By American estimates, 25 percent of the world's oil and mineral deposits are locked beneath the northern ice cap, but will become available if the world warms enough. It would not be the first time that the Arctic has been free of ice. Analysis of soil samples drilled beneath the mile-thick ice cover have shown that Greenland was in the past rich in forests, vegetation and animal life.
[Link: The Washington Times]
This may be one of those situations where everybody in the world is crazy but me, but I think not. Am I the only one who reads these stories of everyone scrambling for the oil riches in the Arctic and can't believe that the only concern seems to be whether the ice is going to melt fast enough and who is going to get nuked getting at all that oil? Come on guys. The reason the ice is melting is that we are burning too much oil! The best chance for the survival of our way of life, and maybe even us, is if that oil stays locked up by the ice. By the time the Arctic is ice free we will be in the throes of a massive environmental/climate shift that will alter our way of life beyond anything humanity has endured in the past and that will last indefinitely into the future. I have to believe that by that time we will have realized what we have done and removed ourselves from the hydrocarbon age.
4 comments:
This claim is bull. There is hardly any oil in that part of the world, apparently the geology is all wrong. Natural gas is perhaps another matter. As for removing ourselves from the hydrocarbon age, don't worry, mother nature will do it for us, with a nice juicy die-off.
Thanks for the comment. You are probably right. I hope you are. I wasn't commenting as much about the oil itself as about the huge irony of using the negative side effects of oil as a means to get more oil. It takes my breath away.
No worries Bill, but am not to sure you mean by "probably right". Were you referring to the oil in the arctic, or the die-off? I hope I am right about the first because the thing I am hoping I am wrong about (a big juicy die-off) will come to pass if we find some way to keep this whacky economic system growing for much longer!
Cheers,
John
I was talking about the oil but I am afraid you are probably right about the juicy die-off as well. We continue to seek solutions to our energy limits that will replace what we are losing rather than seek solutions that will allow us to adjust our consumption to what we really have. As long as that is the case we will face some sort of reckoning down the line. A stressed population living in a stressed environment can find innumerable ways to collapse and in fact the die-off will probably be a many-headed monster.
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