Word: arctic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Opening up more federal land to oil exploration would be another way to bolster the energy industry. Earlier this month the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources approved legislation to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Experts believe the field may hold enough oil to supply U.S. needs for about 20 months. But the bill will face fierce opposition from conservationists who argue that drilling could destroy caribou, polar bears and other wildlife. Opposition could be bolstered by last week's Alaskan oil spill...
Even if the Arctic Refuge is developed, the U.S. will remain in the position of a hungry consumer with a relatively small larder. The Persian Gulf now holds two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves. The U.S. share is less than 3%, while its annual consumption has reached nearly 30% of worldwide usage. Those sobering figures are reason enough for the U.S. to avoid gas- gulping habits that would bring on another painful awakening...
...radiation, which has been linked to cataracts, skin cancers and weakened immune systems in humans and other animals, as well as to damage to plants. Data-gathering flights in the Antarctic in 1987 made the connection between CFCs and ozone destruction all but certain. After a similar expedition through Arctic skies last month, scientists said conditions are ripe for a similar hole to develop over the northern regions this spring...
...little village of Coldfoot, Alaska, 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle, has long endured jokes about its name. But last week no one in Coldfoot -- or anywhere else in Alaska -- was in much of a mood to laugh about the temperature. For a whole month, the entire state had been gripped by one of the fiercest Arctic cold waves on record. Some towns in the interior registered temperatures as low as -75 degrees F for days a time. As for Coldfoot, an unconfirmed reading there two weeks ago put the temperature at -82 degrees, colder than the official North...
Heavy steel equipment in the North Slope oil fields turned icily brittle and snapped into pieces. Military operations were disrupted. Most of the 26,000 Army, Air Force and Coast Guard personnel taking part in Operation Brim Frost, an Arctic training mission, were told to stay in their barracks. The Kusko 300, one of the state's major dog-mushing events, had to be postponed...