BP and the suicide machine
Oil companies have no choice but to look below the melting Arctic ice for more oil and gas. City investors expect it of them.
The Guardian reports that British scientists are in conflict with their American counterparts over the emerging scramble to access oil below the fast-melting Arctic ice sheet. International Polar Year is looming, with a common expectation among the 60 countries taking part that global-warming research will be the big theme. The US Geological Survey, long known for bullish support of the oil industry, intends to participate. They will contribute a hunt for oil and gas in alliance with BP and Statoil. A search, in other words, that if successful cannot fail but accelerate the already catastrophic impacts of global warming on the Arctic. Ungentlemanly conduct, says the head of the British Antarctic Survey. Business as normal, says a spokeswoman from the US Geological Survey.
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Carbon Wars
Beware Exxon-Mobil efforts to discredit the science of climate change. They've been at it for years.
This week the Royal Society took the unusual step of leaking an internal memo from the Royal Society which showed that its elite brotherhood of British scientists are worried about a campaign by fossil-fuel interests to try and discredit the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report when it is published next year. The memo cites Exxon-Mobil as an actor in this dismal effort to emulate the tobacco industry. The deans and bishops of British science are preparing a systematic fightback, it seems.
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Flip-flopping on energy
Two top environmentalists changed their tunes on nuclear and gas this week. Worrying.
On Sunday, in the Independent, Zac Goldsmith concluded that it isn't possible responsibly to condemn nuclear power out of hand. On Tuesday, in the Guardian, George Monbiot confessed that he had become a fossil-fuel supporter. What is going on?
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