Drilling In The Arctic Essay

According to the National Research Council (NRC), it is believed that 13 percent of the Earth’s undiscovered oil is located in the Arctic. The Arctic is the polar region that surrounds the north pole, and it consists of parts of Alaska, Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. It is home to hundreds of species of animals varying from polar bears to snowshoe hares. The arctic is made mostly of glaciers and glaciers make up about 75 percent of the Earth’s fresh water. However, due to its vast amount of resources, the Arctic is a target for mines. Drilling oil in the Arctic is called offshore drilling because it is a process where oil is drilled below the seabed instead of drilling on land. The government should pass

Greg Deemer, a ph from the National Snow and Ice Data Center said, “The act of drilling for oil … contributes to atmospheric greenhouse gas production the same way your automobile does. This is through the combustion of fossil fuels in vehicles / machinery that are used for resource extraction. The secondary effect of oil production in the Arctic region is that this oil will be consumed by customers across the world, emitting trace gases as a result of burning the resource for energy.” Scientists at Environment America found that burning the world’s remaining oil, gas and coal would melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet (Alt et al.). This could cause seas to rise high enough to, “put Miami, New Orleans, New York, Washington and other cities under water.” More water would be exposed to sunlight if there were no more ice caps. Ice reflects 85 percent of sunlight and open water reflects just seven per cent”(Evans et al.). This is a big deal because no sunlight that is not reflected is absorbed and that adds to the problem of global warming even more. If this were to continue to happen until the point that there are no ice caps, the continents would have a new geographic outline because parts of it would be undersea level. Basic comprehension of how the drilling in the Arctic is connected to global warming helps people understand how important passing a law that bans oil drilling in the