Arctic

Although the U.S. is an Arctic nation, it’s about to spend the next two years without a heavy icebreaker. The Coast Guard recently confirmed that the Polar Sea will be decommissioned this year, with her crew being transferred to the Polar Star. The latter boat will be undergoing repairs until 2013, leaving the U.S. without […]

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb is on a three-day trip to Western Russia this week. After paying a visit to Vyborg, a town of 80,000 inhabitants near southern Finland, he made his way to St. Petersburg, where he spoke at the Russian Geographical Society to launch the Finnish-Russian Arctic Partnership. Stubb remarked, “Let’s keep the […]

Last April, the Norwegian and Russian foreign ministers announced that they had begun talks on resolving the 40-year dispute over the maritime border between their two countries in the Barents Sea and Arctic Ocean. In October, Foreign Ministers Jonas Gahr Støre and Sergei Lavrov met again, in Murmansk, this time to sign an treaty on […]

The fifth-annual Arctic Frontiers conference, which promotes dialogue and cooperation in the Arctic, recently convened at the University of Tromsø in northern Norway. Over 1,000 attendees from 20 different countries attended the conference, this year entitled “Arctic Tipping Points,” and heard lectures and presentations on both Arctic policy and science topics. Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s […]

A sad story recently published in the scientific journal Polar Biology bears testament to the consequences of the Arctic’s shrinking ice cap. Scientists from the USGS tracked a radio-collared polar bear, who swam for nine days straight in search of ice. In August 2008, when the extent of the ice cap was at its second-lowest […]

The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs has released a report entitled, “Rethinking the Top of the World: Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey” (PDF). Based on the results from a survey of 9,000 people in eight Arctic countries, the report gives an in-depth analysis of Canadian perceptions of the Arctic, along with a […]

BP and Rosneft, two of the world’s largest oil companies, have formed a “global alliance” to explore three license blocks in the Kara Sea on the Russian Arctic continental shelf. BP is the world’s third-largest energy corporation, while Rosneft is a major oil extraction company owned by the Russian government. Rosneft will now have a […]

“The Polar Imperative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America,” a book by historian Shelagh Grant on the race to claim sovereignty in the Arctic, has been shortlisted as a potential contender for the Lionel Gelber Prize. Each year, the award recognizes the English-language book that “seeks to deepen public debate on significant global […]

After several months of bidding wars, ArcelorMittal has beaten out Nunavut Iron Ore Acquisition to acquire a majority of Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation’s shares, thereby winning control of the Mary River iron ore deposits on Baffin Island, in Canada’s Eastern Arctic (map).  The world’s largest steelmaker will control 70% of the shares, while Nunavut will […]

The NPR has a four-minute clip from Morning Edition discussing Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. Journalists from NPR visited the 300-foot cleanup vessel Nanuq, currently harbored at Unalaska. The Nanuq is one of the many response assets included in Shell’s plan in the case of an oil disaster. Although the moratorium on offshore […]

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season. I will return tomorrow, Monday, January 3 with a new blog posting.

For those of you interested in the Arctic-like conditions making the collective fingers and toes of Western Europe blue, there is an interesting blog post on the Wunder Blog. Some frozen individuals in London and New York decry global warming when they have to turn up their thermostats in early December, but the fact is […]