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According to a recent email....Connie Hedegaard (Danish Climate minister) was asked to apologise to the 21 world leaders she "tricked" into believing that the gletcher retreat was caused by AGW, but she says she will carry on showing the "effects of global warming".

From Nature.Com Published online: 28 September 2008:

Acceleration of Jakobshavn Isbræ triggered by warm subsurface ocean waters by David M. Holland1, Robert H. Thomas2, Brad de Young3, Mads H. Ribergaard4 & Bjarne Lyberth5

Observations over the past decades show a rapid acceleration of several outlet glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica1. One of the largest changes is a sudden switch of Jakobshavn Isbræ, a large outlet glacier feeding a deep-ocean fjord on Greenland's west coast, from slow thickening to rapid thinning2 in 1997, associated with a doubling in glacier velocity3.
Updated Below with a translation from "180Degrees"




Suggested explanations for the speed-up of Jakobshavn Isbræ include increased lubrication of the ice–bedrock interface as more meltwater has drained to the glacier bed during recent warmer summers4 and weakening and break-up of the floating ice tongue that buttressed the glacier5.

Here we present hydrographic data that show a sudden increase in subsurface ocean temperature in 1997 along the entire west coast of Greenland, suggesting that the changes in Jakobshavn Isbræ were instead triggered by the arrival of relatively warm water originating from the Irminger Sea near Iceland.

We trace these oceanic changes back to changes in the atmospheric circulation in the North Atlantic region. We conclude that the prediction of future rapid dynamic responses of other outlet glaciers to climate change will require an improved understanding of the effect of changes in regional ocean and atmosphere circulation on the delivery of warm subsurface waters to the periphery of the ice sheets.

The Greenland ice sheet is drained by many outlet glaciers, with Jakobshavn Isbræ (Fig. 1) on the west coast being its most prolific exporter of ice into the ocean, draining 7% of the sheet by area6. Jakobshavn Isbræ currently transports about 50 km3 yr-1 of ice to the head of the relatively long and narrow Jakobshavn ocean fjord. The mouth of this fjord lies on Disko Bay, of average depth 400 m, and with two deeper channels that connect the mouth to the outer continental shelf break. At the break, Disko Bay joins the much larger and deeper Baffin Bay, which has a core of warm Irminger water travelling northward at depth, at the break7 (see Supplementary Information, Fig. S1). This warm, subsurface water can cross the break, and move into Disko Bay. Even though such subsurface waters are warm, they are also relatively saline, originating farther south in the North Atlantic. At cold temperatures, salinity has a controlling influence on density, and hence the nature of the water movement. (Further background information is available in Supplementary Information.)

This is only an extract from the original article, please click the following link to go to the original source document

Acceleration of Jakobshavn Isbræ triggered by warm subsurface ocean waters

Updated with a translation from "180Degrees"

The right-wing internet newspaper “180 degrees” asked climate minister Connie Hedegaard if she was going to apologise to 21 environment ministers after a new scientific paper (http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n10/full/ngeo316.html) discounted global warming as a cause for the retreat of a gletcher in Greenland, which she had presented to the ministers as “an example of global warming”.

This is a quick translation of “180 degrees” article about her E-mailed reply to that inquiry.
(180Degrees article)

Research doesn’t impress the Connie Hedegaard. The excursions to Greenland will continue.

“No-one has been had” claims the Climate minister Connie Hedegaard, and she has no plans to stop presenting the gletcher in Greenland as an example of the effect of climate change, even though scientists disagree.

Climate minister Connie Hedegaard has presented the retreating gletcher at Jakobshavn, Greenland as a prime example of climate change to visiting politicians for three years now, and she intends to keep on doing so, she wrote to 180 degrees in an E-mail.

New research with, amongst others Danish involvement has otherwise shown that the gletchers variations are not the work of climate change, but rather are caused by changes in ocean currents. That doesn’t impress Connie Hedegaard though. Asked if she would stop her “info-trips” she answered:

“I have no intention of stopping this. A few weeks ago we received news that ice-cover in the Arctic Ocean in 2008 was the second lowest ever. Other surveys have time and again shown that the inland-ice melt in Greenland is speeding up. There is still great uncertainty about the processes along the ice-edge though. As for the Jakobshavn isbræ, we have for years assumed that sea temperatures and the slope of the underground under the bræ might be influencing the sudden changes. Its good news that a Danish scientist is now helping to add to our understanding (of these effects –ed). But it doesn’t change the overall picture of increased ice melt in Greenland and the artic ocean.”

At the same time, the climate minister doesn’t think that her excursions have been used to trick anyone.

“During the visits some of the worlds leading climate scientists told the guests about global warming and the Arctic’s’ special significance. The scientists all stressed, as I also do, that you cannot “see” global warming in isolated events. The scientists also stressed to the participants, that we stood next to a gletcher that retreated faster than could be explained by global warming alone, and that the scientist’s models just weren’t able to explain what was happening. The point of the visits is to show the arctic situation, where Greenland is especially interesting because warming there is twice the size of warming for the world as a whole. So no-one has been tricked” Connie Hedegaard wrote.