It has just been revealed that on the eve of President Barack Obama’s official state visit to Ottawa on February 19, a Russian long-range bomber was intercepted and chased by two Canadian CF-18 jets right outside of the Canadian Arctic over the Beaufort Sea. While the Russian Tu-160 Blackjack did not actually enter Canadian airspace, it did fly into an area under surveillance. Norad (the North American Aerospace Defense Command)  detected the aircraft. Consequently, Canadian jets were scrambled and warnings were sent to the Russians to turn back, which they did.

At a press conference, Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay announced,

“I’m not going to stand here and accuse the Russians of deliberately doing this during the presidential visit. But it was a strong coincidence which we met with the presence … of F-18 fighter planes and world-class pilots that know their business and send a strong signal that they should back off and stay out of our airspace.”

The Toronto Star has a video clip of Minister MacKay speaking at the press conference.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper followed up these comments with remarks demonstrating that his country will not tolerate such intrusions — even if the Russian government claims the Canadians were notified in advance. He declared,

“I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace. This government has responded every time the Russians have done that. We will continue to respond; we will defend our airspace.”

Meanwhile, the head of NORAD, U.S. General Gene Renuart, was demonstrably less concerned than the Canadians. He noted,

“The Russians have conducted themselves professionally; they have maintained compliance with the international rules of airspace sovereignty and have not entered the internal airspace of either of the countries.”

In the media, both Canadian and Russian outlets took the opportunity to exchange barbs. Canada.com featured a blog with a headline that screamed, “Red Dawn Part Deux: MacKay Battles the Evil Russians,” while the Toronto Star incorporated MacKay’s rhetoric into its headline, announcing, “‘Back off and stay out of our airspace,’ Russia.”

On the other hand, an unnamed Russian government source was quoted in the article, “Russia slams as farce Canada’s statement on Tu-160 flight,” by Russian news agency RIA Novosti as saying:

“The Canadian defense minister’s statements concerning the flights of our long-haul aircraft are totally unclear… This was a routine flight. The countries adjacent to the flight path had been notified and the planes did not violate the airspace of other countries. In this light the statements by the Canadian Defense Ministry provoke astonishment and can only be called a farce.”

Indeed, such mid-air meetings are rather normal occurrences. Since 2007, Canadian jets have been scrambled 20 times in response to Russian aerial exercises. Norway also often scrambles jets when Russian jets are detected on the outskirts of its airspace.

In an interview with the Toronto Star, Ray Henault, Canada’s former chief of defence staff, speculated as to why Canada decided to publicize this paricular incident. He observed that it could serve as a diplomatic rebuff to Russia’s huffing-and-puffing earlier this week over the militarization of the Arctic. Or, it could have been Canada making the most of General Renuart’s visit to Ottawa to demonstrate the utility of both NORAD and Canada’s contributions to continental defense. But whatever the real reason, this incident only further displays countries’ growing interests in protecting their territory in the Arctic — and the potential for misunderstandings between countrires to grow more severe.

Two separate scientific surveys of climate change at the North and South Poles have just revealed new evidence that the poles are warming faster than expected.

The International Polar Year 2007-2008 endorsed the work of over 160 different scientific projects to carry out a wide variety of research. Together, the scientists’ work illustrates the dramatic effects that global warming is having in the Arctic and Antarctic. Among these findings are:

• The rate of ice loss in Greenland is accelerating
• Arctic permafrost contains more carbon dioxide reserves than previously believed, meaning that more greenhouse gases will be released into the air as the permafrost melts
• The amount of Arctic sea ice was the smallest it has ever been in the summers of 2007 and 2008 since recording began thirty years ago
• Insect and fungi infections have increased due to warmer temperatures

Researcher with Siberian children. Copyright IPY.

The IPY survey is unique in that it includes research from indigenous communities. While for most people, melting ice caps and warming oceans are problems thousands of miles away without precipitable effects, it’s easy to forget that there are people whose lifestyles are changing in the present due to global warming.

The IPY report is available here in various languages.

UN Scientists working for the International Panel for Climate Change have also found that 11 out of the past 12 years, the earth experienced the warmest global surface temperatures in recorded history (Voice of America).

Yet another study brings more troublesome news with regard to polar bears, which are having an increasingly difficult time obtaining food. Scientists compared blood samples taken from bears in 1985-1986 to blood samples taken twenty years later and were able to determine that 1/3 of the animals are now fasting.

Polar bears are not the only animals affected by disappearing ice caps. Ring seals need ice to nurse their pups. If the population of ring seals decreases, this will adversely affect polar bears, which prey on them.

It is estimated that 2/3 of the world’s polar bears will be gone by 2050. The only remaining populations will be in the Canada’s High Arctic and western Greenland.

Russia is closely watching the process of militarization in the Arctic and will respond accordingly.

General Nikolaj Makarov. Copyright AP.

At an international arms conference in Abu Dhabi, General Nikolai Makarov, the head of Russia’s General staff, stated, “Overall, we are looking at how far the region will be militarized. Depending on that, we’ll then decide what to do.”

Policymakers have focused more attention on the Arctic and its possible militarization since January, when NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer discussed the prospects for increasing NATO’s involvement in the region in a speech at a summit in Reykjavik.

However, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide did not seem disturbed by the general’s remarks. In an interview with Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten (in Norwegian), he said, “I don’t want to interpret it as dramatic at all. I have heard worse, to tell you the truth. I won’t be losing any sleep over this.”

Instead, Barth Eide put a positive spin on Russia’s stance by saying that it symbolizes how “all of the polar states see the North as increasingly important.”

Yet as the Kremlin seeks to become more involved in Arctic affairs, ordinary Russian citizens are fleeing the high latitudes, a story which is profiled in the Guardian. The three biggest Arctic cities in the world, all of which are located in Russia, have lost 1/3 of their population in the past twenty years. To begin with, the region’s population was artificially inflated due to Soviet policy. But since 1989, with freedom of movement, people began moving outward. Recently, the drop in the price of commodities has exacerbated the outmigration from the mining and drilling towns of the north.

If Russia is to have a formidable presence in the Arctic, it will need the manpower to back up its statements. But while it is difficult enough under normal circumstances to find people willing to brave the chilly blasts as laborers or military men, it will be even harder for Russia when faced with the challenges of fleeing workers and a restless military.

The Wall Street Journal has posted an in-depth look at the controversy surrounding Norwegian energy company StatoilHydro’s Snoehvit project. Since 2002, the company, of which the national government owns a majority stake, has been trying to procure natural gas from the seafloor beneath the Barents Sea. Operations at Snoehvit, whose name means “snow white” in Norwegian, involve pumping natural gas from the ocean floor, liqueying it, and then transporting it for export as liquefied natural gas, primarily to the U.S. and Europe. Norway’s LNG is seen as an alternative to unstable Russian sources.

Map of Snoehvit's location. From StatoilHydro.

The project first began in 2002 despite strident opposition from environmentalists, who wanted the area to be protected from oil and gas companies. Yet the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) pushed ahead, approving a plan for developing the area. The project was supposed to be environmentally-conscientious thanks to its use of remote-controlled wells, which sit directly on the seabed to avoid disturbing sensitive fisheries and marine ecosystems. Unfortunately, while the ocean was not dramatically affected, Snoehvit’s operations polluted the atmosphere.

Thus, Snoehvit has been controversial for primarily two reasons:

1. Production has caused much damage to the environment. For months, as construction was under way, excess natural gas had to be burned off due to unforeseen complications brought about by the harsh Arctic conditions. Burning of natural gas is normally banned in Norway, but special accomodations were made for Snoehvit by the government. Nearby towns were consequently covered in black soot.
2. The cost has exceeded original expectations by 50% ($7.73 billion for the first phase of construction, compared to $5.24 billion).

Yet perhaps one of the underlying reasons why many Norwegians are so upset about Snoehvit is because they feel as if they have been betrayed by their government. Citizens’ trust in government has traditionally been relatively high in this small country of only four million people.

Worse yet, the betrayal involved harming the environment, which the Norwegians take very seriously, as respect for nature forms an integral part of their country’s identity. Norway’s carbon dioxide emissions, which are much higher than those in other Scandinavian countries due to its oil and gas industry and inefficient transportation sector, increased by 3 percent simply due to the burning of natural gas at Snoehvit.

Snoehvit burning at night. Copyright Reuters.

The Norwegian State Church recently proposed a 5-year moratorium on new oil and gas licenses in order to protect the environment, with one of the 11 state bishops stating, “Norway also needs to show restraint. We need to demonstrate that we can use renewable energy.” This proposal was met with hostility from the labor sector, which stands to lose thousands of jobs if oil production is slowed.

Despite problems with Snoehvit, the Norwegian government, however, is still determined to develop oil and gas fields farther afield in the Arctic. When the USGS’s Circum-Arctic Survey of oil and gas resources was released in August showing that more resources lied within Danish territory (thanks to its possession of Greenland) than in Norwegian territory, newspapers were filled with worry and trepidation. Norway’s oil and gas exports account for a quarter of the country’s GDP. They have allowed the country to create the Government Pension Fund, in which it is saving hundreds of billions of dollars for the day when oil runs out (with at least $75,000 saved for each citizen), and to have the financial werewithal to avoid joining the European Union.

Thus, Arctic resources might be too tempting for the Norwegian government to turn down, even despite the environmental costs. Townspeople who oppose developments off the coast based on the acronym, “Not in my backyard,” might be less averse to developments that are out of sight and, possibly, out of mind. But at the same time, as Norwegian State Secretary Elisabeth Walaas remarked last month on behalf of Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre,

“The prospects for offshore oil and gas activities in the region are more uncertain today compared to the situation a year ago, due to the sharp drop in energy prices following the financial crisis, coupled with the development costs.”

To add another perspective on the race for energy, thousands of miles south in Yemen, Total is trying hard to get liquified natural gas out of the desert, as the New York Times reports. The company is dealing with a completely different set of obstacles in the Gulf of Aden than those facing Statoil Hydro in Arctic. Whereas ice packs, environmentalists, and the state church stand in the way of operations in the High North, in the arid deserts of Yemen, pirates, terrorism, and sweltering temperatures are the challenges of the day.

As quoted in the article, a construction manager at Total’s natural gas plant in the coastal town of Balhaf remarked on the construction of the LNG plant:

“If we can build this here, we can do it anywhere.”

And as a matter of fact, Total is trying to do the same in the Shtokman Field in the Russian territory of the Barents Sea, where it recently won a bid for a 25 percent stake in the liquified natural gas field, overcoming rivals Chevron and Conoco-Phillips. In the race for the earth’s last drops of fossil fuel, neither frozen seas nor sweltering deserts can stop Big Oil.

Canada will follow through on its promise to invest in the High North by building a research station in Nunavat. Three locations in the territory are being considered to house the High Arctic Research Station, which Canada hopes will attract foreign scientists. In addition, $85 million has been set aside for improving existing research facilities in the Arctic over the next two years.

The official press release from Canada’s Department of Indian and Northern Affairs notes that this action supports the country’s

“integrated Northern Strategy that focuses on demonstrating Canada’s Arctic sovereignty, protecting the North’s environmental heritage, promoting social and economic development, and improving and devolving northern governance.”

It is hoped that the development will aid Nunavat’s development by creating more jobs and strengthening the economy over the long term.

According to the Globe and Mail, some Arctic scientists have criticized the government’s plan to fund infrastructure rather than research. Canadian readers who have commented on the article also appear somewhat cynical about the plan, as they think that these foreign researchers will be employed by “oil companies or diamond mines.”

Possible Locations for Research Station. Map made in Google Earth.

CBS News World Watch has a story about the future of summer ice in the Arctic, along with a video.

Three scientists from Great Britain, together forming the Catlin Arctic Survey, will head to the North Pole at the end of the month. They will attempt to discern whether summer ice in the Arctic will cease to exist within the next five years, a sign which would point to major disturbances in the earth’s environment. The group will travel towing sledges for three months, covering 700 miles in 50-below weather - an endeavor which hearkens back to the days of Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. Every ten centimeters, a radar strapped to a scientist’s backpack will send out a pulse that will provide information on the ice and snow below.

An ice-free Arctic in the summer would allow new shipping and fishing opportunities. On the other hand, as more and more ice disappears, temperatures in the area will increase even faster due to greater amount of dark, heat-absorbing ocean exposed to the sun — affecting everything from indigenous practices to Arctic marine ecosystems.

While the Arctic is seen primarily as a place to harvest the earth’s resources, it is also the site of major efforts to preserve the earth’s riches for posterity. On the island of Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, scientists are working hard to increase the number of seeds at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a gene bank where various strands of all sorts of crops are being stored to save them from extinction due to both manmade and natural catastrophes such as war and global warming.

Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News writes that scientists are well on their way to protecting 100,000 different varieties of plants from African cowpeas to South American eggplants in the so-called “Doomsday Vault.”  Thus, in this little corner of the Arctic where countries are racing to drill for oil, mine for minerals, and trawl for fish, they are also hurrying to scurry away seeds for the long and barren winter that may lie ahead.

Even this apparently noble cause to safeguard seeds for future generations is not without controversy. GRAIN, an international NGO, believes that the vault is “unjust” because it “takes seeds of unique plant varieties away from the farmers and communities who originally created, selected, protected and shared those seeds and makes them inaccessible to them.”

However, their criticism seems to overlook the true aim of the vault, which is not to control the world’s seeds, but rather to protect them from the perils created by both men and nature. Many seeds stored in vaults in Africa have already been destroyed or lost due to civil strife and unrest. Svalbard appears to be one of the most remote and safest refuges on earth, then, as long as the race for the Arctic does not escalate.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Background photo credit: Mari Tefre/Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Illustration by Mia Bennett.

Right on the heels of NATO’s announcement that “there will be a military presence” in the Arctic, Russia declared that it, too, will increase its presence in the High North. Specifically, the country is planning to build a new Arctic research ship and send more scientists to the North Pole. Renowned Russian polar explorer Artur Chilingarov, who made the announcement, also challenged NATO by saying that it will not be able to increase its presence in the Arctic. On the contrary, he declared, “Only our country has the unique technical equipment capable of solving the problems of extreme Arctic conditions, and nothing can be compared with our fleet of icebreakers in terms of mobility and effectiveness.”

The International Herald Tribune has one version of the story, while the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti provides just a slightly different angle.

Popular Science has an article on its website examining the effects of thawing permafrost in the Arctic. New research reveals that the melting ice does not just have localized effects on towns in places like Alaska and Scandinavia, which are sinking as the ice beneath them melts. In addition, vast amounts of greenhouse gases currently stored in the permafrost could be released into the atmosphere, making the thawing ice a problem with global ramifications.

One somewhat counterintuitive point the article makes is that an increase in the number of trees on the Arctic tundra thanks to warmer temperatures and better growing conditions could actually serve to accelerate global warming. While trees are normally thought of as a check against global warming, since they store carbon dioxide and release oxygen, in this case, more trees mean increased melting of the permafrost. Previously, snow would cover the low-lying  moss and lichen and reflect nearly 90% of sunlight away from earth due to the albedo effect. Tall trees, on the other hand, are not so easily covered by snow. Consequently, their dark, exposed leaves absorb sunlight, warming the ground and thawing the permafrost below.

Yet even trees are not immune to the negative effects of thawing permafrost. While they may increase in number, many trees can no longer stand upright in the mushy ice, resulting in a phenomenon known to Alaskans as “drunken trees” — just another bizarre scene in the topsy-turvy world of the Arctic where polar bears drown and Iceland wants to join the E.U.

Drunken Trees. Credit A. Cooper/Alamy, from Popular Science online.

Thorvald Stoltenberg, former Norwegian Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs, presented the Stoltenberg Report (PDF, in English) to a meeting of Nordic foreign ministers in Oslo. The report urges greater security cooperation between the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

In the past year, there has been increased talk of pooling Nordic military resources. Last June, the Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish defense ministers published a report urging the pooling of military resources to cut costs. That same month, Norwegian and Swedish foreign ministers Jonas Gahr Støre and Carl Bildt asked Stoltenberg to develop a proposal for how the Nordic countries could further their cooperation in the next ten to fifteen years, which is the report now being discussed.

A defense alliance would finally create a formal mechanism for cooperation between all five Nordic countries’ militaries. Presently, Denmark, Iceland, and Norway are in NATO, while Finland and Sweden, both EU members, are still neutral in principal. Yet the Stoltenberg Report goes beyond general matters of defense cooperation. The report also discusses Arctic issues, for instance, proposing the creation of a “Nordic maritime response force with search and rescue expertise and icebreaker capacity” to respond to incidents in the region. The report also suggests the possibility for greater cooperation with the Arctic Council, of which all five Nordic countries are members, with regard to climate change and environmental policy.

The Stoltenberg Report comes not long after NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer discussed the possibility of a military presence in the Arctic. At a conference in Reykjavik, he told delegates, “I would be the last one to expect military conflict — but there will be a military presence…It should be a military presence that is not overdone, and there is a need for political cooperation and economic cooperation.” Now, it is increasingly possible that NATO, Russia, and a Nordic alliance might all be raising their military flags in the Arctic’s frigid winds.

In Russia, one newspaper argued that the formation of a Nordic military alliance might actually be a boon to the country. Russia Today reported, “For Russia formation of the Nordic Alliance could possibly mean that it will be able to speak directly to the Arctic countries, thus by-passing NATO, for 60 years now wholly controlled by the US, which in turn could mean that purely economic interests would prevail. However, this is only if the US does not enter the new organisation, because, strangely enough, it has Arctic territories too.”

Not exactly strange, but perhaps ironic: the US might not have any Arctic territory had it not bought Seward’s Icebox from the Russians in 1867 for a mere $7.2 million.