03 January 2011

Man's effect on the Arctic

Rusting gasoline, oil, and diesel fuel barrels litter a previous worksite.  Not all of them are empty, and some of them are leaking.

Selections from a rather depressing set of photos of Wrangel Island (not to be confused with Wrangell Island), taken by wildlife photographer Sergey Gorshkov, via English Russia.

10 comments:

  1. AmyJanuary 3, 2011 at 3:29 PM

    We're going to lose the polar bears, aren't we?

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 3, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    These seem to be taken in Russia, but it's by no means a European-only problem. Canada's Arctic is littered with debris left by decades of military base construction and by the D.E.W. (distant early warning) Line listening posts. Many of the DEW sites have been cleaned up, but the govt's notion of "cleaning up" seems to be coming in and merely removing (or burying!!) the fuel drums with no thought to remediation.

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  3. Sandy Sandy ArtJanuary 3, 2011 at 7:35 PM

    It's a disgrace! It's such a shame big oil doesn't invest more of their enormous profits in clean energy. (SO MUCH POTENTIAL yet untapped.) They just seem to be repeating the mistakes of the past. Hope they wake up before it's too late.

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  4. HeavenlyJaneJanuary 3, 2011 at 9:46 PM

    Wrangel Island is famous for more than just its sad trash. It is the location where wooley mammoths survived until almost modern times, 1700 BC. Just think, at the time when Abraham was discovering monotheism, mammoths were ambling around Wrangel Island.

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 4, 2011 at 5:26 PM

    Hello, am I the only one to notice: free gasoline and diesel!

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  6. LashkaJanuary 4, 2011 at 7:34 PM

    anon, that has to be one of the most stoopid possible comments to make. This blog isn't youtube.

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  7. adeusJanuary 5, 2011 at 4:18 AM

    Is that location pointer correct? If you lookup Wrangel island (or остров врангеля) from the wikipedia, you'll get a completely different island. Anyway, that island might have other problems though, being somewhat close to the Tsar Bomba detonation site.

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  8. MinnesotastanJanuary 5, 2011 at 7:55 AM

    You're right, Adeus. The pointer goes to an island in the Barent's Sea, while Wrangel Island is north of eastern Siberia. I can't resolve the discrepancy.

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  9. adeusJanuary 5, 2011 at 8:22 AM

    My guess is that it's also called Wrangel Island. If you look at the "real" Wrangel island in Google Maps, it doesn't have a name. So googling "остров врангеля" gives you the other one.

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  10. AnonymousJanuary 29, 2011 at 5:15 AM

    I thought that referring to all of humanity as "Man" went out in the last century. Women use fuel oil too, and need to take responsibility just as much as men do.

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