Economy vs. ecology – Arctic's oil exploration

The ongoing battle between economy and ecology has been a constant sight since the start of the industrial revolution. No matter how much our modern society boosts itself as being "environmentally aware" ecology is always second best when going up against economy. The most recent example of this is oil exploration in Arctic.

Arctic's ice is melting fast, opening door for not only increased ship traffic but also for massive oil exploration. Oil reserves are running out, and many oil companies are driven towards the Arctic area because it is estimated that the area north of the Arctic Circle contains approximately 160 billion barrels of oil, around quarter of the world's undiscovered oil reserves.

Exxon Mobil, for instance, has already poured $3.2 billion into Arctic oil exploration with many other big companies such as Royal Dutch Shell are also more than willing to enter the Arctic's oil rush driven by potential high profits.

What damage will oil exploration and oil drilling do to Arctic's environment? Arctic's unique and sensitive ecosystems have been until now protected by the vast kingdom of ice but the shelter of ice is slowly breaking up allowing oil companies to enter the vast areas of the world's most untouched ecosystems.

Where there is an oil exploration and oil drilling there is also a big chance for oil spills and each oil spill in Arctic area represents huge environmental disaster with much more serious negative effect than anywhere else around the globe.

It is almost impossible to clean oil spill in Arctic's weather conditions so once oil interacts with the surface sea ice it will become absorbed in it. Once absorbed into ice oil can be transported by it for as much as 1,000 miles across the ocean. The oil that will be eventually released in the spring, only God knows where, is very toxic because the encapsulation in the ice preserves the oil from weathering, making it terrible for environment.

What this basically means is that each oil spill in Arctic area represents a major environmental catastrophe because cleaning success is almost impossible in these conditions. The remoteness of the Arctic, darkness, extreme weather, deep water, freezing conditions and floating icebergs are only some of the factors which make dealings with the possible oil spill in Arctic impossible to make.

Economy is yet again looking to be a likely winner but at a very high price. But hey, do you honestly believe politicians care about this when being offered enough money by industry to look the other way?

Arctic warming and increased shipping

If Arctic continues to warm at current rate this will lead to further decline of Arctic summer sea ice. Arctic ice melting will not only lead to global sea level rise, and less habitats for polar bears but will also open the door for increased ship traffic which will likely accelerate climate change effect.

The increased Arctic ship traffic will not only mean more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but will also bring with it air pollution in form of engine exhaust particles which could increase warming in this part of the world by some 17-78 percent.

James J. Corbett, professor of marine science and policy at UD said that "One of the most potent 'short-lived climate forcers' in diesel emissions is black carbon, or soot, and ships operating in or near the Arctic use advanced diesel engines that release black carbon into one of the most sensitive regions for climate change."

These tiny air pollutants are produced by ships as the result of incomplete burning of marine fuel. Once released, these particles act like heaters because they absorb sunlight, both directly from the sun, and reflected from the surface of snow and ice.

In order to give more clearer image on the potential impact of black carbon and other ship pollutants on climate the scientists produced high-resolution (5-kilometer-by-5-kilometer) scenarios that not only account for growth in shipping in the region through 2050, but also outline potential new Arctic shipping routes.

The scientists found that:

* Global warming potential in 2030 in the high-growth scenario suggests that short-lived forcing of around 4.5 gigatons of black carbon from Arctic shipping may increase the global warming potential due to ships' carbon dioxide emissions (around 42,000 gigagrams) by some 17-78 percent.

* Ship traffic diverting from current routes to new routes through the Arctic is projected to reach 2 percent of global traffic by 2030 and 5 percent in 2050.

* A Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage through the Arctic Ocean would provide a distance savings of about 25 percent and 50 percent, respectively, with coincident time and fuel savings. However, the scientists said that tradeoffs from the short-lived climate forcing impacts must be studied.

* With controls, the amount of Arctic black carbon from shipping can be reduced in the near term and held nearly constant through 2050.

Polar regions - Rich biodiversity

Many people believe that polar regions are areas with very little life because of extremely cold weather conditions. People usually think about polar bears, penguins, couple of fish species and that's about all. Well the reality is completely different. A marine census couple of days ago documented about 7,500 species in the Antarctic and about 5,500 in the Arctic, including several hundred species that researchers believe could be new to science.

People usually connect rich biodiversity with tropical areas but marine life in polar regions is just as rich and as just as beautiful in Antarctic and Arctic seas. The most interesting fact of this discovery is definitely similarity of life on both poles as many as 235 species were found in both polar seas despite the huge 11000 km between these regions.

Polar regions are full of life with 13,000 different species.

Unfortunately both these regions have not only couple of hundreds of same species but also one gigantic problem - namely global warming that threatens these rich ecosystems. Global warming accompanied with invasion of foreign species that are more and more coming as temperatures increase could cause extinction of many of these species because their "cold sanctity" won't be cold enough in years to come to protect them.

Will this rich biodiversity survive? Difficult to tell, but knowing our lack of responsibility for ecological problems positive scenario looks highly unlikely.

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