AOL News has a new home! The Huffington Post.
Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!Hot on HuffPost:
Controversial Book On Obama Appears To Have Lifted Key Quote
Walker Recall Effort Struggles To Gain Momentum
arctic
Drill Off Alaska Coast? Gulf Mess Renews Debate
By not in system - AOL NewsWASHINGTON -- A year after the disastrous Gulf oil spill, the prospect of a major accident in oil's next frontier - the icy waters off Alaska's north coast - has experts even more concerned. Mark Thiessen, AP A fishing boat returns to the harbor Friday in Cordova, Alaska, from Prince William Sound, the site of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. With no roads connecting remote coastal towns, storms and fog that can ground aircraft, no deepwater ports for ships and the nearest Coast Guard station about 1,000 miles away - it would be nearly impossible to respond on the scale that was ...
Nuclear Subs Taking Scientists on Secret Arctic Missions
By Joseph Schuman - AOL NewsSAN DIEGO -- To avoid detection and take advantage of the ultimate polar route during classified missions, U.S. Navy nuclear submarines regularly cross under the Arctic. So why not do a little science on the way? Starting this year, civilian scientists from the Navy's San Diego-based Arctic Submarine Laboratory will join the crews on otherwise secret passages under the ice to gather data on phenomena that range from the effects of global warming to how changes to the Arctic could help or threaten American shipping interests. U.S. Navy The submarine USS Annapolis is shown on the ...
Shell Oil's Gamble: Will It Be Able to Drill in the Beaufort Sea?
By Bob Reiss - Politics DailyIt's called a "controlled crash landing." The twin-engine Saab turboprop plane chartered by Shell Oil circled warily above the volcanic peaks of the Aleutian Islands Dutch Harbor last week. It dived through a tiny opening in the clouds and the wheels smacked down amid driving snow. Inside sat about two dozen Alaskan Eskimos and a handful of Shell oil executives. At stake on the trip may be America's next big oil find. Shell wants to drill at least one exploratory oil well north of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea in 2011. The company insists it can do it safely. Members of the Inupiat and Yupik ...
Second Arctic Outbreak Hits US; Why Is It So Cold?
By Paul Yeager - AOL News
(Dec. 13) -- The second outbreak of Arctic cold in two weeks has hit the U.S., and residents in much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation will shiver again this week: Temperatures Tuesday morning will range from close to 30 below zero in International Falls, Minn., to near freezing in Miami. While weather extremes are often blamed on either the El Nino or La Nina weather phenomena, it's a lesser-known weather factor, the Arctic Oscillation, that's more responsible for the bitter one-two punch. A "negative" phase of the oscillation occurs when atmospheric pressures are high over the high ...
At Arctic Forum, Putin Urges Other Countries to Chill
By Dave Thier - AOL News(Sept. 23) -- At a forum in Moscow today, 300 representatives from 15 countries met to discuss the future of the arctic. Amid concerns that the region is about to become a battleground over vast reserves of untapped mineral resources, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made an unexpected call for peaceful cooperation on competing Arctic claims. "If you stand alone you can't survive in the Arctic. Nature makes people and states to help each other," he said, the Guardian reports. At the forum, which carried the not-quite mellifluous title "The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue," the deputy ...
Diesel Tanker Runs Aground in the Arctic
By David Knowles - AOL News(Sept. 2) -- On some days, the fuel tank sure feels half empty. Mere hours after an oil platform explosion ripped through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon, a tanker carrying 2.4 million gallons of diesel fuel has reportedly run aground in the Northwest Passage, the Arctic waterway above the Canadian mainland. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre, the tanker is owned by Woodward's Oil and got stuck on a sandbar near the Nunavut community of Gjoa Haven in northern Canada. The ship was taking the diesel fuel to resupply the remote communities in the region, CBC reported. As ...
Coast Guard's Icebreaker Fleet Frozen in Port
By Richard C. Paddock - AOL NewsSAN FRANCISCO (June 30) -- The U.S. Coast Guard won't have any heavy icebreakers available for polar operations for at least six months because of mechanical breakdowns in its small, aging fleet, officials say. The Polar Sea, one of the Coast Guard's two heavy icebreakers, suffered extensive engine problems, which likely will take until next year to repair. The Polar Sea's sister ship, the Polar Star, is undergoing a major refitting, which will be completed in 2013. Dana Goward, director of the Coast Guard Office of Assessment, Integration and Risk Management, said Tuesday that the lack of ...
Navy is Sailing Along With Climate Change Planning
By Annie Snider - Politics DailyWhile Congress struggles to take up climate legislation, the Navy is full steam ahead on the issue. This week, the Navy released the most detailed military document to date outlining a strategy for meeting the security challenges posed to its operations by melting ice, rising seas, and shifting patterns of precipitation and drought. "We must ensure our Navy is fully mission-capable and ready to meet national requirements in the future," said Rear Adm. David Titley, who leads the Navy's Task Force Climate Change, which authored the document. "That responsibility includes anticipating the ...
Cold, Hard Facts: U.S. Trails in Race for the Top of the World
By Bob Reiss - Politics DailyMost Americans give little thought to our far north. We think of the Arctic as a single region, a cold place divorced from our everyday lives, a setting for documentaries from which we learn that polar bears are in danger as their icy habitat shrinks. But the U.S. also faces huge, new geopolitical consequences from the melt. A whole new area of Earth is suddenly open for international conflict, environmental destruction, and an economic bonanza. On March 1, Alaska's senators sat down at the Council for Foreign Relations with other experts on the region to figure out how to get the rest of ...
Polar Ice Cap Could Be Gone in 5 Years, Gore Says
By not in system - AOL NewsCOPENHAGEN (Dec. 14) -- Al Gore has told the U.N. climate conference that new data suggests the Arctic polar ice cap may disappear in the summertime as soon as five to seven years from now. Clicking through a slide show Monday in a packed side event, the former U.S. vice president joined the foreign ministers of Norway and Denmark in presenting two new reports on melting Arctic ice. The Arctic Ocean sea ice has shrunk dramatically, to record low levels, the past several summers. Scientists blame global warming, which has raised temperatures twice as fast in the far north as elsewhere. ...
Follow Politics Daily
POPULAR
- Nancy Pelosi Confirms House May Skip Up or Down Vote on Senate Health Bill
- Debrahlee Lorenzana: A Double Take on Those Double D's
- Palin Earnings Estimated at $12 Million
- Campbell Brown Quits CNN With Shockingly Frank Farewell
- The Five Most Racist Obama Cartoons?
- Soraya M., Stoned to Death for Being an "Inconvenient Wife''
- Jimmy Carter Leaves Church Over Treatment of Women
- No posts are available.
News From Our Partners
- Dragon arrives at space station in historic 1st
- Picking new leader, Egyptians search for superman
- Egyptians vote in first free presidential vote
- Moon chips from Vegas casino mogul sent to NASA
- Egyptians vote to rid nation of autocratic rule
- More Stories »
- Romneys at Home in Elite World of Dressage Riding
- Rudy Giuliani: Mitt's Great. I'm Just Better
- 'Masters of the Universe' Sure Have Fragile Egos
- Romney: My Mistakes 'Haunt Me'
- Newt Lauds Romney: He's Like Eisenhower
- More Stories »
- The 7 Best Moments from Sunday Talk
- Know Your Enemy
- Cannes’s Mischief Maker
- Cut It Out, Internet Bullies!
- Cut It Out, Internet Bullies!
- More Stories »
- Ambition Counteracting Ambition
- Robert Blagojevich Speaks Out
- In Iowa, Obama Calls Romney's Words 'A Cow Pie of Distortion'
- In Iowa, Obama Calls On Congress to Act on Clean Energy Tax Credits
- Romney Has Interesting Morning in Inner-City Philly
- More Stories »
Top News
More News
More on Aol
Local News
More Blog/Sites
Sites and Services
HuffPost Politics