As Arctic Melts, "Leaders" Squabble Over How Best To Make Money From Trend

[hatrack]

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Carving up the frosty Arctic is a hot topic right now for many countries. At stake are the sovereign rights to enormous reserves of natural resources, as well the control of seafaring routes which have until now been blocked by ice. The reason for the newly awakened interest is that the Arctic is rapidly warming. Nowhere else on the planet have such far-reaching consequences of global warming been observed. While biologists and climate researchers fear melting icecaps, rising floodwaters and extinctions of several species, oil and gas companies are hoping the Artic thaw will enable them to access vast new energy sources.

"How our climate will look in the next few decades, is being decided in the Arctic," says Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam (AWI). This week Hubberten played host to Germany's first "Arctic Science Summit Week" in Potsdam near Berlin. Around 150 scientists from all over the world came to discuss the effects that Arctic warming would have on landmasses, people, animals, plants and the global climate.

"We are noticing a rapid decrease in sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and the permafrost on the ground is melting," says Volker Rachold of the International Arctic Science Committee, an organization that coordinates Arctic research worldwide. Scientists say that air temperatures are higher than they have been for centuries. And as a consequence, Greenland's ice is melting more quickly than ever and Alaska's glaciers continue to shrink rapidly.

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But more than anything else, it is the earth's riches under the rapidly disappearing ice that spark the imagination of many. The US Geological Survey estimates that a quarter of the world's oil and natural gas reserves lie hidden under the Arctic Ocean. If the thaw continues, then excavation could soon become financially viable. Norway and Russia are already bickering with each other over drilling rights in the Barents Sea. The region's gas will soon be processed in Murmansk and Hammerfest, and then transported to other parts of Europe and America. The size of the Russian Shtokman gas field alone is estimated at 3.2 trillion cubic meters, making it one of the largest known deposits in the world.

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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,409001,00.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. What's wrong with these people?

:puke:

[phantom power]

2. There was this drunk guy...

and he was holding himself up against a lamp-post, and peering around at the ground. His friend comes up to him and says "Hey, watcha doing?" The drunk says "I'm looking for my car-keys. I dropped them coming out of my car." And his buddy says "but your car is parked down the street." And the drunk guy says "yeah, but the light's much better over here."

[Delphinus]

3. I wish I knew, Dead_Parrot.

Back after the 2004 election, my TV was turned off for weeks. When I finally turned it back on, I watched this program on C-Span put on by the Oceanic & Atmospheric Council (or something similar). They were talking then - 2004 - how bad things were and, for a question, one of the reporters asked how this could be "exploited". I wanted to puke!