The UK’s Prince Harry will join a group of injured UK soldiers in a “race” to the South Pole. Participating in the trip will be several teams amongst others from Australia and the US.
This all part of Prince Harry’s charity “Walking with the Wounded”.
More information: Walking with the Wounded
The Doha Climate Change conference has ended 24 hours later than intended, & sill without a deal that binds the US, China & India. On a positive note the Kyoto Protocol (which is due to expire later this Year) has however been extended till 2020, this however is of little real consequence as countries like the US have never ratified the original Kyoto Protocol.
Now, in honour of Shackleton’s remarkable 800 nautical mile voyage across the Southern Ocean, from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and his crossing of its mountainous interior, the Shackleton Epic expedition will sail Alexandra Shackleton, a purpose-built, exact replica of Shackleton’s 22.5-foot (6.9m) lifeboat, James Caird across the same stretch of open ocean and then attempt to cross the rugged peaks of South Georgia.
A crew of five British and Australian adventurers will join expedition leader Tim Jarvis, AM FRGS, in an attempt to become the first to authentically re-enact Sir Ernest Shackleton’s perilous voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia and then dangerous crossing of its mountainous interior.
To this day, no-one has successfully re-enacted Shackleton’s complete ‘double’ journey across sea and land using traditional gear. British/Australian adventurer Jarvis, 46, a veteran of multiple polar expeditions, believes it will be the most challenging expedition of his life.
Shackleton Epic has been in development since 2008, when Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of Sir Ernest, approached Tim Jarvis with the idea of an expedition to honour one of the greatest leadership and survival stories of all time.
More info:
The PCO took part in a tree planting event on Sunday at which over 1150 trees were planted. The event organised by Greenlight has planted over 7000 trees in the past few years and the event continues to grow each hear with this year about 70 odd people helping to plant the trees.
There’s always room for more, so organisations and companies looking to participate are welcome.
PCO at Tree Planting
For more info:
For the first time a Gas tanker (Norwegian ship Ob River) will attempt to cross the Arctic during the winter season, a period when previously this was unthinkable in the past as the ocean was frozen over.
The trip via the Arctic will save 20 days travel time on the journey from Norway to Japan. A Russian icebreaker is leading the convoy.
More Info:
BBC News – Gas tanker Ob River attempts first winter Arctic crossing.
Webizen’s new online FPS (First Person Shooter) game, called Arctic Combat, is based on war over Arctic resources. According to the game’s prospectus:
“The conflict between the US and Russia rises more and more as past disputes are once again reminded. Battles have started in the Arctic region and is spreading across the world. World War III has begun.“
The game launches on December 6, 2012 & is said to be free.
View Trailer:
The European parliament’s industry committee has rejected attempts to introduce a moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, overruling a contrary vote by its environment committee last month.
The key vote in the industry committee yesterday (9 October) instead proposed a new directive to ensure that companies have “adequate financial security” to cover the liabilities that could be incurred by any accidents.
Drilling companies would also have to submit to national authorities a safety hazard and emergency response report at least 24 weeks before the planned start of operations.
A plenary vote in December will now consider one surviving amendment from the environment committee vote, which would impel member states to refrain from licencing drills unless an effective accident response can be guaranteed.
The European Commission had initially proposed a binding EU-wide regulation, but the industry committee’s vote instead plumped for a directive, which member states can choose how to enforce according to their regional standards.
“Questions have been raised about the significant revocation and amendments of existing equivalent national legislation and guidance [a regulation] might entail,” said the parliamentary rapporteur, Ivo Belet (European People’s Party).
“Such redrafting would divert scarce resources from the safety assessments and inspections on the field,” he added.
British oil industry representatives used similar arguments, according to minutes of a stakeholder peer review meeting at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
“Implementing the Regulation would tie-up considerable resources in both industry and regulators … taking them away from the ‘front line’ where the hazards are,” representatives of Oil and Gas UK said.
After that meeting, the head of the European Commission’s coal and oil unit, Jan Panek, invited the Oil and Gas UK representatives to a separate bilateral meeting on the legal instrument and requirements in the regulation, which took place in April 2012.
Tip of the iceberg
Environmentalists suspect that this was the tip of a lobby iceberg. “This vote had the fingerprints of oil lobby all over it,” Greenpeace spokesman Joris den Blanken told EurActiv.
Amid intense industry lobbying, EurActiv has learned that the oil giant Chevron offered MEPs on the committee a free trip to its offshore Alba platform on 12-14 July, involving two nights stay in an Aberdeen hotel, helicopter trips to the platform, and several briefings.
But a Chevron representative informed EurActiv that the trip had not in fact gone ahead, due to “organisational reasons” on which she declined to elaborate.
Ivo Belet’s office said that he had “had the intention” of going on the package, but instead visited a platform in the Netherlands on a paid-for trip to GDF Suez’s K12B gas-producing platform which utilises carbon capture and storage techniques.
In March 2011, another shadow rapporteur on the committee, Vicky Ford (European Conservatives and Reformists), who tabled more than half of the 642 amendments on the report, visited a rig off the coast of Aberdeen paid for by the oil company ConocoPhillips.
Such trips are considered necessary and educational for legislators, and may not be luxurious, but environmentalists are wary of undue influence when MEPs adopt positions close to the industry’s interests.
A spokesperson at Ford’s office said that she had registered her trip on her European Parliament online declaration of interests but it was not mentioned there at the time of writing.
Camel operations in the Sahara
Oil producing countries such as Norway also pushed hard for the proposed regulation to be transmuted into a directive, because of the “massive administrative burden” and “complicated legal questions” it could raise, according to a Norwegian position paper, seen by EurActiv.
Norway’s deputy oil and energy minister, Per Rune Henriksen, went further, arguing that for the EU to claim jurisdiction over the Arctic by banning drills there “would almost be like us commenting on a camel operations in the Sahara.”
The EU sees itself as an actor in the Arctic because three EU countries have territory in the Arctic – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – while Iceland is an EU candidate.
The EU has in return applied for an enhanced observer seat on the Arctic Council, partly because climate change is a transboundary issue, affecting European weather patterns and fish stocks alike.
Gustaf Lind, the Arctic Council’s current chair, told EurActiv that “of course, as we have EU members, we can all say that we’re positive, very positive [towards the EU's application] but we try to avoid reviewing specific applications in the media.”
Arctic resource race
The EU’s application comes as the continent’s ice has melted to its lowest level ever, carving the pristine region open for a resource race.
The US Geological Survey says that the region could be home to 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its undiscovered gases, and gold and diamond mining companies also view its prospects with relish.
Arctic nations often bemoan a perceived southern hypocrisy that would prevent them from enjoying the same economic benefits from fossil fuel production that others have done.
Oil extracted from the Arctic emits no more greenhouse gas than that produced anywhere else but the region’s remote and hostile terrain could make rescue operations treacherous in the event of an accident.
Arctic futures
Gunnar Wiegand, a director at the EU’s External Affairs Action Service, told an Arctic Futures Symposium in Brussels on 4 October that he hoped EU legislation could inspire Arctic nations to firmer environmental legislation.
“The acquis [accumulated legislation] in the Arctic Council doesn’t go as far as any of the environmental legislation of the EU,” he said.
Maria Damanaki, the EU’s maritime commissioner, told the same conference that as the continent’s ice thawed, new opportunities could arise.
“Offshore drilling in the Arctic now becomes a viable option for big oil companies,” she said. “Arctic reserves could hold enough oil and gas to meet global demand for several years. This is a need the world economy has.”
“Though we may be greening the world economy, oil and gas remain vital for us and will do for some years,” she added.
Scientists are more concerned that the Arctic ice melt could raise sea levels, accelerate global warming by reducing the region’s ice reflectivity of solar heat, and change Gulf Stream currents.
If the Arctic’s summer ice melts completely, some scientists fear that methane hydrates currently frozen on the seabed could be released, causing a runaway and unstoppable greenhouse effect.
Europe rejects ban on Arctic oil drilling | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
ST. PETERSBURG – The scientist responsible for preparing Russia’s claim to seabed rights at the top of the world says Canada and his country are both poised to reap staggering economic benefits when a deal on who owns title to what in the northern ocean is finally struck.
“Canada has a wonderful shelf and basin, so of course Canada can get very rich from this,” said Victor Posyolov, deputy director of Russia’s Institute of World Ocean Geology and the head of its Arctic research program.
Poring over maps tracking the evidence that he is amassing for Russia’s claim, Posyolov estimated that his country, with the longest Arctic coastline, would gain rights to about 1.2 million square kilometres of seabed. He reckoned Canada would get about 800,000 square kilometres of sub-surface territory. That would be about twice as much seabed as the other claimants, Denmark and the United States, are likely to get.
“The biggest shelves and basins are in Canadian waters and it will benefit the most. The U.S. and Denmark have modest sectors,” Posyolov said in a room dominated by a circumpolar map that Canada and Russia jointly produced in 1992.
“We are not involved in studies of how much oil and gas may lie in the Danish, Canadian and U.S. sectors, but there is open data using different methods to make forecasts. Every country knows or imagines that there are reserves there.”
Much has been made of the potentially overlapping claims for the Arctic, but Posyolov foresees little possibility of conflict. There already is “an approximate plan for the division of the Arctic that is not in dispute,” the oceanologist said. It was based on the principle that exclusive economic zones extend out 200 nautical miles (332 kilometres) from each coastal state’s shoreline.
The grey area was beyond the 200-mile limit. To claim sub-surface rights beyond that point, a country has to prove that a geographic link exists between its land mass and adjacent underwater formations that may extend far out to sea. Much of the research pertains to a formation known as the Lomonosov Ridge, which snakes under the ocean for much of the distance between Russia, Canada and Greenland.
Based on standard geographic principles involving equidistance, Russia and Canada would likely agree to split the Lomonosov Ridge at or near its middle. Posyolov suggested it was far more likely that Canada and Denmark would have a difference of opinion over the ridge where it runs closest to Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.
Russia submitted a claim in 2001 to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which makes recommendations about who is entitled to what. The commission asked Moscow to provide additional data for the Lomonosov Ridge and the adjacent Mendeleev Rise.
While the Lomonosov and Mendeleev formations are central to Russia’s claim to much of the top of the world, Posyolov acknowledged that the UN “might declare the North Pole belongs to all humanity and that the area 60 miles around the North Pole belongs to no country.”
To prepare its claim, Russia has undertaken five separate polar expeditions since 2002, the last of which ends this month. Conducting such research has not been cheap. Each mission had involved two icebreakers and cost between $20 million and $30 million, Posyolov said. To share costs, the Danes had asked for Russia’s help with icebreakers while Canada has been working with the U.S., he said.
Tracing a red line that reached far out into the ocean on one of the maps on his desk, Posyolov said that was the rough extent of Russia’s claim. It was based on 13,000 kilometres of bathymetric studies of the underwater depths of the Arctic, 7,000 kilometres of seismic studies of the sea floor as well as research based on multi-beam echo soundings and studies that involved reflection and refraction waves.
Having already submitted a claim to the UN commission, Russia was at the front of the queue. Its revised claim is to be presented in 2013. Denmark and Canada will follow by the end of 2014. The U.S. position is unclear as Washington is not yet a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, whose membership elects the commission on the limits of the continental shelf.
“We present our materials and they say whether they are well-based, convincing and correspond to the UN convention,” Posyolov said. Each country could also say whether its claim was harmed by the claim of another country.
Headlines proclaiming a modern day Gold Rush to stake claims in the Far North badly missed the mark, Posyolov said. As an example of how long it can take to sort such issues out, he cited Norwegian and Russian claims that had taken three decades to resolve.
There are already 51 sea claims before the UN commission. As only about three of them are examined each year, Posyolov guessed that unless the process is somehow accelerated, it would be several decades before the pending Arctic claims were resolved.
© Copyright: Postmedia News
Read more: http://www.canada.com/Canada+Russia+will+share+Arctic+riches+scientist+predicts/7358861/story.html#ixzz28kZg9JQI
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