the 27 member nations of the European Union to collectively slash greenhouse emissions by 55 percent by 2030 — from 1990 levels — and to establish a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050. But Europe only accounts for so much. At the leaders summit of the Group of Seven nations earlier this month, the wealthy democracies failed to agree to a timeline to end their use of coal for electric power. Thorny debates over coal and other climate pledges may shadow the upcoming meetings of the Group of 20 major economies. U.N. projections, meanwhile, suggest that it could already be too late to stave off the 1.5-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures that has been the key target identified in the 2015 Paris climate accords.

Os cinco anos do acordo de Paris, segundo Beijing (CGTN)

 Climate 18:39, 12-Dec-2020

Paris climate accord turns 5: Is the world doing enough to save itself?

Updated 12:35, 13-Dec-2020

Zeng Ziyi , Wang Xiaonan

Hours before the Paris Agreement came to fruition, there were still doubts if it was going to happen.

After all, too many things could go wrong in any treaty that involves 196 countries, especially with the failure of the last conference held in Copenhagen fresh on the mind. Even tiny nuances in wording could send the decades-long negotiations back to the drawing table, again.

The grueling process that led up to the landmark climate deal was often compared to running a marathon. For two weeks, diplomats huddled in the town of Le Bourget on the outskirts of Paris, holding hotel room meetings late into the night while scanning details as small as a punctuation mark within the mountains of documents.

The exhausting days and nights culminated on Saturday, five years ago, when French foreign minister Laurent Fabius finally appeared on stage after a two-hour delay and banged down the small green-topped gavel that signified global cooperation – the deal that involved every nation on Earth was approved.

In the most ambitious climate deal in history, all countries are required to limit greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve the overarching goal of bringing global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and constraining temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

If the 2-degree-Celsius threshold is breached, argued the world's top scientists, a series of natural disasters such as the sea-level rise and prolonged flood and drought would set the world on an irreversible course to climate catastrophe and lead to some 1.2 billion people being displaced by 2050, according to a recent analysis by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

06:42

Diverged paths

After the deal was reached, China and the United States – the world's biggest and second-biggest polluters – have taken drastically different paths in responding to the threat of climate change.

Riding on a wave of populism, U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on global warming, calling it an "expensive bullshit" and a "hoax" created by the Chinese to "make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." After rolling back nearly 100 environmental initiatives enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump ultimately fulfilled his campaign promise of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement earlier last month.

"The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense," Trump stated after the decision. "They don't put America first. I do, and I always will."

Trump's brazen cynicism in the face of a pending global crisis was criticized by world leaders, including U.S. allies such as France and Canada. Nonetheless, U.S. emissions somewhat decreased "because the forces of the market and businesses are going in the opposite direction," said Erik Solheim, former UN Environment Executive Director, during an interview with CGTN. "Big U.S. companies are far ahead of politics."

Meanwhile, China and other nations have stepped up their effort in developing renewable energy and reduced their reliance on fossil fuels, from government policies to market forces. China's forest area has expanded fast for the past decade, leading the world in forest growth. The country has also contributed massively in clean R&D, reaching $6.3 billion – the first among all member states. Half of the world's solar panels are sourced from China, according to Solheim, also former UN under-secretary-general.

The European Union (EU), the planet's third-largest emitter, provided the most public climate fund to developing nations, and in the meantime spent 20 percent of its budget on curbing global warming between 2014 and 2020.

In the southern hemisphere, Australia has been developing the fuel of the future that won't produce any CO2 – hydrogen.

"Five years on, it's clear the Paris Agreement is driving climate action," said Professor Niklas Höhne of NewClimate Institute. "Not only is our warming projection for government climate pledges falling to just over two degrees, a level that puts the Paris Agreement 1.5 Celsius target within reach, but we're also seeing a drop in projects for real world action."

In the absence of the U.S., the EU, China, India, and several other large emitters launched the International Platform on Sustainable Finance to mobilize private investment into environmental sustainability.

Adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, Paris, France. /Reuters

Looking to work in unison

Fighting climate change is a long-haul one, requiring effort from all parties involved – governments, businesses, academics, and the public. According to data from the Climate Action Tracker in December 2020, "2.9 is the median of the low and high ends of current policy projections." The slight fall from 3.6 degrees Celsius, it predicted five years ago, could partly be attributed to the historic climate agreement.

But the world could have done more. If countries had taken action a decade ago, they would have needed to cut emissions by 3.3 percent every year, according to the 2019 emissions gap report released by the UN Environment Program. Now they have to meet an annual reduction of 7.6 percent till 2030, a threshold most countries find out of reach with their current climate action plans.

"Now we are at the moment in history when all the forces are going at the same time in the right direction," Solheim noted. "But the speed is too slow."

One of the major obstacles came from the absence of the world's biggest historical emitter and second-largest emitter currently. But with a Joe Biden presidency approaching, climate cooperation among major polluters is set for a seismic shift. Biden appointed John Kerry – the key U.S. official in shaping the Paris climate accord – the U.S.'s first climate envoy, expected to take the country out of the climate change limbo by facilitating a transition away from coal, oil, and natural gas toward renewable energy. "Five years ago today, the world gathered to adopt the Paris Agreement on climate change. And in 39 days, the United States is going to rejoin it," Biden tweeted on Saturday. 

Read more: Climate cooperation could signify return to China-U.S. diplomacy

Across the pond, China has committed to leveling off carbon emissions no later than 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. "China will scale up its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by adopting more vigorous policies and measures," said Chinese President Xi Jinping, who called for a "green revolution" during the 75th session of United Nations General Assembly held in September. He reiterated on Saturday some commitments for 2030, including lowering CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 percent from the 2005 level, and increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25 percent.

Read more: Full text: Xi Jinping's speech at Climate Ambition Summit 2020

"By the term 'green revolution,' it means we have to undergo a revolution of not just production mode but also lifestyle," Fang Li, China director of the World Resources Institute, told CGTN. Consumers are both contributors and victims to emissions and hence must be involved in this "revolution." Her institute estimates that the water used to produce food that has been wasted could sustain Beijing for eight years.

"The declaration made by Xi that China will go carbon neutral by 2060 sent shockwaves into the entire global environmental system," Solheim said. Japan and South Korea, which heavily rely on fossil fuels, followed up to make carbon-neutral pledge by 2050.

India – the fourth largest emitter – intends to cut emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent below 2005 levels, along with generating 40 percent of electricity from non-fossil-fuel resources by 2030.

"It's widely anticipated that China, the U.S., the EU, and other member states can sit at the table and look for feasible solutions in the next few years," Fang added. Both she and Solheim agree that constructive competition will probably dominate future climate actions. "There's nothing bad if we have a green competition on the verge of irreversible climate change," said Solheim.

(Video editor: Chen Shi)

O clima em forma de festa: 180 pessoas na delegacao do Brasil em Paris

Que bonito! Deve ser uma das delegações mais importantes do planeta: quase uma pessoa por  e para cada um dos países membros da ONU, sendo que muitos deles comparecem com delegações mais modestas.
Não seja por isso: o Brasil completa todos os espaços disponíveis nos hoteis e restaurantes e oferece passagens e diárias para todos e cada um deles.
Mas, será que todos vão mesmo receber as suas diárias?
Depois do decreto de contingenciamento, o govern ameaça dar calote nesse tipo de despesa...
Quanto está o euro mesmo?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

COLUNA ESPLANADA

Paris é uma festa

Representantes da união, estados e municípios estão em Paris para a COP 21, a conferência do clima, com custos pagos pelo contribuinte

Leandro Mazzini

Opinião e Noticia, 1 dez, 2015

cerca de 180 pessoas de delegações brasileiras, representantes da união, estados e municípios estão em Paris para a COP 21 (Foto: Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR)

Enquanto o país agoniza numa crise político-econômica e ambiental (em Minas e no Espírito Santo), cerca de 180 pessoas de delegações brasileiras, representantes da união, estados e municípios estão em Paris para a COP 21, a conferência do clima, com custos pagos pelo contribuinte. A comitiva do Governo federal soma 40 integrantes, incluindo a presidência e seis ministérios. Do governo de São Paulo são 19 – 13 da Secretaria de Meio ambiente e seis do staff de Geraldo Alckmin. Os governadores do Acre (13 na comitiva) e Mato Grosso (12) levaram suas primeiras-damas.
Press trip
Do Rio, partiu o prefeito Eduardo Paes com cinco jornalistas e 24 na comitiva no total. Quatro foram do Governo do Estado.
Oh, Minas Gerais..
Minas Gerais marca presença em peso. O governador Fernando Pimentel levou 15 pessoas, do gabinete e de estatais.
Cresce a fila
No Senado, foi o líder Cassio Cunha Lima (PSDB-PB) o relator da polêmica MP do caso André Esteves & Eduardo Cunha, com 45 milhões de motivos para dar encrenca.

Aquecimento global: os custos e as alternativas de mercado - Ryan McMaken

Must Free-Marketers Reject Global Warming?
Ryan McMaken
Mises Institute, Friday, August 29th, 2014

You can’t make this stuff up. Someone at the UK Guardian named David Grimes has declared that “economic liberalism,” by which he means the ideology of laissez-faire, “clashes” with “scientific evidence.” Which scientific evidence, you might ask? Well, the unassailable scientific dogma of global warming is one:

Climate change illustrates this well, because despite overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic influence, there is a tendency for those with pronounced free-market views to reject the reality of global warming. The reason underpinning this is transparent – if one accepts human-mediated climate change, then supporting mitigating action should follow. But the demon of regulation is a bridge too far for many libertarians.

There is no doubt that some people who purport to be advocates for free markets reject arguments of anthropogenic global warming out of hand without even considering the evidence. I’m agnostic on the matter myself, although I certainly reject the ludicrous assertion that there is such a thing as “settled science” and that the matter is not debatable. And unlike many allegedly great men and women of scientific inquiry, I refuse to agree that global warming “deniers” are heretics who should be burned at the stake (or the modern equivalent of having one’s career ruined). To anyone capable of logical thought, it should be obvious that one’s support for free markets is utterly independent from one’s opinions on the matter of global warming. There’s no reason at all why someone who accepts the reality of anthropogenic global warming would have to support government regulation of all energy usage. To argue such would be like arguing that one’s acceptance of the Bering Strait theory determines one’s opinions about the minimum wage. So why would Grimes think this? We can see it in his quotation above where he says:

The reason underpinning this is transparent – if one accepts human-mediated climate change, then supporting mitigating action should follow.

Ah, so there it is. Acceptance of global warming = acceptance of “mitigation” = acceptance of government regulation. Case closed.

Grimes packs many assumptions into just this one statement. Let’s look more closely:

If one accepts that global warming is a grave danger, is it nonetheless necessary to support “mitigating action” even if it can’t be shown to actually improve anything at all? Even assuming that global warming were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the burden of proof of success is still on those who want mitigating action. Specifically, they need to be able to prove that such action has a reasonable chance of achieving the desired ends. They most certainly have not done so. Indeed, many scientists say it’s already too late to stop it. Many argue that even if major global action were taken right now, the expected result over the next century would be too small to make any difference. In other words, it’s futile at this point to enact mitigating actions. (Also here.) Presumably, if it’s too late, then there’s no reason we should still be debating mitigating action. But of course, having realized that the “it’s too late” message is a PR disaster, the message has instead been changed to “it won’t be too late if we act right now!”
By their own admission, if global controls on production and energy use are not imposed by 2020, we’re all doomed. When 2020, rolls around, however, look for the date to be changed to 2025, and so on. Indeed, the global warming gang is like the Seventh Day Adventists who kept predicting the end of the world in the nineteenth century, and then changing the date when it didn’t happen.

Note, however, that the entire narrative depends on the assumption that all mitigating action must consist of socialist edicts and regulations. Could there be mitigating action that is not based on socialist command and control systems? We all know that any such suggestion would be laughed out of the room by global warming scientists, who in addition to being experts on climate, are also experts on politics, economics, and anything else they decide to be “experts” on. Private solutions aren’t even worth discussing in their view, so even if a laissez-faire minded global-warming enthusiast were to suggest something other than government control of the global economy, he would be immediately excluded from the debate. We all know what “mitigating action” really means.

So, there may be any number of mitigating actions supported by global-warming minded free-market people, from better water filtration, to agricultural engineering, to desalinization, to water delivery systems, all which might be done within the context of markets. But no, none of that is acceptable. The only acceptable “mitigating action” for people like Grimes is global governmental control of the entire means of energy usage and production.

Also important to the support of any mitigating action is an analysis of the cost. Knowing that the true cost to people of submitting to a global warming regulatory regime would be very high, it is necessary for the global warming regulators to portray the effects of global warming as being nothing less than a nightmarish post-apocalyptic landscape of Mad Max proportions. This enables them to argue that no cost is too high to adopt their regime.

Back in the real world, however, costs must always be considered.

Most of the “solutions” to global warming offered by the global elites involve the widespread impoverishment of much of the human population by limiting the production of goods, and the use of transportation resources. Such “solutions” would massively undermine advances in the standards of living for billions of ordinary people just as they are finally starting to come out of grinding levels of poverty. In other words, most of the anti-global warming regulators (most of whom are wealthy white people in first-world countries) want to deny the poor of the world their washing machines. For Grimes, a white intellectual in a wealthy country, he won’t bear the true brunt of the global warming “solutions.” But for many people, the cost of the “solutions” for global warming will be extremely high indeed. So perhaps many people can be forgiven for rejecting the rich-white-man assumption that restrictions on energy usage and production are the bee’s knees.

The proponents of global warming regulation completely ignore these costs, and instead insist that desertification will destroy human society, so it’s better to just make everyone poor now, rather than later. The argument goes something like this: global warming will make many areas of the earth uninhabitable and people will become starving bands of scavengers as a result. So, the only solution to this is to force people back down to nearly-unbearable subsistence levels now, so that they don’t become post-apocalyptic cannibals later. They argue, for example, that much of the American South will become a desert and that many coastal cities will be flooded by rising water levels.

All they’re really saying, of course, is that in case of global warming, large numbers of people will have to migrate to other places. When noting that the South will become a desert, they never mention, for example, that Canada, will become much more hospitable in climate, or that the Hudson Bay would become a more temperate area and a natural location for major trade networks and new cities.

So what the global warming crowd has to do is prove that the cost of migration in the future is evidently higher than the cost of destroying the global economy right now. This has most certainly not been proven, and given that huge migratory flows are relatively common in human history, depicting such a situation as akin to the apocalypse is dishonest at best. Moreover, since the sea levels and desertification processes would not occur overnight, we also know that there would be time for persons to migrate, and we also know that many of the places to which they would migrate, are now virtually uninhabited.

Indeed, it would seem that if mass migration is in our future, we would want to do everything we can to encourage economic growth now. To invest in technologies that contribute to making capital more easily transportable (like smaller and lighter computers and vehicles) and encouraging people to save for the future.

The alternative offered by the proponents of global warming regulation -pushing much of the developing world back into abject poverty- would be sure to bring something far worse, such as endless civil wars among populations where had a middle-class lifestyle within sight, but was then ripped away by the global elites in the name of saving the world.

So, if global warming is indeed on our horizon, it would appear that perfecting technologies like water desalinization, aqueducts, improved agricultural practices, and lowering the costs of basic staples such as housing and labor-saving appliances would be essential. Much of the world has already been working on these problems, and global warming has had nothing to do with it. The Israelis have been developing better and better water and agriculture systems for decades. Many desert countries (including the western United States) have been working on better water filtration and delivery systems. Many societies, such as The Netherlands and Singapore already deal with various issues related to dense populations.[1]

But can you guess which societies are the best as dealing with these issues? Not surprisingly, the societies that have the wealthiest populations and the most industrialized and capital-intensive economies offer the best solutions for dealing with all the problems that global warming has to offer. In other words, the most free economies offer the best hope for addressing these issues. We don’t hear much from Venezuela, for example, about the latest scientific advances in energy production, water cleanliness, and housing.

Meanwhile, those who support global warming “mitigation” are most interested in crippling the very system that makes it easiest to deal with climate-related issues. By impoverishing the world, the global warming regulators wish to see to it that few could afford the very sorts of technologies that would be most helpful in a warmer world. For David Grimes, “science” apparently tells him that poor population are better at mastering their environment than rich populations. If that’s “science” then we can only hope that “anti-science” eventually prevails.

Notes

[1] See the Copenhagen Consensus project for more reasonable comments along these lines.

Mudancas climaticas: os neomaltusianos do tempo preveem sempre o pior...

Não há muito novidade nesses gritos de alarme, com projeções de desastres incomensuráveis, feitos por esses novos profetas do apocalipse climático (e oceânico) que são os cientistas do clima.
Eles são os novos malthusianos, aqueles que anunciam tais e tais catástrofes se a humanidade não se arrepende de seus pecados e segue o caminho duvidoso que eles preconizam.
Eu gastaria todo o dinheiro que eles projetam ser empregado na mitigação dos gases de efeito estufa na promoção do desenvolvimento de regiões atrasadas, não como ajuda ao desenvolvimento, mas simplesmente para o tratamento de epidemias, algumas poucas obras de infraestrutura mas restritas ao saneamento básico e, sobretudo, educação, não mais do que isso.
A educação dos países pobres, e um regime comercial aberto, livre para a competição agrícola, fará muito mais, e melhor, para preparar o mundo para os desastres neomalthusianos do que todo esse dinheiro que os cientistas malucos pensam gastar com quem já é rico, ou seja, indústrias e governos (inclusive cientistas) para que eles façam o que o sistema de livre mercado e de preços livres fará melhor: preparar a humanidade para tempos diferentes (não digo nem melhores nem piores, apenas diferentes) que virão, eventualmente.
Assim como deve haver coisas ruins, derivadas do tal de aquecimento global (man-made, não se esqueçam), também deve haver coisas boas, ora essa. Nenhuma realidade, sobretudo econômica, tem uma só faceta.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The U.N.'s Latest Disaster Forecast BY JAMES FREEMAN ANOTHER CLIMATE WARNING The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2014 Summarizing the latest warning from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the New York Times reports that "the worst is yet to come." This is of course the message of every climate warning, since the global-warming thesis is that emissions of greenhouse gases now will cause dire consequences in the future . But what's new here is an emphasis on one potential consequence. "In particular, the report emphasized that the world's food supply is at considerable risk — a threat that could have serious consequences for the poorest nations." Yet according to a separate U.N. organization, the World Food Programme, the world's food supply is not simply at risk in the future. The WFP says that a full 842 million people in the world do not have enough to eat right now. Has the climate panel calculated how the costs of global-warming regulation could make it more difficult to feed these suffering souls? The impact of potential energy restrictions on the world's developing countries is particularly relevant because, as the Times correctly notes, "While greenhouse gas emissions have begun to decline slightly in many wealthy countries, including the United States, those gains are being swamped by emissions from rising economic powers like China and India."

Ironia 2: pessoal do aquecimento global continua preso no gelo, desta vez no navio chines...

Esse mundo é mesmo engraçado.
Esse pessoal tinha ido à Antártida para investigar a diminuição da cobertura gelada desse continente por causa do aquecimento global, que como todo mundo sabe, anda arrasando pelo mundo afora. Eu, pelo menos, aqui na Nova Inglaterra, tenho suportado um "calor" de menos 20.
Não é que eles primeiro ficaram presos no seu navio de pesquisa? Depois os chineses bravamente foram em seu socorro, e também ficaram presos...
Agora parece que um navio dos malvados imperialistas americanos virá salvar todo mundo...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Antarctique : le navire chinois espère se libérer des glaces

Le Monde.fr avec AFP et Reuters | 07.01.2014 à 08h20 • Mis à jour le 07.01.2014 à 08h27

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Le Xue-Long (Dragon-des-neiges), un brise-glace chinois piégé par les eaux gelées dans l'Antarctique en portant secours à un navire russe va tenter de s'extirper de la zone de banquise en profitant d'une fenêtre de météo favorable, rapporte, mardi 7 janvier, la presse chinoise. Un vent d'ouest qui devrait se leverd'ici à mercredi pourrait, en effet, aider le navire à se dégager de la glace dans laquelle il est resté bloqué après avoir lui-même porté assistance à un navire russe immobilisé, précise le China Daily.

Cette brise est censée aider à déplacer les morceaux de banquise bloquant le brise-glace chinois, qui sont trois fois plus épais que ce que peut fendre le bâtiment, a indiqué l'agence de presse Chine nouvelle. De son côté, un brise-glace des garde-côtes américains, le Polar-Star, est en route vers la zone pour tenter d'ouvrir un chenal aux marins et scientifiques bloqués.

Le Xue-Long a permis jeudi grâce à son hélicoptère d'évacuer les passagers du navire russe Akademik-Chokalskiy, immobilisé depuis le 24 décembre à une centaine de kilomètres à l'est de la base française Dumont-d'Urville. Mais le bâtiment chinois s'est, à son tour, retrouvé prisonnier de la banquise, victime de l'environnement extrême du continent blanc. Le navire russe embarquant 22 membres d'équipage et 52 passagers avait quitté la Nouvelle-Zélande le 28 novembre pour une expédition organisée à l'occasion du 100e anniversaire duvoyage polaire de l'explorateur australien Douglas Mawson en Antarctique.

Lire le récit Colère des scientifiques contre la croisière piégée dans l'Antarctique

« La Chine peut être fière » de l'opération de sauvetage réalisée par le Xue-Long, a estimé dans un éditorial le quotidien chinois Global Times, estimant que celle-ci avait été « saluée par l'opinion publique internationale ». Le navire chinois a des réserves de vivres lui permettant de tenir jusqu'en avril et des réserves d'eau douce jusqu'au mois prochain.

A Grande Ironia: pessoal do aquecimento global fica preso no gelo (vaoesperar o aquecimento chegar?)

Polo Sul

Navio envolvido em resgate na Antártida pode ficar preso

Embarcação chinesa Xue Long está com dificuldade para chegar ao mar aberto

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Helicóptero desembarca os primeiros resgatados do navio russo Akademik  - Andrew Peacock/AFP

O navio chinês "quebra-gelo" (preparado para navegar em águas congeladas) Xue Long, que participou da operação de resgate aos 52 passageiros que estavam presos no navio russoAkademik Shokalskiy na Antártida, também corre risco de ficar preso no espesso gelo no mar.

Após ajudar a transportar os passageiros para o navio australiano Aurora Australis, a tripulação do navio chinês ficou preocupada com a própria mobilidade de se deslocar no gelo. Com isso, os chineses pediram que o Aurora Australis, que estava lentamente quebrando o gelo em direção ao mar aberto, permanecesse por perto caso o Snow Dragon também precise de ajuda. A informação foi dada pela autoridade marítima de resgate da Austrália, que coordena a operação.

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O Xue Long tentará chegar ao mar aberto no sábado, enquanto o Aurora Australis está esperando a cerca de 11 quilômetros ao norte do navio. A decisão de manter o Aurora por perto foi preventiva e ninguém a bordo do Xue Long corre perigo. No entanto, esse é mais um percalço na complexa operação de resgate aos passageiros do navio russo, que estão na Antártida desde a véspera de Natal.

O esperado resgate se tornou possível na quinta-feira após a melhora nas condições climáticas. Neve, ventos, neblina e gelo fizeram as equipes de resgate recuarem várias vezes. O helicóptero a bordo do Xue Long levou sete horas para transportar os cientistas e turistas do Akademik Shokalskiy para o Aurora Australis em grupos de 12 pessoas. Os 22 tripulantes a bordo do navio russo permaneceram no navio, que não corre perigo e possui mantimentos suficientes para semanas.

A expedição – Liderada pelo professor australiano Chris Turney, a expedição pela Antártida, que deveria avaliar os efeitos das mudanças climáticas na região, começou no dia 27 de novembro. A segunda e atual etapa da viagem começou em 8 de dezembro e estava agendada para ser concluída com um retorno à Nova Zelândia, no sábado. Turney, professor de mudanças climáticas da Universidade de Nova Gales do Sul, na Austrália, disse que o navio ficou preso por gelo de quase 10 pés (3 metros) de espessura.

(Com Estadão Conteúdo)