Monday, February 9, 2015

Steve MacMillan — Is the Arctic home to the “New Great Game”?

The Arctic holds an estimated 13% (90 billion barrels) of the worlds undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30% of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources, according to an assessment conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Canada, Russia, the U.S., Denmark (Greenland), and Norway are the five littoral Arctic states, with four of these states members of NATO, an organisation led by Norwegian born Jens Stoltenberg. The Arctic council is a “high-level intergovernmental forum” which consists of the five littoral states in addition to Iceland, Sweden and Finland. 
Control of the territory is a hotly contested issue among Arctic states due to its economic treasures, with a significant portion of the Arctic outside the control of any nation at present. The ability and effectiveness of the Arctic states to cooperate and discuss issues related to the region will determine the nature of this competition. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – which the U.S. hasn’t ratified – stipulates that each littoral Arctic state has sovereign rights over a maximum of 200 nautical-miles (or their exclusive economic zone) from their northern baseline. “In the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State has sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources”, as stipulated by Article 56, section 1.(a), of the UNCLOS.…
As the Arctic unfreezes, it comes into play geopolitically and geostrategically.

New Eastern Outlook
Is the Arctic home to the “New Great Game”?
Steven MacMillan

4 comments:

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ryan Harris said...

Daily arctic sea ice map from the NASA satellite data.

Matt Franko said...

Ryan I'd like to see a synchronized time lapse of that recession which can be seen on the right hand side (right hemisphere) vs. the movement of the magnetic north pole over the last few years...

You have magnetic north moving from northern Canada towards geographic north moving the focus of all of the charged particles towards the north... perhaps allowing more thermal effects at the more southern portions of the seasonal ice coverage..

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/GeomagneticPoles.shtml

Excerpt: "The most recent survey determined that the Pole is moving approximately north-northwest at 55 km per year."

And its accelerating.

They have some measurements iirc at like 500kA thats like 5 main arc lightning strikes at 100kA each running 24/7/365.... some ice is going to get melted for sure as the focus of this current flow becomes more aligned with geo-north...

rsp,

Ryan Harris said...

Shifting magnetic poles could change how radiation from the sun is converted to heat and distributed over the earth. Way over my head, Matt! Most of the models are pretty simplistic and include only the very largest, well measured items from the last 30 years which isn't long enough to have ever observed changes in the earths core or magnetic fields. Don't expect a scientist to admit they don't know though, they'll have an estimate for you and a standard deviation!