Fuck Santa

[solarbird]

There's a 50/50 shot of open water at the North Pole this year.

Comments

[dustin-00.livejournal.com]

Canoe Trip!

Who wants to join me?

Oh! Oh! What do we get to bring to feed the polar bears! Polar bears are cool!

[denelian.livejournal.com]

!!!!!!!!!!

i can't think. this melted my brain

[wrog]

I'll have to admit, the whole notion of scrambling for Arctic resources hadn't occurred to me up until now.

It would be particularly ironic if loss of the polar icecap were to make accessible vast new reserves of oil.

[solarbird]

Yeah, I'd been aware of it for a while - Canada is getting more specific about its territorial claims in the Arctic for exactly this reason.

[(Anonymous)]

There's been 40 years of high-tech searching by the oil companies, with 220 test drills that have all come up dry. It's unlikely there's any significant amount of oil up there. These land grabs by countries are signs of desperation.

One sees a lot of articles on global warming that mention how new markets for resources will open up as a result. I take it as propaganda deisgned to reassure the public that climate change has a silver lining, or that business will go on as usual.

- Paul

[wrog]

(in response to a comment that appears to have been deleted)

It would be particularly ironic if loss of the polar icecap were to make accessible vast new reserves of oil.

I should note, BTW that I never actually thought this was terribly likely.
Nor am I sure how I'd feel if it actually happened (seems as if like finding more oil has had generally negative consequences thus far -- problem is, we actually need the stuff...)

[solarbird]

(in response to a comment that appears to have been deleted)
I think I just hadn't unscreened it yet. I have anonymous comments sent to screening.

[(Anonymous)]

I hear you. I'd stress that it's not impossible that there's oil in the deep-sea arctic, and it's not impossible that companies could drill there.

The problem is, they have to find it (1), and they have to develop the technology for arctic drilling and production (2). (1) is very, very expensive and (2) is still decades away. I wouldn't worry about that action just yet -- East Siberia and ANWR are as far as arctic oil exploitation is going for a while.

What you'll see is development of fields closer to home, or the rehabilitation of problem fields. The coast of Florida and California are looking like big juicy burgers right about now.

- Paul