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werther

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Arctic oil
« on: May 01, 2014, 01:01:43 AM »
Sometimes events that, on their own, do not seem to represent much importance, fall together. Combined, they can be perceived as almost an omen.

Tonight I had an experience like that. On the eve of the day that, for the first time in at least 800K years, or maybe all of human history, carbondioxide will officially make it over the 400 ppm threshold for a whole month, I heard a tanker was on its way from the Prirazlomnoye oilfield.
Tonight it is expected to dock in the port of Rotterdam.

The first time a commercial load of crude is sold and ready to be processed, originating from the Arctic.

Although it is hard to see what I could possibly accomplish, I needed to go out and have a look at what I see as a sort of ‘crossing the Rubicon’.



This is the mouth of river Rhine, the Port where Rosneft will soon deliver its first scavenged payload of fossil fuel. Historic ground; the ‘Atlantik Wall’ bunker was built to prohibit anything coming in. Maybe it should be operated like that once more… against Arctic oil…

I didn’t actually get to see the tanker. I thought it could have been the ‘Pechora Star’ coming in:



There’s a lot of activity over here. I live near the throbbing heart of the BAU scenario… The actual ship is the Mikhail Ulyanov, and it has shut its GPS tracker to sneak in unnoticed.



In the strengthening darkness there’s an eerie glare over the industries stretching right into the North Sea. Strange. No one out there, just fishermen on the pier. " Nothing to worry about" .

I hope Greenpeace will succeed in getting this message out.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2014, 07:53:59 AM by werther »

werther

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Re: Arctic oil
« Reply #1 on: May 01, 2014, 11:27:26 AM »
Maybe it’s of interest to dig deeper into a detail I picked up on my walk to spot the first Prirazlomnoye oil arrival in Rotterdam.

This is part of a billboard along the pier; you can read it while standing head-on in sight of 120 km2 fossil fuel driven big industry:



A large sturgeon entering… combined with the other cosy details in the graph, it is obvious how nature-loving people are lured into believing that BAU can actually be fitted harmlessly into a diverse and attractive ecosystem…



I put this image together to give my opinion on what are the true aspects of this region. Of course, I biased the scales a bit myself…

Instead of the sturgeon I introduced a large ore carrier.

This relates a bit to JimD’s thread on the ‘ugly head’ of human nature. In his post he speaks of BAU-, Green Bau- and what could be called ‘ visionary collapsionado’s’ (I’m probably one of them).
I think the billboard above perfectly illustrates that BAU interests make their beneficiaries do almost anything to convince GreenBAU people that growth and ecology fit together.

For alarmists like me, it is almost impossible to spoil my own love for the natural world by trying to explain GreenBAU people that a billboard like this is propaganda, a gross distortion of reality.

Laurent

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Re: Arctic oil
« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2014, 10:58:46 AM »
Dutch arrest 44 Greenpeace activists blocking Russian Arctic oil tanker

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/01/greenpeace-russian-arctic-oil-tanker

Laurent

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Re: Arctic oil
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2014, 11:35:57 PM »
ExxonMobil And Russia Began Drilling For Oil In The Arctic On Saturday
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/11/3469764/exxonmobil-russia-arctic-drilling/