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RT @the_ecologist: #Arctic: industry insider explains how Arctic Ocean oil drilling is a risky choice http://t.co/n3LpmOoV

via:packrati.us Arctic

Cairn share price drops in the wake of last week's @Greenpece action against #Arctic oil drilling http://bit.ly/kh44cD

via:packrati.us Arctic

Sign this petition to demand to see Arctic oil driller's Greenland oil spill response plan http://bit.ly/m3SBLh
Sign this petition to demand to see #Arctic oil driller's #Greenland #oil spill response plan http://bit.ly/m3SBLh

Greenland Arctic oil via:packrati.us

I just asked #Cairn's energy boss Bill Gammell about his #Arctic #spill response plan. Why don't you? http://bit.ly/lIgL8B

via:packrati.us spill Cairn's Arctic

Four Greenpeace activists who halted drilling by a British-owned oil exploration rig off Greenland have been arrested after they abandoned their occupation because of severe weather.

Greenlandic police arrested the four after high winds buffeted the Stena Don drilling rig overnight, forcing them to abandon mountaineering-style platforms they had suspended by ropes underneath the platform less than 48 hours earlier.

greenpeace greenland Stena Don drilling rig cairn energy arctic drilling arctic

Environmental group WWF Scotland has reacted with dismay at news today [1] that Edinburgh-based oil firm, Cairn Energy, has begun drilling oil exploration wells in the waters off Greenland. WWF Scotland had hoped plans to drill in the environmentally-sensitive Arctic environment would be postponed following the recent BP oil disaster. WWF is calling for an immediate moratorium on new drilling activities in the Arctic.

arctic drilling oil wwf cairn energy

On June 15th, as BP's catastrophic spill in the Gulf neared its third month, President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He had put an indefinite hold on plans to open up new coastal areas, including Florida and Virginia, to offshore exploration. And he had frozen all new permits to drill in deep waters for six months, to give a blue-ribbon commission time to study the disaster. "We need better regulations, better safety standards and better enforcement," the president insisted.

But Obama's tough-guy act offers no guarantee that oil giants like BP won't be permitted to repeat the same mistakes that led to the nightmare in the Gulf. Indeed, top environmentalists warn, the suspension of drilling appears to be little more than a stalling tactic designed to let public anger over BP's spill subside before giving Big Oil the go-ahead to drill in an area that has long been off-limits: the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic Ocean arctic bp oilspill offshore

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame

arctic methane emissions global warming climate change

"The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years' time, a top polar specialist has said.

"It's like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet," said Professor Peter Wadhams, from the University of Cambridge.

Professor Wadhams has been studying the Arctic ice since the 1960s.

He was speaking in central London at the launch of the findings of the Catlin Arctic Survey. "

arctic polar ice ice melt catlin arctic survey climate change greenmonktv

The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

While this year's September minimum extent was greater than each of the past two record-setting and near-record-setting low years, it is still significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, said NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases being pumped into Earth's atmosphere.

arctic sea ice arctic ocean Arctic ice melt arctic sea ice nsidc greenmonktv

Atmospheric circulation patterns in August helped spread out sea ice, slowing ice loss in most regions of the Arctic. NSIDC scientists expect to see the minimum ice extent for the year in the next few weeks. While this year’s minimum ice extent will probably not reach the record low of 2007, it remains well below normal: average ice extent for August 2009 was the third-lowest in the satellite record. Ice extent has now fallen below the 2005 minimum, previously the third-lowest extent in the satellite record.

arctic arctic sea ice nsidc ice extent GreenNumbers greenmonktv

Unimaginable quantities of methane — a greenhouse gas 20 to 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide — are stored underground in the Arctic. Some of it is leaking out

methane arctic greenhouse gas emissions greenmonktv

Humans are essentially putting the brakes on the next ice age, according to a September 2009 study that represents the most extensive work to date on Arctic climate change.

Arctic temperatures (seen in blue, above) have cooled over the past 2,000 years due to a natural tilt in Earth's axis. But human-caused global warming reversed that trend in the mid-1990s (seen in red).

Analysis of records from lake sediments, ice cores, and tree rings found the same results as computer models, strengthening the researchers' conclusions.

arctic thaw arctic global warming climate change ice age greenmonktv

The Arctic has warmed as a result of climate change, despite the Earth being farther from the sun during summer months

climate change arctic global warming GreenNumbers

The predicted year when summers in the Arctic would be free of sea ice has fallen from 2100 to 2050 to 2030 in a couple of years.

Jay Zwally, a Nasa scientist, recently suggested it could be virtually ice-free by late summer 2012. Between 2004 and 2008 the area of "multiyear" Arctic sea ice (ice that has formed over more than one winter and survived the summer melt) shrank by 595,000 sq miles, an area larger than France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined.

Very well written, very sobering article on arctic ses ice.

arctic sea ice arctic arctic ice ice melt greenland ice sheet greenland greenmonktv

From his trawler that motors along the Nuuk fjord, fisherman Johannes Heilmann has watched helplessly in recent years as climate change takes its toll on Greenland.

Global warming is occurring twice as fast in the Arctic as in the rest of the world.

greenland Climate Change global warming arctic greenmonktv

The National Snow and Ice Data Center has a July 6 update on Arctic ice melt:

The Arctic is now in the midst of the summer melt season. Through most of June, ice extent tracked below the 1979 to 2000 average, and slightly above the levels recorded during June 2007.

National Snow and Ice Data Center Arctic ice melt ice melt arctic greenmonktv

The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.

arctic antarctic sea level rise climate change

Scientists claim to have discovered evidence for large releases of methane into the atmosphere from frozen seabed stores off the northern coast of Siberia.

methane siberia methane chimneys arctic greenhouse gas

The concern over the climate impact of sub-Arctic thaw is not new. The U.N. has called the melting of permafrost a "wild card" that could dramatically worsen global warming by releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases.

"The balance of evidence suggests that Arctic feedbacks that amplify warming, globally and regionally, will dominate during the next 50 to 100 years," warned the UNEP Year Book 2008 when it was published earlier this year. "As warming continues, these feedbacks will likely intensify. We may be approaching thresholds that are difficult to predict precisely, but crossing such thresholds could have serious global consequences."

arctic arctic ice arctic thaw greenhouse gas arctic feedback