Arctic troops. (C) US Army Northern Warfare Training Center

Life is a thriller in its own right.

In the latest chapter, Russia is now training a “special motorized infantry brigade” to fight in the Arctic, where it has laid claim to a lion’s share of the billions of tons of untapped oil and gas reserves under the Arctic ocean.

That sounds so “twentieth century,” doesn’t it?

But, considering global events, it’s not.

As laid out in MELTING DOWN’s plot, Russia is poised to be to the world energy industry what the US is to world arms industry, i.e. #1.

If I were Russia, I’d be thrilled at world events.

First, the Arctic continues to lose sea ice. In fact, just a month ago, JPL announced that, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study, “the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate.” Translation: it is getting easier to access those oil and gas reserves.

Second, Japan just elevated the Fukushima nuclear disaster to “Chernobyl” status, making those events the only two Level 7 disasters on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

While that is great news for nuclear opponents, it is even better news for oil, coal and natural gas companies. European governments, in particular, are re-thinking whether to build new nuclear plants and/or to extend the life of existing ones. And, in Japan and other countries that limit nuclear, fossil fuels will be the only near-term way to replace most of the demand for electrical power.

Plus, there is the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. The more unstable it is, the more risk there is that minor oil supply disruptions will turn into major oil disruptions, if not catastrophic ones.

Given all these current events, those oil and gas reserves under the Arctic are looming even larger as a future source for transportation, heating and electrical generation.

Russia knows the value of those reserves. And, apparently, it is getting ready to militarily defend its claims.

  shareshare

Three Things

First, The Climate

This is the most obvious one. MELTING DOWN embeds a lot of climate impacts in-between wild snowmobile chases, nuclear attacks and tense Cabinet meetings.

What’s the bottom line: there is more heat in our atmosphere. The heat can’t escape. And neither can we.

Sooner or later, bad things will happen. In terms of the climate, glaciers are already melting, sea levels are rising, storms are stronger, crops are wilting and we’re seeing swarms of beetles that kill pine forests and mosquitoes that carry the West Nile virus.

Over time, all that heat will disrupt, degrade and maybe destroy our quality of life.

Second, National Security

A large chunk of MELTING DOWN is about national security. Why? Because living in an unstable climate is a lot like flying in an unstable plane.

As the climate becomes less stable, our nation becomes less secure.

Now, President Obama doesn’t talk about that. Neither does Congress nor the media. Thank God, the military does.

Case in point:

“You have very real changes in natural systems that are most likely to happen in regions of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism. Droughts, violent weather, ruined agricultural lands—those are the kinds of stresses we’ll see more of under climate change…More poverty, more forced migrations, higher unemployment. Those conditions are ripe for extremists and terrorists.”                                                                                           –Admiral T. Joseph Lopez (USN)

Case in point: Naval Air Station Pensacola, the primary training base for all Navy, Marine and Coast Guard pilots, as well as the Blue Angels precision-flight squadron. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan smashed into Florida and took large sections of the base with it. Given that example and many other climate-exacerbated coastal incidents, the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review cited 30 US military bases and facilities as being at risk of rising sea levels.

Third, Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Solutions

Typically, we humans take a “one problem – one solution” approach. In a world as inter-connected as ours, it rarely works. Worse, you can pretty well bet the ranch that there will be unintended consequences.

TBL solutions simultaneously address economic, environmental and social issues. As a result, they are far more likely to reduce costs, frustration and wasted time, while increasing revenues, jobs, clean air and other desirable outcomes. For a discussion of TBL solutions, please visit www.tbltimes.com

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Five Major Arctic Basins Identified by US Geological Survey. (CC) USGS map

In 2008, the US Geological Society estimated that 13% of the world’s undiscovered, but technically recoverable, oil was in the Arctic region. For those of you who like numbers, that’s an estimated 900 billion barrels of oil. Since there are 42 gallons in a barrel, that represents a lot of fill-ups: 37,800,000,000,000 (37.8 trillion) gallons.

Plus, there is an estimated 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.

These real-world facts drove me to build MELTING DOWN’s plot around Russia’s potential to control the world’s energy supplies, especially as 1) the world’s demand for oil continues to increase and 2) the supply of on-shore, Middle Eastern oil continues to decrease in the next few decades.

Now…between Libya, Japan and the NCAA tournament, it’s understandable that oil and gas drilling in the Arctic hasn’t gotten a lot of press recently (not that it would, anyway.) But, fear not: preparations, explorations and actual drilling are moving forward.

Case in point: a month ago, there was a webinar entitled “Meeting the Challenges of Arctic Development.” It featured three experts.

The presentation by one of them indicates the level of research and development being applied to the Arctic. His talk “…will provide an update on industry activities for these regions, including the latest on ship classification; fixed and floating drilling/production unit classification; third- party verification; environmental assessments/risk analysis; and ice/ship interaction.”

Another presenter offers re-assurance about operating in environments where the sun never rises for a long period of time and ice flows could crush a rig. His talk “…will present an overview of practical engineering solutions that will allow oil and gas operators to safely and efficiently work in Arctic offshore environments.” (emphasis added)

I visited the Arctic last June when I researched MELTING DOWN scenes on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Arctic is far away from most of us. But the impact of drilling up there is getting closer every day.

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Tsunami-flooded Sendai Airport, Japan: (CC) in the public domain, photo by US Air Force Staff Sgt. Samuel Morse

Japanese lives lost. Towns destroyed. Supply chains disrupted. Daily, the list of consequences grows.

Here’s another one: because of the earthquake/tsunami, humanity’s tinkering with the climate will accelerate even faster.

Why?

Before the earthquake/tsunami, Japan imported about 4 million barrels of oil a day, which accounted for about 45% of its energy needs.

But, over the next few years, Japan will boost its oil, coal and natural gas imports substantially for two main reasons:

1)    The amount of nuclear-generated power will drop, because the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is out of commission, and there may be slow-downs or shutdowns in other stations, as the government mandates inspections. As a result, fossil fuels will be needed to generate electricity

2)    The re-building of Japan will require enormous amounts of construction, which will require enormous amounts of fossil fuels to support it

Furthermore, if the US, Germany, Sweden and other countries reduce their reliance on nuclear because they find too many unreasonable risks, they will turn to fossil fuels as well.

Altogether, the demand for more oil will further drive off-shore drilling from Brazil to Russia. In particular, it will strengthen the economic case for the Arctic drilling that drives MELTING DOWN’s plot. The drilling, shipping and burning of that oil will add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

The demand for more coal and natural gas will also do the same.

Ideally, Japan and other countries should generate that electricity from renewables. Will they? Sure. But not much. Given the political and economic realities, there is no way in the next five to ten years that renewables could largely replace fossil fuels.

It would help greatly if more media outlets and more citizens understood the Great Climate Experiment we’re undergoing. It would be even better, if we incorporated renewables within triple bottom line solutions that address social, economic and environmental issues.

  shareshare