Terrifying proof of global warming | 60 Minutes Australia

[Music] if you want to see icebergs Greenland is the place to come they don't get any bigger or more beautiful than this the thing that strikes you immediately about Greenland is that nature dominates there are no skyscrapers no freeways and with an entire population of 60,000 almost no people just this sublime stark landscape where you're a mere witness to nature at its most spectacular [Music] and nature is always at work even as you watch it changes imagine a big piece falling off and it creates about 15 to 20 feet foot waves and you have to get out [Music] my guide is been sick start as a green Lander he's learned to respect the ice [Music] when for assault it's like an explosion the air wants to get out and that's why we see or hear love what cracking noise well the sound is quite frightening actually it's like the whole thing is about to collapse yes yes the Greenlanders like Finn the disappearing ice is a weathervane proof global warming is happening right here right now when you live here you really have to be a scientist to notice that the changes that we've seen for about 10 years ago all this all this disco bay area was frozen winter ice this is gone this is history for most Greenlanders this is good news it's the start of a boom in tourism farming and fishing all the more remarkable when you consider this enormous island is mostly in the Arctic Circle up near the North Pole Greenlanders are a hardy mix of native Inuits and tough scandinavian settlers who have made their homes the only splash of color on this otherwise barren landscape like Finn most distill traditional hunters using dog sleds to track seals and bears okay what's that I put some magic signal but now they're more than happy to come in from the cold in the past 30 years temperatures have risen by one and a half degrees more than double the global average [Music] it hasn't been this warm in Greenland since the Vikings arrived here a thousand years ago all that's left of that once thriving colony are the ruins of their farms and this beautiful stone church legend has it the Viking Eric the Red banished here for a couple of murders he committed named this place Greenland he did so to make it sound as appealing as possible to entice his fellow countrymen to come and settle here and at worked for 400 years the Vikings called Greenland home now no one really understands why they suddenly disappeared but most historians believe that there was a harsh cold snap and unable to adapt the Vikings became Greenland's early victims of climate change [Music] if there's a modern-day Viking it's Stefan Magnuson he came here from Iceland to farm reindeer but unlike his forebears he's adapting and making the most of today's changing weather for Christmas what are the Dingle bells this is a character who wears sealskin pants speaks six languages and is bringing up his young family in the middle of nowhere you're very resourceful maybe you have to be damn said it Steffan runs 2,000 reindeer on a vast property 150,000 hectares of jaw-dropping wilderness it is such beautiful countryside it's steep really entertaining and high up in the mountains accessible only by horse or helicopter iglasia in the last 10 years Stefan has watched this glacier retreat by almost 100 meters you see that the gray area over there approximately 100 meters right and that's a brand new new land that has been coming out from the ice during the last five to ten years in such a short amount of time oh yes yes you know you are really experiencing the global warming here you are you're observing it happening and I think Greenland is one of the few places on the planet where you where you really really see it and when you sense it the Stephan global warming means less ice that means more pasture and ultimately well-fed happy reindeer make reindeer you live in such a beautiful isolated place are you worried that the warmer climate will bring the world to you that the world will discover Greenland no actually I'll be glad because sometimes we're a little bit too lonely here and so I'll be happy to receive Australians visitors here with the weather on its side the south of Greenland is undergoing an agricultural revolution this is quite good quality I'm pretty sure it looks quite good and it seems to be quite tasty for the animals like salad oh yes sweet there's gonna be some really lucky cheap this you lucky sheep scientist Kenneth Ho is leading the charge trying to turn a nation of hunters into a nation of farmers so things are looking good in Greenland it's getting greener you don't realize how tough it is to grow anything here until you see how excited Kenneth is about his cauliflowers hmm it's very nice actually don't think of 8 raw cauliflower response no sweet everything from lettuce to Chinese cabbage it's all growing in Greenland's warmer weather you're in a lolly shop crispy small iceberg lettuce what do you think this experiment is proving or showing well it's it's it's proving that we are able to produce much more vegetables in Greenland and that we don't have to import it by plane and we can get a better quality and probably hopefully at a better price as well [Music] and then Kenneth takes me on a special detour in a far corner of his farm he has a prized forest of conifers the only forest in a country with no trees they are 40 years old but it's only been in the last ten years they've experienced a growth spurt the warmer weather marked in their trunks you see the top chute and then it's 2006 five four three two one around year 2000 around here yes so a lot of things that's happened in the last seven years what does that tell you about the climate to be honest when I started here 15 years ago working here I I wouldn't have imagined that they would grow so good as they do no that's the good news on global warming he is the bad when you fly north and over Greenland's vast ice cap the downside of global warming becomes frightening ly clear 80% of Greenland is still under ice if it were all to melt sea levels around the world would rise by a disastrous seven meters that thaw is already underway and glaciers here are retreating at a rate that is shocking glaciologists like Ginny Catania it's been increasing and melt over the last maybe 15 years or so every year we see more and more and more mouths do you have any doubt that man's got something to do with this no I don't Ginny's been tracking the movement of the ice using satellite positioning they found it it's cold hard work Virginie hopes the data collected here will reveal if warmer temperatures are causing the ice to move down the mountain more quickly and in turn melt more rapidly the glacier in this area is the fastest in the world moving 15 kilometers a year down the fjord has definitely been speeding up and it's kind of from our perspective it's sort of a unique thing because we never thought ice could really go that fast [Music] Ginny has brought me to the edge of the ice field where the glacier flows towards the sea it's a great view out there yeah it is what are we looking at well you can see Jakob Slaven glacier coming into its fuel and then the entire few orders just filled with icebergs that are floating yeah no history or the icebergs are unpredictable and as they roll dangerous but most of all they're breathtaking this is one of life's unforgettable experiences to travel along the wall of the great place here where the glacier meets the sea where giant blocks of ice carve off to become icebergs ninety-five years ago it's likely a monster iceberg from this Glacia sunk the unsinkable titanic the Glacia here a Tallulah set is the world's biggest ice machine making 20 million tons of ice each day in the form of icebergs the size of cruise ships this one is a baby by Greenland standards but each and the others that form here each day hold enough fresh water to supply Sydney and Melbourne for a whole year even for Greenlanders like Queen sig stirred the ice is still a source of wonder good salty actually you can I will see here the bubbles getting out on the ice then you talk to the ice I know what do you say to it well a few lonely you have always something to somebody to talk to these are all from from the underground here but not all Greenlanders are as romantic as spin metal in it the ever resourceful Stefan Magnussen's discovered his reindeer farm maybe sitting on a huge deposit of precious metals like vanadium and titanium apparently Greenland is full of it and the warmer weather makes it more economical to mine yes it'll be very good for Greenland has there been an estimate on how much it's worth approximately 200 billion dollars 200 million billion billion dollars yes partly [Music] disappearing icebergs rising sea-levels unpredictable weather this is the downside of a changing climate but for Stefan a settler from Iceland the balance is clear global warming gives him the best shot at a good life and after 500 years of living in a snap freeze who can begrudge green Landers their time in the Sun I know you're not originally from Greenland but you love it huh yeah I love it here it's going to be one of the greatest countries on the planet with a global warming yeah it's going to bake you're going to be it [Music] hello I'm Tara Brown thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our Channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 795,207

Rating: 4.1601648 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic, Ray Martin, Peter Stefanovic, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Jennifer Byrne, Mike Munro, Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Paul Barry, Peter Harvey, Michael Usher, Ross Coulthart, George Negus, Ian Leslie, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo

Id: TkRdM8db_qY

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019