Tundra Study Backs Longer Oil-Search Season (thanks to global warming)

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Snow is more important than ice in protecting the delicate tundra from disturbances, a finding that holds promise for a longer oil-exploration season in Alaska's rapidly warming Arctic, state officials said on Friday.

Officials from the state Department of Natural Resources, who released the conclusions of a study they conducted into the impact of heavy equipment on the North Slope tundra, said the finding supports a policy change that will help open the region to exploration earlier in the winter.

"The results are we're going to be able to start every exploration season sooner now than we would have under the old rules, with absolutely no impact to the environment," Tom Irwin, commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, said at a news conference held by Gov. Frank Murkowski.

The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, was prompted by a warming trend that has drastically shortened the time available for exploration, from more than 200 days a year in the 1970s to about half that now.

"As you all know, since the 70s our seasons have been getting warmer and warmer and our access into exploration, of course, is becoming shorter and shorter. And that's expensive," Irwin said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=570&e=1&u=/nm/20041204/sc_nm/environment_tundra_dc

Is not that last paragraph tantamount to admitting global warming? So now, thanks to global warming, we can look for more oil longer, with which to create.... more global warming!

[NMDemDist2]

1. D'oh!

sigh

[private_ryan]

2. I don't think they deny it

they just say we don't anything to do with it...despite CO2 level increasing by 30% or so in the past 100 years. That seems substantial to me.

[spooked]

3. From our own Wayne Madsen: Bush WANTS Arctic Meltdown for Oil!

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_13618.shtml

Bush Administration Want Artic Meltdown
By Wayne Madsen
Nov 15, 2004, 22:56

Washington, DC.

"Speaking off the record, scientists studying the current warming of the Arctic region intimated that some officials in the Bush administration saw the loss of Arctic ice and the resultant opening of sea channels such as the Northwest Passage of Canada as a good thing for the exploration and retrieval of oil and natural gas from the endangered region."