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Four unnamed sources from the Russian President’s administration and the Ministry of Defence told the news website Verstka that a new wave of mobilized troops could soon be sent to Ukraine. These soldiers will likely comprise reservists and existing conscripts who will be “cajoled” into signing new contracts once their current tour of duty ends. “Something is coming. Reservists are being recruited now, the same as before the last mobilization. Whether the mobilization will happen or not, I don’t know, but last time the procedure was the same,” an officer from one of the military units in the Zabaikal region,...

Joe Biden enraged environmentalists in March when he gave the go-ahead to allow the $8 billion Willow Project to drill on Arctic land. The greenies felt that Biden had betrayed a campaign promise of “no new drilling, period” on federal lands. They needn’t have worried. Biden has never wavered from his goal of destroying the fossil fuel industry, nor has he ever deviated from his position that the U.S. will be weaned off of fossil fuels even if it costs tens of thousands of jobs and an untold amount of pain to consumers. The Biden administration announced that it would...

Senior U.S. Navy leaders in the Atlantic and European regions discussed, in some detail, the nature of the Russian build-up and naval activity in the Arctic region during a recent seminar in Washington. Speaking Feb. 9 at a seminar sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute and the Center for Maritime Strategy (CMS), a think tank of the Navy League of the United States — Deterring Russia at Sea in the High North — were Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command and Vice Adm. Dan Dwyer, commander, U.S. Second Fleet. The seminar was moderated by retired Adm. James...

Russia is worried about increased activity of NATO forces in the Arctic and sees risks of "unintended incidents" occurring in the region, TASS news agency cited Russian ambassador-at-large Nikolai Korchunov as saying on Sunday. In March, Finland and Sweden, which are both considering joining the U.S.-led military NATO alliance, conducted combined NATO military drills. The exercise was long planned, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 added intensity to the war game. Moscow describes its actions in Ukraine as a "special military operation". "The recent increase in NATO's activity in the Arctic is a cause for concern. Another large-scale...

The U.S. Navy on Wednesday revealed its strategy in the Arctic as the region becomes more and more accessible.

When the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee convened a hearing to confirm the new Secretary of Navy Kenneth Braithwaite, the word "Arctic" was mentioned 35 times. It topped other hot topics such as "China" and "Russia," which each received 22 mentions, and far outweighed "North Korea," which was raised just six times, reflecting the new interest in the topic in Washington. "The Chinese and the Russians are everywhere," Braithwaite told senators on May 7, referring to the Arctic region. "Especially the Chinese. You'd be alarmed at the amount of Chinese activity off the coast of Norway in the High North,...

The Karluk Disaster In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled Karluk departed Canada for the western Arctic. On board were 10 scientists, 13 crewmembers, four Inuit hunters, one seamstress, her two children, and one passenger. Of these, 11 never returned and most were not heard from again until September 1914. During their 13-month exile, expedition members survived for seven months amid the drifting and inhospitable Arctic ice floes before establishing camp on an uninhabited island hundreds of miles north of Siberia. The wooden-hulled Karluk departed Canada for the western Arctic in June 1913. It became solidly trapped in sea ice...

Beaver Invasion Could Speed Artic Warming

Thirty years after an oil well was drilled at an Arctic wildlife refuge, the effects are still visible from space.

During her nearly four years as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell said, oil companies did not pressure her about opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Politicians, however, were a different story. Jewell says she heard about the issue repeatedly from Alaska’s governor and members of Congress, who were worried about a state budget crisis amid plummeting oil prices and declining local production. The state of Alaska, which lacks a sales tax and an income tax, relies on oil revenues to pay for the vast majority of its state budget, as well as fund...

resident Obama apparently wants his legacy to be one of energy starvation for the United States and dependence on foreign energy from friendly places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. His ban on offshore drilling in federally owned waters off our Atlantic and Arctic coasts makes no sense, either environmentally or economically. As the Washington Times notes, Obama thinks he can get away with it: Vowing that his successor won’t be able to reverse his actions, President Obama on Tuesday used executive authority to permanently ban new offshore drilling in federally owned waters off the Atlantic coast and in the Arctic...

Full title: Sarah Palin: Russia Wins While America Sits On Its Ass (pardon my Великорусский язык) Russia just built and employed icebreakers to control Northern passageways while busily flagging life-sustaining resource-rich underseas acreage, with zero pushback from the U.S In laymen’s terms, The Great Bear seized on America’s weak “uni-party” that controls our government, and watched our politicians go along to get along with Obama’s agenda built on disdain for an “all of the above” energy plan, a nonchalant attitude about bankrupting our government, and overall ignorance about purpose of national borders. Way to go Democrats. And capitulating Republicans. The uni-party was...

In a move that will likely be overturned promptly by the administration of Donald Trump, president Obama on Tuesday formally blocked offshore oil and gas drilling in most of the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, responding to a call from environmentalists who say the government needs to do more to prevent drilling in environmentally sensitive areas of U.S.-controlled oceans. The president had been expected to take the action by invoking a provision in a 1953 law that governs Outer Continental Shelf offshore leases, and he did just that to block drilling in federal waters in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea and most...

The Canadian military has investigated a mysterious pinging sound coming from the sea floor in a remote region of the Arctic, officials have told the BBC. ... But the military says it is so far unable to explain the cause of the "acoustic anomalies". "The [aircraft] crew did not detect any surface or sub-surface contacts," the military said in a statement released to the BBC. ... A spokesman in the department of national defence in Ottawa said the cause of the pinging noise - which locals say can even be heard through the hulls of boats - remains a mystery....

New video of submarine surfacing through ice. ARCTIC CIRCLE (March 10, 2016) USS Hartford (SSN 768) surfaces in the Arctic Circle near Ice Camp Sargo during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2016. Servicemembers and civilians assigned to Arctic Submarine Lab clear ice from the hatches to allow for surface access.ICEX is a five-week exercise designed to research, test, and evaluate operational capabilities in the region. (U.S. Navy video by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Tyler Thompson and Staff Sgt. LINKUSS Hartford (SSN 768) surfaces at the Arctic circle for ICEX 2016

Shell’s ambitious plans to finally return to the Arctic face yet another hurdle, one that could delay drilling once again. Shell is using the port of Seattle as its base for some of its vessels that it will use in the Arctic. Seattle has been a launching point for Shell in the past (and has hosted Alaskan drilling equipment for decades), but a new greener municipal government is taking a harder look at Shell’s operations. Spurred on by Shell’s error-ridden 2012 campaign in the Arctic that culminated in the grounding of the Kulluk, environmental groups have mustered up some political...

ANAHEIM – By day, county Supervisor Shawn Nelson sees a sand crab when he drives past the new transit hub in his district. By night, he thinks “disco roller rink” when colorful lights illuminate the building. “I don’t think this is what the taxpayers had in mind,” said Nelson, who is also board chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority. Many local architects, however, call the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, set to open Dec. 6., a modern marvel and the future of transportation.

NUNAVIK'S LOG BOOK October 17, 2014 ARRIVAL AT DESTINATION The MV Nunavik recently completed its historic voyage through the Northwest Passage. We wish to thank:  Captain Randy Rose and his crew for their safe and efficient navigation; Tim Keane and Gary Bishop for eloquently sharing this adventure with us;  valued customer, Canadian Royalties; our Fednav Arctic team in Montreal; and our faithful readers. This project has been a memorable one for us all, thank you for following our journey. Your friends at Fednav

The headline is a quote by Dr. Judith Curry from a David Rose article in the Sunday Mail: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now. The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his...

Arctic, Antarctic, who cares? The science is settled. Just look at this hockey stick. So what if it’s really a baseball bat. The science is settled, I tell you. We settled it one weekend and now it’s settled for good. At 8 min. 30 seconds in, Nye holds up a picture of Arctic and asks: ‘Would you say that the Antarctic has less ice than it used to?’Climate Depot’s Answer: NO! See: Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is on track to have highest minimum in modern satellite era! – ‘Sea Ice Extent is 27.4% above normal as of Feb 7 2014′Er,...