The Raw Prawn

Reuters: "Arctic thaw could open vast oil and gas region"

An accelerating thaw of the Arctic may open vast regions for oil and gas exploration but that brings worries of spills in the fragile environment, experts said on Thursday.

Scientists behind an-eight nation report saying the Arctic sea ice could almost vanish in summer by 2100 because of global warming said offshore oil and gas operations would be easier but melting permafrost could destabilise installations on land.

Regarding my post yesterday about China's thirst for oil and gas: this would make construction of the Angarsk-Daqing pipeline even more crucial for China.

On the topic of global warming, Tyler Cowen, who is in Calcutta at the moment, has an interesting post up today about how quickly we will adjust to global warming. He discusses the incentives involved with migration out of a city that will be partially submerged, and comes to some interesting conclusions.

If the sea level rises considerably, the watery real estate of West Bengal will fall in value. Let's say we knew that Calcutta would flood in fifty years' time, how would the adjustment process work? Will people leave a dying city too rapidly or too slowly, as defined in economic terms?

Fifty years? Clearly Tyler hasn't been to Calcutta during the monsoon :-P