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TechnoratiWASHINGTON - With oil above $100 a barrel and Arctic ice melting faster than ever, some of the world's most powerful countries -- including the United States and Russia -- are looking north to a possible energy bonanza.
This prospective scramble for buried Arctic mineral wealth made more accessible by freshly melted seas could bring on a completely different kind of cold war, a scholar and former Coast Guard officer says.
While a U.S. government official questioned the risk of polar conflict, Washington still would like to join a 25-year-old international treaty meant to figure out who owns the rights to the oceans, including the Arctic Ocean. So far, the Senate has not approved it.
Unlike the first Cold War, dominated by tensions between the two late-20th century superpowers, this century's model could pit countries that border the Arctic Ocean against each other to claim mineral rights. The Arctic powers include the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway.
The irony is that the burning of fossil fuels is at least in part responsible for the Arctic melt -- due to climate change -- and the Arctic melt could pave the way for a 21st century rush to exploit even more fossil fuels.
The stakes are enormous, according to Scott Borgerson of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant commander.
The Arctic could hold as much as one-quarter of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits, Borgerson wrote in the current issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.
Russia has claimed 460,000 square miles (1.191 million sq km) of Arctic waters, with an eye-catching effort that included planting its flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole last summer. Days later, Moscow sent strategic bomber flights over the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War.
"I think you can say planting a flag on the sea bottom and renewing strategic bomber flights is provocative," Borgerson said in a telephone interview.
SCRAMBLING AND SLEEPWALKING
By contrast, he said of the U.S. position, "I don't think we're scrambling. We're sleepwalking ... I think the Russians are scrambling and I think the Norwegians and Canadians and Danes are keenly aware."
Borgerson said that now would be an appropriate time for the United States to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which codifies which countries have rights to what parts of the world's oceans.
The Bush administration agrees. So do many environmental groups, the U.S. military and energy companies looking to explore the Arctic, now that enough ice is seasonally gone to open up sea lanes as soon as the next decade.
"There's no ice cold war," said one U.S. government official familiar with the Arctic Ocean rights issue. However, the official noted that joining the Law of the Sea pact would give greater legal certainty to U.S. claims in the area.
That is becoming more crucial, as measurements of the U.S. continental shelf get more precise.
Coastal nations like those that border the Arctic have sovereign rights over natural resources of their continental shelves, generally recognized to reach 200 nautical miles out from their coasts.
But in February, researchers from the University of New Hampshire and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data suggesting that the continental shelf north of Alaska extends more than 100 nautical miles farther than previously presumed.
A commission set up by the Law of the Sea lets countries expand their sea floor resource rights if they meet certain conditions and back them up with scientific data.
The treaty also governs navigation rights, suddenly more important as scientists last year reported the opening of the normally ice-choked waters of the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
"Of course we need to be at the table as ocean law develops," the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's not like ocean law is going to stop developing if we're not in there. It's just going to develop without us."
Editing by Philip Barbara
© 2008 Reuters
60 Comments so far
Show AllCan't wait until you Einsteins analyze the global warming article at the link below. Published by an ex NASA scientist that was told to be quite or else all the money for studying global climate change would get nixed.
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
Don't the Danes already own Greenland? They can let the natives build casinos.
Mar 11 2008: Campaigners believe decision on classifying the polar bear as endangered is being held up to complete sales of oil and gas leases in Alaska
Who the hell talks about *owning* the ocean!? Oh right, humans.
And the Danes probably won't be letting the people of Greenland have any say in this.
I buried my dictionary in the garden, am studying a third grad math book and made an appointment to see a shrink, a georgous blond who resembles Pamela Anderson.
Wish he was a female.
Just googled "arctic melt, methane gas." CD and our comments were first two up.
And I found the article in the UK written in '05 that I'd read before about the melting in Siberian tundra (peat bogs).
Someone should send the white house and their scientists those links. But I guess when a company creates its own news, they believe everyone else has done the same.
i didnt get past the first paragraph. instead of addressing the single most important issue facing mankind today, they're staking out the next big monitary gain?!! Its time to kick the corporations out and insert the scientists to try and solve the crisis.
See what Lovelock has to say on this subject, the shit is going to hit the fan big time in our lifetime people, radical changes are underway now, Washington and Oregons crab population has already washed up dead on shore because the water is too cold from the melting polar caps. Within the next 35 years you will not recognize our planet.
It's not the scarcity of natural resourses that presents such horrific problems, but rather the irrational explosion of the planet's human population. The focus of the best scientific, political, and philosophical minds must be devoted to resolving the ethical dilemma of human over-population. Part of the ethical dilemma we face is about the right of the yet-to-be-born to inherit an enviornment capable of sustaining, nurturing, and providing, a viable opportunity for a life worth living.
ignore the above
i have gone mad
apologies to my victims
-matti
Re: KEM P.'s post at 12:37am (specifically the last word).
Be wary of men who tell you FACTS about the future.
It is possible they are lying or insane.
Calculating from Van Buren, ME, which is just past the 47th parallel, to the arctic circle, we get about 19 degrees of latitude. According to one encyclopedia I checked, there are about 111 km per degree of latitude, with some small variations, giving 19 x 111 = 2109, so approximately 2100 km to the arctic circle from Van Buren. Multiply that times .62 to convert from km to miles and you get 1307.58 miles.
I realize that arctic ice doesn't affect the sea levels. I do agree that having the arctic icepack melt entirely will create more open, dark sea. Having this around Greenland and any other land-based glaciers will speed up the melting on land as well. It is this land-based ice melting that will put us all in way over our heads.
KEM PATRICK
bill clinton has no rhythm. he has two left feet...........
didn't get to the lottery place. lost the numbers now. send again. canoe will follow win............
USan wrote:
Melting arctic sea ice or ice shelves (what the article is talking about) won't raise sea level, because the ice is floating and already displacing the same amount of liquid water it will produce when it melts - remember Archimedes principle?
Think about it...do you realize how much more solar energy the Arctic Ocean will receive if it is ice-free during the summer (i think ice reflects 90% of the solar energy). An ice-free Arctic will cause a catastrophic collapse of the land-locked Greenland ice which will raise sea levels up to 20 feet or so. If we lose the Arctic ice we lose everything...it is the great stabilizer.
The above news article is totally absurd. Extracting more oil will be the least of our concerns in a world with runaway global warming.
Ihope the waterworld to come is better than the movie.
Something positive to try while waiting for the methane release....stop the carbon-auto subsidies.
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
.
Ratifying the Law of the Sea in the Senate has been held up because they did not want to give others an advantage. Now as it turns out the only one that will be at a disadvantage is us.
This oil will be VERY costly to bring in. We should get our share of it and probably will, but it is going to break the backs of whoever tries to take on more of it than they can handle.
There is plenty of fresh water ice in the Arctic. Howsome-ever, 90% of ALL of the fresh water on this unique water planet, is in the ice cap of Anarctica. If that keeps melting, the sea levels could rise over 200 feet. Before that happens, we will all be history, along with almost all other life on Earth. The last ones alive, will be in the orbiting space station drawng straws, to see which one will be on the weekly menu. The old time sailors, used to call that meat, "long pork". ___ Sorry that's a fact.
Golly ~USan~, my college edition Webster's dictionary must be wrong, or I read it wrong. Let me check it again.
Yep, on page 76, right there below the word "arctic", is Arctic Circle. Here's what it say: Arctic Circle, arctic circle. (guess those two words don't really have to be capitalized ). Anyway it reads: An imaginary circle, parallel to the equator, 23 degrees 30' from the North Pole.
Then there is a drawing of that imaginary circle line and so using a ruler, I guess-timated it was about 300 or so miles to the northern tip of Maine. Maybe my ruler is wrong? Maybe I'm stupid. No question mark there. ___ I think you are maybe correct on the miles.
Anyway, I wish I hadn't brougt it up. I was replying to the ~Lizard~ that indeed there is a lot of land in the Arctic, not just floating ice and water. It encases much of Alaska and Greenland and much of Siberia too.
Maybe the "imaginary line" defining the Arctic Circle has been changed since my Webster college edition dictionary was published? Let's see? Mine is dated 1968, so it's 40 years old. What happened in 1968?
Well, American soldiers lined up about 300 civilians, including women and children in a small village in Vietnam and shot and killed them.__LBJ said he was not going to run for the presidency again and Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both murdered. Our first son was born and Pope Paul denounced birth control, except for the rhythm system, which I don't understand, but maybe Bill Clinton would offer his version.
I have a feeling that the current crop of world leaders is working on a clever plan to whip the lemmings as they approach the cliff. This way the winner will be the nation with the most dead lemmings furthest from the cliff base.
No matter how bad previous administrations were this one is by far the worst because it has ignored all past and current warnings that others didn't have in specific mind blowing detail. The next president will not be so happy they got their wish to be elected, unless the junk the past, tell the truth, trash secrecy, trash spying without probable cause and warrant, and engage the people in problem resolution rather than fear mongering.
If the next president does all this, I expect the alarm will go off and I will awake to find President McCain proving that there really is a difference in the minor distinction between the two branches of the corporate party.
Man flatters himself by calling his culture civilized. Today the hell dogs are loose and the blood keeps flowing. There are hopeful positives but the negatives are building exponentially.
It's hard to watch as society collapses under the weight of the American criminal enterprise. Educated fools!
"If the ice cap melts it will be lights out for human civilization…forget about exploiting for oil. How will the oil rigs dock when their piers are 10 feet under water?"
Melting arctic sea ice or ice shelves (what the article is talking about) won't raise sea level, because the ice is floating and already displacing the same amount of liquid water it will produce when it melts - remember Archimedes principle?
And Kem, the arctic circle lies at N. latitude 66° 33′ 39″, which is 23° 26′ 22" (i.e the earth's tilt-angle) below the north pole. I think it is a good bit further than 300 miles from northern Maine. Probably more like 1400 miles.
Did you play those numbers COCO? Where is my Canoe?
This is one example of absence of knowledge and insight that has plagued our policies since this administration took office. This does not imply that the previous administration had been adequately responsive to the crucial needs for action in this arena, but the negligent outrages from this administration and the devastating consequences are unprecedented and all to apparent.
Keep dreaming, when the Arctic methane gas blooms out, we'l all be dreamng ____ forever.
Global warming and climate change caused by global warming are two seperate issues. Dramatic climate changes we are now experiencing are not going to stop the Global Warming or the Arctic thaws, which is primariy caused from burning fossil fuels during the past 200+ years.
"...could pit countries that border the Arctic Ocean against each other to claim mineral rights."
If we, the people, claimed the poles for our benefit, war could be avoided and we could harvest these resources with the proceeds going to the needy among us. A national commons run like a business, and a protected area both.
Sorry, couldn't help dreaming a bit.
Hi ~Wilmoor~ I wasn't being critical of you, and realize some may post a comment without reading other's posts. I do that occasionally. I had already posted where one may find the articles, which are written by highly qualified atmospheric and geological scientists, about the Arctic methane gas and then you posted you had read about it someplce, so I thought you'd missed my post.
Yep ~Namaste~, there are too many artiles any more here at Common Dreams to get a decent thread going, lots of informative bloggers have departed to other progressive sites. This Sunday's lead article will probably be in the Archives by Tuesday.
Who exactly are those people you are speaking of ~MIKE IRWIN~?
Someone questioned that the Arctic Circle is only abut 300 mles north of Limestone, Maine. Well, the Arctic Circle stretches down the globe to 30 degrees and 30' from the North Pole, it covers a lot of land area, I was guess-timating the distance, it may be 330 or 295 miles from Limestone. It ain't very far. My point was, there is a lot of land in the Arctic and over 400 billion tons of methance gas trapped in the melting perma frost. When that gas releases ___ and it will, we are history, that includes the bull-headed denyers and their offspring if any.
Hey CoCo:
That would be a tragedy, and the same food web provides much of our food too. Local wildlife populations have proven resilient once the problem is removed, but the pollution is global now.
Its hard to have hope for the future sometimes, but you have to.
BBR001
'with a little luck, the polar bears, whales, seals, birds.... and indigenous humans will be there long after the honkeys and the oil are gone'
don't bet on it......the pollution in the seas and oceans will surely be the destruction of these creatures who depend on it for food.
KEM - Actually I did read your posts - all of them. Matter of fact, I enjoy your posts and nearly always agree with them. I also read all the posts before I add my own because I'm very interested in what all the views are. I just didn't realize you were saying the Siberian tundra had already been thawing for some time. I can't always take time to scroll back and reread because on my dinosaur computer, I sometimes get dumped off if I pause in one place for too long.
KEM PATRICK
'bush thinks the arctic is a village in northern maine.' yeah, and i thought that Wan King was a province of china till i discovered 'smirnoff'.
I wouldn't be surprised if there really isn't a lot oil and gas up there. We are burning through even relatively large discoveries like Prudhoe Bay and the North Sea in just a few decades. Claims to the mineral wealth will likewise only pay out for a few decades.
With a little luck, the polar bears, whales, seals, birds... and indigenous humans will be there long after the honkeys and the oil are gone.
Pump the last drop of oil as the last ice cube melts. Priceless!!
Expert: Arctic polar cap may disappear this summer
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-01 13:48:06
Special Report: Fight against Global Warming
OSLO, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- The polar cap in the Arctic may well disappear this summer due to the global warming, Dr. Olav Orheim, head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, said on Friday. The shrinking of the Arctic ice cap has been astonishing, Orheim said in an interview with Xinhua. "Ice sheet hit the historical low of 3 million square km duringthe hottest weeks last summer, while it covered 7.5 million squarekm on average before the year 2000, " he said. "If Norway's average temperature this year equals that in 2007,the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions," Orheim said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/01/content_7696460.htm
If the ice cap melts it will be lights out for human civilization...forget about exploiting for oil. How will the oil rigs dock when their piers are 10 feet under water?
There are so many people who call themselves informed that go slow when casting responsibility. Their 401ks or positions get in the way of their mouth. Who is really out there or here doing more than talking and telling us all how clever they are and how much they know about the world's eventual demise and our responsibility for it?
"the burning of fossil fuels is at least in part responsible for the Arctic melt" - even in such an article, by a writer who knows what is happening, she feels obliged to present the reality in such a mealy-mouthed way. The "burning of fossil fuels" is totally responsible for the Arctic melt - without the increase in CO2 the melt wouldn't be happening. I guess by "in part" the author means that much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is natural and part of it is from fossil fuels, but it is that "part" that is causing the climate change, so that "part" is wholly responsible. And, right on cue, there is MeAlsoToo_ARealist, a.k.a MeAlsoToo_ADenier to present the usual spin on Antarctic ice. The ice from the Arctic isn't shifting in any sense. The edges of the Antarctic (and the glaciers) are melting like everywhere else. The center of the Antarctic continent (this is a much more complex situation that the Arctic) did seem to be gaining more snow, the result, unsurprisingly, of warmer sea temperatures providing more moisture into the air, which then, in the frigid center of the Antarctic, falls as snow.
I am always amazed to see one of these almost extinct deniers emerge and strut upon the stage of these threads, as if nothing had changed in the way of knowledge or public awareness in the ten years since they began their damaging activities (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Climate_change/).
Well Greenland has some major melting. Huge holes in the ice with more water melting into these holes than is going over Niagara Falls.
The topic was new cold war. Myself I put my money on Russia sine it is debt free, lots of oil. I feel they didn't loose the last Cold war just woke up to the fact it is easier to let America spend itself into the ground all by itself. How can an arms race be called a war?
It's not like we are "missing" any polar-ice...it all seems to be showing-up, 'alive and well' in the Antarctic, lately...
Kem, the artic circle starts 300 miles north of Maine?
KEM -- I feel much better, and busy with so many threads. It's like a tapestry of possibility, that we're using as a trampoline.
A few weak threads here and there, and ripppppPPPPP, there goes the whole neighborhood and planet.
Yes, I was explaining for Wilmoor's opagnithcity
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
I was referring to Wilmoor's post Nam, 35 min after mine. How ya doin? Maybe Will missed mine.
KEM -- Nope, your post was prior to my own, but hidden from view due to the update factor of the page, as we compose our individual responses.
Depending upon how long one takes to compose, one's world view will be equally behind "real-time", until submitted.
Namaste
You must have scrolled past my post about Googling Arctic methane gas ~WILMOOR~. Of course I don't blame you for scrolling past MY posts. Of course I really don't care.
"We have to be creative and help local people understand eco-tourism, pheasant hunting and how to make these activities business for themselves," says Hamilton, whose family foundation funds education efforts. "We are settling back to a more reasonable balance between population and the environment."
**pheasant hunting is definitely not a reasonable business. Just what we need, more trash like Cheney and his idiot lawyer friend he almost killed out shooting birds.
Oh the humanity.
I don't recall where it was, but a few years ago I read an article that said areas in Siberia where the frozen tundra was thawing, and what would happen when that methane gas began to be released.
namaste - "Perhaps the methyl hydrate will jump up and burp 'em in the face ?"
If it does, it won't be any of the idiots responsible, it'll be the grunts out there doing all the dirty work for them.
The Arctic Circle begins about 300 miles north of Limestone Maine. Which was once part of Canada, until America won the little ever heard of Aroostook War. It was fought over peas and potatoes. Limestone is also known as the "Pea Patch".
¿ Perhaps the methyl hydrate will jump up and burp 'em in the face ?
United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway. Five countries involved. Let's assume four major political people in each country make the big decisions - like do we go to war over this or figure out a sane solution that works for the world. That's 20 people from democratic, peace loving nations that just need to get together to solve this. Or is it like our G8 conferences where the Greedy 8 can't find their way out of a paper bag.
Google Arctic methane gas. There are a thousand+ articles on the subject, none are good news.
Scroll down to the one titled, ___"Methane Burps, A Tickng Time Bomb". ___ We are screwed if we humans don't take some sensibe action to prevent it and time is not on our side.
You are totally wrong again ~Lizard~, you are consistant. Lots of land and huge islands in the Arctic. Ever hear of northern Canada and northern Siberia? Lots of gold deposits there also.
But the methane gas release will solve all of the problems humanity has. It is not a question of when it will "burp" out and kill off most of the life on this water world. The question is WHEN? It may be any year within the next ten, up to fifty, more likely ten to twenty years, unless we attempt to prevent it. ___ Our kids are gonna hate us.
Also, the mood is right for some doomsday poetry anno 1972:
"As I read the story of what we've done and do,
my heart breaks for sorrow,
my head bows for shame.
We have killed all our yesterdays and tomorrows
and today is busting into flame..."
-- Ichabod Rain
Ummn, Grease and Lizard -- it's the continental shelves which are being, well not exposed, but made available. Denmark (a.k.a. The Happy Little Kingdom) has a tiff with the Russians and is spending umpteen millions to investigate/prove/show that the continental shelf from Greenland extends further north than the Russian shelf from (I think) Novaja Zemla.
Wildfires in the Arctic? Not so farfetched anymore.
Greace: there is no land to expose in the arctic, its just floating ice.
The U.S., and Russia, are arguing over who owns the arctic ocean as the ice sheet continues to melt thanks to global warming. As the land becomes exposed prospectors want to hunt for oil, but no one is quite sure who owns the oil. "The irony is that the burning of fossil fuels is at least in part responsible for the Arctic melt -- due to climate change -- and the Arctic melt could pave the way for a 21st century rush to exploit even more fossil fuels." How sick is this?
It's vindication of sorts for East Coast professors Frank Popper and his wife, Deborah Popper. The two were maligned by residents here for predicting 20 years ago that Plains population losses would be so dire that government one day would take over large expanses of the region and return them to their natural state by creating a "Buffalo Commons" — a national park where bison would roam.
Today, some of their bold ideas are coming to life — without direct government intervention and not as starkly as the Poppers suggested, but faster than they could have imagined.
"We had not expected much to happen for another generation," says Deborah Popper, who teaches geography at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island.
The Great Plains, long known as the nation's breadbasket, remains the primary source of wheat for the USA. It's also a prime producer of flax seed, sorghum, sunflower, barley, corn, cattle and cotton. Despite population declines in many areas, the total acres of corn, soybean and wheat in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana are up 7.2 million acres since 1950 to 48.3 million acres, says Jim Stephens, president of Farmers National Commodities, a grain-marketing consultant.
Just as people were encouraged to settle the region by the Homestead Act of 1862 and later by several other laws, the Poppers have argued that people should be encouraged to stop farming land that perhaps shouldn't have been farmed in the first place.
They suggested that people stop farming troubled parts of the Great Plains such as western North Dakota, western Nebraska and eastern Montana — fighting words in an area where family ties to the land survived the Dust Bowl and Great Depression in the 1930s. When the Poppers were scheduled to speak in Montana in 1992, their appearance was canceled because of death threats.
Few envisioned then what is happening on the Plains today. The private sector, state and local governments and non-profit groups are pouring money into preserving land and returning it to wildlife. Small towns are still dying, but economic enterprises are emerging from this environmental effort — from bison and dried-fruit snacks produced by Native Americans in South Dakota to Lewis and Clark Trail motorcoach tours in Nebraska.
"Now, the Buffalo Commons has become a lot more plausible," says Frank Popper, a land-use planner and professor at Rutgers University. "There are five to eight different ways this is all going on right now.
"We have never said that the Buffalo Commons would overrun the Plains," he adds. "There has to be a co-existence of land uses and different approaches."
Beth Davis, president of South Dakota Rural Enterprise, an organization that provides economic development resources to communities, says the Poppers' predictions about the Plains "woke people up. If it ticks you off, all the better. We're making some different decisions. We're becoming pro-active. There will be communities that are 500 people strong that will thrive … and others that won't."
The mind-set has changed.
"It's unfair to say, 'Well, my grandparents settled here and they farmed, therefore I should be able to farm and my grandchildren should be able to farm,' " says Christine Hamilton, a fourth-generation South Dakotan and one of the largest ranchers in the state. Christiansen Land and Cattle Ltd. owns about 25,000 acres and manages another 10,000.
"We have to be creative and help local people understand eco-tourism, pheasant hunting and how to make these activities business for themselves," says Hamilton, whose family foundation funds education efforts. "We are settling back to a more reasonable balance between population and the environment."
Bush thinks the Arctic is a village in northern Maine.
Cold war? ___ More likely a hot war with the people we've been electing to high office.
But when the Anarctic ice melts along with the Arctic's ice, all of the Arctic will be under a couple hundred feet of water so it will be naval war.
The true and sad fact is, when the Arctic and Siberian tundra melts, the once trapped methane gas there will have escaped into our atmosphere and the only wars fought here on Earth after that preventable disaster, will be between rodents, roaches and bacteria.
Oh Goodie. Warming allows us to burn even more, ensuring that the climate, most of Earth's species, and certainly human civilization are FULLY screwed.
As Einstein said, there are only two infinite things: the Universe and human stupidity. But he wasn't positive about the Universe....
Very sick. Insane sick.