Image: Thom Sevalrud
As a nuclear-powered icebreaker crunched through 10 feet of August ice at the North Pole, Russian sailors readied two deepwater submersibles for their two-and-a-half-mile descent. Dubbed Mir 1 and Mir 2 (mir meaning “world”), the subs were aptly named—their deployment was about to catch the world’s attention. A hole opened in the ship’s wake, and the subs were lowered. At the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, one sub took seabed samples, the ostensible purpose of the mission, while the other deposited a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag, symbolically claiming this undersea turf for its homeland.
Moscow’s 2007 stunt was mocked widely for its ostentatious flouting of diplomatic etiquette but had its intended effect: other countries were rattled. Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper scurried to the Arctic for a sovereignty tour, and the Danish science minister released preliminary findings that the North Pole was, in fact, Danish.
This article was originally published with the title Arctic Landgrab.
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29 Comments
Add Comment"Polar Meltdown Triggers International Arctic Landgrab
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNations scramble to claim their share of the petroleum riches trapped deep within the Arctic seabed as global warming loosens that ocean's icy grip on its bounty
By Jessa Gamble "
I have two problems with your statement, Jessa !
(1) There has been NO Global Warming for a decade!
(2)Arctic Ice has returned to levels of the 70's and recent below levele's was probably due to Undersea Volcanic activity and the lage area of unually thin Earth crust resulting in thermal heat transfer,But those with agendas don't want the general public to know about those facts.
I have a few problems with your comment barry,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) Unless you have come up with your own novel way to calculate global annual temperature, you are flat wrong that the earth has not warmed for the last 10 years. Take a look at where those who do know how to calculate the global temperature publish their work, for all to see.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
2) Undersea activity has been disproved many times. The sea ice AREA may be close to the 70's, but the VOLUME is not. The area increase this year represents 1 year ice. The 2-3 year ice is the ice that remains during the summers. So if we have a lot of 1 year ice, its just going to melt during the summer regardless of winter area.
Take a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nruCRcbnY0&feature=channel_page
It explains the concept pretty thoroughly. And if you want to know more about some recent publications on the arctic, look here: http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/12/what-exactly-is-polar-amplification-and-why-does-it-matter/
"(1) There has been NO Global Warming for a decade!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly in your ExxonMobil sponsored dreams.
"(2)Arctic Ice has returned to levels of the 70's..."
I typed a couple different retorts but I just keep erasing them. Truth be told I cannot even begin to state how completely untrue that statement is.
You sir, are either misinformed, mistaken, delusional or simply a liar.
Jezz!!! Someone is still defending that global warming is a mith? Well... I guess I shouldn't be surprised at that... after all many still defend intelligent design as well! But what really troubles me is that greed blinding capitalism is not satisfied with the damages it's already caused to the environment... It will take advantage on the damages already established to cause even more damage!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Arctic ice has returned to levels of the 70's . . ."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah. In the winter. Winter sea ice in the Arctic doesn't vary much because the Arctic Ocean is constrained by land (Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia) and its cold enough during the winter to create ice to the limits of these constraints. Shoreliner is right. If you want to talk about ice extent in the winter, you have to mention the volume or thickness of the ice, which is much reduced. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7987354.stm
Or just look at the summer sea ice which is much below average.
Good comments. Wow the title of this article made me think we were headed into WWIII... and after reading it, I hope we aren't. I hope that we can reverse the effects of Global Warming so that drilling in the arctic isn't possible (again), and isn't needed as a result. Although, it seems there could be potential for international tolerance over the matter if we don't let greed get in the way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArctic Melting caused by Global Warming spurs massive rush to exploit Arctic Oil Resources. Lemmings watch in wonder at the idiocy. Excess global irony resources make all previous use obsolete.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome people will believe anything and everything they hear, read, or see. For everyone that has a resource to back their statment, another one has some other report to back a counter statement. Each believeing their own to be the truth of the two in question. The real question is, Is the glass half full, or half empty? If the temp is 50 degrees outside, the eskimo would say it's to warm, and an aborgine would say it's too cold. So, which is it? People, do you ever get tired of arguing other peoples arguments? Ones that beat a dead horse into the ground? Twice over? Remember one thing. ALL DATA is manipulated to help one convence the world that theirs is the RIGHT one, and that the others is the wrong one. Why? Money. Follow the money trail, then you will see the real truth. I'm not saying that G.W. isn't real, but I am saying that there is a reason for everything said and done that happens. That reason is money. Power. Influence. Control. If there was money to be had in it, someone I'm sure would try selling you the idea that the sky is falling too. Of course, others would claim it is not. Of course, money is needed to prove eather it is, or that it is not, the truth. There is where any facts that can be stretched or exaggerated, to get funding, will be done so. But of course, this doesn't make it true. Remember. The Facts may be truth, but the truth is not always the facts. The fact is, the sun always rises every morning. But the truth is, the sun isn't moving at all, the Earth is. Think of it like this, If you were living in 15000 B.C. you would say the Earth is cooling off into an ice age, however, one living in 6000 B.C. would say the Earth is warming. That was a fact. The truth however was, the Earth was simply going through a stage. The theory of relativity based on perception of the angle of perspective of the issue being observed. It may be, that this trend will reverse itself and there may not be a WW3 from it over land & mineral rights. However, it may not reverse itself, and get worse and maybe destroy mankind all together because of dwindling resources via WW3. Then again, neather may happen at all, and man just lives on, till some one else causes WW3 because some one through a shoe at a president or something like that, and no one gets nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust something to think about while your blood pressure is up over what people argue about that others post about based on second hand stories posted by some one else that is claimed to be a reputed person by yet still another some one else.
"Why? Money. Follow the money trail, then you will see the real truth."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK. So the trillion dollar fossil fuel industry has every interest in denying and delaying the science. So we should be very wary of people who deny it is happening.
BIG AL GORE says that carbon credit trading is worth at least
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this$7 TRILLION dollars. So who is buying whom. Who's facts should be believed. The fossil fuel companies sell something useful and Gore and company will sell us a government mandated nonexistant thing. Just who has the reason to lie.
After we burn off the ice from our pollution, they are still eager to rape our planet for more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid you know we can burn trash for electricity and it can also be rendered into gas for our cars. Trash is in abundance. The Perfect "fossil fuel"
Over the last 10 years the North Pole has been melting away at a rate we have never seen in Human History. It has increased 100% since the Corporation revolution has been running strong. (70's-80's) Anyone who cannot understand that that as "GLOBAL WARMING" must have a logic fuse brokenWe must realize that if we do enough harm to our planet, she will kill us all only for her survival.
Now that my friend, is the question. The answer is, Who stands to profit the most from all this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispgtruspace has the real question of all on his/her own post indeed, just Just who has the reason to lie? 7 trillion is a lot of money. Gore has a lot of friends in the government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Now that my friend, is the question. The answer is, Who stands to profit the most from all this? "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo keep the status quo? Why the fossil fuel industry.
"pgtruspace has the real question of all on his/her own post indeed, just Just who has the reason to lie?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean to tell me you think that world's geophysicists are involved in world wide conspiracy to victimize little old Exxon-Moble? Really? What is your primary evidence that Geophysicist in Germany are conspiring with those in Italy to defraud?
"Who's facts should be believed."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat produced by peer reviewed science. Has any one told you that your are not entitled your own set of facts?
"The fossil fuel companies sell something useful.."
That product is also altering our planet's climate.
"...and Gore and company will sell us a government mandated..."
Please get over you Gore obsession. Al Gore did not fabricate climate change nor did he start a fad. He is simply an explicatior of the science. You are simply engaging in a ad hominem.
"...mandated nonexistant thing."
Only if you stick your head into a really deep hole and shout at the top of your lungs "Al Gore! Al Gore Al Gore" then you will be sure to deafen yourself to the science.
nonexistant thing.
US Citizen? Go back to school and stop watching Fox News. Better yet, take trip outside your county and try living in the real world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBarry, Please don't blog.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't believe the climate change deniers who line up every day looking for articles on SciAm mentioning anything related to global warming and then flood the message boards with their propaganda. Come on, exactly how/why is Al Gore somehow equally as suspect as Big Oil again? They make trillions, destabilize countries, lobby incessantly, buy elections and all the while kill us a little each day in their endless pursuit of a buck. How exactly is Al Gore profiting by pointing out the flaws in their arguments? And NO, enough with this "there's two sides" to this argument bull, which is meant to elevate the denial arguments to the same status as scientific study, when it can't stand there on it's own merits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you're not a scientist studying climate change, you're entitled to your own opinion but you have no business posting to SciAm blogs about it, unless you have some sort of agenda much more suspect than Mr. Gore's. I, for one, will trust the scientists thank you on this one.
That being said, I find it disturbing that there is a scramble to get oil because the antarctic is thawing because we burn too much oil. We are pretty stupid as a species, are we not?
Global Warming! UNCLOS! I am deeply grieved that my scientific source for years is becoming increasingly leftist, socialistic with the anti-sovereignty spewing World Government cxxx of a dubious nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this" I am deeply grieved that my scientific source for years is becoming increasingly leftist, socialistic with the anti-sovereignty spewing World Government cxxx of a dubious nature."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo many baseless assertions, so little facts.
Do we really need $8 trillion of buried assets in the Arctic? Or even the $40 trillion buried in the Rockies? Of course not. The government will take care of us. As long as we have bread (food stamps) and circuses (reality shows). Soon we'll be able to burn our currency, which the government is printing, for fuel. Since Congress won't let us drill our own oil, why not just let the Chinese lease all our oil bearing land and offshore tracts and drill, and do what Congress does best - look the other way?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The government will take care of us."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you always just make up arguments that no one else makes?
"Since Congress won't let us drill our own oil, why not just let the Chinese lease all our oil bearing land and offshore tracts and drill, and do what Congress does best - look the other way?"
You did not read the article did you?
Well said. An Arctic "land" grab is a dangerous proposition given the twin bombs posed by peak oil and climate change. Drilling in the Arctic only delays a concerted response to these issues among industrialized countries with interests in the High North. Though a difficult proposition, the establishment of a conservation regime over oil resources in the Arctic commons offers another way forward:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.e-ir.info/?p=460
A month ago Chinese interests bought up a huge coal deposit in Australia. Last week China bought out a natural gas and oil shale holding in Canada. When China is ready to use these fossil fuels they are going to brush aside all the AGW twits and ignore every law they have passed to ruin American fossil fuel companies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy will China be able to do that? Because they can. America becomes a more toothless, weakening tiger in almost daily increments.
@Michael,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does international politics negate the reality of geophysics?
A lot of people don't respect the geophysical superstitions of America's and the West's elites. For a long time now we have been becoming wary of the ability of Western academia to maintain world-class standards of intellectual honesty and perspective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExhibit number one is the hysterical mob stampede into the anthropogenic global warming hoax. Apparently this was fueled by a semi-religious feeling that humans are inherently evil, Western progress including industrialization has been inherently imperialistic and evil, and all of it is bad for the Earth.
My view is that carbon dioxide is truly a greenhouse gas, but at .000385% it has been a trivial component of the late 20th century warming period and even a doubling or tripling of C02 in the 21st century will do nothing to hinder a slide into a little Ice Age.
To paraphrase a British admiral at the Battle of Jutland, "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody experts today."
There certainly is something wrong with our experts and it needs to be fixed. George W. Bush was hooted down by the morons for trying to politicize science. He was trying to fix it.
yes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a wonder the free-for-all has held off this long. Same thing will be happening in Antarctica, but that real estate will be harder to reach than the one where everyone can just motor (or sometimes walk) to.
Has for the whole global warming debate - we are STILL coming out of a little thing called the Maunder Minnimum, otherwise known as the Little Ice Age that started in 1000 AD, and didn't actually break (that I'm aware of) until the mid-1800s.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOF COURSE the world is getting warmer, and the water is returning to its normal depths - but the ocean floors are also continuing to sink back down as the continents and continental shelves continue to rebound due to the release of weight and pressure from the no-longer-existent continental ice sheets.
The only controversial part is whether it's Nature- or man-made. And we keep finding more and more ways that Mama Nature is out-competing us on both the up and down side of that particular discussion.