Why? No, not for clean energy. Because they need the infrastructure to drill for oil and gas there, of course. BBC News - Nuclear power at heart of Russia's Arctic ambition Does this strike nobody else as outrageous? To build eight nuclear power plants on the predication of feeding a global oil dependency long into the future? Didn't we decide a little while back that we had to stop doing this? What folly.
Do you live in the same world I do? Do you see people dying in Africa? Do you see third world nations starving? Do you see oppression around the globe? I do. These problems do not magically disappear. They may not even be fixed by oil, but oil is cheap. It is cheap to acquire, it is cheap to utilize. Developing nations need to build infrastructure. They need to utilize this cheap form of energy. I'm not saying that Russia developing new drilling stations is going to stop poverty in the third world, but I do think that these people should be thought of before 'Mother Gaia'. Let the world utilize the resources they have.
I completely take your point, but I'm on the side of the fence that believes climate change will disrupt global development far more drastically than radically cutting our use of fossil fuels will. Mine is a humanitarian concern, too - not an environmental one.
While this may have been the case when we first discovered oil, I dont think its the same situation we should be in now. We know of too many other ways to produce much cleaner, and more efficient forms of energy. That would be a lot better for us in the long run. If greed didnt overtake the oil industry we would be using another form of energy by now and we would be much better off.
My belief is that they are trying to build up in the Arctic circle so that they can claim the resources that might soon be revealed. If it does get a little hotter than Russia's northern coast will open up instead of being ice. So they're just thinking about the future.
It wasn't really the case when we first discovered oil, because the world wasn't ready for the utilization of oil. I think that a lot of the time people don't realize the amount of infrastructure goes into the utilization of oil. We are talking about every car, truck, plane, boat, submarine, gas station, etc. that would need to be refitted to utilize some new resource. We need to find these new fuel sources (which wind and water do not suffice, solar isn't quite ready yet and people are too fearful of nuclear) before the world starts to see that it would be wise to invest in these new resources. Only then will the actual change occur, and only then will it be humanitarian to suggest, support, or persuade people to use other resources. Until then it just costs far too much money for most countries, and these nations are already pretty poor.
Lets not forget the BIGGEST source of unused energy on the planet. Geothermal energy could produce enough energy to power the planet. Look at Iceland as your model. Wind, water, and solar sure don't hurt either. Five major geothermal power plants exist in Iceland, which produce approximately 24% (2008) of the nation's energy. In addition, geothermal heating meets the heating and hot water requirements of approximately 87% of all buildings in Iceland. Apart from geothermal energy, 75.4% of the nation’s electricity was generated by hydro power, and 0.1% from fossil fuels.
It was the case when we first discovered oil, because we realized the potential so we made the world ready to utilize oil. We just became we to dependent on it and it ended up biting us in the ass. We gotta start switching over at some point to a better energy source and now would be a good time to start switching ,its not going to be a cheap transition no matter when we do it
Well, if they don't mine it the supply is just lower. At least by mining it they are developing something, regardless where/what it is. But besides that, I checked out Sci Fi Science the other night. I am totally on board with the Graphene Solar Panel Idea. Basically we don't have enough material in the entire solar system to build enough Solar Panels to become a Type 1 or 2 Society. But, if we were able to find a large enough Asteroid with enough carbon on it we could build panels out of material that can be 1 atom thick and encircle the sun outside of our orbital plane with solar panels that would lead to effectively free energy. Something like 1 billionth of the Suns energy actually makes it to us on the surface of the planet.
Knowing your disposition to AGW I didn't for a moment expect you would be. To clarify: you can probably see how, to someone concerned about the immiment threat posed by AGW, the thought of setting up nuclear power plants in a long term (like, decades) effort to drill for fossil fuels which are speculated to lie beneath the Arctic circle might give the impression that we're not taking this whole thing seriously as a species. Hence 'folly' and 'outrage'. I'm guessing that a civilisation with the capacity to circle the Sun with an atom-thick mesh of solar cells would probably have overcome that particular obstacle. ...Just a hunch.
Hmmm would mutant polar bears have a right to bear arms? Assuming the got some form of higher intelligence out of it too (But that ALWAYS happens when radiation is involved amiright?)