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Russia Oil - AT: SQ SolvesRussian oil deposits can’t keep up with demand. Need to spread to the Arctic Konończuk (head of the department of eastern European studies and a major researcher in eastern European politics) 12 Wojciech Konończuk, April 2012 , RUSSIA’S BEST ALLY THE SITUATION OF THE RUSSIAN OIL SECTOR AND FORECASTS FOR ITS FUTURE, http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/PRACE_39_en.pdf As production levels in the traditional oil fields are regularly falling, the development of new regions is a problem. Eastern Siberia with the northern part of Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Far East (and the Arctic shelf in the longer term) stand the greatest chance of becoming major production sources. Production has already started in some of these regions, although its level is still low. An increase in output is also expected on the Caspian and the Black Sea continental shelves, which will however have less impact on the Russian oil sector. What these regions have in common is that they all have been explored geologically to only a small extent so far, which makes it difficult to assess the volume of the oil deposits there. Furthermore, investments in geological and exploration research are at low levels, the discovered fields are at the initial stage of development and most of them are classified as medium in terms of confirmed deposits. What makes Eastern Siberia, the Far East and the Arctic shelf different from the present chief production centres are the much harsher climate conditions; this significantly raises the costs of investment and requires the application of new, often still undeveloped technologies (as in the case of the Arctic shelf). Another crucial aspect regarding the new fields is the feasibility of production, while in 80% of them production is unprofitable, given the present fiscal situation. AT: Ice AgeNo ice age for another 130,000 years Brock 11 (Chris Brock, TIMES STAFF WRITER, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 2011, http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20110319/CURR04/303199998/?loc=interstitialskip) PAUL SMITHS — Chalk one up for the humans: we staved off an ice age.¶ That's one conclusion ecologist and paleoclimatalogist Curt Stager makes in his book "Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth," released Tuesday by St. Martin's Press.¶ And we have it in our power to prevent another ice age, which, compared to global warming, would be much worse for humans. "An ice age is to global warming as thermonuclear war is to a bar brawl," Mr. Stager writes in "Deep Future."¶ Most of the scholarly studies about humans and global warming deal with the issue within the next century or so. But Mr. Stager looks ahead dozens of centuries.¶ Mr. Stager takes a deep look at climate and its long-term patterns.¶ "I try to make the point that we have a whole lot of power as to what the future holds," said Mr. Stager, a professor at Paul Smith's College and a research associate at the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute.¶ In "Deep Future," he looks at the bright and dark sides of what is at stake on Earth thousands of years from now. The book has received a starred review in the journal Kirkus Reviews, which called it "essential reading."¶ One of the bottom lines in "Deep Future" is that each generation should realize what we're doing to Earth and pay attention to the cumulative effect.¶ "Along with power comes responsibility," Mr. Stager said in a phone interview from Paul Smith's campus, located near Saranac Lake. "Without sounding like a preacher and 'Thou shalt do this,' I think it's important for people to realize the consequences of our actions are going to last a lot longer than folks had anticipated."¶ He writes in "Deep Future": "Our very existence at this pivotal moment in history gives us the amazing ability — some might say the honor — to set the world's thermostat for hundreds of thousands of years."¶ Mr. Stager writes that most climate models predict another ice age at the year 50,000. Humans, he said, have stopped that "in its tracks" because of carbon dioxide emissions. The next ice age will arrive around the year 130,000. But not if "we burn through all our remaining coal reserves during the next century or so," Mr. Stager writes. If we do that, he said, the next ice age won't hit for the next half million years. Your evidence is wrong – cooling is a factor of warming SAMARDŽIĆ 10 — (LJILJANA SAMARDŽIĆ, Reporter on interntational news, http://www.wavemagazine.net/arhiva/40/topic/false-ice-age.htm) "Despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track below normal." This means that the alleged states about mini ice age are far from truth¶ By LJILJANA SAMARDŽIĆ (ljiljana.samardzic@wavemagazine.net)¶ from Sombor, SERBIA¶ During UN's World Climate Conference in 2009 Mr. Mojib Latif, a climate expert at the Leibniz Institute at Kiel University in Germany, held a speech about climate predictions, which were concluded from his research. However, New Scientist, along with few others medias, reported that Mr. Latif research shows that we are entering new little ice age, which is supposed to last for next 20 or 30 years. With reports, speeches, surveys available online even laics could see that words of Mr. Latif were misinterpreted. After this misquoting, he gave a statement in which he refutes his alleged conclusions and sayings.¶ Next decade turned into several decades¶ The confusion was about a final line of the abstract: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming."¶ First of all, the scientist said that this "may" happen, which means that this climate phenomenon is not something that will surely happen. There is only a possibility and lots of factors might influence on the final result. Secondly, the author said "over the next decade" and that, somehow, turn into "decade or two" and even "several decades".¶ Besides, Mr. Latif said that "we don't trust our forecast beyond 2015" which means that their model is not precise when it comes to one specific year.¶ Global warming on hold¶ The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that "sea ice extent increased at a fairly steady rate in the early part of the month and then slowed towards the end of January. A brief slowdown in ice growth is not unusual during winter." In comparison to January of few past years "ice extent averaged for January 2010 was the fourth lowest for the month since the beginning of satellite records".¶ It is also concluded by analyzing data from last three decades that "the summer Arctic sea ice melt season now lasts nearly a month longer than it did in the 1980s. A later start of freeze-up and an earlier start to the melt season both contribute to the change." Those statements refute the headlines that brought confusion among settlers of the Earth which tend to make us believe that global warming will be shortly postponed. According to Mr. Latif, the warming had been only slowed down and acceleration might happen again in period between 2015 and 2020:¶ "We did only forecasts for the time until 2015. However, if we look further, then we have some indications that there are after, say after 2015 or 2020, you know, global warming will accelerate again."¶ So, the global warming is not postponed, stopped or anything alike. Due to natural fluctuations it happens only to be on hold for the "another 10 years or so". The earth is warming – proves ice age is false LDEO 10 (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Study Adds New Clue to How Last Ice Age Ended, September 8, 2010, http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/study-adds-new-clue-how-last-ice-age-ended) As the last ice age was ending, about 13,000 years ago, a final blast of cold hit Europe, and for a thousand years or more, it felt like the ice age had returned. But oddly, despite bitter cold winters in the north, Antarctica was heating up. For the two decades since ice core records revealed that Europe was cooling at the same time Antarctica was warming over this thousand-year period, scientists have looked for an explanation.¶ A new study in Nature brings them a step closer by establishing that New Zealand was also warming, indicating that the deep freeze up north, called the Younger Dryas for the white flower that grows near glaciers, bypassed much of the southern hemisphere.¶ “Glaciers in New Zealand receded dramatically at this time, suggesting that much of the southern hemisphere was warming with Antarctica,” said study lead author, Michael Kaplan, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “Knowing that the Younger Dryas cooling in the northern hemisphere was not a global event brings us closer to understanding how Earth finally came out of the ice age.”¶ Ice core records show that warming of the southern hemisphere, starting 13,000 years ago, coincided with rising levels of the heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide. The study in Nature is the first to link this spike in CO2 to the impressive shrinking of glaciers in New Zealand. The scientists estimate that glaciers lost more than half of their extent over a thousand years, and that their creep to higher elevations was a response to the local climate warming as much as 1 degree C.¶ Samples of glacial debris, like this boulder, lets researchers retrace the path of ancient glaciers. Credit: Mike Kaplan. (Alice Doughty, University of Maine pictured)¶ .¶ To reconstruct New Zealand’s past climate, the study’s authors tracked one glacier’s retreat on South Island’s Irishman Basin. When glaciers advance, they drag mounds of rock and dirt with them. When they retreat, cosmic rays bombard these newly exposed ridges of rock and dirt, called moraines. By crushing this material and measuring the build-up of the cosmogenic isotope beryllium 10, scientists can pinpoint when the glacier receded. The beryllium-10 method allowed the researchers to track the glacier’s retreat upslope through time and indirectly calculate how much the climate warmed.¶ Rock samples were flown out of Irishman Basin by helicopter and shipped¶ to the U.S. for analysis. Credit: Mike Kaplan.¶ The overall trigger for the end of the last ice age came as Earth’s orientation toward the sun shifted, about 20,000 years ago, melting the northern hemisphere’s large ice sheets. As fresh melt water flooded the North Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf Stream weakened, driving the north back into the ice age. During this time, temperatures in Greenland dropped by about 15 degrees C. For years, scientists have tried to explain how the so-called Younger Dryas cooling fit with the simultaneous warming of Antarctica that eventually spread across the globe.¶ The Nature paper discusses the two dominant explanations without taking sides. In one, the weakening of the Gulf Stream reconfigures the planet’s wind belts, pushing warm air and seawater south, and pulling carbon dioxide from the deep ocean into the air, causing further warming. In the other, the weakened Gulf Stream triggers a global change in ocean currents, allowing warm water to pool in the south, heating up the climate.¶ Bob Anderson, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty who argues the winds played the dominant role, says the Nature paper adds another piece to the puzzle. “This is one of the most pressing problems in paleoclimatology because it tells us about the fundamental processes linking climate changes in the northern and southern hemispheres,” he said. “Understanding how regional changes influence global climate will allow scientists to more accurately predict regional variations in rain and snowfall.”¶ Other researchers involved in the study: Joerg Schaefer and Roseanne Schwartz, also of Lamont-Doherty; George Denton and Aaron Putnam, University of Maine; David Barrell, GNS Science, New Zealand; Trevor Chinn, Alpine and Polar Processes Consultancy, New Zealand; Bjørn Andersen, University of Oslo; Robert Finkel, University of California, Berkeley; Alice Doughty, Victoria University of Wellington." No ice age and warming outweighs Chameides 8 — Professor of Environment @ Duke (Bill, PhD, Yale University, “Pulse of the Planet: A New Ice Age IS Coming ... but Don't Hold Your Breath,” 11-17-2008, http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/iceage-nature) Skeptics have been arguing that we should forget about global warming -- a new ice age is imminent. Maybe, some say, it's already started. In fact, a new study does predict the coming of an ice age, one promising to be more permanent than others. Is it imminent? Depends on how you characterize 10,000 years. It may surprise you to know that in our current climate, ice ages are more the norm than not. Over the past three million years, covering the end of the Pliocene and the present Pleistocene epoch, the Earth’s climate has oscillated between cold times (called ice ages or glaciations) and warmer times, interglaciations. In the recent past (the last one million years or so) the ice ages have lasted for about 100,000 years, and the warmer periods tens of thousands of years. The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. The questions most relevant to us are: when will the next ice age occur and should we be concerned about a global cold wave or the current global warming? The answers lie in the mechanism behind the climate swings. The oscillations between ice ages and warm periods can be qualitatively explained by the Milankovitch theory (for more details see here). The theory's basic tenet is that the ice age–interglacial swings are triggered by changes in the Earth’s orbit about the sun (eccentricity), rotational changes of the Earth on its axis (precession), and changes in the tilt of the axis (obliquity, which is what causes the seasons). The orbital changes affect how much sunlight reaches the Earth at different latitudes. These changes in solar radiation are then amplified by feedbacks involving carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the ice albedo, and the large temperature swings inferred between ice ages and interglacials. One of the major puzzles in the Milankovitch theory is the so-called Mid-Pleistocene transition. Before about one million years ago, the glacial periods lasted about 40,000 years (which corresponds to the frequency of obliquity changes). Then the glaciations transitioned to a 100,000-year cycle (which corresponds to the frequency of changes in eccentricity). Why this transition? Scientists continue to discuss the cause. Now Tom Crowley of the University of Edinburgh (previously at Duke University) and William Hyde of the University of Toronto have added a new wrinkle to the debate in a paper just published in Nature. Using a simplified, coupled climate-ice sheet model, they conclude that the shift in the ice age cycling kicked off a slow transition to a new climate regime, one that will be characterized by a permanent ice sheet in the northern mid-latitudes. They argue that this transition is being driven by snow-ice albedo effects. A permanent ice sheet in the mid-latitudes of the North Hemisphere sounds like bad news. But panic is a little premature. Tom Crowley states that "our model predicts a rapid transition [to an ice age] beginning in the 10,000-100,000 years. But the timing of this transition is surely model dependent -- it could easily be a quarter of million years or so -- still short from the context of geology but almost infinite from the viewpoint of society. Our results in no way can be interpreted as justification for continued use of fossil fuels, as that problem is near term and very significant." 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