Protect the Arctic.com

Check the Web for a Source on Arctic Climate Change

admin — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 10:46:31 +0000

If you’re looking for a source on Arctic climate changes, you have a lot of options. You can head to a bookstore and look up relevant information in reference materials that focus on weather in the area. You can also find a lot of information and good sources on the internet. There are even various state and government reports that you can request or locate online or through data provided by various agencies that track such information. Climate changes have become a big deal in the last decade and gained a lot of attention with Al Gore’s political campaign. Global warming became a concern for scientists and residents world-wide.

A good source on Arctic climate change can tell you about the average as well as extreme temperatures and amounts of precipitation the area receives. Reports also monitor the melting rate and creation of glaciers and icebergs. Satellite photos help people compare the size of various masses of ice over time and show their progression across land or water. Many believe that the rate of melting is increasing and causing immediate or possibly negative long-term affects on the world’s ecosystem. It can help when reviewing data to also understand how data was collected and if it has been independently verified by another trusted source.

One of the reasons that finding a reliable source on Arctic climate change is important is because finding can affect political decisions that impact both humans and animals in the Arctic and potentially throughout the world’s ecosystem. Various gases emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere have an impact on both climate and health in general so such data is carefully monitored and at the heart of many political battles that strive to both protect the environment and continue the development for resources like oil and methane.

Sources on Arctic climate changes include the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and the Arctic Council and International Arctic Science Committee as well as other scientific agencies. There may be many crucial, future decisions that will affect human and wildlife as well as the Earth’s ecosystem as a whole, so data collected by these entities is extremely important. Even if mistakes have been made or politicians have used data for their gain, the condition of the Earth and how humans utilize its resources at alarming rates can no longer be ignored. Modern life has exacted an extreme price on the Earth and careful consideration is necessary so life can be sustained for future generations.

Vacations in Oslo, Norway

admin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:40:40 +0000

Have you always wanted to take an exciting artic adventure? Now is the perfect time to start planning your next getaway. You should consider traveling to the beautiful and exciting Norway. The area of Oslo is a popular vacation spot with many guests because of the variety of attractions and activities. Once you make a visit, you will wonder why you didn’t travel here sooner. When starting to plan your trip, use HelloWeekends.com so that you can find a perfectly affordable hotel.

Norway is known for its gorgeous views. No mater what part you choose to visit, you will be able to take memorable photographs. While the weather can be especially chilly in Oslo, Norway, this is what often attracts so many visitors. This is because a variety of outdoor adventures can be had at this destination. Have you always wanted to ski, snowboard, or ice-skate? You will be able to try all of these exciting sports while in Oslo.

You may be wondering what top-rated attractions are located in Oslo. There is so much to see and do! Many visitors choose to spend time at the amazing Vigeland Park. Here you will find many unique sculptures surrounded by greenery and flowers. The park itself also has a very relaxing atmosphere. If you want to learn more about the history and culture of Norway, a visit to the Norwegian Folk Museum is a must. With so many attractions in Oslo to choose from, visitors of all ages are sure to be entertained.

You will also find many restaurants, shops, and spas in the Oslo area. You can enjoy a bite to eat after spending the afternoon purchasing new clothes or souvenirs to bring home to your loved ones. You may also want to enjoy a massage or other relaxing spa service so that you’re able to relax and forget about your everyday responsibilities. These are just a few more exciting activities that you can take part in while on your trip.

No matter what you choose to do while in Oslo, you will create many lasting memories. As you start to plan your trip, you will also need to choose a hotel for your stay. You want to choose a high quality hotel so that you’re able to get the service that you deserve. HelloWeekends.com can help you find a great hotel at a price that you love. Start planning your Oslo adventure now!

Oslo urges Ottawa to settle Arctic dispute with Moscow

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:48:21 +0000

Norway has urged Canada to settle a dispute with Russia over sovereignty of territory in the Arctic, in order to lower tensions. This came after a boundary agreement between Russia and Norway, marking the end of a dispute that lasted over forty years. Norway’s dispute with Russia had been over the Barents Sea, an area rich in natural resources. Canada’s current dispute with Russia is similar in nature, and settling it could serve as a way to lower tension between the two countries.

Jonas Gahr Store, the Foreign Minister for Norway, said that the Barents Sea pact between Norway and Russia serves as an example of how each country with a foothold in the Arctic is scrambling to try an claim a region that could contain as much as one-quarter of the world’s total untapped oil and gas, and which will become more accessible as the polar ice caps melt. Gahr also said

“It is also sending a message to the Arctic states that this is how we solve outstanding issues. It’s done through negotiation; it’s done by using the most modern principles of international law.”

Store added that many governments including Canada’s have approached the government of Norway in the past for advice on negotiating with Russia regarding the Arctic. A joint submission between Canada and Russia has been submitted to the United Nations committee, which will rule on the fact that both countries have laid claim to the sea bed of the Arctic Circle. Both Canada and Russia have claimed the Lomonosov Ridge, which is an underwater mountain range in the Arctic Sea. Both countries have claimed that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of their own continental shelves.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon met to discuss measures to resolve the dispute. Cannon added

“I also restated our government’s unwavering commitment to protecting Canada’s sovereignty, and emphasized that our territorial integrity remains non-negotiable,”

in a statement released from his office. He also said that that Canada will not militarize their claim, but will assert sovereignty over the area. However, there was an incident during which Canadian fighter jets chased away Russian bombers that had flown near (though not into) Canadian airspace. Lavrov warned against NATO (North Atlantic Trade Organization) boosting its presence in the Arctic: “I don’t think it would be right for NATO to assume the right to determine … how to make decisions in the Arctic.”

Photos by Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Arctic Plants – What You Should Know

admin — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:12:57 +0000

Arctic plants are very scarce, and for good reason. This region is so cold that few plants can actually survive in the weather. The plant life that calls the arctic home has to be very steady and able to withstand all of the different elements. There are some flowers, moss, and shrubs to be found, along with some grasses. However, because of the weather and the fact that the soil is only a few centimeters deep across the continent, there is simply not a mass of plants that call this continent home.

Arctic plants that you will find in this region include things like grasses, lichen, cloud berry flowers, wildflowers, herbs, dwarf and arctic willows, and more. There are only a few short months of sunshine in the arctic, and the weather is still cold and windy all the while. Still, many plants have managed to adapt and call this region home, no matter what the weather is like. Adapting is a slow process that requires the plants to adjust to their new surroundings and get used to the temperatures and lack of sunlight in the region.

Many of the plants are smaller and grow very low and close together. This keeps them protected from the severe winds of the arctic and the cold that it is known for. Other arctic plants use fuzzy coverings or wooly seed covers to protect themselves from the elements and adapt to the cold environment that is found here. The plants that have cup-shaped flowers are able to direct the sun’s warmth into the center of the flower, allowing them to stay warmer than the air surrounding them. An example of this would be the poppy. There are many ways that plants adapt, including having shallow roots, small leaves, dark colors, and hearty survival skills.

You won’t find delicate flowers or shrubbery in the arctic. In fact, arctic plants have to be durable and adapt to the weather in order to survive. Because of the climate and short season for growing, most of the plants that you’ll find on the arctic tundra are perennials, which means the flowers do not die in the winter and come back year after year, which makes them heartier than annual plants that are only around for one or two seasons. The plants in the arctic have had to adapt themselves to many things, but they are still there and give the landscape something else to offer beyond snow and ice.

Rosneft Refuses to Allow TNK-BP to Join £10bn Arctic Deal with BP

admin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:49:34 +0000

After creating a share-swap deal, Rosneft and BP were set to drill in the Arctic waters of Kara Sea, but there were some complications in the swap part of the deal that got in the way. Alfa Access Renova are the existing BP partners in Russia that have created TNK-BP as a partnership and thereby placed a court order that halted the swapping of shares with Rosneft due to a breach of an earlier agreement, the company claims. Apparently, BP made a suggestion that TNK-BP would be able to join the deal with Rosneft in Russia, and they weren’t too fond of being excluded after that statement.

The agreement was put into place to ensure that TNK-BP could get involved on the action going on in Russia and there have been many talks about joining the deal, but the company still feels that it is not an acceptable solution. They don’t have the experience, personnel, or technology according to the CFO of Rosneft, which is why it doesn’t seem like it will be successful. The oligarchs (as TNK-BP is known) and BP will now begin arbitrations in the United Nations Court in Sweden to determine the next steps.

The settlement to TNK-BP is only going to be financial, in most cases, because the company seems to only want money from the deal. However, the arbitration process is set to begin and no one sees it likely that things will be settled before the proceedings are completed. Everyone is trying to be done by February 25th, but that may not be possible depending on the circumstances and the events that take place. Rosneft is the world’s largest producer of oil, and chose BP to drill in the Kara Sea as part of the share/swap deal that they had made.

Since this cannot go on currently, Rosneft will have to wait until the arbitration is completed and then see about carrying out their deal or striking a new one to get back to work. Rosneft doesn’t see the need or ability for TNK-BP to join the deal in the Arctic, but the company is fighting back and will likely get something for their struggle. In the world of oil, it’s a constant competition to get the best and most proficient people involved in deals, and to Rosneft, TNK-BP is not one of those types of companies.

Photo by itar-tass.com

Canada Burnishes Its Position as Arctic Power

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:57:55 +0000

Canada has made several recent moves that show the fact that Canada seeks to establish itself as an Arctic power. The country’s government recently bolstered its presence in the Arctic which, with increasingly warm weather, has become increasingly accessible. The promise of rich resources such as oil and natural gas has pushed Canada to try to take more control over its northern waterways. The Canadian government has, in recent months, made its Arctic territory a location for official visits, as well as military exercises taking place both above and below water. This came at roughly the same time as an incident in which Russian bombers were chased away by Canadian fighter jets because they had flown a little too close to the border of Canadian aerospace.

Many of the nations that have a foothold in the Arctic have been researching various areas of the ocean floor and continental shelves, which have shown that they may contain a huge amount of natural resources. In fact, the Arctic may contain as much as one third of the total undiscovered oil in the entire world. The extension of continental shelves has caused some confrontation between countries, with a dispute regarding which country an area of the Arctic Sea rich in natural resources belongs to. Canada and Russia have both laid claim to the land, although Norway has urged both countries to settle the dispute and lower tension.

Canada and Denmark are also working to resolve several old disputes regarding territory for fishing and oil development. Lawrence Cannon, the Foreign Affairs Minister for Canada, revealed Canada’s first Arctic foreign policy statement, which is designed to settle existing boundary disputes and claims to offshore territory. The United States Geological Survey has estimated that a large proportion of the world’s gas and oil reserves lie above the Arctic Circle, making the economics stakes in this territory quite high.

A number of bids for exploration of natural gas and oil reserves within the Arctic reached record levels in June of 2008, with one for over one billion dollars. Many countries with a hold in the area, such as Canada and Russia, have been expending a lot of effort and resources to map the ocean floor. Russia has announced that it has begun a project to create a new Arctic atlas, which will include notations for areas of the Arctic that could be potentially dangerous to the companies working there.

Alaska Seeks to Overturn Delay in Arctic Drilling

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:28:24 +0000

Alaska recently filed a petition to try and overturn the Obama administration’s hold on any drilling in federal waters in the Arctic. Officials from the Department of the Interior, on the other hand, have insisted that no such moratorium exists.

Alaska’s legal petition asserts that the Department of the Interior’s “arbitrarily and capriciously imposed” hold on drilling in federal waters after the Deepwater Horizon disaster was brought about “without considering and weighing the potential effects on Alaska, including economic harm to the State of Alaska and Alaska residents.”

The Governor of Alaska, Sean Parnell has backed the petition, based on the economic damage he says the hold could cause. Parnell said in a statement regarding the petition,

“Development of Alaska’s (Outer Continental Shelf) resources is of critical importance to Alaska’s future and the economic and security interests of the United States.”

He added,

“We are taking this action to ensure that the federal government abides by applicable federal law, including its legal responsibility to make the OCS available for expeditious and orderly development.”

Officials for the Department of the Interior said that the moratorium on drilling was completely separate from the slow approach to Alaskan drilling. Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said “We are taking a cautious approach to offshore oil and gas development as we strengthen safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations. This includes the Arctic, which presents unique environmental challenges.” Regarding the petition, she added “There is no moratorium in Alaska and therefore nothing to sue on. The moratorium is on deepwater drilling and there is no deepwater drilling in Alaska.”

Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, said during an Anchorage news conference last week that the existing hold on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico does affect the state of Alaska, although later in the same conference he and other officials attempted to make a distinction between the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the related but separate decision to wait on drilling in Alaskan waters. A court decision has blocked any drilling in the Chukchi Sea for the foreseeable future, regardless of any of the Interior Department decisions. Judge Ralph Beistline, a United States District Court Judge, ruled that no activities regarding exploration could be allowed until the deficiencies are remedied. Eventually, a proper environmental review will be conducted and drilling exploration will be able to commence.

Arctic Animals

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:10:26 +0000

Anyone who was a grade school student in a United States public school recently inevitably did a report or paper focused on Arctic animals or the Arctic region in general. This area is a fascinating ecosystem at the northern end of the earth and is well known for its extremely cold temperatures, Northern Lights, and eternal summer as some call it. The eternal summer reference comes from the fact that during the summer months, the sun continues to shine in the Arctic, even through out what is normally considered nighttime hours. This remote location is the natural habitat for polar bears, Arctic foxes and wolves, caribou, and musk ox to name a few.

Other Arctic animals that thrive in cold, northern temperatures include the snowy owl, collared lemming, Arctic hare, walrus, and narwhals (whales). Narwhals, also called corpse whales because they often float upside down on their backs for prolonged periods, travel slowly in Arctic waters in pods. As they travel, they communicate with amazing clicks, squeals and whistles so they can stay together. Narwhals eat squid and have an interesting and distinctive tusk that sticks out like a tooth on the whale’s head that can grow to about nine feet long.

The caribou and musk ox are a main part of the Arctic diet for the people that live in areas of Canada, Denmark, Russia, Iceland, and Scandinavia. A musk ox is a member of the sheep and goat family and can grow to be a huge animal of almost a thousand pounds. This brown and bearded animal is highly visible in the Arctic while the polar bear and Arctic fox have the advantage of being able to blend into the white snow and tundra with their white fur coats. Although small, the Arctic fox has a huge advantage over the polar bear and arctic wolf thanks to its fur that keeps it warmer than most mammals. The fox even has fur on the bottom of its feet to protect it from the extreme Arctic cold temperatures.

The native Arctic polar bear is considered the biggest animal in the bear family at an average of almost 9 feet tall. The polar bear actually has black skin under its white fur. Although deceptively slow at times on tundra, the polar bear is an amazing swimmer and does about six miles an hour in the water. They prefer to live quite close to Arctic water so it can hunt for seals easily, so it’s important that these bears have similar conditions when they are in zoos.

Petroleum Exploration in the Arctic

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:01:11 +0000

Petroleum exploration in the Arctic has increased in the last few years mostly due to the increase in oil prices and continued demand across the world for this resource. Several major companies have taken on new or extended projects in spite of a higher Petroleum Profits Tax as levied by the State of Alaska. Companies like Shell, Alaska Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum and continue to play major roles in drilling, testing, and hopefully tapping more oil. Exploration is mostly concentrated near the ANWR border east of Prudhoe Bay, in the southern area of the Brooks Range foothills, and west of the NPRA (National Petroleum Reserve).

Petroleum exploration in the Arctic has long been a conflicting issue for the world from a political standpoint as well as an ecological one. Many people worry that continued exploration is going to be at the cost of losing natural areas and wildlife habitats that are crucial to the chain of life. Conversely, oil is still a necessary and highly sought after resource. Oil exploration is at an all time high and more people are employed as a result. Searching for oil costs a great deal of money and as many have recently observed in the BP leak in the Gulf, clean up can also be very expensive and take its toll on the surrounding environment and wildlife, not to mention human impact.

Petroleum exploration in the Arctic is a political hot button and likely will be for some time. President Obama in recent months announced his desire that OCS (outer continental shelf) oil and gas exploration leasing would be allowed in the Chuck-chi Sea. Other leases on the Beaufort and Chuck-chi Seas would be discontinued. The President and Congress will still have to decide how the royalties of tax gains will be shared with the Federal Government and individual states like Alaska. The amount of oil expected to be gained from Alaskan OCS is nearly 30 billion barrels of oil.

One of the controversial aspects to petroleum exploration in the Arctic has been how ANWR would be affected. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, situated on Alaska’s northern area between Prudhoe Bay and the Canadian Border divided a lot of people as to whether oil exploration should take place there. Alaskans seem to support limited exploration and the state legislature continues to pass resolutions supporting oil exploration. Some are still concerned that exploring for oil at all in the ANWR area could damage the ecosystem and wildlife.

India to Bid for Share in Russia’s Arctic Oil Reserves

admin — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 12:01:24 +0000

A recent press release from India’s leading firm for oil and natural gas, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) shows India to bid for share in Russia’s Arctic oil reserves. ONGC is the only foreign company that will be placing bids for Russian oil deposits, and will be bidding through its Russian subsidiary company, Nord Imperial. The area that ONGC will be bidding on, which includes parts of the Trebs and Titov regions, holds oil reserves estimated to total at about two hundred million tons.

The Minister of Natural Resources for Russia said that although the oil reserves in these regions is classified as a “strategic resource” (as opposed to a luxury or economic resource), the Russian government will be allowing ONGC to bid, but the Russian government will most likely be going with a national company. Some sources suggest that ONGC could be planning to partner up with Rosneft. Because of the rapid rate at which domestic demand for oil is rising in India, the Indian government has been looking into a number of foreign oil reserves for consideration. Coal and oil reserves around the world have been looked at by the Indian government with the intention of expanding the amount of resources it can acquire.

The Indian government has also begun plans for creating a sovereign wealth fund, in order to help cover the financial needs of companies owned by the state, such as ONGC, as well as Indian Oil Corporation and Oil India Limited. Each of these companies bid for various types of energy assets (such as oil, gas, and coal) around the world. In 2009, China spent roughly thirty-two billion dollars on energy and resource acquisition around the world. In contrast, India spent only roughly two billion dollars.

With India to bid for share in Russia’s Arctic oil reserves, the landscape of Indian energy production could change drastically within the next decade. The increased amount of natural resources coming into India could dramatically alter the way the Indian economy functions. The Indian government is currently considering reviving its natural gas plan with Iran, and may also be taking a stake in BP’s (British Petroleum) holdings in Vietnam. The economic push between China and India could spur some interesting and possibly controversial decisions regarding energy acquisition within the next few years, and the way these two countries get their energy could make an impact on even the global market.