Canadians Plan Robot Sub Missions To Aid Claim For Arctic 86
jbpisio writes with a link to this blog-post summary that the Canadian government has commissioned a pair of unmanned subs to explore the geology of two underwater Arctic mountain ranges; the subs' mission will be to provide evidence supporting Canada's claim to huge swaths of potentially petroleum-rich seabed areas. According to the linked article, "The submersibles, scheduled to be launched in 2010, would be sent on a series of 400-kilometer missions north and west of Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost land mass and the country's gateway to the open Arctic Ocean — the scene of an international power struggle over undersea territory and petroleum resources believed to be worth trillions of dollars." At least five countries (besides Canada, these are the US, Russia, Denmark and Norway) would like a slice of those trillions.
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Blatant hijacking of idiotic first post.
Is there anyone else out there who is getting tired of the current greed-based international world order?
For starters, I would hope that the writing is on the wall for all petroleum based technology, what with alternative sources of energy and increasingly efficient ways to transport it in an appropriate form for a given application.
Furthermore, the squabble that results over any newly discovered resource ultimately ends up wasting large amounts of money and effort, w
Re:Yeah I just had to do it (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
Three quotes from people way smarter than me:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.(George Santayana) "
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams
and finally from St. Heinlein:
"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. " Starship troopers, 1959
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Is there anyone else out there who is getting tired of the current greed-based international world order?
Sure. Let's leave the riches unexploited. I don't want to freeze my ass drilling in the north anyways.
Witn the increasing usage of robots to do the work of man, I wonder what the fairest distribution of wealth would be. Clearly, the most productive entity, be it machine or man, would be allocated the most resources. So will super-smart robots become the greatest controllers of wealth?
This question has se
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The owners of the robots become wealthy and hold the power, not the robots themselves.
We're an extremely long way from any sign of actual machine intelligence, and only a complete moron would give such a machine power. Uh oh...
Ok, we're an extremely long way from machine intelligence...
The mountie always gets his man (Score:2, Funny)
The mountie always gets his man errrrr killer whale.
Is it worth it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Great, so all we have to do is burn off all other oil sources to heat the planet up enough to melt the ice cap to get more oil.
What most don't realize is that the polar ice caps play a major role in moderating the Earth's temperature. Ice reflects light, while water (or at least its contents) absorbs it. Without the ice caps, the sunlight is absorbed into the water, raising the temperature of the oceans globally, compounding the global warming issues we're already facing.
Trust me, if that happens, the las
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Exactly! It's a question I see very few people asking Will weather events become so bad that we become unable to use the remaining oil reserves?
It's like the oil industry is the Pied Piper merrily
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The geographic North Pole is not near any land, so unless water levels in the arctic ocean have dropped significantly (like say by more than 4 kilometers) the pole has not become an island.
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Semantics.
Ok, the arctic ice pack has melted back from land enough to leave open water on all sides for the first time in human history.
That by itself is not a "problem" per se, the real problem is the dramatic loss of white reflective snow, traded in for heat soaking ocean.
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Wrong.
Development plans have been multi-stranded : directional drilling from artificial, artificially increased, or natural islands ; drilling and piping from sub-sea (and sub-ice-gouge) manifolds ; drilling from gravity base structures of the scale of Hibernia (East of Canada, installed in the mid-1980s, designed for "Iceberg Ally", which is a harsher test than the relatively slow, flexible sea ice.
In Feburary 20
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sooner or later it will be worth it, and so it makes sense to stake the claims now.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Informative)
The area in question is VERY unlikely to be explored for petroleum, let alone developed, for decades. And there may be nothing there.
The real issue is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea [wikipedia.org], which allows countries to claim exclusive mineral rights beyond the current 200 nautical mile limit, out to the edge of the continental margin [wikipedia.org] (which the treaty calls the "continental shelf", but it's not the same as the usual definition of that term). In some places this can be a significant chunk of territory. However, to establish the claim you have to define the geological boundary between continental crust and ocean crust, and there is a limited time to do so after ratification of the treaty (10 years). In Canada's case, the treaty was ratified in 2003. Canada therefore has to submit the claim to the responsible UN commission by 2013. In the part of the Arctic Ocean that is close to Canada, there is a large area (e.g., the Alpha Ridge) [international.gc.ca] that is shallow enough that it could be claimed (the white line in the picture in the above link), if it is shown to be continental material. Unfortunately there isn't much known about that area, because the Arctic Ocean is one of the least-understood ocean basins. Hence there is a strong motivation to find out more about it, and sooner than 2013. With sea ice covering most of the area most of the year, it makes sense to use subs to survey it.
It isn't so much a "power struggle" as a 10-year window to define a geological boundary in order to make an exclusive claim in the area, under international law. After that, the 200 nautical mile limit becomes the permanent boundary. Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway have ratified the treaty, so they're in the running with Canada. The U.S. isn't, because it hasn't ratified, but it doesn't have much to gain in the Arctic (the continental margin in Alaska is narrow). As a sign that it isn't really much of a "power struggle", Canada, Russia, and Denmark have all run joint scientific expeditions to the area to study the sea floor geology in the last several years.
Mod parent up! (Score:2, Redundant)
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Because whenever any country has tried this, the US and other Western powers has had the head of state assassinated and a puppet dictatorship put in place. The only exception so far is Venezuela, though not through the lack of the US government trying to assassinate Chavez. One of the more recent ones is the US support (military aid and so on) of massacres in East Timor, which allowed Western o
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Oh, it's worth it. Stay the hell off my land, please.
Look at a map and tell me with a straight face we can't claim the arctic as our own... Look at places like Grise Fiord; you're right there, about a few hours off from the actual north pole, and guess what? It's a small inuit community! (albeit not the prettiest one, but still)
It's an issue of we don't want international ships crossing and killing the region (enviromentally) in the name of profit, spitting in our face. Oil will be the least of our concerns
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Actually, if you read Harpers throne speeches carefully, he hints at plans to exploit the resources there as much as possible.
He doesn't quite directly say that he wants to pillage the land, but he does mention resource acquisition, and an increased presence, and given his origins (Alberta) and his general environmental stance, I expect nothing more than a token environmental front to the whole northern area and as many resources as he can effectively pull out of it.
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With current oil prices, people have an excuse to continue wasting. The same for corporations. I can see investigation for more efficient energy sources being put aside because oil price is low.
Ultimately, governments will scrap the oil-independence plans they had made during the oil-shock and get back to sit on their lazy asses. When eventually oil ends, we'll be unprepared, of course. That's why I think the currently lower oil prices are not a good thing, but a disgrace.
Let's face it, Joe Sixpack, Jo
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The town that I met my wife in is within spitting distance of the Arctic circle, and was founded to exploit the area's oil reserves. If you believe the town's official history, it was founded in the late 1970s, but there was a settlement, then a railway line, then an industrial yard, then an administration centre, over the dozen years before then. At that time, exports were ne
Cold (Brrrrr!) War? (Score:5, Funny)
So everyone is sending midget subs to the arctic in an attempt to gain some sort of rights to exploit the resources there. Is it only a matter of time before they start equiping them with torpedoes and try to sink each other? Last sub floating wins...like underwater robot wars.
Actually, now I think about it, no-one will get hurt and this is starting to sound like fun!
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I keep saying we should weaponize the vehicles anyway...
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Last sub floating wins...
*scratches head...*
Not content to stop (Score:1)
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I understand your bitterness over countries fighting to take control of an ever-shrinking reserve of energy that has no future and damages the environment, but consider this also :
Successful nuclear fusion reactors (that put out more energy that they consume), at the current rate of scientific research, will appear in the 2040's at the earliest. In the meantime, fossil fuel prices are going to go up and up, and millions with low incomes are going to find it hard to heat their homes, buy food and travel to w
Well, actually... (Score:2)
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I don't consider nuclear energy to be a good/viable alternative to fossil fuels. *shrugs*
Why?
Cold war in the making (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope that by then there will be a practical way to use hydrogen or something else instead of oil.
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Canada doesn't have a major navy. There have been plans in the past to at least buy a polar-class ice breaker to patrol the north but that keeps getting canceled. Maybe it's back on [pm.gc.ca] (named, ironically enough, after Diefenbaker, he who murdered the Arrow. Harper has such a low opinion of Canadians he doesn't think we'll remember. Him and McKay, minister in charge of using his position to pick up chicks and lying through his pointy little teeth to the Progressive Conservatives, God Rest Their Souls.
Chances ar
Make up your mind (Score:3, Insightful)
You rag on John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservative) for cancelling a very expensive program and you whine that Stephen Harper (Conservative) is not spending enough on exploring the arctic.
You're either a troll or a disgruntled liberal will find any excuse to bash the conservatives. Frankly, I don't know how you got moderated up.
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You rag on John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservative) for cancelling a very expensive program and you whine that Stephen Harper (Conservative) is not spending enough on exploring the arctic.
You're either a troll or a disgruntled liberal will find any excuse to bash the conservatives. Frankly, I don't know how you got moderated up.
There's a difference between liberal and Liberal, which one did you mean? Are you another Canadian who takes his lessons on political discourse from from American talk radio and don't know the difference?
Diefenbaker toadied up to Eisenhower and destroyed the Canadian aerospace industry, airframe and engine at the behest of the Americans who didn't want the competition. (Ironically ever since then Americans have ragged on Canada for not pulling our weight, which makes me choke).
Harper is either lying or delu
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The Arrow was not a total loss. A lot of the design of the Arrow went into American fighter jets...fly by wire, computer control, artificial feedback, etc.
But I am definitely not a fan of Diefenbaker for doing what he did.
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The Arrow was worse than a total loss. Dief had them cut into scrap and melted down. He had the blueprints shredded and burned. Canadian aerospace never recovered.
American fighter technology benefited from the crowds of designers and engineers that were turfed out onto the street by AV Roe and Orenda at Eisenhower's command and who the Americans picked up cheap.
So we spent all that money then literally burned the results and forced the people to leave the country to find jobs. I'd rather name a ship after P
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Yes, I know what Diefenbaker had done. I was pointing out that the development of the Arrow pushed fighter jet technology way ahead and that those same technologies that were in the Arrow went into subsequent fighter jet designs.
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Yes, but to no benefit of Canada as an industrial nation. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that the people who designed the Arrow went on to share apply their skills and knowledge in the US and Europe, as they should. No reason they should suffer.
It's just a shame that Diefenbaker was such a pussy when the US leaned on him to cancel the Arrow.
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As for UN-sanctioned borders and conflict mediation, if there is enough oil for this to become a conflict, I suspect the UN will not be able to cope.
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Hey, we have several rowboats and sea kayaks standing by here in Canada, so don't get your hopes up!
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Canada's army consists of 5 fully operational nuclear submarines (3 of which currently reside in the West-Edmonton Mall) and 4 killer-beaver equipped war canoes!
Disclaimer: Yes, I am Canadian!
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Actually I think one of the beavers retired after a punch from Stephen Colbert. He's been replaced by a marmot now..
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Re:Cold war in the making (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as building oil rigs, I doubt any one is going to make any money off it while oil is under $100 a barrel, unless, of course, governments pays for the projects outright with little hope of return. About the only country with that kind of cash and that kind of political system is Russia. The US, or course, is broke, and the US oil companies are clearly not interested in difficult projects, as they hardly explore the oil fields they have. In any case the future is renewable energy, and investing in oil is throwing good money after bad, as is shown with multitrillions of dollars thrown away in Iraq while Afghanistan is left to harbor enemies.
Only a matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
All that oil and only a few bears, seals and Inuit to complain. It looks like sooner, rather than later, we'll hear Mother Nature squealing "Oh my God! Nobody's ever put it THERE before!"
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Only about five people live that far North (840 km from the North Pole), in Alert, which is a small military outpost and weather station and the Northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world. The nearest Canadian city is some 2000 miles to the South.
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A couple of corrections to your corrections. Igaluit has been a city since 2001, and its population is 6184 (according to the 2006 census). You are right that Alert's transient population is around 200, but its permanent population is only 5. You're also right about the distance from Iquluit; I should have stated it was ~2000 km to the South.
http://tinyurl.com/577lbx [tinyurl.com]
It's no joke! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Modding "Funny" is a waste of time. See
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm700 [slashdot.org]
The USA is sending Sarah Palin... (Score:4, Funny)
We're sending her up there, and she'll just claim the whole lot using her sense of geography and nationalism to claim the whole lot. She becomes a national hero to a nation more interested in oil than logic, and she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012, reminding voters that she takes those nucular codes very serious.
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"We're sending her up there, and she'll just claim the whole lot using her sense of geography and nationalism to claim the whole lot. She becomes a national hero to a nation more interested in oil than logic, and she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012, reminding voters that she takes those nucular codes very serious."
Only the harsh, jackbooted Discipline of Alaska Barbie can rescue us from the Putinist Threat and restore the US to comforting post-WWII smalltown niceness. Vote for the She-Wolf of Maybe
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...she'll be swept into the oval office in 2012...
Luckily the world will end a month and a half later
Submissions? (Score:2)
Canadians Plan Robot Submissions To Aid Claim For Arctic.
Submissions? Those cruel Canuck bastards! How is humiliating robots going to help them claim the Arctic?!?
So, all it takes is planting the flag eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
This could get very ugly.
The law of the sea supposedly governs this kind of thing. Determining the extent of the continental shelf can extend the exclusive national right for minerals up to 150 nm past the EEZ, so in theory the documentation of the shelf should be a benign action. But ultimately international law is enforced by warfare on various scales of intensity, starting at diplomatic sanctions, through economic sanctions, and all the way up as high as warfare can go.
International law is only what you can force a country to accept as international law. We know Russia wants to claim these resources, and gainsaying them can lead to armed conflict.
Back in 1991, I remarked that the course of the twenty first century would be determined by the integration of the former Soviet states into the world political, security and economic systems. The opportunity to do this, if it ever existed, was bungled by the first Bush administration, and now we are dealing with a militarily powerful, mineral rich nation with a paranoid persecution complex and authoritarian instincts. Do they have more invested in stability than they can get out of grabbing territory?
Re:So, all it takes is planting the flag eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
...now we are dealing with a militarily powerful, mineral rich nation with a paranoid persecution complex and authoritarian instincts.
Who? Russia, or the USA?
Developement (Score:2)
The best way to prove your claim on something is to turn it into something useful by developing it. Once you have invested in the area and start producing oil, most people will agree that it is wrong to seize what you've built there.
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(to the world that is)
Pure Fucking Insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Two articles, 50 posts, and nary a mention of the total gibbering insanity of this move.
Our species is burning oil at such a rate that it's actually causing the polar ice caps to melt. Instead of turning around and thinking about just what the hell we're doing to ourselves we actually use this as an excuse to start a competition for oil rights under the ice that we're about to melt. Just take a step back and think about that for a minute, the lunacy of it just absolutely blows my mind.
This is like a crack addict scraping the dead tissue out of their lungs and putting that shit back into their pipe and smoking it. Doesn't there come a point at which people think our energy consumption might be costing us too fucking much and we need to just cut down a tad? Seriously, if this talk about drilling for oil in the Arctic isn't meant as a joke then satire is dead, and our species is headed the same way.
</rant>
Re:Pure Fucking Insanity (Score:4, Interesting)
This is as much about protecting sovereignty as it is about oil, of which Canada already has the second largest reserve in the world. It doesn't really need any more, but it does need to protect itself from the expansionist greed of other nations.
But I do agree about the utter insanity of burning fossil fuels.
Obligatory Quote (Score:1)
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Poit! Egad! Zog! Fjord!