With the ground literally melting beneath them, the State of Alaska has a novel approach to deal with climate change; drill for more oil! Why the fuck not?
Because the Arctic is warming twice as fast than any other place on Earth, the permafrost (a layer of frozen highly organic soil) has started to thaw. The thawing tundra is freezing two months later than it did in the 1980s and it is wreaking havoc on Alaska’s infrastructure from roads and airports to entire cities that will need to be relocated as the ground crumbles around them from warming temperatures. This climate catastrophe will be expensive for the state, up to 5 billion by one estimate. Alaska is struggling to pay for deteriorating infrastructure now, so how will the state pay for the damages? Most likely they won’t be able to afford it over time, due to a declining revenue from the oil sector. The fossil fuel extraction corporations provides the state with “more than half of its budget and 90 percent of its discretionary spending”.
Alaska Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski, was successful in persuading the dotard as well as the rest of a anti-life GOP majority to end protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, exploration and seismic permit applications have already been filed to drill in the highly sensitive eco-system (luckily the deep state of the Interior Department issued a scathing rebuke to the oil consortium on their permit applications). Murkowski, not one to shy away from lying to the people of America, when she emphasizes that the oil industry only needs a teeny tiny 2000 acres of the formerly massive protected wildlife refuge. She neglected to mention “that instead of a single spot, oil field facilities and pipelines could be spread over hundreds of square miles if oil is found on the refuge”. In fact, the seismic testing proposal alone calls for “two 150-strong teams of workers, airstrips, giant sleds and special vehicles that create vibrations similar to those created by dynamite to search for and map underground oil or natural gas reserves”.
Ed Yarmak of Arctic Foundations with his thermosyphons. The giant tubes filled with refrigerant suck up warm air and help keep permafrost frozen. . Brian Shumaker has developed a way for companies to get the most exploration time possible. He created a thermometer that can be stuck into the permafrost and attached to a solar-powered box that sends temperature readings to the Internet via satellite, so that oil companies can move as soon as they know the ground is cold enough. He sells them through his company Beaded Stream. "Usually with our technology we can get folks out there days to weeks early," Shumaker told NPR. "It translates into huge cost savings."Elizabeth Hardball of NPR writes:
"To be honest, climate change is pretty good business for our company," says Ed Yarmak, who runs Arctic Foundations and gets about half his work from oil companies on the North Slope. "We're in the business of making things colder."
By "things" he means the permafrost that blankets Alaska's North Slope.
The oil industry has built a vast network of pipelines and buildings on top of permafrost, and has always had to use special engineering to adjust for it. Oil operators have used Yarmak's product since the 1970's, but he says rising temperatures mean it's needed even more.
As permafrost thaws, he says, "the doors start to stick, the sheet rock cracks, the floor isn't level any more. Things aren't the way that they planned them."
To help, Yarmak manufactures long metal tubes filled with a refrigerant, called thermosyphons. In his company's Anchorage warehouse he points out a dense array of tiny fins that stick out the top.
"It's where the heat comes out and goes to the air," he says.
Hardball notes that the giant tubes, which cost, $10,000 each, are partially buried in the permafrost, where the thermosyphons refrigerant pulls the heat out of the ground and keeps the earth frozen. Thousands have been installed by the oil industry across the Alaskan Arctic.
h/t EcoWatch