The Global Cooling Initiative

Considering the Bush administration's penchant for ironically-titled giveaways to big business, I suppose you could call this the Global Cooling Initiative. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) wants to help two petroleum companies explore for oil in the Arctic ocean under a proposal touted as an effort address global warming. This takes place against the backdrop of the International Polar Year (IPY), a project involving 60 countries to assess the affect that global warming is having on the Arctic and Antarctic.

Documents on the IPY website show that BP and Statoil, a Norwegian company, are "significant consortium members" on a USGS proposal to assess "energy resources in the circumarctic area including oil, gas, coalbed methane and methane hydrates". Geologists estimate that a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie under the Arctic, and analysts have predicted a 21st-century goldrush to tap them as the Arctic Ocean's ice cover retreats.

Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "I would be very uncomfortable with a project that simply was out to log the hydrocarbon reserves of the Arctic as a geological activity. I don't think that fits very comfortably within either the scientific guidelines or the ethical underpinning of the IPY."

***Suzanne Weedman of the USGS said: "This is very much a part of what we do. Our responsibility is to assess the undiscovered oil and gas using geological information." She said the plan built on a project called the Arctic Energy Assessment, which is part of its World Energy Project - a global attempt to map untapped hydrocarbon fuel reserves. Oil companies including ExxonMobil, Amoco, Conoco, Texaco and PetroCanada are listed as members.

Well, I guess there is something to be said for the Bush administration finally acknowledging that global warming exists; not much, but something.