Cue the wingnuts to spin this as "melting polar ice caps are a GOOD thing!"

Even if you believe that homo sapiens is the only species that deserves to survive and that polar bears are expendible, the very real likelihood that the Arctic ice cap will be reduced by forty percent by 2050 and that seasonal polar ice may be nonexistent this summer ought to be cause for concern. Ecological consequences, ranging from the disappearance of coastal areas of Florida, Louisiana, and the Caribbean and an increase in predator species, combine with the possibility of land wars as passages between northern areas of Canada, Alaska, and Russia become more likely.

But today, watch for the gasbags of right-wing radio to declare the polar bear, the walrus, the seal, and the very life of the indigenous people in the northernmost areas of the world to be expendable in the name of Cheap Gas™:

The Arctic may contain as much as a fifth of the world’s yet to-be-discovered oil and natural gas reserves, the United States Geological Survey said Wednesday as it unveiled the largest-ever survey of petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle.

Oil companies have long suspected that the Arctic contained substantial energy resources, and have been spending billions recently to get their hands on tracts for exploration. As melting ice caps have opened up prospects that were once considered too harsh to explore, a race has begun among Arctic nations, including the United States, Russia, and Canada, for control of these resources.

The geological agency’s survey largely vindicates the rising interest. It suggests that most of the yet-to-be found resources are not under the North Pole but much closer to shore, in regions that are not subject to territorial dispute.

“For a variety of reasons, the possibility of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic has become much less hypothetical than it once was,” Donald L. Gautier, the chief geologist for the survey, said during a news conference Wednesday. “Most of the resources are on the continental shelf in areas already under territorial claims.”

The assessment, which took four years, found that the Arctic may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil reserves, and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This would amount to 13 percent of the world’s total undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.

At today’s consumption rate of 86 million barrels a day, the potential oil in the Arctic could meet global demand for almost three years. The Arctic’s potential natural gas resources are three times bigger. That equals Russia’s proven gas reserves, which is the world’s largest.

Three years. That's all the time that drilling every drop out of the Arctic would give us. Three years to even further accelerate the decline of non-seasonal ice and permafrost.

Three years.

And then what?

Three years isn't a lot of time to develop alternative technologies, particularly when the government is bankrupt from oil wars and unable to fund any of the kind of research and activities that gave rise to the computer industry and the internet. What three years does is lull people into a false sense that everything is just fine, that there is plenty of oil, when the bottom line is that no matter how you slice it, oil is a finite resource, and when it's gone it's gone. And we'd better start learning how to fuel our lifestyle in other ways, no matter what is in the Arctic that we can now get to because of our folly over the last thirty years.