LifeItself

As Nicholas Taleb stated in "Antifragility": Now as a skeptical empiricist, I do not consider that resisting new technology is necessarily irrational: Waiting for time to operate its testing might be a valid approach if one holds that we have an incomplete picture of things. This is what naturalistic risk management is about. [ I.e., management of risk by nature, TWP.] However, it is downright irrational if one holds on to an old technology that is not naturalistic at all yet visibly harmful, or when the switch to a new technology ... is obviously free of possible side effects that did not exist with the previous one.  (Page 191) So what does this statement have to do with the current developments in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas?  It turns out that a lot. First, both sides in the Arctic disputes have taken fragile, absolutist positions. Environmentalists claim that there is no technology that could ever be applied in the Arctic from here to eternity, because all techno...

  Picture a vast gray ocean that dissolves into gray sky pregnant with heavy dark clouds, and a gray flat sandy shore that slowly oozes up from the Chukchi Sea.  This is what our Ocean Energy Advisory Committee saw from the Coast Guard C130 plane , chartered by BSEE's Director, Admiral James Watson. Click on this image to see it in full resolution and hit Esc to go back. This gray vastness is surrounding our C-130 plane, flying the BSEE Advisory Committee to the Burger Prospect in the Chukchi Sea and to Point Barrow in Alaska. In summer, the Arctic ocean is dotted with white ice floes. In winter all is frozen. Our incredibly young and competent Coast Guard pilots are gradually descending to 500 ft above water. On August 30, 2012, we flew close to the Burger Prospect at 500 ft above the sea level.  This is the area where one day Shell will drill their first wells.  The sea was dotted with ice floes, some very large.  Similar floes stopped all arct...