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EmailAndrew Sullivan has posted a video from The Economist which offers an excellent animated explanation of the current Arctic resources rush. Six nations bordering the melting Arctic Circle are vying for territory on the seabed and to control potential shipping lanes as more of the waters prove navigable.
Among other things, there's oil and gas up there under the ice and sea. Russia, Norway, Denmark (via Greenland), Iceland, the U.S. and Canada are all players. They have until May 13, 2009 to stake their claim on unclaimed portions of the seabed to the United Nations. This is the best overview of the competing claims I've seen.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Jan 27, 4:58 p.m. Inappropriate
This is why I will maintain my Economist subscription as long as I can afford it.
I wonder what will happen if/when Greenland becomes independent?
I also bet that Finland is really smarting over the loss of Petsamo/Pechenga right now... that sliver of coastline could have made a huge difference to their present fortunes if they'd managed to hold onto it during World War II.
Posted Tue, Jan 27, 11:45 p.m. Inappropriate
Washington DC, Jan 27th 2009:
NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears.
“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.