Arctic Ocean Offshore Drilling

Most sentient beings get the willies when we hear about how fast the Arctic icecap is disappearing.  But in Alaska?  Roll out those offshore leases! Anchorage Daily News, 5/7/07:

Right now, however, the forecast is for western Alaska and North Slope communities to enjoy a relatively early summer, with ice-free shipping lanes opening up a couple weeks earlier than last year, National Weather Service ice forecaster Kathleen Cole said Friday.
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[T]hat's good news for northern Alaskans. A longer ice-free season means barges can reach Kotzebue and Barrow earlier and later in the summer, thus eliminating the high cost of receiving food and supplies by air that much longer. And summer seismic crews employed by oil companies won't be hampered as much by ice.  Said Cole: "I think everybody is going to be happy about that."

Since then, some academicians have been busy mapping out the apportionment of the Arctic Ocean floor:

(Legend below the fold.)

The International Boundaries Research Unit (Durham University, England) has been tackling the problem in their recently released Report on Arctic Boundaries:

British scientists say they have drawn up the first detailed map to show areas in the Arctic that could become embroiled in future border disputes.  A team from Durham University compiled the outline of potential hotspots by basing the design on historical and ongoing arguments over ownership.  Russian scientists caused outrage last year when they planted their national flag on the seabed at the North Pole.  The UK researchers hope the map will inform politicians and policy makers.

"Its primary purpose is to inform discussions and debates because, frankly, there has been a lot of rubbish about who can claim (sovereignty) over what," explained Martin Pratt, director of the university's International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU).

There’s a little blame-casting upon the Russians, who planted their flag at the North Pole sea floor last year.  Here’s the legend for that above-the-fold map:

All Alaska residents get an annual per capita payment, drawn from oil production royalties in the state.  Other states get a 50-50 share on the royalties from offshore production.  But Alaska made a deal at statehood - that split is 90% for the state, and only 10% for the national treasury.  Without the cash distributions, enthusiasm for offshore drilling might be less there.  At any rate, the last push for more offshore drilling was in 2006, led by (former, yay!)  Congressman Richard Pombo.  The San Francisco Chronicle link from a diary I wrote on the subject back then has expired, sorry:

THE U.S. SENATE is expected to vote this week on a bill that would expand offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  As always in the horse-trading atmosphere of the U.S. Capitol, the repercussions of the bill are being felt far from the 8 million acres off the west coast of Florida that would be opened to drilling. As usual, some of the arguments have nothing to do with the wisdom and merits of oil and gas exploration in the gulf.

Alaska's two Republican U.S. senators, Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, have made their support for the legislation contingent on Alaska getting a cut of the new drilling revenues. Yes, these are the same senators who have suggested that increased energy production was such a national imperative that they are willing to sacrifice the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So their concern here is obviously not about the gulf environment. It's about money. They want to join the other oil-producing gulf states that are getting a cut of the potential bounty: Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.

That’s right!  Two years ago, the Alaska Senate delegation was so concerned about increasing domestic production that they were willing to kill it if Alaska didn’t get a cut from new leases in the Gulf of Mexico.  Other Alaskans may be starting to wonder if drill-drill-drill isn’t the answer either.  Why's that?  Because Alaska is being hit, especially hard.  The New Yorker published a great three-part article on global warming back in spring 2005.  It’s only available in abstract form now:

The National Academy of Sciences undertook its first rigorous study of global warming in 1979. .... It’s now 25 years since that report was issued, and, in that period, carbon-dioxide emissions have increased from 5 billion a year to 7 billion, and the earth’s temperature has steadily risen. The world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last 2 millennia. The impacts of global warming are no longer just hypothetical. Nearly every major glacier in the world is shrinking. The oceans are becoming not just warmer but more acidic; the difference between day and nighttime temperatures is diminishing; and plants are blooming weeks earlier than they used to. These are the warning signs that the Charney panel cautioned against waiting for. The most dramatic changes are occurring in the Arctic, which is melting.

One wonders if homeowner’s insurance in Alaska covers damage due to melting:

Trees fall over as the permafrost melts out from under them.  The phenomenon is dubbed "drunken forest":

Even if they’re not concerned about the bears.  Though without adequate ice, polar bears will have to forage more on land.  This would make the seasonal issues familiar in Churchill, Manitoba along Hudson Bay much more widespread.

And, it turns out, Senator Barack Obama offered an amendment to the 2006 bill, putting strings on drilling.  In this case, fuel efficiency standards.  Not unlike what he said he’d be willing to consider as President recently, in fact.  The Tuscaloosa News in Alabama, hardly a hotbed of leftist enviro-whacko liberalism, praised the junior Senator from Illinois two years ago:

An energy bill set for passage in the U.S. Senate this week that would open up thousands more acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil exploration has some attractive features. But in the long run, it is a myopic piece of legislation.  
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The most troubling aspect of the energy bill is that while it opens up vast new areas of the Gulf to oil exploration and production, if it offers nothing to require increased fuel economy.  To move toward energy independence, the two concepts should be joined at the hip. But the Senate leadership, notably Tennessee Republican Bill Frist, refuses even to consider a bipartisan fuel-economy amendment, saying extra baggage would threaten passage of the bill.
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The amendment, proposed by Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., would require a 4 percent improvement in fuel economy standards annually unless federal regulators say otherwise. Experts say that’s a sensible figure.
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[Our] concern [about this bill] would fade if the Congress showed itself willing to push for fuel economy. Feeding the nation’s appetite for more oil while doing nothing to curb it is poor policy in the long term.

In addition to the pre-Katrina New Yorker articles in 2005, there was attention to the problem of methane (a greenhouse gas which ratchets up the effects of warming by trapping different wavelengths than carbon dioxide) being released from melting permafrost.  This in addition to cow fart methane which OrangeClouds115 asked Al Gore about in Austin last month.  From the BBC:

A frozen peat bog in Siberia is threatening to release loads of harmful greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, say scientists.  The bog, which is the size of France and Germany, is thought to be melting for the first time in 11,000 years.
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Scientists say the permafrost - a permanently frozen layer of soil or rock - won't re-freeze once it's melted.  Siberia's peat bogs have been producing methane since the ice-age, but most of the gas had been trapped underground.  Methane is thought to be more dangerous to the environment than carbon-dioxide.

Perhaps influenced by all that news coverage, Senator John McCain made a fact-finding trip to Alaska in August 2005, together with Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC).  An active link is still available from the Sunday Independent in South Africa:

"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary."
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McCain - along with Senator Joe Lieberman - is behind new proposed legislation that would require power-generating companies to reduce carbon emissions to their 2000 levels.
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Alaska's own congressional delegation of two senators and a representative did not take part in the tour and have opposed any mandatory limits on carbon emissions.

Three years ago, McCain was on board with global warming.  He still thought expanded offshore drilling was not a good idea.  It would not solve the grave problems the world faces.  Then, the next week, came a storm no one will soon forget.  Hurricanes serve to convert thermal energy to mechanical energy, and Katrina was a doozie:

Maybe we can look to that very week, right after the CoDel to Alaska, as the time when "maverick" McCain started to abandon whatever principles he had.  While New Orleans braced for the storm, and was transformed forever, the rapprochement between McCain and Dubya was on.

As was this:

In 2006, the Republican Congress (with help from Democrat John Dingell, sadly) blocked any and all efforts at fuel efficiency and alternative energy.  But now, they are so distressed that they want to call off their August recess ("vacation") because the urgency of passing legislation to allow outer continental shelf drilling?  It's lousy drama, though I still worry that there are those who are gonna buy into this nonsense.

Never mind that the Republican Majority during the Bush years routinely took Monday and Friday off, and convened late on Tuesdays.  Almost every week!  And in addition to the customary recess in August (part of which is for constituent contact at home, fact-finding travel delegations, and some for vacation), and the month of October off for campaigning, the 109th Congress also took the month of January off, the better to facilitate the legal problems facing then Majority Leader Tom Delay back in Texas.

If this is urgent now, it's is because the Republicans neglected to act on it during the years when their Party controlled both Legislative Houses in addition to the White House.  And they’re throwing tantrums about passing offshore drilling NOW?  Yawn.