Grounding of Shell drilling platform highlights dangers of Arctic Oil Drilling

Shell has plans for drilling several exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas area off the north coast of Alaska. The grounding of the Kulluk circular oil drilling ship while being towed in heavy seas must call into question whether safety measures by Shell and Coast Guard response capabilities are adequate to allow Arctic drilling to proceed.

Initial approval for oil drilling by Shell Oil was given by the Obama administration in August 2012 despite opposition by numerous conservation groups and a petition of over a million US citizens. To preserve a safe climate based upon the simple climate maths of how much fossil fuels we can afford to burn, we need to Go Fossil Free through divestment, start taxing carbon and leave the oil reserves beneath the Arctic alone.

Related: Greenpeace - Save The Arctic | Sierra Club - Chill the Drills: Protect America's Arctic! | Center for Biological Diversity - Arctic Oil Development | Alaska Despatch - U.S.: Shell’s grounded drilling rig raises questions | July 2011 - Smears on integrity of Polar wildlife scientist a prelude to Arctic Oil Drilling

Methane and CO2 in thawing Arctic permafrost a climate tipping point

A new report on permafrost slowly thawing in the Arctic creating methane and carbon dioxide emissions highlights an approaching dangerous climate tipping point. There is a huge amount of organic matter frozen in permafrost, estimated to contain 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon, twice the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere. And it is starting to melt. With no way to stop it except indirectly through us reducing the rate of global warming by reducing our own emissions.

"The release of carbon dioxide and methane from warming permafrost is irreversible: once the organic matter thaws and decays away, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost," said lead author Kevin Schaefer, from the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"Anthropogenic emissions' targets in the climate change treaty need to account for these emissions or we risk overshooting the 2°C maximum warming target," he added.

Watch this youtube interview with Lead author Professor Kevin Schaefer, Research Scientist at the University of Colorado being interviewed at the climate talks in Doha:

The report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost (PDF) - was published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and launched at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Doha on November 27. (See media release)

Smears on integrity of Polar wildlife scientist a prelude to Arctic Oil Drilling

A misconduct complaint has been filed against the US Interior Department on behalf of an Arctic scientist who has been under investigation since the start of the year. The scientist, Dr. Charles Monnett, PhD, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) formerly known as the Minerals Management Service, has not been told why he is under investigation or what the allegations are against him, although a record of interview from February this year seemed to question his scientific integrity by focussing on a 2006 scientific paper co-written with Jeffrey Gleason - Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming by polar bears in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea.

Related: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility - Arctic Scientist protests witch hunt on polar bear paper