GW means we can drill for MORE oil!

[madd0ct0r]

Oil: Only part of the Arctic's massive resources
By Steve Hargreaves @CNNMoney July 17, 2012: 5:15 AM ET

A rush to extract natural resources from the Arctic Ocean is heating up as global warming makes more and more of it accessible. Click to expand this map highlighting major oil and gas fields and the two main Arctic shipping routes.
Yet it will be just the latest in a slow-moving but steady push to tap the Arctic's vast natural resources.

Encouraged by high commodity prices and shrinking sea ice, everyone from Big Oil to the cruise industry is eager to get in on the Arctic's riches.
Oil and Gas: Perhaps the most high profile of the Arctic's natural resources, oil and natural gas also seem to be the most plentiful.
Nearly 13% of the world's undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its undiscovered gas reserves lie north of the Arctic circle, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That's 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Those estimates don't even include so-called unconventional oil and gas deposits such as hydrocarbons found in shale rock or methane hydrates on the sea floor -- which are basically crystals filled with natural gas.

Finding themselves increasingly locked out of resource-rich nations such as Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, the world's major international oil companies are eying this potential Arctic bounty as a source for future growth.
Shell's Alaska operations are garnering most of the headlines this summer, but the U.K.'s Cairn Energy is already drilling off the coast of Arctic Greenland.
Norway's Statoil (STO) is exploring in the Barents Sea, where Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) also has leased acreage. And Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) has struck a deal with Russia's Rosneft to drill in the Arctic off the Siberian coast.
These and other deals have been announced in rapid succession over the last few years. But actually producing sizable quantities of oil from the Arctic will be a long, slow process.
The region is utterly lacking in the infrastructure needed to build oil wells and move crude out: pipelines, deep water ports, airstrips, housing. Even which counties own what resources is in dispute.
Dealing with the shifting Arctic ice is another challenge.
Greenpeace to monitor Shell Arctic drilling with submarines
The pressures created by massive ice sheets could crush traditional oil field equipment. Even subsurface pipelines and well heads could be obliterated by a deep iceberg moving in the shallow Arctic waters off Alaska.
"There needs to be an evolution of technologies," said Surya Rajan, an oilfield technology analyst at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
It's not at all certain extracting this oil and gas can be done without significant damage to the natural environment and the livelihoods of the people that inhabit the region.
So for now, Arctic oil development will proceed at a slow pace, in shallow water with drilling mostly confined to summer months -- much as Shell (RDSA) is planning with its Alaska wells.
Even if Shell strikes oil next month, those wells would not be producing oil for several years. It may be a decade or more before major amounts of oil or gas flow from Arctic waters.
Shipping: The melting Arctic is creating a tantalizing prospect for shipping companies: Keeping the northern sea passage between Europe and Asia permanently open.
For decades ships have been able to traverse the Arctic along two sea routes. One hugs the Canadian coast and the other along the Russian side.
Obama to allow more Arctic drilling
These routes can cut the distance between Northern Europe and Japan nearly in half, according to a report by the Arctic Council, an organization made up of the eight Arctic nations and other stakeholders. Some estimate it could shave a millions dollars in costs off each trip.
Arctic voyages could previously only take place during a short window in the summer, and often required expensive and scarce icebreakers to accompany the ships.
That may be changing.
Many scientists now estimate that the Arctic could be permanently ice-free in the summer by 2030.
That could make the Arctic passable year round, and without requiring the services of an icebreaker.
Minerals and fish: In addition to oil and gas, the Arctic is is thought to contain world-class reserves of iron ore, zinc, nickel, gold, uranium, and other minerals.
Already, the world's largest zinc mine is in Arctic Alaska, while the largest nickel mine is in Arctic Russia. One estimate in a Geological Society of London paper said the mineral value in Russia alone could exceed $2 trillion.
Fishing is also an important resource in the region, and could grow as more waters become accessible and species such as cod migrate northward.
Clearly, there will be expanding uses of the Arctic as it thaws.
Whether humans can successfully tap these resources without further damaging the environment, and whether Arctic riches will offset the likely substantial costs imposed by global warming elsewhere on the planet, is another matter entirely.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/17/news/ec ... rctic-oil/

[cosmicalstorm]

Well it seems that even if we were to cut ALL emissions right now, this moment. We would still be in for many decades of problems.
Might it not be better to make the most of it right now? Use resources to make sure our society doesn't collapse because of energy problems and then hoping for the best with regards to advancing technology, solar cells, genetics, nanotech and machine intelligence. Maybe offset rapid changes with feats of geo engineering or something.
Or have I just bought into big oils propaganda?

[Covenant]

You've bought into big oil's propaganda.

It's not like these sources will disappear if we don't use them RIGHT NOW. We're not fat men at a buffet trying to eat the last piece of cake before closing time. If you presume we are semi-fucked for many decades, burning through all that fuel will only put us into deeper-fucked territory for those same amount (and longer!) decades as well.

Furthermore, since there ARE alternatives to many of these energy concerns, failing to do so now does not engender us to having unique breakthroughs later. Instead, keeping the easy cop-out cheapo option in reserve as a backup creates a safety net for everyone in the case that "the best" with regards to technology does not pull through in time due to reticence to admit a problem, lack of political will, or the exercise of industrial pressures to slow down the rush to sustainable alternatives.

In fact, those problems with "the best" have been happening and are ongoing, it's not fearmongering in the slightest. Unless you assume, like so many addicts might, that "tomorrow" you can really start cold turkey so long as you make it through today... well, that's not the way it's going to work, especially at such a large scale, and with so many people driving this industry. Hell, even the junkie analogy is flawed. It's not like a single junkie waking up tomorrow and quitting, you're literally going to accept a "sometime in the future" when all the junkies, producers, and pushers wake up and say "no more!" and start life as organic produce sellers.

There's no reason to "make the most of it" since it's not a temporal thing. Again, remind yourself that it's not like a "sale" on energy that only lasts a few days before it goes back to full price. You are a man living in a god damned bunker after the end of the world, and using up all the batteries now to "make the most of it" with your Nintendo DS after finding some extra batteries does not increase your chances of finding new batteries or renewable energy in the future, and those batteries also power your last flashlight. If you fuck everything up and assume "Oh, well, soon our radiation suits and magical water recycling systems will be created by us or our children or grandchildren or something," without making the greatest possible efforts in that direction... then well shit, what have you done but exacerbate the problem?

If the question was, "do we allocate the current resources towards finding a solution, or save them for later," that is an interesting question. But that's not the question. The question is this:

"Do we allocate the current scant resources into a self-destructive cycle of waste so that the morons in big Ford trucks that make their tiny testicles feel big as they drive off to McDonalds in a flat urban sprawl can continue to do so without having to worry about buying a different kind of truck or switching to a smaller car, or do we save these in case a miracle doesn't happen and we don't discover the solution to life, air, water, energy, society, and an expanding population all before our ever-increasingly damaged environment and minimal energy stocks give out on us?"