By Gideon Long, BBC News 11 Nov 07;
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has described his alarm at the pace of climate change after wrapping up a two-day fact-finding trip to southern Chile.
Mr Ban, who has vowed to make the fight against global warming a key issue during his tenure at the UN, went to Antarctica on Friday where he heard from scientists how rising temperatures have caused huge ice shelves to collapse into the sea.
He was the first head of the UN ever to visit the frozen continent.
On Saturday the secretary general visited the majestic mountains of the Torres del Paine national park, one of Chile's top tourist attractions.
He flew over the Grey glacier, the facade of which is covered in cracks, which experts blame on changes in the weather.
Mr Ban is gathering information to take to a major UN conference on climate change next month on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Among the scientists who briefed him was Gino Casassa, one of Chile's leading experts on climate change and a member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the issue.
"The Antarctic peninsula is one of the three [climate change] hotspots on earth and the temperature increase here over the last 50 years has been up to 10 times the global average," Mr Casassa said, as he stood in thick snow at one of two permanent Chilean bases on the continent.
'Astonishing'
"These are really astonishing changes, and nobody thought they would happen so fast.
"The heat is migrating south, warming up the ice and melting it. And as it does the ice just collapses into the ocean.
"We are having to reshape the whole glacialogical theory thanks to what we've been witnessing on this peninsula."
Speaking to reporters who accompanied him to Antarctica, the UN secretary general said the world had to do more to safeguard the future of the planet.
"I'm not here to frighten you, I'm not scaremongering," he said. "But the world is changing, the glaciers are melting ... the change is now progressing much faster than I had thought. It's alarming."
During his trip to Antarctica, Mr Ban dropped in on his compatriots at South Korea's King Sejong research station, also on the Antarctic peninsula.
There, scientists have monitored the impact of global warming on a glacier which has retreated over 1km (0.62 miles) in the past half century.
"Very, very serious global warming is taking place," said the head of the base, Sang Hoon Lee.
For years, many scientists cast doubt on the existence of global warming but these days the sceptics are dwindling in number.
"Even when I was studying for my PhD I didn't think there was enough evidence," Mr Casassa said. "It was less than 10 years ago that I was converted."
From Chile, Mr Ban flew to Brazil, where he is due to visit an ethanol plant and see how the burning of fossil fuels has affected the Amazon rainforest.
When he travels to Bali next month his main priority will be to kick-start negotiations aimed at agreeing a follow-up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse emissions.
UN's Ban Says Global Warming is 'An Emergency'
Juan Jose Lagorio, PlanetArk 11 Nov 07;
EDUARDO FREI BASE, Antarctica - With prehistoric Antarctic ice sheets melting beneath his feet, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for urgent political action to tackle global warming.
The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else on Earth in the last 50 years, making the continent a fitting destination for Ban, who has made climate change a priority since he took office earlier this year.
"I need a political answer. This is an emergency and for emergency situations we need emergency action," he said during a visit to three scientific bases on the barren continent, where temperatures are their highest in about 1,800 years.
Antarctica's ice sheets are nearly 1.5 miles (2.5 km) thick on average -- five times the height of the Taipei 101 tower, the world's tallest building. But scientists say they are already showing signs of climate change.
Satellite images show the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning and may even collapse in the future, causing sea levels to rise.
Amid occasional flurries of snow, Ban flew over melting ice fields in a light plane, where vast chunks of ice the size of six-story buildings could be seen floating off the coast after breaking away from ice shelves.
"All we've seen has been very impressive and beautiful, extraordinarily beautiful," he said late on Friday. "But at the same time it's disturbing. We've seen ... the melting of glaciers."
MELTING
Ban is preparing for a UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December, which is expected to kick off talks on a new accord to curb carbon emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
Ban has focused strongly on the environment and held a climate change summit at the United Nations on the eve of the annual General Assembly gathering of world leaders.
On Saturday, he continued his South American tour at Chilean national park Torres del Paine, taking a helicopter tour over Patagonian ice fields that scientists say are melting fast. Ban was flown over a glacier marked by large cracks from ice that has melted and broken away.
"(Climate) change is progressing much faster than I had thought," he said, calling on developed countries in particular to do more.
Ban, the first UN chief to visit Antarctica, was also due to visit the Amazon rain forest in Brazil, a leading force in developing biofuels from crops as an alternative to fossil fuels. Fears about climate change have fueled a boom in biofuels.
Despite the controversy of diverting food crops into fuel production, Ban has said alternative energy sources are vital to addressing climate change.
Antarctica -- a continent with only about 80,000 temporary residents -- is 25 percent bigger than Europe and its ice sheets hold 90 percent of the fresh water on the Earth's surface.
