On the Beach in the arctic north

Contested Arctic Territory
Taken from "Russia plants flag at N Pole" BBC.co.uk

On the Beach was one of the few mandatory books I read in high school. As Nevil Shute's radioactive, WWIII cloud crept towards Melbourne I felt, for the first time, the tension of imagining death as a real possibility. I remember marveling at the complacence of the characters who, though they knew the end was nigh, continued to pursue the nuanced pleasures of everyday life as if nothing were amiss. The radioactive cloud creeps south. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, Moira Davidson began taking classes in typing and shorthand and the Holmeses plant a garden, and Vladimir Putin has a titanium flag erected in Russia's garden pond.

Russia's Arktika expedition to the North Pole represents complacency of a similar ilk. Projections of a faster-than-expected melting ice cap have set those nations bordering the arctic north to extending their territorial claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Oh boy! The world as we know it may be coming to an end, but at least we'll finally be able to get to those pesky oil reserves under the ice.

Melting polar ice and the Greenland ice sheet are an increasingly sticky problem, as they pertain to both sea-level rise and the movement of ocean currents. The Gulf Stream, which warms England, Ireland, Scandinavia and Northern Europe, is thought to operate on the basis of "thermohaline circulation." As water arrives in the global north from the Gulf of Mexico, it is cooled and its salinity increased. This dense water sinks and moves back south. If enough melt water from Greenland and the pole mixes into this current, the decreased salinity may be enough to shut it down. As if that were not enough, the melt water also raises global ocean levels. If only the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, sea level worldwide would rise by over 7 meters. That's enough to completely alter the coastline of the entire planet and obliterate many of the world largest and most densely populated cities.

It has long been thought that though polar melt is occurring, the long-term effects were centuries, even a millennium, away. Cracks are appearing in both the ice and the long-term projections. The results of arctic ice-melt, long perceived as centuries away, may be closer than we think. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies head, James Hanson, has suggested a "nonlinear" rate of ice sheet melt, with potential results measured in decades as opposed to centuries. Peter Wadhams of England's Cambridge University, while studying the "chimneys" of cold, dense water under the Odden ice shelf, said that the number of columns had shrunk from 9-12 to just 2 in 2005. Wadhams also observed that ice beneath the North Pole was 46% thinner than 20 years previous.

While the ice cap melts and the world's temperature regulating currents are threatened, even while the European north, which is warmed by those currents, is at risk of becoming a Siberian extension, Norway, Denmark and Russia are itching to claim the arctic El Dorado of petrol beneath that ice so that they can continue conducting the business as usual of burning fossil fuels, the very cause of the melting ice cap.

It is uncertain how this issue will play out, although it seems ridiculous for Norway and Denmark to waste valuable time parsing with Russia. The only way to address both the oil crunch and the results of global warming is a complete break from fossil fuels as soon as possible. By some projections, there will be a complete melt of the North Pole ice sheet every summer by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080. Russia, Norway and Denmark, along with the U.S. and Canada, expect to continue needing crude oil well into the future, and that the matter is even being considered in the international arena testifies to both the importance of oil to national interests and to the belief that there may soon be no polar ice cap, regardless of localized rhetoric designed to sooth the insecurities of voting constituencies.

Coupled with advent of perceived Peak Oil, national governments are becoming increasingly desperate (albeit quietly) to secure oil supplies wherever - and in the case of the arctic, whenever - they might be available. Unlike Shute's On the Beach, we are confronted with a man made disaster that, if it cannot be avoided, might at least be lessened if faced with an immediate effort to create a fossil-fuel free economy in the next fifty years instead of business-as-usual oil exploration. Considering the obstacles Europe has overcome in the 20th century, such an ambitious goal isn't unreasonable, and might represent one of the endeavors that finally unite European citizens under a common goal.

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	A scramble to understand Greenland's melting ice sheets	International Herald Tribune	Tue Jan 8	0
	[Seed] Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history	European Space Agency	Sat Jan 5	13