Word: arctic
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Russia is at the thick of the new game. In an expedition that lacked nothing in patriotic bluster, a Russian-led team descended to the seabed on Aug. 2 and planted a titanium Russian flag directly on the North Pole. In early September, Russian bombers launched cruise missiles during Arctic exercises. But it isn't only the Russians who are staking their claims. On Aug. 10, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper flew to Resolute, a hamlet of 250 souls on Cornwallis Island in the northern territory of Nunavut, and announced plans for an Arctic military training facility and a refurbished...
...current interest in the Arctic, in short, is a perfect storm seeded with political opportunism, national pride, military muscle flexing, high energy prices and the arcane exigencies of international law. But the tale begins with global warming, which is transforming the Arctic. The ice cap, which floats atop much of the Arctic Ocean, is at least 25% smaller than it was 30 years ago. As the heat-reflecting ice that has made the Arctic the most inaccessible and uncharted part of the earth turns into water - which absorbs heat - the shrinkage is accelerating faster than climate models ever predicted...
...shrinkage of the ice has made it easier to access the Arctic, competition for the region's resources has intensified. David Ooingoot Kalluk, 66, an Inuit who has hunted on the ice around Resolute for the past 48 years, has sensed the weird new world to come. "The snow and ice now melt from the bottom, not the top," Kalluk says as he glances out over the almost ice-free waters of Resolute Bay and fingers a pair of binoculars. He used to take dogsleds across the ice in June to hunt caribou on nearby Bathurst Island. Now, he says...
...polar bears may not be able to. A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) predicts that shrinking sea ice will mean a two-thirds reduction in their population by midcentury. Not even strict adherence to the Kyoto accord on limiting greenhouse gases would stop an Arctic meltdown, which means the Arctic, like nowhere else on Earth, is a place where efforts to mitigate global warming have yielded to full-bore adaptation to its impact. That process is freighted with irony. With gas and oil prices near historic highs and with scant prospect of any decrease in world demand...
...rush will go on for Arctic resources, even though it is far from clear how extensive they really are. An often cited USGS report from 2000 estimated that the Arctic could contain 25% of the world's undiscovered oil reserves. More precise guesses are just beginning to come out. Late last month the USGS put total reserves in the East Greenland Rift Basins at 31.4 billion bbl. of "oil equivalent," mostly in the form of natural gas. (That would be the equivalent of about four years of U.S. oil consumption.) While the assessment of the region won't be finished...