EU is reviewing Arctic policy with deadline for comments in March

[John Nissen]

https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/eu-arctic-policy-barents-sea-europe-energy-security-us-lng 

[John Nissen]

Hi all,

The Arctic is in a terminal illness from meltdown.  There is a desperate need to lower the Arctic temperature, which will involve refreezing the Arctic to some extent.  The extreme urgency is because of tipping processes which could soon pass a point of no return unless the temperature is lowered.  If any of these processes were to continue unabated, catastrophic climate change and/or sea level rise would soon become unavoidable.  Those powerful people and organisations who wish to exploit an Arctic with less ice, must be countered by those with an interest in the future of humanity.  The EU needs to be advocating for cooling intervention in the collective interest of all their citizens except the most rapacious.  And keeping the Arctic arctic must be an EU priority for the sake of the indigenous peoples, their culture and their livelihoods.

There is a chance for some of us to make a submission to the EU committee dealing with Arctic policy, see attached.  I think there is probably a 200 word limit.

Feedback is here [1], with 53 submissions as of today.  Note that submissions are mostly (if not all) from people or organisations in EU member states.  Doug has looked at them all.  We especially would welcome submissions from EU colleagues and people who can claim EU citizenship (Albert for Finland? Peter or wife for Italy?)

Cheers, John

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/16154-EU-Arctic-policy-Update_en

On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 5:24 PM John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/eu-arctic-policy-barents-sea-europe-energy-security-us-lng 

[John Nissen]

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all considering a submission.  I think we should have a submission on behalf of PRAG.  But there could be submissions from HPAC, NOAC, and individuals.  Perhaps something can be discussed at the NOAC meeting coming up in a few hours time, Clive.  The EU could make a big contribution to the argument for intervening to protect the Arctic: as an insurance against ever more extreme weather events and coastal flooding - and against AMOC collapse (Iceland being already worried by this possibility)!

There have been two submissions since I emailed before, taking the total from 53 to 55.  You can see the last two here [1].   They are both noteworthy.  

Submission 55 is from the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland (Finland), calling for more research funding, but not mentioning the work by John Moore et al. (at the University of Lapland?) concerned about slowing the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet.  They mention that the EU is an observer for the Arctic Council [2], but I fear that the Arctic Council has a strong motivation for exploiting the Arctic rather than protecting it.

Submission 54 is from Oil Change International (Norway). I don't know whether it will carry less weight because Norway is not in the EU.  However the submission is remarkable in supporting the Sami people and their right to be consulted: Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).  They are against drilling for oil in the Arctic, pointing out the danger from spills and the upset to marine life.  They mention the impact of the Arctic's rapid warming and ice melt elsewhere in the world, but don't follow it up with the severe warning to the whole world that it deserves. 

Ideas for hard-hitting, well-argued submissions, please.

Cheers, John

[1] Update on submissions received

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/16154-EU-Arctic-policy-Update_en

[2] Arctic council

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Council

[3] Extract from submission 54:

The impacts of changes in the Arctic are not isolated; the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average. Rapid ice melt in the region disrupts ocean currents and triggers extreme weather globally, threatening biodiversity, agriculture, fisheries, and the resilience of local communities everywhere.

[John Nissen]

Here are some thoughts towards a submission.

The EU needs a drastic rethink on its policy towards the Arctic.  The present policy does not consider the long term protection of its citizens.  The EU needs to recognise that the Arctic is the main source of the immediate climate crisis and the sea level crisis to come.  The EU must change its focus from exploitation of the Arctic to protection of the Arctic: halting its accelerated heating and meltdown.  The EU must accept that a number of tipping processes are being driven by heating and melting, and these processes need to be slowed if not reversed.  The urgent need for cooling intervention has to be squarely faced, otherwise these processes will soon become irreversible with dreadful consequences for the citizens of the Arctic, the citizens of Western Europe, and the citizens of the whole world.

The Arctic is a critical component of the Earth System, as proven from the paleo records.  Evidence suggests that at the end of the Younger Dryas, 11.7 thousand years ago, the temperature in the Arctic (as measured by ice cores) lept by 7-10C over a period of a few decades, with the Arctic becoming seasonally ice-free, the climate in Europe becoming much hotter to herald the start of the Holocene, and the sea level rising by 20 metres in 400 years.  There is also some evidence of megatsunamis originating from the collapse of the Hudson Bay ice dome.  

History could be repeating itself, but starting from a higher base temperature.  Since 1980, the Arctic has been warming at four times the rate of global warming which is now around 0.35C per decade.  Thus 2C could be reached by 2040 and 4C by 2100 globally, with 8C and 16C respectively in the Arctic.  The Greenland Ice Sheet contains enough ice mass to raise the sea level by at least 7 metres.  A partial collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet could begin at any time, leading to megatsunamis and sudden sea level rise.  The partial collapse could trigger a similar collapse from some large Antarctic glaciers which are already in a critical state.  Together with steric sea level rise from ocean expansion, it has been estimated that a 2.5m sea level rise is quite possible this century, with a significant risk of a much greater rise.

Arctic fragility has been demonstrated since 1980 by rapid warming and accelerated tipping processes: (i) discharge of icebergs and meltwater from glaciers to raise sea level; (ii) discharge of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, from thawing permafrost thereby contributing to local and global warming; and (iii) disruption of polar jet stream behaviour as the temperature gradient from the Arctic to tropics is lowered.  The jet stream disruption is manifest in greater meandering and sticking: there is a growing tendency for the Rossby wave to get into blocking patterns, causing "stuck weather" and associated weather extremes: droughts, heatwaves and floods.  The accelerated growth in stuck weather and its consequences should be a major concern for the EU.

There is also a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), another tipping process.  It is thought that a collapse could occur within a few decades, sufficient to drastically alter European weather and cripple economies.

A cascade of tipping processes is possible.  For example, a partial collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet could cause the collapse of the AMOC into a different circulation mode. All four tipping processes are liable to reach a point of no return, when reversal becomes impossible and some kind of collapse becomes inevitable.  

All the EU countries with coastlines are threatened by coastal inundation of sea water, from a combination of sea level rise, storm surges and extremes of precipitation. The EU has a choice between relying on defences against inundation (where a sea level rise of 2.5m or more is quite possible this century; see above) and the deployment of cooling interventions to halt sea level rise and reverse climate change.  The EU would be foolish to ignore cooling intervention with SAI, when its annual cost could be a fraction of the annual cost of sea defences alone.

The EU could take a lead role in protecting the Arctic by cooling it; most major powers seem intent on exploiting the fact that the Arctic is in meltdown by planning sea routes and resource extraction operations.

Must stop now.  I hope I've got you all thinking!  Perhaps some AI work could be done.

Cheers, John

[John Nissen]

Hi everyone,

I would like to make a submission on behalf of PRAG, but welcome comments from others.  I will have a PRAG meeting on Monday 9pm UK time, 5 pm EST (as daylight savings).  We'll send you a link.  Please send comments on the text I sent yesterday: corrections and omissions particularly.

The text could be much improved, I'm sure.  Could kind people with AI bots please apply them to the text.  Doug G and Robert T were very helpful before.

On AMOC, there is news about a potential collapse happening already.  Iceland is really worried.  The AMOC part of the global circulation system is driven by westerly winds across the Atlantic and sinking brine, extruded from the ice when sea ice is formed in the Arctic.  Both drivers are weakening.  Both would be strengthened by starting to refreeze the Arctic.

I've only seen one personal contribution.  Please consider making one yourself, to reflect your own thinking.

Cheers, John

[Paul Klinkman]

Dear Restorers,

I need to report to all members of this group that the previous thread, "4 Billion Dead by 2050", has all the hallmarks of being a phishing attempt.  I posted this same warning earlier today within that thread.  Curiously, somebody else deleted it.

First of all, realize that "4 billion dead by 2050" sounds like click bait, doesn't it?  

I tried to use a link supplied with the thread.  Yes I linked through to something else, but very suspiciously, the new website asked me for verification of who I was. Now think, why would any honest website ask a user for verification simply to learn something?  Mere information should be totally free to any comer.

So, the website claimed to be using a popular verification site.  It ALMOST looked like a standard "I am not a robot site" but no it wasn't exactly how the popular verification site looks.

After clicking "I am not a robot" I was told to type in a completely strange series of keyboard shortcuts on my computer.  No, this isn't whatsoever how verification that I"m not a robot would ever possibly work.  This isn't asking me, as a human, to look at the pictures and click on the motorcycles or bridges.  The commands were, in order,

1.  Open up a DOS powershell on my own computer.

2.  Press Ctrl-V in order to paste some apparently really nasty command into the powershell

3.  Press "Enter" in order to run that truly bad DOS Powershell command on your own computer, evading your Windows security program.

So yes, the whole "verification" was a phishing attempt.

Who are these posters anyway?  Or, has some outsider taken over a legitimate poster's account?

I posted this on the "4 billion dead" thread, and then somebody, probably the owner of the thread, deleted only my post (and didn't delete the whole thread as a phishing attempt).  I'm posting here as a warning to the entire restorers community that they are under a hack attack at this moment.  Best guess, only a legitimate owner of this particular thread can delete this particular email, and they will care about warning the entire community.

I'll get back to climate restoration soon enough.  I'm a curmudgeon who sometimes points out flaws in other people's plans, but that's simply a difficult part of everybody getting things right.

Yours in Hope,

Paul Klinkman