
There Is Gas Under the Tundra - crunchiebones
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/charles-xelot-there-is-gas-under-the-tundra
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LandR
There are some beautiful photos in this article!

Love the guy taking a rest in the snow.

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mirimir
I guess so. But all I can see are _extremely_ fuzzy images.[0] Anyone know why
I might be seeing that?

0)
[https://keybase.pub/mirimir/flare.png](https://keybase.pub/mirimir/flare.png)

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TeMPOraL
Yup, check your JS blocking and/or connection. I can confirm that the pictures
in this article are both high-quality and simply beautiful (especially for
those of us who love industrial porn).

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mirimir
I do connect via nested VPNs. Bandwidth isn't bad, but latency is 100-200
msec. Maybe the site is just confused.

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johnohara
It was known for a long time that hydrocarbons existed below the ice in this
location. Russia simply lacked the expertise to explore it properly and so it
there it sat.

To my knowledge, only two companies worldwide possess the ability to explore
in such harsh conditions: ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

Russia, via Rosneft, opted to partner with ExxonMobil to explore the region
and created the project photo-documented by the original post. It is known as
Sakhalin-1 [1]. ExxonMobil is the principal operator and a 1/3 partner.

This article by CNBC [2] does a decent job of discussing the project and some
of the economic and political issues involved. Personally, I found the
contents below the fold the most informative and insightful.

Associated links: [1]
[https://www.sakhalin-1.com/](https://www.sakhalin-1.com/) [2]
[https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/exxon-mobil-could-tap-
huge-a...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/exxon-mobil-could-tap-huge-arctic-
assets-if-us-russian-relations-thaw.html)

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zengid
"ice breaker tankers" just sounds like tempting fate. Or maybe every tanker
should be that sturdy /s.

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dsfyu404ed
It just means the hull design (and some other things) are different so it can
function as its own icebreaker. If anything it's less risky than using normal
tankers and constantly trying to clear a path for them.

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surya026in
Tundra will soon experience full freedom.

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24gttghh
FYI: There are some NSFW images/links at the bottom of this article.

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Raphmedia
Clarification: there are two risqué thumbnails to other articles. One of them
is a breastfeeding mother and the other is a nudist male seen roughly from the
side.

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24gttghh
Exactly. This may or may not be NSFW depending where you are...better safe
than sorry though!

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Raphmedia
Agreed. Added the clarification so that people who are from countries where
such things are allowed in public won't avoid the article for nothing.

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_Microft
... and it better stays there. Building up more capacity to extract fossil
fuels is not what we should be doing right now.

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makomk
In practice, the shift to renewable electricity and the focus on reducing
emissions means more demand for natural gas, since gas generators produce less
pollution than coal and are better at responding to changes in demand caused
by variation in the renewable energy supply.

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eksemplar
Is that really practical though? I mean, it makes sense financially and in
terms of how we usually do transition, but we’re frankly running out of time,
and maybe we need to be radical rather than practical.

I’m old, I’ve seen how we’ve ignored the warnings for the past 30 years. Worse
yet, if you ask people on when sollutuons can be ready, they say 10-20 years,
and we only have one decade left to stop our own destruction.

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eej71
I'm old too and I truly believe that we will continue to be here 10-20 years
from now with roughly the same world we've always had.

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krisdol
10-20 years ago places I lived and remembered being quite heavily snowy in the
winter just get a bit of dusting at best now.

New England has lost over 600 ski areas. There are fewer and fewer places with
good enough conditions to grow coffee (a shame as I feel like the culture
around fine coffee is just now coming into existence in the US). Enjoy
oysters, clams, and scallops while you can as ocean acidification is killing
them in droves. As soil heats due to global warming, it releases carbon
dioxide, accelerating these effects.

I don't think the world is the same for anyone working in these industries or
in tourism. Folks on HN are also generally isolated from the effects of the
kinds of droughts that caused the Arab Spring, or from having to home refugees
of climate change whose islands are disappearing to the rising sea levels.

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thrower123
At least with the ski areas, gross mismanagement had a significant part to
play. Saddleback mountain doesn't get any less snow than Sugarloaf or Sunday
River, but it has been repeatedly run into the ground.

