推 hunmir:好複雜...第三頁以後的部分有沒有人願意講解？ 09/21 04:08
標題:Melting Ice Brings Competition for Resources
Part 3: Russia Flexes its Muscles
新聞來源:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,579265-3,00.html
(需有正確連結)
By Gerald Traufetter
Part 3: Russia Flexes its Muscles
Meanwhile, at StatoilHydro's research and development laboratory in the
central Norwegian city of Trondheim, engineers are developing new
technologies for dealing with the harsh Arctic environment. They examine ways
to use tugboats to push icebergs out of the way, test special solvents that
thicken the oil in ice-cold water and design tanker hulls that can't be
crushed by the ice. In the first producing gas field in the Barents Sea,
known as Snøhvit (snow white) StatoilHydro, without further ado, placed the
entire production unit on the ocean floor so that icebergs can simply drift
across the system.
StatoilHydro plans to have its Arctic oil and gas production running at full
speed by 2030. "We're currently taking giant steps up a technology ladder,"
Richardsen says proudly.
The Norwegians are self-confident. But what happens to production in the
midst of a polar low-pressure system? When it comes to toughing it out in the
polar regions, the descendants of explorer Roald Amundsen, the first person
to reach the North and South Poles, are not about to be upstaged. But
politics are a different story altogether. Norway, a country of 4.7 million
people, shares the Barents Sea with Russia, and a 155,000-square kilometer
(60,000-square mile) section is considered disputed. Another dispute, over
Spitsbergen and its status under international law, has been smoldering since
1920.
The Russian Defense Ministry provoked Norway when it sent the warship
"Severomorsk" to cruise the waters off Spitsbergen this summer. Two days
later, the Russian air force conducted firing exercises over the Barents Sea
with Tu-22M3 supersonic bombers.
It was all part of a series of previously arranged exercises. But Russian
military leaders later said, with the poker faces and rhetoric of the
powerful, that they had "reestablished a military presence in the Arctic."
The fronts in the new Cold War are still drawn between the old blocs, and the
theaters are the same, but exactly where these fronts are located remains
unclear.
Ellesmere Island, Canadian Arctic
82° 47' North, 77° 57' West
Karsten Piepjohn hasn't shaved in four weeks, and the hairs of his beard are
beginning to curl around his mouth. He isn't the only one sporting the
wilderness-chic look. It is only 8 p.m., but Piepjohn and his fellow
researchers from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources
(BGR), based in the northern German city of Hanover, are exhausted as they
sit on benches around a table. A wind from the north, from the sea, is
tugging at the lines of the main tent. The team's camp is less than 900
kilometers (560 miles) from the North Pole.
"The Russians have flushed out half the world," says Piepjohn -- his own
team's backers from the German Economics Ministry included. Piepjohn, a
geologist, is referring to the spectacular actions of an eccentric Russian
member of parliament, who traveled to the North Pole by submarine last year
and had a Russian flag driven into the seabed there -- a meaningless act of
appropriation under international law.
Years ago, who would have been interested in discovering what happened to
this glaciated island, part of the Canadian Arctic today, 100 million years
ago? But times have changed. "We may be looking back to the Paleozoic age,"
says Piepjohn, "but what we discover in the process is critical to the
policies of today."
Suddenly scientists are no longer interested in basic research alone.
Instead, they are shifting their attention to mineral resources -- and
everything hinges on the question of who just owns the North Pole.
The reason this is so important lies in a complex provision of the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which states that the territorial
claims of each member state extend beyond the 200 nautical-mile zone if the
country has proven that its own continental shelf protrudes beyond this zone.
Each nation must submit its scientifically supported claims to a United
Nations body with the odd name UNCLOS. The Russians took the most cavalier
approach to the task, by simply selecting the two longest mountain chains in
the northern Arctic Ocean -- the Lomonossov Ridge and the Alpha Ridge -- and
declaring them part of their continental shelf. In doing so, they hoped to
quickly lay claim to an enormous Arctic region covering more than 1.2 million
square kilometers (463,000 square miles).
But anyone who hopes to truly grasp the current geology of the Arctic must
embark on a journey into the past. On the next morning, Piepjohn and his crew
board their helicopter to take precisely such a trip. The BGR geologists are
reconstructing the formation of the Arctic, and the key to that lies in a
time long ago, when palm trees rustled in the wind here.
It was about 400 million years ago, and a large, open sea did not exist in
the region. Instead, as Piepjohn assumes, the area was the site of a gigantic
collision. The original continents, Baltica and Laurentia, collided "exactly
here, on Ellesmere," says Piepjohn, clapping his hands together and laughing.
"What we're looking for now is the compression zone."
The traces of this continental collision are still visible from the
helicopter. "Look, over there, a fold!" says Andreas Läufer, 43. With a wave
of his hand, the geologist indicates to the pilot that he should allow the
helicopter to hover over the ridge. The layers of rock are shaped as if God
had been practicing origami. Läufer reads the formations the way others
would read a history book.
"Spitsbergen, this northernmost bit of the European continent, is an
excellent geological match for this rock that we find today on the other side
of the North Pole," explains Werner von Gosen, a geology professor from the
southern German city of Erlangen. After the great collision, the two
continents Baltica and Laurentia became wedged together and then drifted
apart again. That, says Gosen, is how the northern Arctic Ocean was formed.
The details of this powerful continental drift have sweeping consequences.
"In the warm, prehistoric past of the Arctic, large reserves of oil and gas
were formed," says Piepjohn.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: Where are they today?
"Geologists have already found oil in the southern part of Ellesmere," says
the BGR geologist. But if Ellesmere and Siberia, separated by the northern
Arctic Ocean today, were still connected when these fossil fuel reserves were
created, there would have to be large undiscovered reserves off Russia's
northern coast today.
The discoveries by the BGR team could also have important consequences for
the drawing of territorial borders in the Arctic. If the theory Piepjohn and
his team are proposing, namely that Laurentia, the precursor to the North
American continent, and Eurasian Baltica were one long ago, it could mean
that the underwater Lomonossov Ridge is attached to both the Siberian and the
Canadian continental shelf -- just off the coast of Ellesmere. In that case,
the maritime border between Canada and Russia would have to be drawn exactly
in the middle of the long undersea ridge, creating a stalemate situation.
One of the curiosities of this vast continental puzzle is that when today's
northern Eurasia and the original American continent split apart about 60
million years ago, a fragment of Europe remained attached to the northern
part of Ellesmere. "That's why we are in fact standing on European soil,"
Piepjohn says facetiously, and quickly adds: "Geologically speaking, of
course!"
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「就像其他各類集體主義一樣，種族主義也尋求不勞而獲。它尋求自動獲得知識﹔它尋求
自動評價人們的品質而忽略運用理性或道德判斷的責任﹔而更重要的是，它尋求自動的自
尊（或偽自尊）」
Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness>
致台灣之光的影迷跟球迷
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