ANWR 2

target b/c an economic asset/ $ and ideological issue

<div>see glacier</div><div>sea level rise</div><div>
</div><div>see carbon bomb (also includes methane)

</div>

antagonist means pro-drilling (red)

<div>=
</div><div>ew 320</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/greenland" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(82, 149, 70); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Greenland</a> experienced an unusually warm summer in 2019, which caused the world's largest island to lose 600 billion tons of ice and raised sea levels by 0.2 of an inch, <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL087291" target="blank" style="color: rgb(82, 149, 70); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5; font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">according to a NASA study</a> released yesterday. That amount of ice loss more than doubled Greenland's 2002-2019 annual average.</div><div></div><div><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/scientists-sound-the-alarms-as-temperature-in-antarctica-reaches-record-high/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">Scientists sound the alarms as temperature in Antarctica reaches record high</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/julia-conley/" title="Posts by Julia Conley" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Julia Conley</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams/" title="Posts by Common Dreams" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Common Dreams</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Climate scientists on Friday revealed the latest troubling new observation in Antarctica, illustrating the consequences of the rapid warming of the area brought on by the manmade climate crisis. As The…</div></div><div></div><div>d<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=5061fa210e&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">windling Arctic Sea Ice May Affect Tropical Weather Patterns</a> BY: BOB BERWYN
A new study finds a possible link between Arctic warming and more frequent El Niños in the Central Pacific. <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=2e7df80673&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Read More</a></div><div>=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-water-2644974237.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-water-2644974237.html</a>scientists have discovered record warm water beneath <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/antarctica" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Antarctica</a>'s "doomsday <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/glaciers" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">glacier</a>" for the first time, leading to concerns for the glacier whose collapse could contribute nearly a meter (approximately 3 feet) to global <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); outline: 0px; line-height: 1.5;">sea level rise</a>.<div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2644974237" style="margin-top: -15px; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description" style="clear: both;"><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-1" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-water-2644974237.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1">The findings are part of the <a href="https://thwaitesglacier.org/projects/melt" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration</a> — a UK and U.S.-led research expedition to better understand how quickly the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica might collapse. On Jan. 8 and 9, researchers drilled a bore hole through the ice, then measured the waters beneath for the first time on Jan. 10 and 11, according to <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/january/scientists-find-record-warm-water-in-antarctica--pointing-to-cau.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">New York University</a> (NYU). They recorded temperatures more than two degrees Celsius above freezing.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-2" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-water-2644974237.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2">"Warm waters in this part of the world, as remote as they may seem, should serve as a warning to all of us about the potential dire changes to the planet brought about by climate change," researcher David Holland, who directs NYU's Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Global Sea Level Change, said in the university press release. "If these waters are causing glacier melt in Antarctica, resulting changes in sea level would be felt in more inhabited parts of the world."</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-3" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-water-2644974237.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem3">The Thwaites Glacier has been called the "doomsday" glacier and the "most important" glacier in the world, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51097309" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">BBC News explained</a>. The glacier, roughly the size of Britain or Florida, already contributes four percent a year to global sea level rise. Not only that, it acts as a stop on the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could raise sea levels by more than three meters (approximately 10 feet)."It certainly has a big impact on our U.S. coast and in many areas," Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, who is not involved with the Thwaites project, told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/climate/thwaites-glacier-melting-antarctica.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR177XLLQRk0TWnyrvxz9r6ubzjwCT2O28qumlzSsvaqp3vWvz7b983nhiQ" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The New York Times</a> of the glacier.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-4" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-doomsday-glacier-water-2644974237.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" data-id="4" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem4">While satellite data shows that the glacier is rapidly retreating, there has not been an on-the-ground investigation of the glacier until now, BBC News reported. Partly, this is because of how difficult it is to reach. West Antarctica is the stormiest place on Earth, and the glacier is more than 1,000 miles from the closest research station.Researchers specifically took measurements from the glacier's grounding zone. That's the place where the glacier's ice moves off of bedrock and into the sea, NYU explained. Thwaites is especially precarious because the bed it rests on slopes downward, according to BBC News. As warm water melts the ice between the glacier's surface and the bedrock, the glacier retreats and the ice on top is more likely to break off."The fear is these processes will just accelerate," University of Oregon glaciologist Dr. Kiya Riverman told BBC News. "It is a feedback loop, a vicious cycle."To better understand the grounding zone, the scientists drilled a 600 meter (approximately 1,968.5 feet) hole through the ice and used a device to measure the ocean's temperature and turbulence — a sign of the glacier's fresh water mixing with the salt water of the ocean. This is the first time scientists have measured the ocean beneath Thwaites through a bore hole, and their results so far show they were right to be worried."The fact that such warm water was just now recorded by our team along a section of Thwaites grounding zone where we have known the glacier is melting suggests that it may be undergoing an unstoppable retreat that has huge implications for global sea level rise," Holland told NYU.</div></div></div></div><div></div><div>icn 120</div><div>3 <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=2899460c02&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Arctic Wilderness Areas to Watch as Trump Tries to Expand Oil and Gas Drilling</a> BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN Once land is leased, it's a complicated process to undo. Environmental groups are fighting to stop efforts to open these ecologically sensitive areas before it's too late.</div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102018/jet-stream-climate-change-study-extreme-weather-arctic-amplification-temperature">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102018/jet-stream-climate-change-study-extreme-weather-arctic-amplification-temperature</a></div><div>
</div><div><h5 class="article-title" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-weight="font-weight" normal="normal" line-height="line-height" rem="rem" font-size="font-size" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102018/jet-stream-climate-change-study-extreme-weather-arctic-amplification-temperature" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px;">Global Warming Is Messing with the Jet Stream. That Means More Extreme Weather.</a></h5><div class="meta" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 1rem;">BY BOB BERWYN
<div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: none;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Greenhouse gases are increasingly disrupting the jet stream, a powerful river of winds that steers weather systems in the Northern Hemisphere. That's causing more frequent summer droughts, floods and wildfires, a new study says.The findings suggest that summers like 2018, when the jet stream drove extreme weather on an unprecedented scale across the Northern Hemisphere, will be 50 percent more frequent by the end of the century if emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants from industry, agriculture and the burning of fossil fuels continue at a high rate.In a worst-case scenario, there could be a near-tripling of such extreme jet stream events, but other factors, like aerosol emissions, are a wild card, according to the <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaat3272" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">research</a>, published today in the journal Science Advances.The study identifies how the faster warming of the Arctic twists the jet stream into an extreme pattern that leads to persistent heat and drought extremes in some regions, with flooding in other areas.The researchers said they were surprised by how big a role other pollutants play in the jet stream's behavior, especially aerosols—microscopic solid or liquid particles from industry, agriculture, volcanoes and plants. Aerosols have a cooling effect that partially counteracts the jet stream changes caused by greenhouse gases, said co-author Dim Comou, a climate and extreme weather researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam."The aerosols forcing was a bit of a surprise to us," Comou said. "Those emissions are expected to decrease rapidly in the mid-latitude regions in the next 10 to 30 years" because of phasing out of pollution to protect people from breathing unhealthy air.In recent decades, aerosol pollution has actually been slowing down the global warming process across the Northern Hemisphere's mid-latitude industrial regions. If aerosol emissions drop rapidly, as projected, these regions would warm faster.That would change the temperature contrast between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, which would dampen the warming effect of greenhouse gases on the jet stream. By how much depends on the rate, location and timing of the reductions, and the offset would end by mid-century, when man-made aerosols are expected to be mostly gone and no longer reflecting incoming solar radiation, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist and study lead author Michael Mann.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Repeats of the Summer of 2018?</h3>The jet stream is a powerful high-altitude wind that shapes and moves weather systems from west to east. Different branches of the jet stream undulate from the subtropics to the edge of the Arctic. In the past 15 years at least, the jet stream has been coiling up more, slithering farther north and south. When it gets stuck in the extreme pattern identified by the scientists, it leads to more deadly and costly weather extremes.That extremely wavy pattern, called "quasi-resonant amplification," was evident during the extreme summer of 2018, Mann said.<div class="media media-element-container media-image_centered_medium" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 648px; margin: 0.25em auto;"><figure id="file-271572" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-png" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><img alt="Extreme Weather and the Jet Stream" title="Extreme Weather and the Jet Stream" height="445" width="529" class="media-element file-image-centered-medium" typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/icn_centered_medium/public/ArcticJetStreamWeird529px.png?itok=G1_IEjio" style="box-sizing: inherit; border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; float: none; margin: 0px auto;" /></figure></div>It played out in real time on TV and in newspaper headlines about droughts, floods, heat extremes and wildfires—an "unprecedented hemisphere-wide pattern,"Mann said. "It played a key role in the large-scale jet pattern we saw in late July, associated with deep stagnant high pressure centers over California and Europe."That brought blazing temperatures and wildfire conditions to California, flooding over the Eastern U.S. and unprecedented heat to the Scandinavian Arctic region, as well as a six-month heat wave and drought across parts of Central Europe, all events showing a clear <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27072018/summer-2018-heat-wave-wildfires-climate-change-evidence-crops-flooding-deaths-records-broken" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">global warming fingerprint</a>, according to scientists.The new study focuses on summer extremes, while <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022018/cold-weather-polar-vortex-jet-stream-explained-global-warming-arctic-ice-climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">other research</a> has looked at how global warming affects the jet stream in winter.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333;">What Happens in the Arctic Doesn't Stay There</h3>Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved with the new research, said the study has some"compelling new evidence on the link between amplified Arctic warming and extreme mid-latitude weather during the summer months."What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there. Increased melting of reflective sea ice in summer exposes more dark-colored ocean to absorb heat, and that heats the surrounding land. As Arctic warming races ahead of the rest of the global average, the temperature contrasts that drive the jet stream are reduced, and the river of wind more frequently twists into sharp and slow-moving or stationary waves."When the jet stream enters this wavy state, extreme weather tends to occur on either side of the amplified ridges and troughs as the storm track becomes locked in place," Swain said. Then, specific regions experience long periods of cool and stormy or, contrarily, hot and dry weather, he added.</div></div></div></div><div class="tagged-with" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em;"><label style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; line-height: 1.2;">PUBLISHED UNDER:</label><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/extreme-weather" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">EXTREME WEATHER</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/climate-science" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CLIMATE SCIENCE</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CLIMATE CHANGE</a></div></div></div></div>

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</div><div></div></div><div></div><div>a<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10122019/arctic-report-card-2019-bering-sea-ice-extent-greenland-melt-permafrost-indigenous-impact" style="font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" outline="outline" px="px">rctic Report Card 2019: Extreme Ice Loss, Dying Species as Global Warming Worsens</a></div><div class="meta" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BY SABRINA SHANKMAN
icn</div><div><div><div>=</div><div>
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</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>‘Boiling with methane’: Scientists reveal ‘truly terrifying’ sign of climate change under the Arctic Ocean</div><div>
</div><div>A spectacular image of methane bubbles rising above a cold seep site. Methane bubbles flow in a small stream out of the sediment on an area of seafloor offshore Virginia north of Washington Canyon. Quill worms, anemones, patches of bacterial mat, pandalid shrimp, and a large red crab (Chaceon quinquedens) can be seen in and along the periphery of the seepage area.]</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams October 9, 2019</div><div>Scientists studying the consequences of methane emissions from underwater permafrost in the Arctic Ocean announced this week that they found a 50-square-foot area of the East Siberian Sea “boiling with methane bubbles.”</div><div>
</div><div>“This is the most powerful seep I have ever been able to observe,” lead scientist Igor Semiletov said Monday, using a term for methane gas bubbling up from the seafloor to the surface. “No one has ever recorded anything similar.”</div><div>
</div><div>Semiletov, a Russian researcher who has participated in 45 Arctic expeditions, set out on the Academic Mstislav Keldysh last month, accompanied by scientists from the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden.</div><div>
</div><div>Their discovery was announced in a statement from Russia’s Tomsk Polytechnic University, where Semiletov is a professor. The researchers’ findings from the expedition and Semiletov’s remarks were translated and reported on Tuesday by The Telegraph.</div><div>
</div><div>Russian scientists find ‘most powerful’ ever methane seep in Arctic Ocean https://t.co/v6HrbjPlXv</div><div>
</div><div>— Telegraph World News (@TelegraphWorld) October 8, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Permafrost is a mix of soil, rocks, and sand bound together by ice that stays frozen for two or more years straight. As human activity causes global temperatures to rise, the world’s permafrost is thawing—releasing ancient bacteria and viruses as well as greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that further heat the planet.</div><div>
</div><div>Compared with carbon dioxide, methane has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere but is better at trapping radiation, so methane’s impact is more than 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.</div><div>
</div><div>Experts are increasingly concerned about the consequences of thawing permafrost that is located both beneath land and water in the planet’s coldest regions. Last week, the Washington Post reported on “stunning and dramatic” scenes from a region of Eastern Siberia where “sections of many older, wooden buildings already sag toward the ground—rendered uninhabitable by the unevenly thawing earth,” and “rivers are rising and running faster,” sweeping away entire neighborhoods.</div><div>
</div><div>The Academic Mstislav Keldysh expedition’s research team, led by Semiletov, traveled to an area of the Arctic Ocean known for methane “fountains” to study the effects of permafrost thawing. Around the “powerful” fountain they found east of Bennett Island, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere was more than nine times higher than the global average.</div><div>
</div><div>Describing the researchers’ discovery of the fountain based on the univeristy’s statement, The Telegraph reported:</div><div>
</div><div>When researchers drew near to the “emerald-colored” water of the methane fountain, they “could see how gas was rising to the surface from the black depths of the sea in thousands of bubbly strands,” according to expedition member Sergei Nikiforov.</div><div>
</div><div>They took samples of bottom sediments, water, and gas, scooping up the extraordinarily large methane bubbles in buckets rather than small plastic capsules and filling several pressurized canisters.</div><div>
</div><div>The next day, the expedition stumbled upon another giant seep of roughly the same size, even though discovering seeps among rough ocean waves is usually “harder than finding a needle in a haystack,” Mr. Nikiforov said.</div><div>
</div><div>The expedition’s findings, also reported on Tuesday by Newsweek, elicited alarmed reactions from readers and climate activists the world over:</div><div>
</div><div>Our seas are starting to ‘boil’ — with methane. This is not normal. #ClimateCrisis #ArcticMatters #UniteBehindTheScience https://t.co/ATk7IzFuSi</div><div>
</div><div>— Callum Grieve (@callumgrieve) October 9, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Oh, fuck. https://t.co/OnwCW2rL2c</div><div>
</div><div>— Ray Monk (@Raymodraco) October 8, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>A New Zealand chapter of the Extinction Rebellion movement—which launched a fresh wave of peaceful acts of civil disobedience around the world on Monday to demand bolder climate policies—tweeted in response to the expedition’s discovery, “This is why the disruption we caused is very minor in comparison to what’s coming.”</div></div><div>
</div><div></div></div><div><div>=</div><div>icn</div><div><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><tbody class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionBlockOuter"><tr><td class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionBlockInner" valign="top" style="padding: 9px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionRightContentOuter" width="100%" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionRightContentInner" style="padding: 0px 9px;"><table class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionRightTextContentContainer" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="352" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" class="yiv0362650747mcnTextContent" style="line-height: 24px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=e9aade8094&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">House Votes to Block Drilling in Arctic Wildlife Refuge as Clock Ticks Toward First Lease Sale</a>
BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN
The effort to protect one of the nation’s last wild places from drilling still faces major hurdles. It may take legal action to stop Trump's lease sale.</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); min-width: 100%;"><tbody class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonBlockOuter"><tr><td valign="top" align="center" class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonBlockInner" style="padding: 0px 18px 18px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonContentContainer" style="border-radius: 5px; background-color: rgb(142, 196, 77);"><tbody><tr><td align="center" valign="middle" class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonContent" style="padding: 6px;"><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv0362650747mcnButton " title="Read More" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=9b7149c493&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: block; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 14px;">Read More</a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>=</div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-administration-seeks-to-unleash-a-pillage-of-arctic-refuge-but-indigenous-groups-vow-to-fight-it/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-administration-seeks-to-unleash-a-pillage-of-arctic-refuge-but-indigenous-groups-vow-to-fight-it/</a></div><div>
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</div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-pompeo-doctrine-a-formula-for-catastrophe">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-pompeo-doctrine-a-formula-for-catastrophe</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>The Pompeo Doctrine: A formula for catastrophe</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Michael Klare / TomDispatch September 12, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Donald Trump got the headlines as usual — but don’t be fooled. It wasn’t Trumpism in action this August, but what we should all now start referring to as the Pompeo Doctrine. Yes, I’m referring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and, when it comes to the Arctic region, he has a lot more than buying Greenland on his mind.</div><div>
</div><div>In mid-August, as no one is likely to forget, President Trump surprised international observers by expressing an interest in purchasing Greenland, a semi-autonomous region of Denmark. Most commentators viewed the move as just another example of the president’s increasingly erratic behavior. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen termed the very notion of such a deal “absurd,” leading Trump, in an outburst of pique, to call her comments “nasty” and cancel a long-scheduled state visit to Copenhagen.</div><div>
</div><div>A deeper look at that incident and related administration moves, however, suggests quite a different interpretation of what’s going on, with immense significance for the planet and even human civilization. Under the prodding of Mike Pompeo, the White House increasingly views the Arctic as a key arena for future great-power competition, with the ultimate prize being an extraordinary trove of valuable resources, including oil, natural gas, uranium, zinc, iron ore, gold, diamonds, and rare earth minerals. Add in one more factor: though no one in the administration is likely to mention the forbidden term “climate change” or “climate crisis,” they all understand perfectly well that global warming is what’s making such a resource scramble possible.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>This isn’t the first time that great powers have paid attention to the Arctic. That region enjoyed some strategic significance during the Cold War period, when both the United States and the Soviet Union planned to use its skies as passageways for nuclear-armed missiles and bombers dispatched to hit targets on the other side of the globe. Since the end of that era, however, it has largely been neglected. Frigid temperatures, frequent storms, and waters packed with ice prevented most normal air and maritime travel, so — aside from the few Indigenous peoples who had long adapted to such conditions — who would want to venture there?</div><div>
</div><div>Climate change is, however, already altering the situation in drastic ways: temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet, melting parts of the polar ice cap and exposing once-inaccessible waters and islands to commercial development. Oil and natural gas reserves have been discovered in offshore areas previously (but no longer) covered by sea ice most of the year. Meanwhile, new mining opportunities are emerging in, yes, Greenland! Worried that other countries, including China and Russia, might reap the benefits of such a climate-altered landscape, the Trump administration has already launched an all-out drive to ensure American dominance there, even at the risk of future confrontation and conflict.</div><div>
</div><div>The scramble for the Arctic’s resources was launched early in this century when the world’s major energy firms, led by BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Russian gas giant Gazprom, began exploring for oil and gas reserves in areas only recently made accessible by retreating sea ice. Those efforts gained momentum in 2008, after the U.S. Geological Survey published a report, Circum-Arctic Resources Appraisal, indicating that as much as one-third of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas lay in areas north of the Arctic Circle. Much of this untapped fossil fuel largess was said to lie beneath the Arctic waters adjoining Alaska (that is, the United States), Canada, Greenland (controlled by Denmark), Norway, and Russia — the so-called “Arctic Five.”</div><div>
</div><div>Under existing international law, codified in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal nations possess the right to exploit undersea resources up to 200 nautical miles from their shoreline (and beyond if their continental shelf extends farther than that). The Arctic Five have all laid claim to “exclusive economic zones” (EEZs) in those waters or, in the case of the United States (which has not ratified UNCLOS), announced its intention to do so. Most known oil and gas reserves are found within those EEZs, although some are thought to be in overlapping or even contested areas beyond that 200-mile limit, including the polar region itself. Whoever owns Greenland, of course, possesses the right to develop its EEZ.</div><div>
</div><div>For the most part, the Arctic Five have asserted their intent to settle any disputes arising from contested claims through peaceful means, the operating principle behind the formation in 1996 of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental organization for states with territory above the Arctic Circle (including the Arctic Five, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden). Meeting every two years, it provides a forum in which, at least theoretically, leaders of those countries and the Indigenous peoples living there can address common concerns and work towards cooperative solutions — and it had indeed helped dampen tensions in the region. In recent years, however, isolating the Arctic from mounting U.S. (and NATO) hostilities toward Russia and China or from the global struggle over vital resources has proven increasingly difficult. By May 2019, when Pompeo led an American delegation to the council’s most recent meeting in Rovaniemi, Finland, hostility and the urge to grab future resources had already spilled into the open.</div><div>
</div><div>Reaping the Arctic’s Riches</div><div>
</div><div>Usually a forum for anodyne statements about international cooperation and proper environmental stewardship, the lid was blown off the latest Arctic Council meeting in May when Pompeo delivered an unabashedly martial and provocative speech that deserves far more attention than it got at the time. So let’s take a little tour of what may prove a historic proclamation (in the grimmest sense possible) of a new Washington doctrine for the Far North.</div><div>
</div><div>“In its first two decades, the Arctic Council has had the luxury of focusing almost exclusively on scientific collaboration, on cultural matters, on environmental research,” the secretary of state began mildly. These were, he said, “all important themes, very important, and we should continue to do those. But no longer do we have that luxury. We’re entering a new age of strategic engagement in the Arctic, complete with new threats to the Arctic and its real estate, and to all of our interests in that region.”</div><div>
</div><div>In what turned out to be an ultra-hardline address, Pompeo claimed that we were now in a new era in the Arctic. Because climate change — a phrase Pompeo, of course, never actually uttered — is now making it ever more possible to exploit the region’s vast resource riches, a scramble to gain control of them is now officially underway. That competition for resources has instantly become enmeshed in a growing geopolitical confrontation between the U.S., Russia, and China, generating new risks of conflict.</div><div>
</div><div>On the matter of resource exploitation, Pompeo could hardly contain his enthusiasm. Referring to the derision that greeted William Seward’s purchase of Alaska in 1857, he declared:</div><div>
</div><div>“Far from the barren backcountry that many thought it to be in Seward’s time, the Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30% of its undiscovered gas, and an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources.”</div><div>
</div><div>Of equal attraction, he noted, was the possibility of vastly increasing maritime commerce through newly de-iced trans-Arctic trade routes that will link the Euro-Atlantic region with Asia. “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” he enthused. “This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days… Arctic sea lanes could come [to be] the 21st century’s Suez and Panama Canals.” That such “steady reductions in sea ice” are the sole consequence of climate change went unmentioned, but so did another reality of our warming world. If the Arctic one day truly becomes the northern equivalent of a tropical passageway like the Suez or Panama canals, that will likely mean that parts of those southerly areas will have become the equivalents of uninhabitable deserts.</div><div>
</div><div>As such new trade and drilling opportunities arise, Pompeo affirmed, the United States intends to be out front in capitalizing on them. He then began bragging about what the Trump administration had already accomplished, including promoting expanded oil and gas drilling in offshore waters and also freeing up “energy exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” a pristine stretch of northern Alaska prized by environmentalists as a sanctuary for migrating caribou and other at-risk species. Additional efforts to exploit the region’s vital resources, he promised, are scheduled for the years ahead.</div><div>
</div><div>A New Arena for Competition (and Worse)</div><div>
</div><div>Ideally, Pompeo noted placidly, competition for the Arctic’s resources will be conducted in an orderly, peaceful manner. The United States, he assured his listeners, believes in “free and fair competition, open, by the rule of law.” But other countries, he added ominously, especially China and Russia, won’t play by that rulebook much of the time and so must be subject to careful oversight and, if need be, punitive action.</div><div>
</div><div>China, he pointed out, is already developing trade routes in the Arctic, and establishing economic ties with key nations there. Unlike the United States (which already has multiple military bases in the Arctic, including one at Thule in Greenland, and so has a well-established presence there), Pompeo claimed that Beijing is surreptitiously using such supposedly economic activities for military purposes, including, heinously enough, spying on U.S. ballistic missile submarines operating in the region, while intimidating its local partners into acquiescence.</div><div>
</div><div>He then cited events in the distant South China Sea, where the Chinese have indeed militarized a number of tiny uninhabited islands (outfitting them with airstrips, missile batteries, and the like) and the U.S. has responded by sending its warships into adjacent waters. He did so to warn of similar future military stand-offs and potential clashes in the Arctic. “Let’s just ask ourselves, do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?” The answer, he assured his listeners, is “pretty clear.” (And I’m sure you can guess what it is.)</div><div>
</div><div>The secretary of state then wielded even stronger language in describing “aggressive Russian behavior in the Arctic.” In recent years, he claimed, the Russians have built hundreds of new bases in the region, along with new ports and air-defense capabilities. “Russia is already leaving snow prints in the form of army boots” there, a threat that cannot be ignored. “Just because the Arctic is a place of wilderness does not mean it should become a place of lawlessness. It need not be the case. And we stand ready to ensure that it does not become so.”</div><div>
</div><div>And here we get to the heart of Pompeo’s message: the United States will, of course, “respond” by enhancing its own military presence in the Arctic to better protect U.S. interests, while countering Chinese and Russian inroads in the region:</div><div>
</div><div>“Under President Trump, we are fortifying America’s security and diplomatic presence in the area. On the security side, partly in response to Russia’s destabilizing activities, we are hosting military exercises, strengthening our force presence, rebuilding our icebreaker fleet, expanding Coast Guard funding, and creating a new senior military post for Arctic Affairs inside of our own military.”</div><div>
</div><div>To emphasize the administration’s sincerity, Pompeo touted the largest NATO and U.S. Arctic military maneuvers since the Cold War era, the recently completed “Trident Juncture” exercise (which he incorrectly referred to as “Trident Structure”), involving some 50,000 troops. Although the official scenario for Trident Juncture spoke of an unidentified “aggressor” force, few observers had any doubt that the allied team was assembled to repel a hypothetical Russian invasion of Norway, where the simulated combat took place.</div><div>
</div><div>Implementing the Doctrine</div><div>
</div><div>And so you have the broad outlines of the new Pompeo Doctrine, centered on the Trump administration’s truly forbidden topic: the climate crisis. In the most pugnacious manner imaginable, that doctrine posits a future of endless competition and conflict in the Arctic, growing ever more intense as the planet warms and the ice cap melts. The notion of the U.S. going nose-to-nose with the Russians and Chinese in the Far North, while exploiting the region’s natural resources, has clearly been circulating in Washington. By August, it had obviously already become enough of a commonplace in the White House (not to speak of the National Security Council and the Pentagon), for the president to offer to buy Greenland.</div><div>
</div><div>And when it comes to resources and future military conflicts, it wasn’t such a zany idea. After all, Greenland does have abundant natural resources and also houses that U.S. base in Thule. A relic of the Cold War, the Thule facility, mainly a radar base, is already being modernized, at a cost of some $300 million, to better track Russian missile launches. Clearly, key officials in Washington view Greenland as a valuable piece of real estate in the emerging geopolitical struggle Pompeo laid out, an assessment that clearly wormed its way into President Trump’s consciousness as well.</div><div>
</div><div>Iceland and Norway also play key roles in Pompeo’s and the Pentagon’s new strategic calculus. Another former Cold War facility, a base at Keflavik in Iceland has been reoccupied by the Navy and is now being used in antisubmarine warfare missions. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps has stationed several hundred combat troops at bases near Trondheim, Norway, the first permanent deployment of foreign soldiers on Norwegian soil since World War II. In 2018, the Pentagon even reactivated the Navy’s defunct Second Fleet, investing it with responsibility for protecting the North Atlantic as well as the Arctic’s maritime approaches, including those abutting Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. Consider these signs of heating-up times.</div><div>
</div><div>And all of this is clearly just the beginning of a major buildup in and regular testing of the ability of the U.S. military to operate in the Far North. As part of Exercise Trident Juncture, for example, the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and its flotilla of support ships were sent into the Norwegian Sea, the first time a U.S. carrier battle group had sailed above the Arctic Circle since the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Similarly, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer recently announced plans to send surface warships on trans-Arctic missions, another new military move. (U.S. nuclear submarines make such journeys regularly, sailing beneath the sea ice.)</div><div>
</div><div>The Irony of Arctic Melting</div><div>
</div><div>Although Secretary Pompeo and his underlings never mention the term climate change, every aspect of his new doctrine is a product of that phenomenon. As humanity puts more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global temperatures continue to rise, the Arctic ice cap will continue to shrink. That, in turn, will make exploitation of the region’s abundant oil and natural gas reserves ever more possible, leading to yet more burning of fossil fuels, further warming, and ever faster melting. In other words, the Pompeo Doctrine is a formula for catastrophe.</div><div>
</div><div>Add to this obvious abuse of the planet the likelihood that rising temperatures and increasing storm activity will render oil and gas extraction in parts of the world ever less viable. Many scientists now believe that daytime summer temperatures in oil-producing areas of the Middle East, for instance, are likely to average 120 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, making outdoor human labor of most sorts deadly. At the same time, more violent hurricanes and other tropical storms passing over the ever-warming waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico could imperil the continuing operation of offshore rigs there (and in other similarly storm-prone drilling areas). Unless humanity has converted to alternative fuels by then, the Arctic may be viewed as the world’s primary source of fossil fuels, only intensifying the struggle to control its vital resources.</div><div>
</div><div>Perhaps no aspect of humanity’s response to the climate crisis is more diabolical than this. The greater the number of fossil fuels we consume, the more rapidly we alter the Arctic, inviting the further extraction of just such fuels and their contribution to global warming. With other regions increasingly less able to sustain a fossil-fuel extraction economy, a continued addiction to oil will ensure the desolation of the once-pristine Far North as it is transformed into a Pompeo-style arena for burning conflict and civilizational disaster.</div><div>
</div><div>Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. His new book, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books), will be published in November.</div><div>
</div><div>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.</div><div>
</div><div>Copyright 2019 Michael T. Klare</div></div><div>
</div><div></div></div><div></div><div>omg 819 an</div><div><div>...Experts observed storm clouds in the region which, at lower latitudes, would have preceded thunderstorms. Lightning generally happens much further south because relatively higher temperatures and humidity levels are needed to cause the phenomenon.</div><div>
</div><div>The lightning at the North Pole was observed after climate experts have spent weeks recording higher-than-average temperatures in the Arctic. The warming globe is causing sea ice in the region to disappear at a higher rate than ever recorded, as Common Dreams reported last month. The melting ice in turn is contributing to a warmer Arctic.</div><div>
</div><div>As the Washington Post reported, the lighting denotes “that the atmosphere near the pole was unstable enough, with sufficient warm and moist air in the lower atmosphere, to give rise to thunderstorms.”</div><div>
</div><div>“The probability of this kind of event occurring would increase as the sea ice extent retreats farther and farther north in the summertime,” Alex Young, a meteorologist with the NWS in Fairbanks, told Wired.</div><div>
</div><div>Before the lightning was recorded, climate scientists were concerned about wildfires that have been burning in Greenland for more than a month.</div><div>
</div><div>“The lightning strikes near the North Pole come during one of the most extreme Arctic ice melt years on record,” the Washington Post‘s Capital Weather Gang tweeted, summarizing meteorologists’ alarm over recent weather in the planet’s far northern region. “There’s currently no sea ice in Alaskan waters, and Arctic-wide sea ice is plummeting to one of the five lowest levels on record.”...</div></div><div></div><div>PEAT FIRES</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-wildfires--2639340124.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-wildfires--2639340124.html</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2639340124" style="margin-top: -15px; line-height: 1.5;"><div class="body-description" style="clear: both;">So many <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">wildfires</a> are burning in the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Arctic</a>, they're visible from space, new images from NASA's Earth Observatory show. The satellite images reveal huge plumes of smoke wafting across uninhabited lands in Siberia, Greenland and Alaska, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/24/world/wildfires-arctic-climate-sci-intl/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">CNN</a> reported.Summer fires are common in the Arctic, but not at this scale."I think it's fair to say July Arctic Circle <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wildfires?src=hashtag_click" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">#wildfires</a> are now at unprecedented levels," said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at <a href="https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Europe's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service</a>, on <a href="https://twitter.com/m_parrington/status/1153222688615337984" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Twitter</a> earlier this week.<div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1" style="">Copernicus' scientists have been tracking more than 100 wildfires raging above the Arctic Circle since the start of June, which was the hottest June on record. July is on pace to break records too as Europe bakes under <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/europe-braces-for-second-extreme-heat-wave-this-summer-2639316173.html" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">another heat wave this week</a>."The magnitude is unprecedented in the 16-year satellite record," said Thomas Smith, an assistant professor in environmental geography at the London School of Economics, to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2019/07/23/arctic-fires-shown-satellite-concerning-scientists/1793530001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">USA Today</a>. "The fires appear to be further north than usual, and some appear to have ignited peat soils."Peat fires burn deeper in the ground and can last for weeks or even months instead of a few hours or days like most forest fires, according to the <a href="https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2019/07/25/Arctic-wildfires-continue-to-burn-releasing-record-amounts-of-CO2/8291564058758/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">UPI</a>.The researchers at Copernicus track how much greenhouse gas the wildfires emit into the atmosphere as well. So far, the Arctic's fires have released approximately 100 megatons, 100 million metric tons, of CO2 between June 1 and July 21, which <a href="https://twitter.com/m_parrington/status/1153224477205028864" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Parrington said on Twitter</a> "is getting close to 2017 fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Belgium" for the entire year, as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2019/07/23/arctic-fires-shown-satellite-concerning-scientists/1793530001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">USA Today</a> reported.Smith added another comparison to the amount of carbon released in the past two months."These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares (380 square miles)," he told <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2019/07/23/arctic-fires-shown-satellite-concerning-scientists/1793530001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">USA Today</a>. "The amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted from Arctic Circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic Circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together."That number is likely to jump as the fires burn through the peat, which acts as a carbon reservoir."The fires are burning through long-term carbon stores (peat soil) emitting greenhouse gases, which will further exacerbate greenhouse warming, leading to more fires," said Smith.Parrington said that the Arctic is seeing temperatures rise twice as fast as the global average."What this means is that, following ignition, the environmental conditions have been ideal for the fires to grow and continue," he told <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2019/07/23/arctic-fires-shown-satellite-concerning-scientists/1793530001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">USA Today</a>.The fires were likely ignited by lightning strikes and are now enormous. The largest fires are located in Siberia, in the regions of Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Buryatia, <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145355/wildfire-smoke-swirls-over-russia" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">according to the Earth Observatory</a>, as <a href="https://www.livescience.com/66022-wildfires-burning-arctic.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Live Science</a> reported. They have conflagrations have burned 320 square miles, 150 square miles, and 41 square miles, respectively.[twt]
Atmos scientist Santiago Gasso said on <a href="https://twitter.com/SanGasso/status/1154078682509692928" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Twitter</a> the Siberian fires have "now created a smoke lid extending over 4 and half million (square km) over central northern Asia. This is staggering."</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2" style="">Krasnoyarsk, the Russian city near the second largest fire, is blanketed in haze, according to the Earth Observatory. Siberia's largest city, Novosibirsk, doesn't have any fires as now, but smoke carried there by the winds caused the city's air quality to drop, as <a href="https://www.livescience.com/66022-wildfires-burning-arctic.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Live Science</a> reported. Right now, <a href="https://www.airvisual.com/russia/novosibirsk" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the city's Air Quality Index is hazardous</a>.Since the fires in the Siberian arctic are raging in uninhabited areas, firefighters are not able to access them. Only rain will put them out.Firefighters are working to put out the fires in Alaska since they are farther south, according to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2019/07/23/arctic-fires-shown-satellite-concerning-scientists/1793530001/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">USA Today</a>.</div><div class="post-pager js-listicle-pager" data-listicle-style="" data-async_load_parameters="platform=desktop&display_ads=1&settings=%7B%22enter_url%22%3A+false%2C+%22no_post_section%22%3A+false%2C+%22ads_breaks%22%3A+null%2C+%22prevent_last_break_repetition%22%3A+false%2C+%22use_numeration%22%3A+false%2C+%22ads_order%22%3A+%5B%5D%2C+%22pagination_order%22%3A+%5B%5D%2C+%22list_breaks%22%3A+null%2C+%22reorder_voting%22%3A+false%2C+%22cooldown_in_seconds%22%3A+null%2C+%22source%22%3A+%22post_listicle_settings%22%2C+%22next_post_url%22%3A+null%2C+%22up_down_voting%22%3A+false%2C+%22show_columns_on_mobile%22%3A+false%2C+%22numeration_sort%22%3A+-1%2C+%22use_pagination%22%3A+false%2C+%22body_text_above%22%3A+false%2C+%22use_ads%22%3A+false%2C+%22items_as_posts%22%3A+false%2C+%22multiple_answers%22%3A+false%2C+%22no_redirect%22%3A+false%2C+%22is_guest_voting_allowed%22%3A+true%2C+%22layout_type%22%3A+1%7D" style="display: table; width: 780px;"><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; visibility: hidden;"><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem" style=""><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2019/07/23/arctic-fires-shown-satellite-concerning-scientists/1793530001/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 0px !important;">Arctic fires shown on satellite are concerning scientists ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style=""><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/24/world/wildfires-arctic-climate-sci-intl/index.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 0px !important;">'Unprecedented' wildfires ravage the Arctic - CNN ›</a></li></ul></ul></div></div></div><div class="tags" style="margin: 20px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">wildfires</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">arctic</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">climate change</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">climate crisis</a></div></div><div><div>=</div><div>An area of 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) was engulfed by forest <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">fires</a> in remote regions of Russia on Monday. In comparison, the total surface of the nation of Belgium is 3.07 million hectares.With fires raging for days, immense clouds of smoke reached large population centers, including Russia's third biggest city, Novosibirsk. Authorities declared emergencies in several regions.<div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The smoke is horrible," pensioner Raisa Brovkina told state television after being hospitalized in Novosibirsk."I am choking and dizzy," she added.<h5>No Money to Put out Fires</h5>Siberia regularly faces immense wildfires, but the impact this year had been boosted by strong wind and unusually dry weather. The blazes have been allowed to spread as cash-strapped local authorities usually ignore fires in remote regions.Talking to Siberian Times, an emergency pilot in Krasnoyarski Krai said he had spent days waiting to fly his firefighting plane, but received no order to do so."Every day the whole team and I are on duty. There are four aircraft," he said in an article published on Monday."Since the beginning of the fires, not a single specialized [plane] has been lifted into the air.""They say it is expensive to extinguish and if part of the forest burns down — it is not scary," the unnamed pilot said.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h5>Greenpeace Steps in</h5>Separately, the region's officials said that cost of the firefighting effort is sometimes "ten times larger than the possible damage" caused by the fire.But the pilot slammed the calculation as "absurd.""Of course, now, probably it will be expensive to extinguish everything that burns," he said."But why was there no order to fly out earlier, when the fire had just begun to spread?"<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/russia-to-pay-millions-for-seizing-greenpeace-ship/a-39740289" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The Russian charter of Greenpeace</a> had launched a petition to force the government to move against wildfires in Siberia, which was signed by some 245,000 by Tuesday evening.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem3"><h5 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Burning in the Sun</h5>The wildfires "have long stopped being a local problem" and have "transformed into an ecological disaster with consequences for the entire country," Greenpeace said.Greenpeace expert Grigory Kuksin said the soot and ashes accelerate the melting of <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/fire-and-ice-the-untapped-fossil-fuel-that-could-save-or-ruin-our-climate/a-43246890" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the Arctic ice and permafrost</a>, which in turns releases even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."It is comparable to the emissions of major cities," he told the AFP news agency. "The more fires affect the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">climate</a>, the more conditions are created for new dangerous fires."The group said almost 12 million hectares have already burned this year, destroying <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/forests" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">forests</a> that absorb carbon dioxide.Siberia was almost 10 degrees Celsius (18 Fahrenheit) warmer than the long-term average in June, according to the World Meteorological Organization.</div></div></div><div>=<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" text-align="text-align" center="center" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><li class="hidden-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.33;"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/11/headlines/study_finds_antarctic_glacier_is_melting_and_could_add_50cm_to_sea_level_rise" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;">Study Finds Antarctic Glacier Is Melting and Could Add 50cm to Sea Level Rise</a></li><li class="hidden-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.33;">719</li></ul>=</div><div></div><div>719</div><div><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" sf="SF" compact="Compact" display="Display" apple-system="apple-system" blinkmacsystemfont="BlinkMacSystemFont" segoe="Segoe" ui="UI" roboto="Roboto" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" apple="Apple" color="Color" emoji="Emoji" symbol="Symbol" font-size="font-size" em="em" line-height="line-height" margin="margin" px="px">retro report 4: Trump’s push to drill the Arctic Refuge hits a headwind</h2><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 0px;"><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">The Republican-backed tax law of 2017 included a stealth measure that opened the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas drilling.</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">The Trump administration has been rushing to get drilling leases auctioned before the 2020 presidential election.</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">But  now, “unusually harsh criticism from federal wildlife regulators could deal a blow” to that effort, <a href="http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkN2OgyAQhZ9G7jQgWukFF900voahMFpSfgwMu_HtF20ymUkOYc6ZTyuELaZD7jEjKRnSYo3spxu93ykxcjBMjILYvKwJwCvrJKYCZC8vZ7VCG8P1gTJB3lIIMTEuGKNa3Rhj633shdKrWelrWKeRnC6LKsZC0CDhF9IRAxAn34h7bvij6edaAf5yd6h3jJ2O_hQitqvK2FZzv7fKqfxRrUnWORu2NmMxR5ud8h5MW1o2jpTS8TZ0b_Su4fNWtI4lIKSGPxmxZ-A7nWhfZ20d6x4zE2zmgj5vwzD9TM1A_dZ3ubwyKv05c5Akd4Vefxivr9sJ45Iri6VOX4LFY4GgXg7MFxN-uV5n47GDPC9zgDXIV6zsBOWck2pkYl0ZpIEEW3EX23D1f_2mjoE" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkN2OgyAQhZ9G7jQgWukFF900voahMFpSfgwMu_HtF20ymUkOYc6ZTyuELaZD7jEjKRnSYo3spxu93ykxcjBMjILYvKwJwCvrJKYCZC8vZ7VCG8P1gTJB3lIIMTEuGKNa3Rhj633shdKrWelrWKeRnC6LKsZC0CDhF9IRAxAn34h7bvij6edaAf5yd6h3jJ2O_hQitqvK2FZzv7fKqfxRrUnWORu2NmMxR5ud8h5MW1o2jpTS8TZ0b_Su4fNWtI4lIKSGPxmxZ-A7nWhfZ20d6x4zE2zmgj5vwzD9TM1A_dZ3ubwyKv05c5Akd4Vefxivr9sJ45Iri6VOX4LFY4GgXg7MFxN-uV5n47GDPC9zgDXIV6zsBOWck2pkYl0ZpIEEW3EX23D1f_2mjoE&source=gmail&ust=1562185787717000&usg=AFQjCNG8DK7k4hA-qoUf7p9fIKsQRzCW2g" style="">as Reuters (via Yahoo News) reported in May.</a></li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">Alaska-based staff of the Fish and Wildlife Service are (in so many words), charging Bureau of Land Management with doing a shoddy job assessing how drilling will affect the refuge environmentally. (Both agencies are part of the Department of Interior.)</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">The BLM “failed to include oil spill response plans, analyze the effects of climate change on the Arctic, or ensure that surveys of polar bear denning habitats are required,” FWS staff wrote in response to the BLM’s environmental report.</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">“The Interior subagency also listed dozens of other information gaps in its 59 pages of comments and implied that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management wrote the study without properly consulting wildlife regulators,” according to Reuters</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">These comments would seem to strengthen the legal case that the Trump administration’s permitting process for drilling in the Arctic Refuge has been flawed, were anyone to sue the Trump administration to stop it.</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">Back in March, a government watchdog group charged Interior with hiding “18 memos detailing the environmental “unknowns” of drilling in the Arctic refuge,” <a href="http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUMuOwyAM_JpyjHgkkB44dLXqb0Q83BQ1gQjMRvn7Jalk2dZY9njGGYQ55UNvqSCpBfIUvOZK0vudEq97z8ZhJKFMrwywmrBozBXIVu0SnMGQ4rVA2UjeWgzwAjk47oS0jFluqDJy4EJZZanvyckymeoDRAca_iAfKQJZ9BtxKzfxuPFni33fO4AIe-kiYAMKphygtI5RSRlXVCoSTto7VZS32lLHuseTjewpRvor-179qFtP15l3pdqCxn06l1aS9WZwdR8m2nQ-JV1wUzS1utYY8JggGruA_4rFrzvX83hsoM_PFkCE_AWbAyMVQpBG5FM7GbWHDHNdLofilf8B4WJ5Pg" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUMuOwyAM_JpyjHgkkB44dLXqb0Q83BQ1gQjMRvn7Jalk2dZY9njGGYQ55UNvqSCpBfIUvOZK0vudEq97z8ZhJKFMrwywmrBozBXIVu0SnMGQ4rVA2UjeWgzwAjk47oS0jFluqDJy4EJZZanvyckymeoDRAca_iAfKQJZ9BtxKzfxuPFni33fO4AIe-kiYAMKphygtI5RSRlXVCoSTto7VZS32lLHuseTjewpRvor-179qFtP15l3pdqCxn06l1aS9WZwdR8m2nQ-JV1wUzS1utYY8JggGruA_4rFrzvX83hsoM_PFkCE_AWbAyMVQpBG5FM7GbWHDHNdLofilf8B4WJ5Pg&source=gmail&ust=1562185787717000&usg=AFQjCNEFNJPUETDtq7YpQj1nZ1iGTSPn8w" style="">as E&E News reported at the time,</a> and petitioned the agency’s Inspector General’s office to investigate.</li></ul><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-left: 4px solid rgb(139, 196, 74); margin: 1em 0px;"><h3 style="" sf="SF" compact="Compact" display="Display" apple-system="apple-system" blinkmacsystemfont="BlinkMacSystemFont" segoe="Segoe" ui="UI" roboto="Roboto" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" apple="Apple" color="Color" emoji="Emoji" symbol="Symbol" font-size="font-size" em="em" line-height="line-height" margin="margin" px="px">also</h3><ul style="margin: 1em 0px 1em 1em;"><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">House Democratic lawmakers have put a bill in motion to close the Arctic Refuge to drilling, along with the Atlantic and Pacific coasts</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">“It does nothing to go after the existing jobs in oil and gas,” said co-sponsor Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.).“It simply says you can’t expand into this one special place,” <a href="http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUNuugyAQ_JryhgG1FR94aHPS3zAIqyVFMFxq_PuzakJms0N2Z3a0yjCHuMs1pExKgjhYI-vuwfqeESNbw8VdEJuGKQIsyjqZYwGyltFZrbIN_hxgXJCP5ApMU489E0o8uGonzYUG3o2ibXU9TeRQGVQxFrwGCT-Ie_BAnPzkvKZb87zVb3zbtlXKqfRVl04V4ow0qvRY2P2AGsHAEnRUOdHgaUn0E_ACqsOy2JwB6BJ-QJXPlpponbN-xm6LdMQGx4k9jPesYzVWhIpXzzcX_N0I9vdo2-7V3Vq2zHWVypiy0t8Kl5MoV5UX_eUN_s5HKCeNXodDu3ib9wG8Gh2YK6585Xuen_cVpIctOUCT8SIxQ8GapiEoZAKu9NJAhLm4M2N_4j-24ZGP" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlUNuugyAQ_JryhgG1FR94aHPS3zAIqyVFMFxq_PuzakJms0N2Z3a0yjCHuMs1pExKgjhYI-vuwfqeESNbw8VdEJuGKQIsyjqZYwGyltFZrbIN_hxgXJCP5ApMU489E0o8uGonzYUG3o2ibXU9TeRQGVQxFrwGCT-Ie_BAnPzkvKZb87zVb3zbtlXKqfRVl04V4ow0qvRY2P2AGsHAEnRUOdHgaUn0E_ACqsOy2JwB6BJ-QJXPlpponbN-xm6LdMQGx4k9jPesYzVWhIpXzzcX_N0I9vdo2-7V3Vq2zHWVypiy0t8Kl5MoV5UX_eUN_s5HKCeNXodDu3ib9wG8Gh2YK6585Xuen_cVpIctOUCT8SIxQ8GapiEoZAKu9NJAhLm4M2N_4j-24ZGP&source=gmail&ust=1562185787717000&usg=AFQjCNEX3_imy-lAq5e9PPwkQ4wdZZyLIQ" style="">reported Alaska Public Media.</a></li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">Based on his track record to date, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), isn’t likely to schedule a vote on any Senate companion to the House bill.</li><li style="margin: 3.75px 0px 3.75px 7.5px;">“We have to provide the American people with a choice, a bet to save ANWR. I don’t know how [Republicans] are going to defend it. They did it in the middle of the night; they stuck it to a bill it didn’t belong in. No hearings, nothing,” <a href="http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkNGOgyAQRb-mvGFAseoDD91s-hsGYapkEQyMbfz7HW1CBrhk5l6ONQhzyofeUkG2F8ijd7ru7mIYBHNaOdm3PfNlfGWA1figMe_Atn0K3hr0KV4NQvZs0UNjWmEn2yop-9fdtK4ehpdplWla2UHHTpfR7M5DtKDhDflIEVjQC-JWbs3jVj9p4QKLD6GyaaXblsjqoANEyPPBIb59TnGFiCQqJe9K8CVReE4Nq0cE4O-EUDgmXjBtPPnAXaaRPs7cR27iJzN_xh5EJ2raqVSyejxlL59NL37vSnU_3U2Jda6rsk8Fjf07A7GsN4Or_ZMNvc4nkksmIuNpv0ePxwjRTAHcFxZ-6V6fx2MDHeFTAlDO_BWJYC-apmFk5BKNjNpBhnkPF-F41X-byZIy" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJwlkNGOgyAQRb-mvGFAseoDD91s-hsGYapkEQyMbfz7HW1CBrhk5l6ONQhzyofeUkG2F8ijd7ru7mIYBHNaOdm3PfNlfGWA1figMe_Atn0K3hr0KV4NQvZs0UNjWmEn2yop-9fdtK4ehpdplWla2UHHTpfR7M5DtKDhDflIEVjQC-JWbs3jVj9p4QKLD6GyaaXblsjqoANEyPPBIb59TnGFiCQqJe9K8CVReE4Nq0cE4O-EUDgmXjBtPPnAXaaRPs7cR27iJzN_xh5EJ2raqVSyejxlL59NL37vSnU_3U2Jda6rsk8Fjf07A7GsN4Or_ZMNvc4nkksmIuNpv0ePxwjRTAHcFxZ-6V6fx2MDHeFTAlDO_BWJYC-apmFk5BKNjNpBhnkPF-F41X-byZIy&source=gmail&ust=1562185787717000&usg=AFQjCNGkIHGUs8VPs39esoEqmq8CwZ_JEw" style="">Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the head of the committee that approved the bill, told The Hill</a>. “They did it in a very sneaky way, underhanded way, so what we did today was out in the open, we had a good debate about it.”</li></ul></blockquote></div><div><div></div><div>gray whales</div><div>165 west coast, 90% do not strand/wash up; arctic krill b/c AGW</div><div><div></div><div>omg (whales starve off CA no food)</div><div>
</div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/mike-pompeo-actually-just-cheered-the-new-opportunities-presented-by-the-arctics-melting-ice-sheets/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Pompeo actually just cheered the ‘new opportunities’ presented by the Arctic’s melting ice sheets</a></h2></div></div></div></div><div>=619<h2 class="posttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; font-weight: 300; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/arctic-death-spiral-coastal-permafrost-collapse-23d650acea99/" rel="bookmark" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word;">Arctic death spiral speeds up sixfold, driving coastal permafrost collapse</a></h2><div class="postmeta" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.15625rem; line-height: 1.3; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="url fn n" href="https://thinkprogress.org/author/joe-romm/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; white-space: nowrap;">JOE ROMM</a></div><div class="postmeta" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.15625rem; line-height: 1.3; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div class="postmeta" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.15625rem; line-height: 1.3; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 0px;">Drone surveys have revealed erosion of coastal permafrost in the Arctic — up to 3 feet a day. Researchers reported Friday that the recent rate of erosion is six times higher than the historical rate.Meanwhile, the Arctic just saw the hottest May on record, with temperatures in northwest Russia hitting a remarkable 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius). Global warming is driving Arctic sea ice to near-record lows, which in turn is driving ever-worsening summer heat waves in the southern United States, according to another new study.In the first study, a team led by <a href="https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2019/arctic-coast-erosion-revealed-by-drone-images" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">University of Edinburgh scientists</a> flew drone-mounted cameras over a section of permafrost coastline in the Canadian Arctic.They found that during a 40-day period in the summer of 2017, the coast had retreated a remarkable 47 feet — with daily rates of collapse sometimes exceeding 3 feet,"Big chunks of soil and ground break off the coastline every day, then fall into the waves and get eaten away,” co-author Dr. Isla Myers-Smith, a University of Edinburgh geoscientist, explained.This rate of erosion was more than six times greater than the historical average experienced in the previous half century.<div class="related-contentwrapper" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); 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border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/dangerous-permafrost-climate-feedback-loop/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/dangerous-permafrost-climate-feedback-loop/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;"><figure class="postfigure postfigure--format-thumbnail" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><div class="postthumbnail" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><picture id="picture-1116139" class="wp-image-1116139 size-full " data-id="1116139" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=1200&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C900px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 1920px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=1200&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C900px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1920px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C768px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1024px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C768px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 512px) and (max-width: 1024px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C576px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 512px) and (max-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=512&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C384px&ssl=1" media="(max-width: 512px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C576px&ssl=1" media="(max-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i1.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Arctic-Permafrost-Thaw-Alfred-Wegener-Institute.jpg?w=1200&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C900px&ssl=1" media="all" style="box-sizing: inherit;">
</source></source></source></source></source></source></source></source></picture></div></figure></a></div><div class="related-contentbody" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 513px;"><h3 class="related-contenttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2rem; margin: -7px 0px 0.5em;">The most dangerous climate feedback loop is speeding up</h3>In Siberia, the carbon-rich permafrost warmed by 1.6°F in just the last decade.</div></div>The permafrost, or tundra, is soil that stays below freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit) for at least two years. Thawing permafrost is a dangerous amplifying feedback loop for global warming because the global permafrost contains <a href="http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n10/abs/ngeo1573.html" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">twice as much carbon as the atmosphere </a>does today .As the permafrost melts, it releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane, and as the coastline disintegrates and erodes, more and more permafrost will be exposed to the warming air and water.This means, as the planet continues to warm, more permafrost will erode and melt, releasing even more greenhouse gases in a continuous feedback loop.A <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/114/21/5361" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">2017 study</a> found the Alaskan tundra is warming so quickly it had become a net emitter of CO2 ahead of schedule. That study was the first to report a major portion of the Arctic had already become a net source of heat-trapping emissions.As the Arctic warms, the ice retreats — and the <a href="https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1136765567438794752" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">recent record Arctic temperatures</a> have led to the <a href="https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1137761845840736257" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">second lowest amount</a> of sea ice on record for June (after 2016).<figure class="postfigure postfigure--format-article-width" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 2rem; padding: 0px; max-width: 100%; letter-spacing: normal; text-transform: none;"><div class="postthumbnail" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><picture id="picture-1144134" class="wp-image-1144134 size-full " data-id="1144134" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=1200&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C800px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 1920px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=1200&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C800px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 1024px) and (max-width: 1920px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C683px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 1024px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=1024&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C683px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 512px) and (max-width: 1024px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C512px&ssl=1" media="(min-width: 512px) and (max-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=512&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C341px&ssl=1" media="(max-width: 512px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C512px&ssl=1" media="(max-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><source srcset="https://i2.wp.com/thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Labe-Arctic-Sea-Ice-extent.jpg?w=1200&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C800px&ssl=1" media="all" style="box-sizing: inherit;">[scry dialongal down graf]</source></source></source></source></source></source></source></source></picture></div><figcaption style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.06875rem; line-height: 1.45rem; margin: 1em auto 0px; max-width: 41.5625rem; text-transform: uppercase;">ARCTIC SEA ICE EXTENT (IN MILLIONS OF SQUARE KILOMETERS). CREDIT: ZACH LABE.</figcaption></figure>Such ice loss is a key reason climate models have long predicted that human-caused warming would be at least twice as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere. When highly reflective sea ice melts due to higher temperatures, it is replaced by the dark blue sea which absorbs more solar energy, leading to more melting.A study released last week in the <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018JD029365" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">Journal of Geophysical Research</a> found that loss of Arctic sea ice is making extreme heat waves more likely. The study concludes that “low summer sea ice in Hudson Bay is statistically linked to an increased frequency of summer U.S. heat waves,” especially in the U.S. Southeast and southern Plains.The study also finds that the melting sea ice is weakening the jet stream. A weaker jet stream causes summer weather systems to stall, leading to longer and stronger heat waves — and other extreme events, as recent studies have reported.Back in December, the annual <a href="https://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">Arctic Report Card</a> from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noted that “Growing atmospheric warmth in the Arctic results in a sluggish and unusually wavy jet-stream that coincided with abnormal weather events in both the Arctic and mid-latitudes.”What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Unless we start cutting carbon pollution sharply and rapidly, we can expect Arctic temperatures to soar in the coming decades, bringing ever worsening extreme weather to this country.</div><div>= </div></div><div></div><div><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=be66114246&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ocean Is Screaming': What Killed Thousands of Seabirds on an Arctic Island?</a> BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN The story of the puffins’ deaths likely starts at the bottom of the food chain, where warming water and climate change are changing the menu.</div><div></div><div><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/ykbcgpvyvzmnmgttnfqvvnvttfntykbwczvmqspkcsf_zlwmrfdfkrssfprmbfb.html?a=&b=273&c=21989&d=2" style="">Antarctica’s fourth largest ice shelf susceptible to hydrofracture and collapse from winter winds</a><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"> Recent findings on Antartic ice shelves show that they are…</div><div><div></div><div>omg (whales starve off CA no food)</div><div>
</div><div>also Bolton, both mercer</div><div>
</div><div><div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/mike-pompeo-actually-just-cheered-the-new-opportunities-presented-by-the-arctics-melting-ice-sheets/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;"> Pompeo actually just cheered the ‘new opportunities’ presented by the Arctic’s melting ice sheets</a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">by <a class="url fn n" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/cody-fenwick/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Cody Fenwick</a> May 6, 2019</div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has never been terribly worried about climate change, but in a new speech to the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Finland on Monday, he seemed…</div></div><div></div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://grist.org/article/the-arctics-ticking-carbon-bomb-could-blow-up-the-paris-agreement/">https://grist.org/article/the-arctics-ticking-carbon-bomb-could-blow-up-the-paris-agreement/</a></div><div>
</div><div>
<div><div>=
</div><div><a href="https://grist.org/article/the-arctics-ticking-carbon-bomb-could-blow-up-the-paris-agreement/">https://grist.org/article/the-arctics-ticking-carbon-bomb-could-blow-up-the-paris-agreement/</a></div><div>
</div><div>yoder 3/19</div><div>
</div><div>Even in a dream-come-true scenario where we manage to stop all the

world’s carbon emissions overnight, the Arctic would inevitably get

hotter and hotter. That’s according to <a href="https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/3-5degc-temperature-rise-now-locked-arctic">a new report</a>

by U.N. Environment, which says the the region is already “locked in”

to wintertime warming of 4 to 5 degrees C (7.2 to 9 degrees F) over

temperatures of the late 1900s.

The report, released at the U.N. Environment conference in Kenya on

Wednesday, says that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the

planetary average, and models show that it’s on track to become <a href="https://grist.org/article/let-it-go-the-arctic-will-never-be-frozen-again/">ice-free</a> during the summer as soon as 2030.

That’s the bad news. So here’s even worse news. The Arctic contains

much of the world’s permafrost, which holds what the report calls a

“sleeping giant” made of greenhouse gases. As the ground warms, the

microbes in the soil wake up and start belching greenhouse gases.

Estimates vary, but the report says 1.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide

lurk beneath the Earth’s permafrost. That’s more than <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/co2-emissions-reached-an-all-time-high-in-2018/">40 times</a> as much CO2 as humans released into the atmosphere last year, and double the amount of the gas in the atmosphere today.

If that permafrost stayed permanently frozen, as the word itself

suggests it should, we could continue worrying about other stuff. But

researchers expect Arctic permafrost to shrink 45 percent compared to

today. Unleashing that stored-up carbon dioxide and methane would

obviously “derail efforts” to limit warming to 2 degrees C (3.6CK

degrees F) as outlined in the Paris Agreement, the report says. But then

again, it would derail pretty much everything.

“New evidence suggests that permafrost is thawing much faster than

previously thought, with consequences not just for Arctic peoples and

ecosystems, but for the planet as a whole because of feedback loops,”

the report states.

This is one of the runaway warming scenarios, often called the

“carbon bomb” or “methane bomb.” (Permafrost holds both greenhouse

gases.) Unlike a real bomb, however, it wouldn’t explode all at once.

And at least <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190206104538.htm">one recent study</a> suggests that we still have time to defuse it.

Within the Arctic, the soil formerly known as permafrost — let’s call

it “meltafrost” — could pose a danger to 70 percent of current

infrastructure by 2050, as well as the region’s 4 million inhabitants,

10 percent of whom are indigenous. Recent studies have shown that

permafrost thaw could cause houses to collapse, lead to uneven roads,

and threaten important <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/climate-change-and-the-deteriorating-archaeological-and-environmental-archives-of-the-arctic/AB1238067F7DAB646DE91C937047B916">cultural and archaeological sites</a>.

The North Pole runs warmer than the rest of the planet because of a

phenomenon called “Arctic amplification” — basically a region-specific

term for feedback loops. “[W]hen sea ice melts in the summer, it opens

up dark areas of water that absorb more heat from the sun, which in turn

melts more ice,” the report explains.

These rapid changes in the Arctic might seem far away, but you will

feel them, too. For those of you on the coasts, keep in mind that the

melting of Arctic glaciers and Greenland’s ice sheet makes up a third of

sea-level rise around the globe. Rising seas will wreak havoc in

coastal regions as they deal with flooding, damaged buildings, and the

saltwater contamination of drinking water sources.

And for those further inland, there’s the wild weather. The melting of the Arctic causes changes in the jet stream and <a href="https://grist.org/article/4-ways-the-melting-arctic-is-wreaking-havoc-near-you/">disrupts weather patterns</a>

much further south. It’s been linked to worsening drought across the

western United States, stalled hurricanes in the East, and the polar

vortex that occasionally dips down over North America to turn us all

into popsicles.

As many are fond of saying, “What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.”</div><div>
</div></div></div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-climate-change-2634032427.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-climate-change-2634032427.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>by </div><div>Jon QueallyA new research paper by American and European climate scientists focused on Arctic warming published Monday reveals that the "smoking gun" when it comes to changes in the world's northern polar region is rapidly warming air temperatures that are having — and will continue to have — massive and negative impacts across the globe.The paper new paper — titled <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafc1b/meta" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017</a> <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafc1b/meta" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">— is the work of scientists at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen (GUES).</a><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="1" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1" style="">"The Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but beyond the Arctic," said Jason Box of the GUES, lead author of the study. "Because the Arctic atmosphere is warming faster than the rest of the world, weather patterns across Europe, North America and Asia are becoming more persistent, leading to extreme weather conditions. Another example is the disruption of the ocean circulation that can further destabilize climate: for example, cooling across northwestern Europe and strengthening of storms."John Walsh, chief scientist at AUF's research center, was the one who called arctic air tempertures the "smoking gun" discovered during the research — a finding the team did not necessarily anticipate."I didn't expect the tie-in with temperature to be as strong as it was," Walsh said. "All the variables are connected with temperature. All components of the Arctic system are involved in this change."The study, published Monday as the flagship piece in a special issue on Arctic climate change indicators published by the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first of its kind to combine observations of physical climate indicators — such as snow cover, rainfall and seasonal measurements of sea ice extent — with biological impacts, such as a mismatch in the timing of flowers blooming and pollinators working. According to Walsh, "Never have so many Arctic indicators been brought together in a single paper."This three-and-a-half minute video put together by the research team, explains its methodology and findings in detail: [vid]The new study comes as temperature records in the polar regions continue to break record after record. Last week, climatologists said Alaska experienced the highest March temperatures ever recorded.</div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="2" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Statewide temperatures averaged 27°F degrees last month, a full 4 degrees higher than the record set in 1965. Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist with the International Arctic Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks, <a href="https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/weather/2019/04/03/march-records-for-warm-weather-across-alaska-were-obliterated-this-year/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">told</a> the Anchorage Daily News, "We're not just eking past records. This is obliterating records."Also last month, as Common Dreams <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/14/un-report-warns-locked-arctic-temperature-spikes-will-unleash-global-sea-level-rise" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">reported</a>, the UN Environment Programme (ENUP) warned in a far-reaching report that winter temperatures in the Arctic are already "locked in" in such a way that significant sea level increases are now inevitable this century.Rising temperatures, along with ocean acidification, pollution, and thawing permafrost threaten the Arctic and the more than four million people who inhabit it, including 10 percent who are Indigenous. But, as UNEP acting Executive Director Joyce Msuya noted at the time, "What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic."That warning was echoed by the researchers behind the new study out Monday. Their hope, they said, is that the findings about air temperatures and the delicate interconnections between the climate and other natural systems in the Arctic will "provide a foundation for a more integrated understanding of the Arctic and its role in the dynamics of the Earth's biogeophysical systems."</div>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/08/researchers-warn-arctic-has-entered-unprecedented-state-threatens-global-climate?cd-origin=rss" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Common Dreams</a>.<div class="post-pager js-listicle-pager" data-async_load_parameters="platform=desktop&display_ads=1&settings=%7B%22list_breaks%22%3A+null%2C+%22body_text_above%22%3A+false%2C+%22show_columns_on_mobile%22%3A+false%2C+%22use_ads%22%3A+false%2C+%22reorder_voting%22%3A+false%2C+%22numeration_sort%22%3A+-1%2C+%22items_as_posts%22%3A+false%2C+%22ads_breaks%22%3A+null%2C+%22enter_url%22%3A+false%2C+%22ads_order%22%3A+%5B%5D%2C+%22no_redirect%22%3A+false%2C+%22multiple_answers%22%3A+false%2C+%22no_post_section%22%3A+false%2C+%22use_pagination%22%3A+false%2C+%22next_post_url%22%3A+null%2C+%22source%22%3A+%22post_listicle_settings%22%2C+%22use_numeration%22%3A+false%2C+%22up_down_voting%22%3A+false%2C+%22layout_type%22%3A+1%2C+%22pagination_order%22%3A+%5B%5D%7D" data-listicle-style="" style="display: table; width: 780px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem" style=""><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/c02-levels-2633711783.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">CO2 Levels Are Now at a 3 Million-Year High - EcoWatch ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style=""><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/2019-hurricane-season-2633804161.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Early Forecasts Suggest 'Quiet' 2019 Hurricane Season - EcoWatch ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem" style="">
</li></ul></div></div><div></div><div><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=eda4afe0a6&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What the Arctic Offshore Drilling Ban Means to Native Villages Who Rely on the Ocean</a> BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN Hunters worry about marine mammals and the survival of a way of life, but there are also some mixed feelings as the Trump administration goes full bore on oil and gas drilling.</div><div><div></div><div>ew 4/19</div><div><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=607734a51b&e=c2e8fdabfa" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Judge Says Trump’s Plan to Allow Drilling in Arctic Ocean Is ‘Unlawful and Invalid’</a></div><div></div></div><div>=</div><div><table class="yiv2239430766mcnCaptionBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody class="yiv2239430766mcnCaptionBlockOuter"><tr><td class="yiv2239430766mcnCaptionBlockInner" style="padding: 9px;" valign="top"><table class="yiv2239430766mcnCaptionRightContentOuter" style="border-collapse: collapse;" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv2239430766mcnCaptionRightContentInner" style="padding: 0px 9px;" valign="top"><table class="yiv2239430766mcnCaptionRightTextContentContainer" style="border-collapse: collapse;" width="352" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv2239430766mcnTextContent" style="line-height: 24px;" valign="top"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=f9f2888aba&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Lawyers Ramp Up Challenges to Trump’s Oil Drilling Push</a>
BY: SABRINA SHANKMAN
One judge put oil leases on hold over a failure to consider the climate risks of greenhouse gases, and more challenges are brewing in the Arctic.</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table class="yiv2239430766mcnButtonBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" min-width="min-width" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody class="yiv2239430766mcnButtonBlockOuter"><tr><td class="yiv2239430766mcnButtonBlockInner" style="padding: 0px 18px 18px;" valign="top" align="center"><table class="yiv2239430766mcnButtonContentContainer" style="border-radius: 5px; background-color: rgb(142, 196, 77);" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv2239430766mcnButtonContent" style="padding: 6px;" valign="middle" align="center"><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv2239430766mcnButton " title="Read More" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=4b58b01158&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: block; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 14px;">Read More</a></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div></div><div>3/19</div><div> Trump administration is moving to permit a handful of private companies to start using seismic surveys in the Atlantic. This destructive tool in the oil exploration industry can cause marine creatures — including dolphins, whales, fish and zooplankton — catastrophic harm, including death. "I will tell you we wouldn't work really really hard to get the [Atlantic] seismic permits out, if it was an area that wasn't going to be available," said Joe Balash, who oversees the the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency responsible for permitting the Atlantic seismic permits and crafting the five-year drilling plan. When Balash says that area is going to be "available," he means they intend to make the Atlantic coast available to oil companies to drill. The League of Conservation Voters has led efforts to halt drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic and other areas where drilling has been off-limits. We've organized and put pressure on members of Congress and we're currently suing the Trump administration to block its Arctic drilling plans. We can stop the Trump administration again, but we need your help.  <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://secure.lcv.org/page/contribute/C4DFEMMARM01?source=3125151" name="2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1.5em; font-weight: bold;">The League of Conservation Voters is fighting on many fronts — climate action, clean water, healthier air. Your support is needed more than ever. Please donate to LCV right now — even $5 can help. Every gift will be triple matched » </a> There's more to this fight — the Senate also just announced that oil lobbyist David Bernhardt's confirmation hearing to be Interior Secretary has been scheduled for next Thursday. Believe me — if confirmed, Bernhardt, who currently oversees the Interior Department as the Acting Secretary, will ram through Trump's plan for drilling in the Atlantic and in other oceans off our beaches.</div><div>2/19<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://ecowatch.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=214ab5fbb3f6015d74ffab4ec&id=0fc30ff404&e=c2e8fdabfa" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Russian Polar Bear 'Invasion' Is a Sign of Something Much Bigger</a> ew </div><div></div><div>1/19 </div><div>, despite being affected by the government shutdown, the Bureau of Land Management is holding public meetings in Alaska to push forward plans for new oil and gas leases in the Arctic. wheeler?</div><div></div><div><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-ship-traffic-animals-threatened-2618873213.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; line-height: 31px;">Arctic Ship Traffic Threatens Narwhals and Other Extraordinary Animals</a></h1><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url css-listicle-body-2618873213" data-elid="2618873213" data-authors="The Conversation" data-headline="Arctic Ship Traffic Threatens Narwhals and Other Extraordinary Animals" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description"><div class="widgetbrief">By Donna Hauser, Harry Stern and Kristin LaidreAmericans often associate fall with football and raking leaves, but in the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Arctic</a> this season is about ice. Every year, floating <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-ice" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">sea ice</a> in the Arctic thins and melts in spring and summer, then thickens and expands in fall and winter.As climate change warms the Arctic, its sea ice cover is declining. This year scientists estimate that the Arctic sea ice minimum in late September covered 1.77 million square miles, tying the <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/92817/arctic-sea-ice-reaches-2018-minimum" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word;">sixth lowest summertime minimum on record</a>.</div><div class="js-appear-on-expand" style="transition: all 350ms ease 0s; height: 0px; overflow: hidden; opacity: 0;"><div class="widgetshow-more with-primary-color js-keep-reading js-page-view-and-reload-embeds" style="cursor: pointer; border-radius: 15px; float: left; padding: 7px; font-weight: 600; background-color: rgb(240, 240, 240);">Keep reading...</div></div></div></div></div><div>
=yikes nor methane:<div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Warm Waters Under Arctic Ice a 'Ticking Time Bomb'</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2600400973" data-authors="Lorraine Chow" data-headline="Warm Waters Under Arctic Ice a 'Ticking Time Bomb'" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">Scientists warn that a warm layer of salty <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/oceans" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ocean</a> water accumulating 50 meters beneath the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Arctic</a>'s Canadian Basin could potentially melt the region's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-ice" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">sea-ice</a> pack for much of the year if it reaches the surface.The <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat6773" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">findings</a> were published Thursday in the journal Science Advances by researchers from Yale University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.This "archived" heat is currently trapped under a surface layer of colder freshwater, but if the two layers mix, "there is enough heat to entirely melt the sea-ice pack that covers this region for most of the year," lead author<a href="https://people.earth.yale.edu/profile/mary-louise-timmermans/about" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Mary-Louise Timmermans</a>, a professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University, told <a href="https://news.yale.edu/2018/08/29/archived-heat-has-reached-deep-arctic-interior-researchers-say" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">YaleNews</a>.The researchers discovered that the heat content of the warm, salty layer doubled from 200 to 400 million joules per square meter in the past 30 years.The warming layer is "a ticking time bomb," the study's co-author John Toole of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/sea-ice-warm-layer-1.4803195" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">CBC</a>."That heat isn't going to go away," he added. "Eventually ... it's going have to come up to the surface and it's going to impact the ice."Scientists believe the warm water is coming from the Chukchi Sea in the south, where ice cover has been<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-sea-ice-walrus-2474014630.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">rapidly melting</a> and being exposed to the summer sun. Strong northerly winds are driving these warm waters north and flowing beneath the Canadian Basin....</div></div></div></div><div></div><div> Trump administration hands over the <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://act.nrdc.org/letter/arctic-drilling-180522?source=EMOANWPET&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=text5&utm_campaign=email&t=7&akid=993%2E1776095%2E4YIj1-" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 900;">Arctic Refuge</a> and<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://act.nrdc.org/letter/beaufort-sea-180522?source=EMOBEAPET&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=text6&utm_campaign=email&t=8&akid=993%2E1776095%2E4YIj1-" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 900;">Beaufort Sea</a> to oil giants </div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-refuge-drilling-trump-2561725554.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-refuge-drilling-trump-2561725554.html</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="widgetbrief" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/department-of-interior" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Interior Department</a> has launched the process of holding lease sales for oil and gas drilling in the 1.6-million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/anwr" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">ANWR</a>).Despite decades of fierce resistance from Democrats and conservation groups, pro-drilling Republicans were able to realize their goal of opening the refuge after <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-refuge-drilling-2517635533.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">quietly including</a> the measure in last year's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.</div><div class="js-appear-on-expand" style="transition: all 350ms; height: auto; overflow: hidden; opacity: 1; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A notice published Friday in the Federal Register starts the 60-day public scoping period to assist in the preparation of an environmental impact statement for the <a href="https://www.blm.gov/programs/planning-and-nepa/plans-in-development/alaska/coastal-plain-eis" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">leasing program</a>.The sale targets the 1002 area on the Prudhoe Bay in Northern Alaska, which has an estimated 12 billion barrels of recoverable crude. The area is described by the <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2018/04/threatening-indigenous-rights-and-arctic-ecosystem-interior-launches-process" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Sierra Club</a> as "the biological heart" of the Arctic Refuge—home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other species—as well as vital lands and wildlife for the subsistence way of life of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/how-drilling-in-anwr-would-threaten-the-gwichin-peoples-way-of-life-1882011846.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Gwich'in Nation</a>....</div></div><div></div><div>Peaceful "kayaktivists" from <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/norway/no/nyheter/2018/Greenpeace-aksjonerer-mot-oljeboring/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Greenpeace Norway</a> boarded a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/statoil" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Statoil</a>-contracted rig set to drill two Arctic wells this year.Two people boarded the rig at the Skipavik yard on Norway's west coast Thursday morning and have requested a meeting with the rig's captain.</div><div></div><div>https://www.ecowatch.com/penguins-climate-change-2539963001.html</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-climate-change-2539897203.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-climate-change-2539897203.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>sci gobsmack by #</div><div>
</div><div></div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022018/arctic-oil-gas-lease-sale-violated-nepa-environmental-rules-petroleum-reserve-lawsuit">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022018/arctic-oil-gas-lease-sale-violated-nepa-environmental-rules-petroleum-reserve-lawsuit</a></div><div>
</div><div>earthjustice</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-drilling-2524505765.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-drilling-2524505765.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>=<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qltcjEzEEH2ze6IxssqwTeZPTrsOoill/view" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">a letter from several Republican luminaries including Teddy Roosevelt IV</a> and Republican senior officials from four previous Republican administrations urging protection of the Refuge.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qltcjEzEEH2ze6IxssqwTeZPTrsOoill/viewWilliam D. RuckelshausFormer Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Nixon and ReaganLynn ScarlettFormer Deputy Secretary, Department of the Interior, under President George W. BushWilliam K. ReillyFormer Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush
Ted Roosevelt IVBarclays Capital CorporationNathaniel ReedAssistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks under President Richard NixonThe Honorable Tom Evans (R-DE), Member of Congress from 1977 to 1983Thomas H. KeanFormer Governor of New Jersey (1982-1990) and Chairman, 911 Commission</div><div>=</div><div>A group of 12 Congressional Republicans sent a letter to the leaders of both houses of Congress Thursday, objecting to a provision in the tax bill that would allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."For decades, Congress has voted to prohibit oil and gas development in the refuge, with the overwhelming support of the American public," <a href="https://reichertforms.house.gov/uploadedfiles/arctic_national_wildlife_refuge_letter_to_gop_leadership_final.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">the group wrote</a>. "Support for this protection remains strong today. After years of debate, the Arctic refuge stands as a symbol of our nation's strong and enduring natural legacy."The letter was sent as the Senate was poised to pass a massive—and controversial—tax overhaul, which has seen fierce opposition from Democrats. The House<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/us/politics/house-tax-overhaul-bill.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> passed its own version of the tax bill</a> in November, and the two versions will now have to be reconciled. Tucked into both bills is <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15112017/anwr-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-oil-drilling-alaska-murkowski" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">a provision</a> that would allow for the opening of a 1.5 million-acre section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. The justification for its inclusion in the tax bill is that profits from any oil and gas development would help offset a budget deficit.This part of the refuge, known as the coastal plain, occupies murky legal territory and has been fought over for decades. While the majority of the 19 million-acre refuge has been designated as wilderness area—and is permanently off limits to drilling—the coastal plain has occupied a middle ground. It is not currently open to drilling, but an act of Congress could reverse that.This is not the first time the GOP has come close to passing a bill to open this part of the wildlife refuge to drilling, but in the past, conservationists have won. This time—despite the effort of this group of Republicans—that's looking less likely.Earlier this week, the bill hit a procedural bump due to some arcane legislative rules that appeared to make it illegal to wrap the ANWR provision into the tax overhaul. Those who oppose drilling in the refuge saw it as a potential way to kill the provision, but Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)—a supporter of drilling in the coastal plain—said she did not see it as a problem. "We will be able to resolve all this," <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/republicans-hit-snag-with-effort-to-drill-in-arctic-wildlife-refuge/article/2642084" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Murkowski said.</a> "I am not concerned."The letter opposing drilling was signed by Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Dave Reichert (Wash.), Ryan Costello (Penn.), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Chris Smith (N.J.), Patrick Meehan (Penn.), Daniel M. Donovan, Jr. (N.Y.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Mark Sanford (S.C.), Carlos Curbelo (Fla.), John J. Faso (N.Y.) and Leonard Lance (N.J.).  In it, the Republicans laid out a number of reasons why they believe drilling in the refuge is a bad idea:</div><div></div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-oil-anwr-drilling-2513482646.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-oil-anwr-drilling-2513482646.html</a></div><div>
</div><div><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">Oil Exploration in Arctic Ocean Approved by Trump Administration as ANWR Drilling Bill Moves Forward</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2513482646" data-authors="Lorraine Chow" data-headline="Oil Exploration in Arctic Ocean Approved by Trump Administration as ANWR Drilling Bill Moves Forward" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">The fight against new <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Arctic</a> drilling took a major setback on Tuesday. On the same day that the Senate Budget Committee passed a bill allowing oil and natural gas drilling in Alaska's pristine <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/anwr" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Arctic National Wildlife Refuge</a>, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump</a> administration granted <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-drilling-2458533481.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">oil company Eni's request</a> to explore for oil in nearby Alaska waters.The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/department-of-interior" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Department of Interior</a>'s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) issued the permit to Eni yesterday, allowing the oil giant to drill exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea as early as next month. “Achieving American energy dominance moved one step closer today with the approval of Arctic exploration operations on the Outer Continental Shelf for the first time in more than two years," the department <a href="https://bsee_prod.opengov.ibmcloud.com/newsroom/latest-news/statements-and-releases/press-releases/bsee-approves-new-drilling-operations-in" target="blank" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">boasted</a>.In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that initiated the process of rolling back former President Obama's 2016 ban on any new off shore oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Ocean.Exploratory drilling will take place on Spy Island, a man-made artificial island approximately three miles offshore of Oliktok Point. Eni, which has sat on its leases in the Beaufort Sea for more than a decade, says the new development could lead to the creation of 100-150 jobs in the region and new production of 20,000 barrels of oil per day."BSEE Alaska Region staff conducted a thorough and complete review of Eni's well design, testing procedures and safety protocol," said Mark Fesmire, BSEE Alaska Region director. "Exploration must be conducted safely, and responsibly in relation to the Arctic environment and we will continue to engage Eni as they move forward with drilling its exploratory well."
But environmental groups fiercely oppose oil and gas development in the area over risks of a potential spill and say that drilling in the Arctic will exacerbate global warming.The <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Center of Biological Diversity</a> said in a <a href="https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/arctic-drilling-07-12-2017.php" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">statement</a> that the area is home to many marine mammals, including bowhead whales, polar bears and ringed seals and birds from all over the world, including spectacled eiders and longtailed ducks. They also noted that the Trump administration provided the public only 21 days to review and comment on the exploration plan and only 10 days to comment on scoping for an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act.“Approving this Arctic drilling plan at the 11th hour makes a dangerous project even riskier," said Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the organization. “An oil spill here would do incredible damage, and it'd be impossible to clean up. The Trump administration clearly cares only about appeasing oil companies, no matter its legal obligations or the threats to polar bears or our planet."The Center for Biological Diversity and other groups filed a lawsuit challenging Trump's April executive order. The lawsuit is pending in federal court in Alaska.Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-drilling-alaska-murkowski-2508047461.html" target="self" style="text-align: center; text-decoration-line: none;">Republican-led push</a> to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) moved forward on Tuesday. The bill, which is combined with Senate Republicans' tax reform overhaul, was approved by the Senate Budget Committee in a party-line vote of 12-11. The measure is now headed to the Senate floor.The legislation, introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), could advance with only 51 votes in the Senate instead of the usual 60 as it complies under Congress' budget resolution instructions for 2018.Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups have criticized the GOP for sneaking the "<a href="http://wilderness.org/blog/how-did-your-senators-vote-arctic-refuge-drilling" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">backdoor drilling provision</a>" through the budget process."It's really not gotten the attention that it should," Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/29/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-267819" style="text-decoration-line: none;">POLITICO</a> about the ANWR provision. "It's not just the budget discussion. It's about everything else that's going on, the flurry of all sorts of other news."Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of <a href="https://defenders.org/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Defenders of Wildlife</a>, also issued the following statement: "A vote for the Senate tax reform bill is a vote supporting the destruction of America's iconic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sen. Murkowski's toxic drilling provision forsakes the conservation values that helped shape our nation and threatens polar bears, muskoxen, caribou and hundreds of species of migratory birds from all fifty states. Congress must uphold America's conservation legacy by rejecting any bill that includes oil drilling in the Arctic refuge."</div></div></div></div><div>
</div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/anwr-drilling-bill-2513765485.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/anwr-drilling-bill-2513765485.html</a></div><div>
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</div><div>=</div></div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/drill-arctic-artificial-island-2498548130.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/drill-arctic-artificial-island-2498548130.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>shell plan</div>

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=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-drilling-congress-2498983191.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-drilling-congress-2498983191.html</a><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;">GOP-Controlled Senate Paves Way for Oil Drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge</h1></div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2498983191" data-headline="GOP-Controlled Senate Paves Way for Oil Drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;"><div class="body-description" style="">The Senate Republicans' narrow passage of the 2018 budget plan on Thursday opened the door for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/anwr" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ANWR</a>).But Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups criticized the GOP for sneaking the "<a href="http://wilderness.org/blog/how-did-your-senators-vote-arctic-refuge-drilling" style="text-decoration-line: none;">backdoor drilling provision</a>" through the budget process. Past proposals to drill in the refuge have consistently failed.The budget was passed through a legislative tool known as reconciliation which only requires a simple majority, rather than 60 votes. The budget was approved 51-49, with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul joining Democrats in opposition, paving the way for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Trump</a>'s tax overhaul proposal.Drilling ANWR would raise revenue for Trump's tax plan that cuts taxes for the rich.ANWR, the largest <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/public-lands" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">protected wilderness</a> in the U.S., consists of more than 19 million acres of pristine landscapes and is home to 37 species of land mammals, eight marine mammals, 42 fish species and more than 200 migratory bird species."The budget passed by the Senate today sets in motion a sellout of some of our most iconic public lands and waters to the highest bidder, in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires," said <a href="https://earthjustice.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Earthjustice</a> president Trip Van Noppen."Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not a budget issue, and should not be part of the budget reconciliation process," Van Noppen added. "This is a blatant attempt to use the budget reconciliation process to pass a divisive and controversial proposal that would lead us in the wrong direction on climate."Senate Democrats, led by Maria Cantwell of Washington, offered an amendment to the Senate's budget resolution that would block drilling in the Alaskan refuge but the measure failed 48-52 mostly along party lines.Republicans led a "sneak attack" that turned "public lands over to polluters," Cantwell said.Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon also said that there is "something cynical and sad" about opening ANWR since it would increase oil output from a state being impacted by climate change the fastest.Conservatives have sought for decades to open up parts of the refuge to create jobs and boost the energy sector. As <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-arctic/democrats-fail-to-block-arctic-reserve-oil-drilling-idUSKBN1CO36H" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters</a> reported, Republicans have targeted the so-called 1002 area on the Prudhoe Bay in Northern Alaska, which has an estimated 12 billion barrels of recoverable crude.Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has long championed opening up the Arctic Refuge to drilling, called the 1002 a "non wilderness area" since the government set it aside for petroleum exploration decades ago.But Earthjustice <a href="https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2017/senate-vote-threatens-to-advance-oil-drilling-in-america-s-arctic" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">noted</a> that the targeted area hosts migratory bird species and endangered wildlife and is considered to be sacred to the indigenous Gwich'in people, who sustain themselves from the caribou that migrate there."Americans should be outraged at the shameless hijacking of the federal budget process. This fight is far from over," said <a href="http://wilderness.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Wilderness Society</a> president Jamie Williams. "Now is the time for Americans across the country to speak out. Congress cannot sneak this through the back door when they think nobody is looking. The Arctic Refuge is simply too fragile and special to drill, and we have a moral obligation to protect it for future generations of Americans."The Wilderness Society <a href="http://wilderness.org/blog/how-did-your-senators-vote-arctic-refuge-drilling" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">pointed out</a> that the battle is not over yet."The Senate's drilling provision is just the first step towards drilling in the Arctic Refuge," the organization stated. "It requires the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to draft instructions to reduce the federal deficit through revenues created by oil and gas leasing in the refuge. The House has already passed a similar budget provision, but both houses of Congress must now work to reconcile their budget versions before final passage and delivery to the president."</div></div>yikes, amplifying feedback<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/tanker-crosses-arctic-without-icebreaker-first-time-due-melting-sea-ice">http://www.alternet.org/environment/tanker-crosses-arctic-without-icebreaker-first-time-due-melting-sea-ice</a>

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<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18072017/alaska-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-anwr-oil-drilling-leases-congress-budget">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18072017/alaska-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-anwr-oil-drilling-leases-congress-budget</a>

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<div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/trillion-ton-iceberg-broke-antarctica-and-all-i-can-think-about-food">http://www.alternet.org/environment/trillion-ton-iceberg-broke-antarctica-and-all-i-can-think-about-food</a></div>

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July 12, an iceberg the size of Delaware broke loose from Antarctica and floated into the sea. Researchers, who had been anticipating the breakup since 2014, say that it cannot be attributed to climate change. At least not yet.

As I continued scrolling through my morning news feed, I skimmed other headlines: Donald Trump Jr., the perfect summer cocktail, net neutrality. Over the past year, I developed a habit of pausing before clicking, especially on upsetting content, because when you have a baby in the same year Donald Trump is elected president, you have little energy left to mine toxic tweets. Sometimes that self-preservation would turn into mild indifference, however, and stories with important yet triggering keywords would get ignored, flicked upward and out of sight.

But my thumb stopped on the iceberg headline. A tremulous sense of fear eventually made me click.

It didn’t matter that no scientist was ready to make a call on what caused the break. The reality is that climate change is getting worse every week, and policymakers are ignoring one of the biggest factors. <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/pdf/research/clf_reports/2015-12-07e-role-of-diet-food-waste-in-cc-targets.pdf" target="self" title="" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">The role food and agriculture plays</a> has been almost entirely absent from written commitments in local or worldwide negotiations, according to the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University.

This is a problem. Two days before the Antarctic iceberg broke loose, a study was published in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/05/1704949114.full" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> that, in a nutshell, confirmed some of our worst fears: Earth’s sixth mass extinction is already underway, threatening the planet’s animal populations and ecosystems. To use the authors’ words, we’re looking at a “biological annihilation” that’s largely human-caused.

Unlike the researchers assessing the iceberg, the authors of this study clearly point to climate change: “In the last few decades, habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification, and more recently climate disruption, as well as the interactions among these factors, have led to the catastrophic declines in both the numbers and sizes of populations. …”

Recently, a colleague and I have been collaborating on a project measuring the environmental impacts of residential lawns and the industrial food system. Our research uncovered some surprising facts, and the data, compiled in one convenient place, have been sobering.

For instance, the food and agriculture sector is the <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">second-largest contributor to emissions</a>, at 24 percent, barely less than the energy sector. Global meat and dairy production together account for about <a href="http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/" target="_self" title="" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">15 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions</a>.

Why are meat and dairy emissions so high? Last year, in the United States alone, an estimated 90.9 million acres of corn and 89.5 million acres of soybeans were planted, and most of it went to feed livestock. (Feed crop production accounts for 24 percent of the sector’s emissions, while deforestation for feed crops and pasture accounts for 9 percent.)

One problem is the way those crops are grown, usually at an industrial scale requiring intense use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Overuse of chemical fertilizers releases high levels of nitrous oxide, “a greenhouse gas with 300 times as much heat-trapping power as carbon dioxide,” reported <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fertilizer-produces-far-more-greenhouse-gas-expected" style=" text-decoration-line: none;">Science News</a>. Intensive monoculture farming depletes soil, pollutes rivers, and destroys habitats.

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<p data-reactid="38" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: -0.65em 0px 35px 215.406px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.75; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eni US will become the first energy company allowed to explore for oil in federal waters off Alaska since 2015 after the Trump administration this week approved a drilling plan on leases the company has been sitting on for 10 years.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the drilling plan of Eni US, a unit of Italy's Eni on Wednesday as part of President Donald Trump's plan to boost oil and gas drilling and make the country "energy dominant."

The approval is conditional on Eni getting other state and federal permits, which in past cases are generally granted once BOEM gives the green light.

"We know there are vast oil and gas resources under the Beaufort Sea, and we look forward to working with Eni in their efforts to tap into this energy potential," said BOEM's acting Director Walter Cruickshank.

Eni plans to drill into the Beaufort Sea from an artificial island using extended wells more than 6 miles (10 km) long starting in December. Eni did not immediately return a request for comment on its drilling plans.

Trump in April signed an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy executive order to extend offshore oil and gas drilling to areas in the Arctic and other places that have been off limits to support the industry.

Eni's leases, which were set to expire by the end of the year, were outside of an area protected by former President Barack Obama weeks before he left office. The company's plan to move ahead with risky and expensive drilling comes despite years of low oil prices and dangerous Arctic conditions.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc quit its exploration quest offshore Alaska in 2015 after a ship it had leased suffered a gash in mostly uncharted waters and environmentalists had discovered an existing law that limited the company's ability to drill.

Environmentalists complained that the administration rushed the approval of Eni's plan, providing the public only 21 days to comment on the plan and only 10 days to comment on scoping for an environmental review required by federal law.

An environmental lawyer said her group would work to stop the drilling. "We'll fight Trump's reckless giveaway of our oceans for the sake of polar bears, whales and ice seals and the fragile ecosystems where they live," said Kristen Monsell, a lawyer with the nonprofit group, the Center for Biological Diversity.

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E&E

Six House Republicans are urging Budget Committee leaders to omit from the fiscal 2018 budget resolution any language that supports opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling.

The moderates said in a <a href="https://www.eenews.net/assets/2017/06/23/document_pm_02.pdf">letter</a> yesterday to Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and ranking member John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) that they don't believe the "long debated and highly controversial" issue of ANWR development belongs in a "responsible budgeting process."

Republican Reps. Dan Donovan of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Frank LoBiondo and Chris Smith of New Jersey, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, and Dave Reichert of Washington sent the letter.

The group urged Black and Yarmuth to not include any language in the budget blueprint the committee is crafting that would either explicitly open ANWR to development "or allow opening of the Refuge through the reconciliation process."

President Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposal assumes cost savings of $1.8 billion over the next decade by allowing oil and gas drilling in a portion of ANWR starting in 2022 — a longtime priority of Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Drilling supporters are eyeing development within a 1.5-million-acre swath of the 19-million-acre refuge.

The Alaska congressional delegation is looking to the budget reconciliation process as a vehicle to include revenues related to oil and gas drilling in ANWR, though neither chamber has produced a fiscal 2018 budget resolution yet with guidelines for the appropriations process. Budget reconciliation is an expedited maneuver that allows certain budget and fiscal matters to pass by a simple majority in the Senate.

"Any development in the Refuge would not only disrupt this fragile, critically important area, it would also erode this long-standing commitment to protect our most valued landscapes," the six House Republicans wrote. "We strongly believe that any debate on the status of the Coastal Plain should occur outside of the budget reconciliation process."

When Murkowski introduced her bill earlier this year to allow limited oil and gas development within a portion of ANWR, she argued that doing so would create new jobs, reduce the deficit and protect national security.

"For nearly 40 years, Alaskans have proven that we can responsibly develop our natural resources while protecting the environment," she said in a January press release introducing the legislation. "Alaskans overwhelmingly support responsible development in the non-wilderness portion of ANWR and there is no valid reason why we should not be allowed to proceed."

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<div>Leaked Draft Shows How U.S. Weakened Climate Change Wording in the Arctic Declaration</div>

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<div>The U.S.-edited draft, obtained by InsideClimate News, shows how the Trump administration targeted climate actions. It's a strategy we could see in future meetings.</div>

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<div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052017/arctic-council-climate-change-rex-tillerson-donald-trump">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18052017/arctic-council-climate-change-rex-tillerson-donald-trump</a></div>

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The day before the Arctic Council met for its biannual ministerial last week, the United States requested six changes to the intergovernmental declaration that was to be issued—each of which weakened the language on climate change.

The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body representing all eight <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/arctic" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Arctic</a>states, does not make policy, but the diplomatic work accomplished there is intended to trickle back to the countries and result in changes. An important part of that is the declaration issued at the end of each two-year chairmanship, which is signed by top officials from each country, to acknowledge the scientific and diplomatic work that was accomplished and to state the council's goals going forward.

The last-minute move by the United States to weaken the document can be seen as a test case for what we can expect at larger, more consequential meetings of international organizations dealing with global warming issues and policy as President <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Donald Trump</a> rolls back U.S. climate policies and backslides on international commitments.

At last week's meeting, Secretary of State <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/rex-tillerson" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Rex Tillerson</a> brought the United States' chairmanship to an end and passed the torch to Finland. When the declaration was released, it was applauded by some for its inclusion of language about the <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/topics/global-climate-treaty" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Paris climate agreement</a> and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">climate change</a>.

"There was a great deal of debate as to whether or not climate would even be addressed in the declaration," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said at a public event on Wednesday. "It is significant to note that not only was it addressed, it was acknowledged in the Fairbanks declaration that climate change is happening, that we're seeing impacts in the Arctic at twice the rate as in other places, and it is attributable to emissions."

Whit Sheard of the Circumpolar Conservation Union, an observer to the council, said he was relieved to see the final text. "I thought it was pretty impressive," he said.

But those in the negotiations know how much more aggressive it could have been.

"Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the people who read the declaration will not have the benefit of hindsight and will think it's pretty good and we agree with that," said Jim Gamble, who represents the Aleut International Association, a permanent participant on the council. "There's an effort to move the climate agreement and sustainable development goals forward. But for those of us who are involved in the whole negotiation, we know at various times there was stronger language."

Behind the scenes, it had been a mad dash to get the declaration finalized.

The group of negotiators—which includes representatives from each of the Arctic countries and from six indigenous groups that are permanent participants on the council—had planned to meet for an hour on May 10 to finalize grammar and other trivial changes.

But on May 9, the negotiators received a new version of the declaration from the United States that asked for six changes—all downplaying climate risks, the need for the Paris treaty or ambitious renewable energy goals. Negotiators spent a long morning huddled around a table, working line-by-line through the document projected on a screen. The other nations challenged the U.S. on every point, often joined by the indigenous groups.

Because the negotiation process is closed to the public—and even to the groups with observer status at the Arctic Council—draft versions of the declaration are confidential. InsideClimate News obtained a copy of the May 9 version, with track-change suggestions by the State Department's acting assistant secretary, Judith Garber. ICN spoke with multiple sources who were part of the negotiations. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the confidentiality of the talks.

The Changes

The Arctic Council is a consensus body, and its declarations are hammered out over a series of negotiations. As the outgoing chair country, the United States under President Obama wrote the first draft.

The Fairbanks Declaration was the result of three negotiations—in Juneau in mid-March, in New York in April, and on May 10, the day before the ministerial.

After the meeting in New York, the general consensus was that the document was largely finalized—until the changes from the United States arrived on May 9.

It was like the United States "just dropped a bomb on a multilateral forum at the last minute," said one council delegate. "I don't think any of us were mentally prepared that we were now going to be in a make it or break it situation."

The first change that the United States proposed fell near the end of the preamble and had to do with the great elephant in the room at any climate-related talks the U.S. is now involved in: the Paris climate agreement. Trump's policies would all but ensure the U.S. would miss its Paris pledges, and the president's advisers have been caught up in an <a href="file://localhost/%20%20https/::insideclimatenews.org:news:05052017:paris-agreement-climate-change-donald-trump-jared-kushner-steve-bannon-clean-power-plan" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">internal struggle over whether to leave the treaty</a> or simply backslide on the country's commitments.

The version of the declaration that the countries had previously agreed on noted the entry into force of the Paris Agreement "for the parties to that Agreement" and encouraged its implementation. The U.S. objected to that language, and the final version reflects a softer approach.

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Immediately following that paragraph, the preamble had called for the commitment to working toward full implementation of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The goals, established by the UN in 2015, seek to end poverty, improve health and education and combat climate change. They include ambitious clean energy targets.

The U.S. called for the deletion of that section of the declaration. Led by Finland, the other parties pushed back, and the section was put back in, albeit in less forceful terms.

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Lower down, in a paragraph devoted to energy, the United States contested a reference to renewable energy. Where the earlier version reiterated "the need to improve the access of Arctic communities to clean, affordable, renewable and reliable energy sources," the U.S. wanted to delete the word "renewable."

Many countries, as well as the indigenous groups, fought this, and the word "renewable" made it back in—though in a less prominent place.

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The fourth change is the only one that the United States was fully successful in pushing through. The earlier version noted "with concern that the pace and scale of continuing Arctic warming will strongly depend on future emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate pollutants." At the request of the United States, the word "strongly" was removed.

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Similarly, a few lines later, the original version noted that climate change "is by far the most serious threat to Arctic biodiversity." The United States proposed changing "by far the most serious threat" to "a most serious threat."

The negotiators landed on middle ground, calling it "the most serious threat."

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The sixth and final proposed change dealt with the findings of a report produced by a working group of the Arctic Council called "Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic." The report presented the stark and far-reaching implications of climate change in the Arctic, and the earlier version of the draft included some of those findings.

The council noted "with concern that the Arctic Ocean could be largely free of summer ice in two decades, that melt processes in the Arctic may have greater impact on global sea level rise than previously estimated, and that changes in the Arctic may be affecting weather in mid-latitudes."

Each point referred to a finding of the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25042017/arctic-sea-ice-climate-change-global-warming-sea-level-rise-ipcc" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">SWIPA report</a>, a study that involved hundreds of scientists and which synthesized peer-reviewed science on various Arctic-related issues.

The United States asked to delete that paragraph entirely.

Though the final version "notes with concern" the report's findings and calls for the adoption of the report's recommendations, it does not include the actual findings.

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"That was probably the biggest change in the document," said a person who took part in the talks.

Because very few people actually read the voluminous reports issued by the council, but many more read the declaration, it was a missed opportunity.

After the text was finalized during the negotiators' long morning meeting on May 10, it was sent to Tillerson, who was on a flight to Fairbanks at the time. He signed off on the document within about 20 minutes, according to a person who took part in the talks and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

By the time the senior ministers from the Arctic countries—Canada; Denmark; Finland; Iceland; Norway; Russia; Sweden and the U.S.—walked into a planned dinner that evening, each of the countries had agreed to the new language.

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/exxon-mobil-could-tap-huge-arctic-assets-if-us-russian-relations-thaw.html" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Exxon Mobil could tap huge Arctic assets if US-Russian relations thaw</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">www.cnbc.com/.../exxon-mobil-could-tap-huge-arctic-assets-if-us-russian-relations-th...</cite>

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<a class="fl" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FRNJkORiMMUJ:www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/exxon-mobil-could-tap-huge-arctic-assets-if-us-russian-relations-thaw.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Dec 13, 2016 - U.S. sanctions on Russia have prevented Exxon Mobil from ... 2012 to develop offshorereserves in the Arctic Kara Sea and the Black Sea, as well ... Drilling in the Arctic is notoriously difficult and can take place only during a ...</a>

<div class="_Tib"><a class="fl" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FRNJkORiMMUJ:www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/exxon-mobil-could-tap-huge-arctic-assets-if-us-russian-relations-thaw.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Missing: <s>anwr</s></a></div>

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/12/12/exxon-arctic-russia-sanctions-rex-tillerson-secretary-state/" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Exxon is heading back to the Arctic once Russia sanctions are lifted ...</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">energydesk.greenpeace.org/.../exxon-arctic-russia-sanctions-rex-tillerson-secretary-sta...</cite>

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<a class="fl" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uCzpA1sO-GQJ:energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/12/12/exxon-arctic-russia-sanctions-rex-tillerson-secretary-state/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Dec 12, 2016 - ExxonMobil will return to its Arctic partnership with Russian state-owned oil ... In 2014Exxon had stake in 10 separate oil and gas drilling licenses, ... Shell far East offshore oil; Exxon Arcticproject Laptev Sea; Exxon Arctic ...</a>

<div class="_Tib"><a class="fl" href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uCzpA1sO-GQJ:energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/12/12/exxon-arctic-russia-sanctions-rex-tillerson-secretary-state/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Missing: <s>anwr</s></a></div>

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Offshore-Oil-and-Gas-Governance-web.pdf" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Offshore Oil and Gas Governance in the Arctic - Brookings Institution</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/.../Offshore-Oil-and-Gas-Governance-web.pdf</cite></div>

<div class="slp f">by C Ebinger - ‎2014 - ‎<a class="fl" href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=932532920787364891" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Cited by 2</a> - ‎<a class="fl" href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&q=related:G2zjLMAF8QzISM:scholar.google.com/" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Related articles</a></div>

AMAP. Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Arctic Council). AnWr ... russia-USA-norwayArctic Offshore Oil and Gas regime Project .... Arctic-specific standards to accommodate drilling ...... 34 See ExxonMobil, Arctic Leadership, ...</div>

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="http://www.mensjournal.com/travel/collection/drilling-for-oil-in-the-arctic-a-timeline-20150703" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Drilling for Oil in the Arctic: A Timeline - Men's Journal</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">www.mensjournal.com/travel/.../drilling-for-oil-in-the-arctic-a-timeline-20150703</cite>

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<a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:www.mensjournal.com/travel/collection/drilling-for-oil-in-the-arctic-a-timeline-20150703+exxon+arctic+anwr+drill+offshore+russia&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp_4WE7eXTAhVClFQKHdDhBuUQHwg-MAM" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">Jul 3, 2015 - While two Shell Oil rigs prepare to drill offshore exploratory wells off the Alaskan coast, ... of Northeast Passage by Russian expedition using icebreaker. ... to Arctic National Wildlife Range, renamed Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) ... March 1989: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound halts ...</a></div>

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/here-s-why-obama-is-approving-arctic-drilling-again/" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Here's Why Obama Is Approving Arctic Drilling Again - Scientific ...</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../here-s-why-obama-is-approving-arctic-drilling...</cite>

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<a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SBSImAtzJ9EJ:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/here-s-why-obama-is-approving-arctic-drilling-again/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">In addition, drilling offshore Alaska is in relatively shallow waters and would need ... forced Shell competitor Exxon Mobil to withdraw from partnerships there. ... the Russian Arctic's lack of infrastructure could make projects slower to develop.</a></div>

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a class="fl" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SBSImAtzJ9EJ:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/here-s-why-obama-is-approving-arctic-drilling-again/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">[PDF]</a><a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Artic%20Report_F2.pdf" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Opportunities and Challenges for Arctic - Wilson Center</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Artic%20Report_F2.pdf</cite>

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<a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Artic%2520Report_F2.pdf+exxon+arctic+anwr+drill+offshore+russia&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp_4WE7eXTAhVClFQKHdDhBuUQHwhKMAU" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">ANWR: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge bbl: barrel boe: ... Energy with exploration drilling offshore in. Greenland, and by Gazprom, Rosneft, and ... nia in offshore Russian and Canadian Arctic ..... coPhillips,ExxonMobil, BP, and TransCanada.</a></div>

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<h3 class="r" style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy" style=" cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;">Arctic Refuge drilling controversy - Wikipedia</a></h3>

<div class="f kv SWb" style=" height: 18px; line-height: 16px; white-space: nowrap;"><cite class="Rm" style=" font-style: normal;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy</cite>

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<a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy+exxon+arctic+anwr+drill+offshore+russia&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp_4WE7eXTAhVClFQKHdDhBuUQHwhQMAY" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;">The question of whether to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been .... when the Exxon Valdez oil spill delayed and ultimately derailed the process. ... On June 18, 2008, President George W. Bush pressed Congress to reverse the ban on offshore drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in ...</a></div>

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ecowatch

Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey: What's Exxon Got to Do With It?

By Andy Rowell

Washington, DC is still reeling Wednesday with the news that Donald Trump sacked FBI director James Comey.

Ostensibly, the White House is saying that Comey's firing is all about his botched investigation into Clinton's emails. But everyone knows that is not the truth.

As Politico reported, behind the sacking is an "an enraged Trump, fuming about Russia." Two Trump advisors told Politico that Trump was angry about the ongoing investigation by the FBI into links between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

The Trump line that the FBI Russian investigation has nothing to do with it is being ridiculed in the papers this morning.

As David Leonhardt stated bluntly in the New York Times, "The president of the United States is lying again … First, it's important to remember just how often Trump lies. Virtually whenever he finds it more convenient to tell a falsehood than to tell a truth, he chooses the falsehood."

So why fire Comey? A blistering editorial in the paper argued, "The president of the United States, who is no more above the law than any other citizen, has now decisively crippled the FBI's ability to carry out an investigation of him and his associates."

The paper added, "By firing the FBI director, James Comey, late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump has cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country's history."

The investigation could have had "potentially ruinous consequences for the administration." So Trump fired the man who could have been about to impeach him.

The timing is certainly interesting. As the Hill pointed out too, many people are questioning the timing of Comey's dismissal.

There may be other factors at play worth mentioning. Who is Trump meeting today in the White House? The president only has one publicly scheduled item later today and that is a meeting with Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia.

As the British Independent newspaper noted, "It will be impossible to separate the meeting from the unfolding political drama in Washington."

Before Lavrov meets Trump, he will hold a meeting with ex-Exxon boss and now Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

On the agenda are Ukraine, Syria and "bilateral issues," according to the State Department. It is the highest level meeting between Trump and the Russians since he took office.

Also co-incidentally or not, tomorrow Lavrov and Tillerson will travel to Alaska to attend the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Fairbanks.

The Arctic Council is an international forum that promotes cooperation among Arctic states and includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S. Under President Obama's administration, the U.S. position focussed on climate change.

Working together on the Arctic is ideal to help thaw U.S.-Russian relations, according to some.

Indeed, according to the Council, the meeting "will convene to review and approve work completed under the two-year U.S. Chairmanship to improve sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic."

But those two years have passed. Obama may have championed environmental protection, but Trump does not. Obama wanted to preserve the Arctic. Trump does not. As the U.S. hands over the baton of responsibility at the Council to Finland, the old order is no more.

Trump wants better ties with Russia. In turn, Russia wants Exxon to help explore for oil. There is no doubt Exxon wants Russian oil. Exxon's old boss is now central to the Trump Administration. And by removing Comey at such a crucial time, Tillerson and Lavrov can work on some smoke-filled backroom deals, without the threat of the FBI looking at U.S.-Russian relations.

Of course, much of this is speculation and analysis of an unfolding political situation. The Arctic meeting may not have been on Trump's mind, but Russia certainly was. And we all need to keep a watching brief on this fast-moving story, because no one knows where it will end.

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<div><a class="fl" href="https://www.google.com/search?q=related:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy+exxon+arctic+anwr+drill+offshore+russia&tbo=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp_4WE7eXTAhVClFQKHdDhBuUQHwhQMAY" style=" text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer; display: block; padding: 7px 18px; outline: 0px;"> </a><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/bp-alaska-oil-well-leak-2364852784.html">http://www.ecowatch.com/bp-alaska-oil-well-leak-2364852784.html</a></div>

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Unrelenting warmth during what should be the iciest time of year sent global sea ice extent to a record low last month, the <a href="https://nsidc.org/" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">National Snow and Ice Data Center</a> said on Friday, with both polar ice caps at a record-low extent every single day of the month.

Compared to the average from 1981 to 2010, the area of ice missing in the Arctic was about the size of Texas and Arizona combined; in the Antarctic, it was bigger than Alaska, according to the NSIDC.

Temperatures in the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/arctic" target="_blank" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Arctic</a> were about 9 degrees Fahrenheit above average throughout November and December, with peak readings soaring to 50 degrees above the long-term average around Christmas, when the North Pole warmed above freezing, a mark rarely seen outside of summer.

"Some of the crazy weather patterns we've seen this winter could be, in part, due to the loss of sea ice," said NSIDC director Mark Serreze. "We've had very unusual weather patterns pumping warmth up into the Arctic...the changes are happening so fast that we can't keep up with them."

Scientists measuring sea ice in a three-year run of record global heat feel the urgency of the data they are capturing, while the political climate around them changes even faster.

The NSIDC is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is administered by the Department of Commerce.

With many in President-elect Donald Trump's proposed cabinet on record either denying that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases or questioning the need for urgent action, many fear that future funding for government climate science could be at risk.

After Trump's election, a senior NASA official <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/will-trump-scrap-nasas-climate-research-mission" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">expressed concern in an internal email</a> that the Earth Sciences division would have its funding cut, and Trump adviser Bob Walker, a former House Science Committee chair, has said <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">he believed NASA</a> should end its climate monitoring programs, which he calls "politically correct environmental monitoring." <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-denier-nasa-transition-20938" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Christopher Shank</a>, the leader of Trump's NASA transition team, is policy director for the House Science Committee, which has doggedly questioned the climate work of NOAA and NASA scientists.

Those sentiments have led some scientists reportedly to begin to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.c9363ce1307b" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">duplicate climate data</a> to protect it from potential Trump administration tampering.

NASA ice scientist Walt Meier said he hopes it does not come to a showdown with Trump policymakers. "Our aim is to get the best data, the best models, the best understanding of the science to policy makers and the public," Meier said. "We hope that the policymakers use that wisely. My job is to provide the information to make the decisions."

Monitoring Arctic sea ice conditions is important, he said, because of implications for shipping, the Arctic environment and energy development.

Serreze said, "We at the NSIDC view our role as the honest purveyors of the best scientific information. We've tried to avoid getting into advocacy because we would lose respect. We're in a situation now where the data speak for themselves. People who deny that, who say that humans don't have anything to do with it, have their head in the sand. Deny it at your peril.

"You can't hide or suppress data. We're in the information age."

The information these days carries sobering implications about the vicious cycle of climate change, which has been amplified in the Arctic as it warms at double the rate of the global average.

"Our attention is starting to shift to what we are seeing in the autumn and winter. Things are creeping into the cold season," he said. "September has been viewed as month that tells the most—after the melt season, what have you got left? Now, we're realizing we have to look at a lot more than what's been going on in winter."

The slow formation of sea ice this winter is a seasonal climate feedback loop. Less ice on the ocean means the water absorbs more heat in late summer, which slows the freeze-up in autumn and early winter.

"You're at a situation where, in the past, when everything was ice covered, heat from the ocean can't get to the atmosphere, but when when the ocean is exposed, it can't be colder than 32 degrees Fahrenheit," said Meier. "But the most remarkable thing about this year and last year is not just the internal Arctic warming from the sea, but the heat coming up from south."

According to Serreze and Meier, there's increasing evidence that the continuing loss of sea ice is, at least in part, causing the weather patterns that funnel even more warm air toward the Arctic by<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08062016/greenland-arctic-record-melt-jet-stream-wobbly-global-warming-climate-change" style=" box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;"> shifting the path of the jet stream</a>.

"It's not only the extent. The thickness and volume are even more concerning," said Lars Kaleschke, an oceanographer with the<a href="https://www.awi.de/" style=" box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Alfred Wegener </a><a href="https://www.awi.de/" style=" box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Institute of Polar Research</a> in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Recent satellite data show that much of the thicker multi-year ice has vanished from the Arctic. The remaining ice is so thin that it's susceptible to melting and breaks up faster during stormy weather, according to Mats Granskog, a research scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute who specializes in tracking the age of Arctic ice.

Granskog and other scientists shared observations from recent field research at the recent conference of the American Geophysical Union. As the ice breaks up, water as warm as 40 degrees Fahrenheit can surge up thousands of feet from deep in the ocean, melting even more ice, said Amelie Meyer, an oceanographer at the Norwegian Polar Institute. Within 48 hours, the surface temperature can climb more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit, to above freezing, which increases the moisture in the air tenfold, Meyer said. That moisture and warmth fuel more storms, which intensifies the cycle, they said.

The changes in Antarctic ice extent the past few months have been equally dramatic, but the causes are not well understood. By August of 2016, the belt of ice around Antarctica was sharply below average.

The exact cause of the precipitous decline remains elusive, scientists said, but they detected significant changes in wind patterns in August, September and November that are most likely linked with global warming, according to Serreze.

The job of monitoring complex systems like the Arctic and Antarctic and studying <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">climate change</a> impacts requires not just well-funded U.S. research, but also global collaboration. For example, some European satellite missions have specialized in reading sea ice thickness and volume. Together with data from NASA and NOAA, scientists are able to most accurately paint a picture of global climate change.

Mark Drinkwater, head of the European Space Agency's Earth Observation Program science division, said in an email significant policy changes under Trump "could indeed have a very important impact on what is today an extremely positive reciprocal working relationship. Shifts in U.S. policy could easily impact this relationship."

According to Drinkwater, European Earth observation programs are dependent on NASA and NOAA for certain critical data, and vice-versa.

"Policy (be it mitigation, adaptation, technology infusion) is completely reliant on knowledge...required to avoid the 'blind spot,' which could otherwise slap humankind in the face."

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<div class="tagged-with" style=" box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><label style=" box-sizing: inherit; display: block; line-height: 1.2;">PUBLISHED UNDER:</label>

<div class="field-item even" style=" box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/arctic" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">ARCTIC</a></div>

<div class="field-item odd" style=" box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/climate-science" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">CLIMATE SCIENCE</a></div>

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<div class="field-item even" style=" box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style=" box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">CLIMATE CHANGE</a></div>

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<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/obama-enacts-offshore-drilling-ban-designed-to-be-trump-proof-w457205">http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/obama-enacts-offshore-drilling-ban-designed-to-be-trump-proof-w457205</a>

east coast anwr

...Obama <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-jewell-applauds-presidents-withdrawal-atlantic-and-arctic-ocean-areas-future" style=" box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">banned all future offshore oil and gas drilling</a> from nearly 120 million acres of land in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The bans include a series of underwater canyons along the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia, and virtually all of the U.S. Arctic, including the entire U.S. Chukchi Sea and all but about two percent of the U.S. Beaufort Sea.

In a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/20/united-states-canada-joint-arctic-leaders-statement" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">joint announcement with the White House</a>, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau simultaneously designated all Arctic Canadian waters off-limits to drilling. The bans come <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/exxon-mobile-russia-sanctions-rex-tillerson-232770" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">as concerns rise</a> that due to Trump's nomination of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, the company will soon begin exploring for oil in the Russian Arctic.

"Holy muskrat, it's good news!" says 69-year-old Native Inupiat Doreen Simmonds, a local leader against drilling in her home community of Barrow, Alaska, on the edge of the Chukchi Sea. "They talk about 'responsible drilling' – that's a lot of anaq [shit]. They always make mistakes. If there was a spill up here in our ice? It would be the end of our water, our land. ... What would be left for my great-grand-kids?"

It was Shell's operations in the Chukchi Sea that set off protests in Seattle and elsewhere last year, pitting "<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/meet-the-rappers-and-kayaktivists-out-to-stop-shells-giant-oil-rig-20150522?page=4" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">kayaktavists</a>" against Obama.

Though the Canadian ban will be reviewed every five years, President Obama's bans are indefinite and designed to be permanent, akin to the designation of a national monument.

This is likely to make the bans Trump-proof. Unlike an executive order, which can be undone easily by another president, "never in history has a president undone a permanent oil and gas withdrawal of another president," says Niel Lawrence, Alaska director and senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The incoming Congress and administration will surely try, as Alaska's Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, <a href="https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/12/20/obama-prohibits-offshore-drilling-in-most-of-us-arctic-waters/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">told Alaska Dispatch News</a> Tuesday. But the fight will be a long one. "I am confident that [the ban] will stand up in court," Lawrence says.

Presidential bans on offshore oil drilling have a long history and are granted through the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which states, "The President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf."

As <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-24/offshore-drilling-foes-invoke-1953-law-to-prod-obama-on-u-s-ban" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">Bloomberg reports</a>, "While presidents have modified decisions from their predecessors to withdraw areas from drilling, they have never rescinded them altogether. And it's not clear they would have the power to. A legal opinion from the U.S. attorney general in 1938 said similar designations ‘do not imply a power to undo.' And there have been no federal court rulings on the provision."

<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/briefer-on-ocsla-withdrawal-authority_20161121_0.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">Permanent bans</a> to relatively small offshore areas have been enacted by Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama; all of them remain fully intact. In 1990, President Bush enacted a moratorium on all new offshore drilling in the federal waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and most of Alaska. But that was a temporary act, set to expire after ten years. President Clinton extended the moratorium through 2012, only to have the second President Bush cut off its last four years, allowing it to expire in 2008. No president has permanently protected so vast an area of offshore waters from oil and gas drilling as President Obama has now done.

This is a position likely to be popular among Americans, 75 percent of whom, responding to a <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/190268/prioritize-alternative-energy-oil-gas.aspx" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">March Gallup poll</a>, said they preferred alternative energy to the production of oil and gas; that included 51 percent of Republicans. The same month, more than 45 climate, conservation, indigenous and coastal organizations filed a legal petition calling on Obama to end new oil and gas lease auctions <a href="https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/offshore_oil_drilling/pdfs/Petition_to_End_Offshore_Leasing_Center_3-28-16.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none;">in all federally controlled oceans</a>.

"Permanently shielding these waters from the oil and gas industry is a major milestone for coastal communities that depend on them – as well as a global community acting collectively to mitigate the worst of climate change," Mary Sweeters, an Arctic campaigner with Greenpeace, said in a statement. "But the job will not be done until no new leases are granted anywhere in U.S. waters."

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