Draft letter to the FT re Greenland

[John Nissen]

Hi  all,

The following letter needs to be cut down to 400 words for publication by the FT, or preferably less.  Could I ask those with AI to try and reduce and improve the text for me?  Please don't copy the AI responses to everyone!  My previous letter on the subject last year was rejected.

I might try a similar letter to the Guardian, if Oren thinks there is any chance of publication.

Reference [1] is to the paper on the cost of sea level rise, recommended by John Moore.

BTW, I chose to respond to the following article about Denmark wanting to invest in Greenland: www.ft.com/content/07f9879b-9f06-4b81-b41f-7822ed3797c4

Cheers, John

To: the editor of the Financial Times for publication

19-01-2026

 

The necessity for cooling intervention to save Greenland

Dear editor,

I suspect that Trump’s desire for Greenland has a lot to do with the exploitation of Greenland’s resources, recognised by Denmark: “Denmark’s investment fund has ‘huge appetite’ to invest in Greenland” (FT, 18^th Jan)”.

But allowing Greenland’s ice sheet to continue its meltdown unabated is asking for trouble.   The ice sheet contains enough ice to raise the sea level by at least 7 metres.  A partial collapse this century is quite possible.  Furthermore, due to the dynamics of the planet, the meltwater from Greenland would raise sea levels most in Antarctica, where there are several large glaciers in a critical state: as terminations are lifted glacier descent is accelerated; this could double or triple the sea level rise from Greenland.

The cost to the world of a single metre of sea level rise has been estimated at 700 billion USD per year [1].   Even half a metre would be catastrophic for low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam; several metres would devastate coastal cities and agricultural land worldwide, with incalculable economic and ecological consequences.  This is a planetary emergency to be faced by future generations, if the nations around the Arctic remain intent on competing for mineral assets, for exploitation of sea routes, or for military advantage.

In 2012, I and sea ice expert Peter Wadhams testified to the UK Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry on Protecting the Arctic. We warned that geoengineering was already necessary to save the Arctic—and were openly ridiculed.  Since then, Arctic temperatures have risen four times faster than the global average, and the danger from a number of critical “tipping elements”, including the Greenland Ice Sheet, has only grown.

There is now a desperate need for quickly lowering the Arctic temperature, while it is still possible with geoengineering.  This justifies the immediate consideration of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI)—a solar geoengineering technique that mimics the cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions by injecting SO₂ into the stratosphere. Understandably, many find the idea of SAI alarming. But recent research shows that mid to high latitude injection could lower the Arctic temperature with minimal risk of serious side effects—especially compared to the risks from continued inaction.  The cost of such deployment has been estimated at around 11 billion USD per year.   

But, while superpowers vie with one another to exploit the Arctic rather than save it from meltdown, catastrophic sea level rise becomes inevitable.

Yours sincerely,

John Nissen, etc.