GLACIER? NATIONAL PARK RENAMED TO GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH NATIONAL PARK

BILLINGS, Montana — Glacier National Park has lost two more of its glaciers to climate change and many of the rest may be gone by the end of the decade, a government researcher said Wednesday.

Warmer temperatures have reduced the number of named glaciers in the northwestern Montana park to 25, said Dan Fagre said, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Here is an interesting article about Glacier National Park. It is interesting because the glaciers have melted. A fact, which is also an embarrassment on a couple of levels. A young student today, a product of an educational system that excludes critical thinking or a historical perspective, might well ask his parents, "Why did they name this place Glacier National Park?" It is more likely that he might ask, "What is a Glacier?"

As a tribute to Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, corporations that yearly spend millions of dollars producing the "junk science" regarding global warming that is regularly and routinely trumpeted on the "junk media" FOX news, I suggest the following proposition.

As a tribute to this monumental collaborative effort this park should be renamed from Glacier National Park to Global Warming is a Myth National Park.

CHINA IN ICE FREE ARCTIC

"The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the Chinese government to allocate more resources to Arctic research,"

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Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are already at odds over how to divvy up the Arctic riches

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90 billion untapped barrels of oil -- and wrangling over who should control the still frozen shipping routes

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the famed Northwest Passage

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could become ice-free in the summer months any time between 2013 and 2060, would cut travel distance by 40 percent.

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She points out that the country has one of the world's strongest polar scientific research capabilities and already owns the world's largest non-nuclear icebreaker.

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Last year Beijing approved the building of a new high-tech polar expedition research icebreaker, to set sail in 2013.

THE TIPPING POINT

Canada's Permafrost Has Moved North 80 Miles in Past 50 Years
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 02.18.10
Science & Technology (science)

Writing in the journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, the scientists also say that permafrost is in an advanced state of deterioration as far north as the 55th parallel.

Stored Methane Emissions Increasing

methane is a more potent greenhouse gas. The fear is that a tipping point will be reached and vast stores of methane will be released in a relatively short time period as the permafrost melting trend continues.

EXXON IN THE ARCTIC

ExxonMobil could be ramping up its Arctic

to sign a contract for a Transocean rig capable of drilling in Arctic waters and which is estimated to cost up to $1 billion to build

Exxon has long been interested in the Arctic and has an increased its acreage in the Beaufort Sea and is in different stages of planning and assessment in areas offshore West Greenland, eastern Canada and Newfoundland.

annual summer ice thaw increases, leaving more open water

proposed (and now long-awaited and over budget) MacKenzie Valley Gas Project key to Exxon’s Arctic plans.

Exxon Arctic Fields

KIVALINA, ALASKA

Storm-plagued village sues energy companies

Anchorage Daily News
February 26th, 2008

photo by Melinda Kramer

By ELIZABETH BLUEMINK

The eroding village of Kivalina in the Northwest Arctic is suing Exxon Mobil and 23 other energy companies for damage related to global warming.
The suit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of the Native village's federally recognized tribe and its city government, according to lawyers for the village.

Kivalina, located on a shrinking barrier island in the Chukchi Sea, says the energy companies should pay to move the village to safer ground.

"We need to relocate now before we lose lives," said Janet Mitchell, city administrator for Kivalina, in a press release announcing the lawsuit.

The companies are contributing to global warming that is threatening to destroy the village, according to the lawsuit, which demands a jury trial. The defendants include one coal company, nine oil companies and 14 utilities. Three of the oil companies - Exxon, BP and Conoco Phillips - operate on Alaska's North Slope.

Growing Pentagon Focus on Energy and Climate

Growing Pentagon Focus on Energy and Climate
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

For the first time, the report — at the request of lawmakers — considered the significance of climate change for national security, both as a potential source of conflict and a factor in military operations.

A core conclusion:

Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.

The report also describes a longstanding, and now intensifying, focus on cutting the use of fuels, which is a huge cost and a security concern on the battlefield. There’s yet another plea — particularly in light of expanding shipping activity in the Arctic Ocean — for ratification of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, which despite support from a series of presidents faces persistent resistance from a small cluster of influential senators

NAVY: TIME IS NOW TO PREP FOR ICE FREE ARCTIC

Freakin' Navy. First, they accept the global warming fraud and then start throwing away billions of borrowed chinese $$'s on the new arctic battlefield



Navy: Time is now to prep for ice-free Arctic

By Lance M. Bacon - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Feb 2, 2010 12:43:37 EST

The Navy will soon have a new battlefield on its hands. Climate changes near the North Pole have been dramatic. The amount of summertime ice has decreased by half over the past 50 years. The ice is also 50 percent thinner, resulting in greater seasonal variations.

“The Arctic is changing, and it is changing rapidly,” said Rear Adm. David Titley, oceanographer of the Navy. “If the Navy does not start looking at this today … we could wake up in seven or eight years and find ourselves way behind the power curve.”

ARCTIC OIL TWO

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0216697120080102

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=56399

GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD AND THE US NAVY

This decade of emails and documents clearly concludes that global warming scientists have manipulated scientific data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures; and the fact that, there has been no statistically significant global warming for fifteen years, but our world has experienced a rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Well, apparently these guys did not get the message

The U.S. navy is planning a massive push into the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches and other maritime interests.

An "Arctic roadmap" by the Department of the Navy details a five-year strategic plan to expand fleet operations into the North in anticipation that the frozen Arctic Ocean will be open water in summer by 2030.

SHELL IN BEAUFORT

After years of controversy and delays, a federal agency has given the green light to Royal Dutch Shell to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean.

The decision on Monday by the Minerals Management Service clears one of the last big hurdles for the company to drill two exploration wells on two offshore lease areas in the Beaufort Sea. The company plans to do the drilling between July and October 2010 — the next open-water season when the sea-ice melts.

Shell, which does not produce on the North Slope, has bet heavily on Alaska’s offshore potential. In 2008, it paid $2.1 billion for leases in both the Beaufort and the Chukchi Sea, and now has about 200 offshore leases.

“The reality of offshore oil drilling is that accidents will happen,” he said. “And when oil spills in Arctic ice, there is no cleaning it up. A blow-out like the one that recently despoiled waters off the coast of Australia would leave oil in the waters off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for decades, killing whales, seals, fish and birds and turning irreplaceable spawning and feeding grounds into an ecological wasteland.”

CHUCKCHI SEA

Oil companies just spent a record $2.7 BILLION dollars for the "right" to drill exploratory wells in the Chuckchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. This is a huge amount of money, in fact, the most ever spent in Alaska
the oil companies are very confident there is a lot of recoverable oil in rocks beneath the Chuckchi Sea. It also means they think they can find it, produce it, and move it to market.

Wonk Room Global Warming

SHELL LEASE CHUKCHI

WASHINGTON — With global warming melting the Arctic's eons-old ice at an alarming rate, shipping and oil companies are looking ahead at how to exploit the new open waters.

Scientists say the Arctic's seas could be essentially free of ice in the summertime by mid-century.

Already, shipping already has increased within the Arctic Circle to serve the oil and gas industry.

Oil companies have been looking at Alaska's arctic waters as a new frontier.

And in the past two years, the Bush administration has leased large parts of those waters — the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

Shell was the main buyer of the Chukchi leases in February, spending $2.1 billion.

"Shell, like many other national and international oil companies, is actively assessing Arctic opportunities," said Shell spokeswoman Darci Sinclair.

90 BILLION BARRELS

There’s oil in that thar Arctic, and lots of it; that’s what the U.S. Geological Survey has to say after conducting the most comprehensive survey of the Arctic’s energy resources to date. The USGS says the polar region contains one-fifth of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas resources, which amounts to 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The report is bound to fuel calls for oil companies to increase drilling in the Arctic Ocean, and is also guaranteed to spark protests from environmentalists who advocate a shift away from fossil fuels.

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Ironically, much of the new exploration is being made possible by global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels; melting ice caps have opened up prospects that were once considered too harsh to explore [The New York Times].

ARCTIC MELT

The ice lid on the Arctic Ocean continues to melt. At summer’s end, sea-ice coverage was one-third smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000.
The map has patches of color demarcating areas of the Arctic Ocean and seabed to which each of the five countries bordering the ocean—the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway—might claim title. Bright, solid colors represent seafloor over which each country already has jurisdiction because it lies within its 200-nautical-mile offshore limit. Striped areas represent the maximum stretch of seafloor each is likely to claim as additional territory under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

OIL LAST FRONTIER

Last spring Canada Southern Petroleum, a company with significant reserves inside the Arctic Circle, received a takeover offer of $7.50 per share, nearly a 60 percent premium on its stock price. By the time the company was sold four months later to another Canadian firm, it went for $13.10 a share.

While there is drilling in the Arctic on or close to shore, the sea under the polar cap is unlikely to remain largely untapped for long - governments and corporations are racing to carve up the Arctic oil pie.

A new petroleum province will likely be needed if the world is going to both replace the output from current fields, many of which are declining, and keep up with worldwide oil demand that is expected to surge by more than 50 percent over the next 25 years. This underlay the tripling of oil prices since 2002.

BP (Charts), which operates the huge Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska, signed a $17 billion exploration agreement with Russia.

Statoil, Norway's state oil company, considered to have some of the best cold-weather expertise in the business from its North Sea operations, is well positioned to explore massive deposits believed to lie north of Norway in the Barents Sea.

Royal Dutch Shell (Charts), ExxonMobil (Charts), Chevron (Charts) and ConocoPhillips (Charts) have interests as well.

ARCTIC OIL RUSH

Back in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea went into effect, a treaty that defined ocean boundaries and set up regulations for ship traffic. The U.S. signed the treaty in 1994, but the Senate refused to ratify it, opposing the idea of UN sovereignty.

But what was then just a diplomatic absence is now seen as a lapse in judgment that could cost billions of dollars. Under Law of the Sea, countries are entitled to control any waters above landmasses that extend from their continental shelf.

Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan advisor and current president of the Center for Security Policy, has called the treaty the "most egregious transfer of American sovereignty, wealth, and power to the UN." Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) has said he'll use "whatever means it takes" to keep the U.S. from joining the treaty. That included leading the charge to kill a bill that surfaced for ratification in 2004.

An Arctic land grab is already well underway. In early June, Russian scientists claimed they found evidence of 70 billion barrels of oil and natural gas reserves on the Lomonosov Ridge, a huge rock formation that extends through the North Pole from Siberia to Greenland.

Russia has slapped a claim on nearly half the Arctic -- a territory of half a million square miles -- and granted a monopoly to its own companies to exploit it. Denmark is crying foul, saying it, too, has rights to the ridge.
"It makes exploration a lot more risky," says Paul Kelly, former general counsel at drilling firm Rowan Cos., since bankers, he says, won't put up the money for ventures in "murky waters."
Lobbyists representing companies including Exxon Mobil
Chevron
and ConocoPhillips
are allying with environmental groups, who want UN protection for Arctic wildlife and ecosystems
U.S. Navy, which says it won't be able to patrol the Arctic effectively without the rights the treaty provides to the territory.

An Arctic land grab is already well underway. In early June, Russian scientists claimed they found evidence of 70 billion barrels of oil and natural gas reserves on the Lomonosov Ridge, a huge rock formation that extends through the North Pole from Siberia to Greenland.

Russia has slapped a claim on nearly half the Arctic -- a territory of half a million square miles -- and granted a monopoly to its own companies to exploit it. Denmark is crying foul, saying it, too, has rights to the ridge.
"It makes exploration a lot more risky," says Paul Kelly, former general counsel at drilling firm Rowan Cos., since bankers, he says, won't put up the money for ventures in "murky waters."
Lobbyists representing companies including Exxon Mobil
Chevron
and ConocoPhillips
are allying with environmental groups, who want UN protection for Arctic wildlife and ecosystems
U.S. Navy, which says it won't be able to patrol the Arctic effectively without the rights the treaty provides to the territory.

ARCTIC TUG OF WAR

Arctic sea ice is usually 1 to 3 meters, or as much as 9 feet, thick. It grows during autumn and winter and shrinks in spring and summer. Scientists have monitored sea ice conditions for 50 years.
Don't Miss

* Ice melting across globe at accelerating rate, NASA says

The disappearance of the ice in the past decade is astounding, climate scientists say.

"We've been seeing a retreat year after year," said Marika Holland, an oceanographer with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "The sea ice loss we observed in the summer of 2007 was shocking."

Soon there may be no sea ice anywhere in the Arctic during some months of the year.

Although environmentalists are concerned by this melting trend, shipping and energy companies are salivating at the prospect of smaller ice caps, which makes Arctic drilling and commerce easier. Cargo ships may be able to travel from Asia to North America more cheaply and efficiently, for example.

In a showy technological display August 2, 2007, a Russian submarine planted an underwater flag 14,000 feet (4,200 meters) below the North Pole.

Russian scientists are keen on proving that the seabed below the North Pole is part of the Eurasian continental shelf, an area called the Lomonosov Ridge.

If that's the case, the region would be under Russian control

"Most of the estimated undiscovered resources are in areas with agreed-upon territorial boundaries," said Don Gautier, research geologist at the USGS.

"Exceptions are the East Barents Basins, where Russia and Norway are involved in bilateral discussions of the offshore boundary. Another exception is the Alaska./Canada boundary offshore, which is also subject to bilateral discussions between U.S. and Canada," he said.

"The Russians have got a half-dozen icebreakers. Americans have a pair of icebreakers, but they are old and worn out," Pike said.

And of course, much of countries' access to the Arctic will come down to money.

"Building a ship to operate in a foot of ice is no big deal. Building an icebreaker that can get through 2 yards of ice, now you're talking serious icebreaking. The Russians can get through 2 yards of ice without breaking a sweat," Pike said.

Ultimately, questions about what is drilled for in the Arctic, and by whom, will depend on the global economy. Recovering oil from a forbidding frozen wilderness makes sense when it's selling for $150 a barrel, but not so when it is at $40 a barrel.

ICE FREE BY 2013

And as the melting polar ice makes the Arctic more accessible to ships, several countries are scrambling to claim jurisdiction in the area.

"The economic interests are reflected in ... competing claims by relevant stakeholders, and resumed military presence in the area," NATO said on its Web site. "As it is a region of enduring strategic importance for NATO and allied security, developments in the High North require careful and ongoing examination."

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 90 billion barrels of oil, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are recoverable in the frozen region north of the Arctic Circle.

At the same time, Arctic water is warming so quickly that the entire region could be ice-free by 2013.

Already Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland are fighting to lay claim to the Arctic's icy real estate.

According to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries are entitled to exclusive economic zones up to 200 miles from their shores. But some countries are trying to extend that zone.

Russian scientists want to prove the seabed below the North Pole is part of the Eurasian continental shelf, an area called the Lomonosov Ridge.

If that is the case, the region would be under Russian control. Moscow argued before a U.N. commission in 2001 that the ridge is an extension of its continental territory. But the United Nations asked for more evidence.

Danish scientists are trying to prove that the Lomonosov Ridge is connected to Greenland, and Canadian scientists are looking for links between the ridge and Ellesmere Island, a Canadian territory.

ARCTIC OIL

In new findings, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic may be home to 30 percent of the planet's undiscovered natural gas reserves and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil.

"Based on our study, there are 40 [billion] to 160 billion barrels of oil north of the Arctic Circle," said Gautier. The USGS had previously estimated the Arctic is home to 90 billion barrels of oil.

The Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy, estimates that the world currently uses 30 billion barrels of oil a year.

Offshore oil exploration in the Arctic is still in its infancy, but ExxonMobil and other oil companies already have staked their claim and started drilling in the Mackenzie Delta, the Barents Sea, the Sverdrup Basin, and offshore Alaska.