Newspaper Columns - Frans-Jan W. Parmentier

Newspaper Columns
I regularly write op-eds, often about climate change and the Arctic, in the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. A selection of these are translated here to English, or to Dutch, while all of my columns are available in the original Norwegian version.
Klassekampen, 21 May 2021
Norway's continued investment in the oil industry could mean economic suicide.
Last Tuesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a bombshell of a report. It advocated an immediate stop on the exploration of new oil and gas fields to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. In addition, the IEA projected an explosive growth in solar and wind energy, which means that in rich countries emissions from electricity could go down to zero by ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 9 April 2021
All Norwegian political parties say they want to solve the climate crisis. Do they mean that?
Does it matter who Norway votes for when it comes to climate? Norwegian politicians, from left to right, promise a green future in their party programs – in which the ideological differences seem to have disappeared. Recently, the greens of Mdg supported more research into modern forms of nuclear energy, and even the draft party program of the right-wing populist ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 26 February 2021
Snow on the Acropolis does not herald a new Ice Age.
It's like clockwork: as soon as it freezes somewhere – like -27.5 degrees Celsius in Hemsedal, Norway recently – the climate skeptics wake up from their hibernation. In this case, it was none other than the vice-speaker of parliament, Morten Wold, who in a Facebook post put the strong frost forward as proof that global warming isn't that bad. A fallacy, of ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 8 January 2021
How does quick clay cause landslides? And can climate change make this worse?
On the night of December 30, the ground under a neighborhood in Gjerdrum, Norway suddenly became unstable. People, animals and houses were dragged hundreds of meters away, and ten people were killed. This terrible disaster raises many questions. What was the cause of the landslide? Why were these houses built in an area with this known risk? And should we worry ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 13 November 2020
Could Joe Biden's election signal a turnaround in climate politics?
Last Wednesday, while the world was anxiously following the results of the US elections, those same United States quietly left the Paris Agreement. It is one of the many messes after four years of Trump that Joe Biden will have to clean up. As if the pandemic, social inequality and intense divisions among the American population weren't enough. Is saving the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 9 October 2020
Less coal and lower CO₂ emissions: A glimpse that change is on the way?
2020 is a horrible year in which nothing seems to be going right in the world. The pandemic, Donald Trump's chaos and on top of all that: climate change that's getting worse and worse. Last summer was the warmest ever recorded on our side of the planet. Australia, California and Siberia have been ravaged by immense wildfires, and the current hurricane season is ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 28 August 2020
Is the Greenland ice sheet lost forever – or can we still turn the tide?
While a temperature of 54.4 °C was recorded in Death Valley – possibly a new world record – news surfaced that Greenland's ice sheet has melted to a point of no return, even if we manage to halt climate change. The study appeared on CNN on August 14th, among others. The Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 7 meters. Should ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 24 July 2020
Higher emissions lead to more warming, which in turn leads to higher emissions
Not content with the summer weather? Try a holiday in Siberia! The remote arctic village of Verkhoyansk was – until now – famous for being the coldest inhabited place in the world since they hold the record with a temperature of 67.8 degrees below zero. But that was 128 years ago. Last month, temperatures rose to 38 °C, which is unprecedented for any location ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 19 June 2020
Does Norway need wind energy to enable a fossil-free future?
It must have been a beautiful day in spring, now 15 years ago. I drove through the rolling countryside in central Germany, on my way to the forest where I did fieldwork for my Master's thesis. I saw hills covered with meadows, with a row of windmills adorning almost every top. Spinning silently, they heralded a fossil-free future. The fact that the factory chimneys ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 15 May 2020
Norway's debate about arctic oil exploration is farcical.
While oil prices in the USA dropped below zero, the Norwegian government clung to the fossil fuel-driven economy. Airline companies that fly nowhere and oil companies that cannot get rid of their oil will receive tens of billions of dollars in tax benefits and favorable loans – without any significant demand to become more sustainable. What would have been an ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 3 April 2020
It’s not a given that things will be different this time around.
While half the world is sitting at home waiting for the pandemic to pass, the polluting influence of humans has entered a decline. Air pollution disappeared from Beijing in the East to Los Angeles in the West, China's CO₂ emissions fell by 25% and the number of flight movements in the world has halved. You may have begun to wonder: is the coronavirus a blessing in ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 28 February 2020
Isn't it better to let the earth warm up a bit and pay for the inconvenience?
The recent forest fires in Australia, which were devastating to both humans and animals, came after a record-breaking drought and a summer with unprecedented high temperatures. Still, Australia's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, denies that reducing Australia's emissions could have any impact on our climate. Despite the fact that the country is the largest exporter ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 20 December 2019
We cannot save the climate by planting trees on Greenland.
At the failed climate summit in Madrid it became, once again, abundantly clear that international climate policy is completely dysfunctional. After 25 climate summits, global emissions are still rising, while they need to be reduced by at least 7% per year in order to avoid global warming of 1.5 degrees – which the World Meteorological Organization reported ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 15 November 2019
Apparently, there's no good news on climate without cooking the books.
The Norwegian governing parties Høyre and Venstre recently had a climate celebration on social media: Greenhouse gas emissions decreased for the third consecutive year and have not been this low since 1995. Venstre tweeted a chart where emissions appeared to be cut in half, and Høyre posted a chart on Facebook to show that, under their leadership, emissions have ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 25 October 2019
A better planet is not only defined by lower CO₂ emissions.
Imagine that by tomorrow, fossil fuel emissions have suddenly been reduced to zero. That, in some magical way, every car in the world is electric, we only generate electricity with sun, wind and water, and that chimneys of factories neatly capture CO₂ and store it underground. If so, has the planet been saved? If the answer is yes, it's at the last moment, because ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 6 September 2019
Local climate policy is an important part of the solution to the climate crisis.
Just before the summer, I happened to sit on the public gallery of Amsterdam town hall, where the city council debated whether the city should declare a climate crisis. Extinction Rebellion, an international movement of climate activists, had successfully campaigned for this, and about eight rebels listened attentively to the debate in the otherwise empty gallery. ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 2 August 2019
Right-wing parties have not always been bad for the environment.
Last weekend was quite exciting: Who would carry the title "hottest place in Norway"? Laksfors, in Grane commune, was hot on the heels of Nesbyen, which had held the record for 49 years. From their holiday destinations – one was bobbing in a rubber boat at a campsite in Tønsberg, and the other was sitting on a beach in Latvia – both mayors followed how the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 28 June 2019
Forget about flying shame, SAS is now offering climate-friendly flights. Or not?
The time has finally arrived: We are going to fly climate-friendly! That is, if you can believe the PR talks of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) which adorn billboards acrosse the country, with texts such as "On the way to more sustainable travel". Is it true that we will soon be able to fly with them, on return trips to Bali or New York, without a large impact on the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 24 May 2019
Extinction rebellion desires a climate uprising. Are their demands realistic?
The fight against climate change has moved up a gear over the last six months. Around the world, the "Extinction Rebellion" movement is carrying out massive, non-violent, resistance actions. Their demands: governments need to declare a climate emergency, emissions should be reduced to zero in 2025, and broad civilian platforms need to be established that will ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 12 April 2019
We have only just started to translate the secret language of plants.
Plants don't talk, everyone knows that, right? Actually, that's not entirely true. Of course, you will never hear plants gossip with each other about the scandals which that one rebellious bush around the corner has ended up in, but they do communicate with each other. Plants can 'smell' each other and in this way transfer information. A secret language that can ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 8 March 2019
It is too early to throw in the towel and wait for the end of the world.
"Are you a climate optimist or a climate pessimist?", I was asked, just after I had given a lecture of an hour about the threat of climate change on the polar region. Without hesitation, I replied that I was an optimist, to which the audience responded with amazement. Perhaps this also applies to you, if you read this column more often, since I regularly report on ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 1 February 2019
Who will stand up and lead us away from the climate crisis?
Who will leads us away from the climate crisis? Despite decades of discussions to reduce our CO₂ emissions, they went up again last year as usual – by almost three percent. Since the Kyoto Protocol was signed, more than twenty years ago, fossil emissions have increased by more than half. The failure of our world leaders, and the greed of industry, is reflected in ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 28 December 2018
Collective action against the climate crisis is badly needed. Time for the green vests?
Save the climate, have fewer children! I regularly come across this advice, in the newspaper or on social media, often in a nicely designed graph. No need for shorter showers, getting rid of your car or to stop eating meat: no other action (or rather, non-action) reduces your CO₂ emissions as dramatically as having one child less. But is this correct? Is that ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 23 November 2018
Biodiversity is essential – not a luxury or a left-wing hobby.
Pando, the forest of one tree, is not doing well. And it's not because of global warming for a change. Pando is one of the oldest organisms on earth – perhaps 14,000 years old, when Norway was still largely covered with a kilometer-thick ice cap. Our climate has changed a lot since then, and this forest in the American state of Utah has also survived that. The ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 19 October 2018
To choose polluting aircraft over the train is incomprehensible.
The fight against climate change can be complex, but some decisions are simple. Like not building a third runway at Gardermoen, the airport of Oslo. An increase in the capacity of the airport will only lead to more CO₂ emissions and more noise pollution. That's bad for the environment and bad for the immediate surroundings. It is therefore unsurprising that the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 31 August 2018
While the search for oil continues, we are reaching a new climate normal.
Forest fires that ravaged along the entire west coast of the US. The thickest and oldest arctic sea ice that broke up. Night temperatures in Oman that didn't drop below 41 degrees Celsius. Record after record was broken this summer, and Norway wasn't spared: the unprecedented drought led to dozens of forest fires and a disastrous year for Norwegian farmers. Did ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 27 July 2018
The nature of the far North can create many jobs, provided we do not destroy it first.
It is ten degrees and foggy in Berlevåg when we make port with Klassekampen's summer boat. There are no yellow, dried-out trees or forest fires here like in the South of Norway. Trees do not or hardly grow in this environment. The heat of this summer and the worst drought in 70 years seem like a distant memory on our trip along the North Norwegian coast. But here ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 22 June 2018
While we enjoy the sun, a potential food crisis is growing.
The weather was hot and the climate deniers were silent. Strange actually, that you only hear from them when it is cold in the winter, but not during a historic heat wave. Then again, there was little to deny: the average temperature in Norway in May was more than four degrees C above normal – in the south this was five to seven degrees. Moreover, the lack of ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 18 May 2018
Do we have to stop going on holiday? Or can we spend our CO₂ in a smarter way?
Vacations are bad for the environment, according to a study that appeared last week in Nature Climate Change. It showed that tourism is responsible for 8% of global CO₂ emissions. Roughly twice as high as previous estimates. This difference is mainly due to the fact that, unlike previous research, it wasn't just the climate impact of the trip itself that was ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 13 April 2018
Shell and Equinor are guiding us through the climate crisis. Or are they?
What is going on with the oil companies? Don't they want to sell oil anymore? Just before Easter, Shell presented a vision of how the world could use little to no oil in the future. Last month, Statoil announced that they will throw outt the word "oil" from their name and continue as "Equinor". For decades, Statoil and Shell have only made climate change worse. Now ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 9 March 2018
A winter with lots of snow should not make us forget that the Arctic is melting.
Severe frost, snow, and ice. Great! Europe finally got a normal winter. Right? No. Appearances can be deceiving, because in reality there is nothing normal about it. In my previous column I already predicted this: due to changes in the jet stream circling the polar region, it can be extremely cold in one place and extremely warm somewhere else. This was also the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 26 January 2018
We have left our traces all across the earth, even where we cannot see them.
Frozen iguanas fell from the trees in Florida! How can climate change be true? Every winter it's the same story. As soon as a single snowflake falls from the sky, climate skeptics will elbow each other out of the way to declare that the earth isn't warming. But while the east of the US could go skiing, the west saw extremely high temperatures. In Alaska it was 8.7 ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 12 January 2018
The Norwegian climate trial was doomed to fail. But not all hope is lost.
To lose a lawsuit is never fun. But when it has negative consequences for our environment, we all lose a little bit. Last week on Thursday, Greenpeace and Natur og Ungdom (Nature and Youth) lost the lawsuit they had filed against the state. They demanded that the expansion of oil drilling in the Barents Sea should be banned since this would go against Article 112 ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 10 November 2017
The 23rd UN climate conference: Everyone agrees, but nothing changes.
23 times. That's how often the UN has held its annual climate conference in an attempt to prevent dangerous global warming. You undoubtedly know of the times they met in Kyoto and Paris, but there are few people who can remember the other 21 meetings. And that isn't strange either, because most of the time it's all talk but little action. Expectations for the 23rd ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 15 September 2017
While storms and extreme precipitation strike, the rich are moving to the high ground.
The Canadian protest singer Geoff Berner already sang it years ago: "You and me baby, we’re going to watch the poor drown. ‘Cos the rich are gonna move to the high ground". Cynical, but also very topical now that hurricanes Harvey and Irma have left unprecedented devastations in just a few weeks. Because as usual, it's the poorest among us who will feel ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 11 August 2017
Global warming is smouldering beneath this summer's heat waves and forest fires.
Back from vacation? Perhaps you visited the Mediterranean? Good timing, since the Norwegian news channel NRK reported a few weeks ago that this would be impossible in the future. It'll be too hot. In other words: quick, before it becomes unbearable on the Spanish beaches, take an airplane to the South. Obviously, I do not need to explain the irony here. By the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 7 July 2017
Norway needs a government which realises that oil does not have a future.
"This is not the time for tactics or game-playing. This is the time to act and to put our best foot forward. To save our planet – together." This statement came from Norway's prime minister Erna Solberg during the climate conference in Paris in 2015. Admirable words, which mean nothing apparently. Because today, one and a half year later, the Norwegian government ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 2 June 2017
The climate debate is riddled with false contrasts. This won't get us any further.
Recently, the end times were world news. The Guardian reported that climate change had thawed the permafrost around the global seed fault on Svalbard, and that it flooded. This led to a media storm with sensational headlines about 'The Doomsday Vault'. The subtext: climate change has gotten so bad already, that even our emergency plan for the end of the world isn't ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 5 May 2017
Why suffer through a snow storm, when you can do research from the comfort of your office?
While the airplane descends, I look out of the window and see the snow-covered peaks of Svalbard. It’s light outside, even though it’s the middle of the night. The sun won’t set until August. In the middle of this snow-filled landscape, on top of a mountain plateau near Longyearbyen, I see a number of large white globes: antennas that maintain contact with ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 17 March 2017
Climate science is threatened by much more than just Donald Trump.
Last week I attended a meeting in Seattle, where together with climate scientists from Europe and the US we mulled over the question of how much methane is released from permafrost in the Arctic. This group also included researchers from NASA and NOAA, institutes that are now under fire from Trump and his people. This became apparent once more at the end of the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 10 February 2017
Small changes in an ecosystem can initiate a turbulent chain reaction.
I should be talking about Donald Trump, and the unprecedented shift in American science policy. From a president who published in Science only last January, we have gone to one who tries to silence climate researchers, and threatens to take away federal funding for a university because of demonstrations against a right-wing activist. And we’re only three weeks ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 6 January 2017
Is it man or nature that has caused the recent increase in methane emissions?
When climate change hits the news, it's often about records being broken. Globally, 2016 was the hottest year ever measured. Never before was there so little ice in the Arctic as this winter. And the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere hasn't been this high in 800.000 years. But there's another greenhouse gas that has also risen to a record high: methane. A gas ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 18 November 2016
The USA leaving the UN climate convention isn't the worst-case scenario.
While the world's countries had just gathered in Marrakech to discuss the implementation of the Paris agreement, news broke that Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. He doesn't believe in climate change; it's a conspiracy by the Chinese, he says. Is the Paris agreement, two weeks after going into force, already a failure? Perhaps it won’t be ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 28 October 2016
The Norwegian climate trial is an attempt to force politicians to abide by their words.
Greenpeace and the Norwegian organisation "Nature and Youth" have recently sued the government of Norway to prevent the exploration of new oil fields in the Barents Sea. With it, climate activists are following a new path: rather than persuading the government to implement better policies, they want to enforce such policies through a court of law. This new ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 23 September 2016
Sea ice is disappearing. That's not just bad news for polar bears.
When Fridtjof Nansen and his Fram-expedition were stopped by a wasteland of frozen ice on their way to the North Pole, it was also the definitive refutation of an old and curious idea that there had to be a large area of open water at the center of the Arctic Ocean. 120 years later, an ice-free North Pole doesn't seem far-fetched anymore: this month sea ice reached ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 15 July 2016
Politicians incite distrust towards experts - and allow global temperatures to rise.
"People in this country have had enough of experts", said Michael Gove, the former British justice secretary who is headed for an uncertain future, earlier in June. This bizarre statement came as a reply to a question about the many (inter)national organisations that warned against the economic consequences of Brexit. Regardless of your opinion about the EU, the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 13 June 2016
Extreme weather hints at what our climate may be like in the future. Are we prepared?
While the water level of the Seine recently reached such high levels that the basements of the louvre were evacuated and several villages in Germany flooded, the south of Norway experienced warm and sunny weather. With temperatures close to 30 degrees C the region was among the hottest in Europe. When it's warmer in a place like Voss than Mallorca, something ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 2 May 2016
People can do a lot to adjust to climate change. But what about plants and animals?
Last summer, I was hiking through the west of the Hardangervidda in Norway: 100 km in a week through an area without cellphone reception, no internet, no obligations, and no rush. Nonetheless, the group that I had joined was walking at a swift pace. So much so that I was wondering whether some of them came to enjoy nature or whether this was an alternative for the ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 21 March 2016
What do they mean when meteorologists say that it’s warmer because of El Niño?
Last year was worldwide the hottest year ever. And this year will probably be even warmer. At least, that’s what the British Met Office said last December, and with the record-breaking heat of the past three months they haven’t been proven wrong so far. Normally, scientists are hesitant with such predictions. But then again, this year isn’t a normal year: A ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 8 February 2016
Those who think that climate change is boring, have never seen a glacier disappear.
Recently I discovered, to my great astonishment, that many people think that climate change – my research field – is boring. That even some employees of this newspaper start to yawn when they hear the word «climate». And admittedly: I don’t get that enthusiastic either when I hear policy terms such as «sustainability» or «green economy». But when I ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 7 December 2015
Antarctic sea ice is increasing. Is the Earth not warming after all?
For most people, the Arctic and Antarctic are one and the same thing. It’s cold, and there’s lots of snow and ice. When I recently gave a lecture about the North Pole region, even the organizers did not realize that penguins are common only to the South and polar bears to the North. These two animals, that can only meet each other in a zoo, were standing side ... Continue reading →
Klassekampen, 26 October 2015
Doomsday-thinking doesn't get us any step closer to counteracting climate change.
“So... is the world going to end?”. This may not be the most common response when you tell someone what kind of work you do, but as a climate scientist I’ve gotten used to this question. Climate change often evokes doom scenario’s and it’s therefore understandable that people are very concerned: 2015 will most probably become the hottest year ever ... Continue reading →