Despite some complications, oil giant Shell is confident it will get to work drilling for oil in the Arctic this year.

This just goes to show how things usually have a way of working out. Here we were worrying peak oil was just about upon us. But thanks to global warming caused by burning oil, the Arctic ice melt opens up more and more oil for the oil giants to burn.

You see? Despite what all the alarmists say, there is usually no need to panic. And to think there are people who say this is an irrational system with no logic.

There are still some issues. Anchorage Daily News said on July 27 that the ice is lingering longer than expected. But there are some positive signs that suggest this is a temporary hiccup at most.

Last month, for instance, Greenland's ice melted at the fastest rate in recorded history — with a 97% surface melt over just four days. So I think we can be pretty confident any lag in sea ice melting will prove only a temporary issue.

Asides from that, there are no real problems in the oil giant’s way. Sure, in mid-July a Shell oil drilling ship in the Arctic, Noble Explorer, nearly caused a major disaster when it lost its mooring and nearly ran aground in an Alaskan harbour. But the point is the ship didn’t run aground — thus proving it is not all doom and horrific catastrophes.

It was kind of lucky, really, as Shell admits it has no idea what to do if there is an oil spill in the Arctic during summer drilling. The company says its plan is just to leave all the oil trapped by ice there for the next nine months.

But you just don't hear about all those times an accident doesn’t cause irreparable damage to ecosystems. No, the sensationalist media are all just, “Oh no, there goes the Gulf of Mexico!” or “Exxon's Alaskan oil spill has wiped out 250,000 sea birds and almost destroyed the local fishing and tourism industries!”

Behind all the alarmist propaganda, the facts are that most days of the year, the oil industry does not cause such headline-grabbing, ecosystem-killing, local industry-destroying disasters. It merely works slowly and patiently, without fuss, at threatening all life on Earth through runaway climate change.

This reality is now so blatant, recognition is coming even from those that spent years trying to undermine the scientific consensus around it.

You know things are getting serious when Koch Industries, the largest funders of climate denialist disinformation in the world, help fund a study, headed by a dedicated climate “sceptic”, and it finds global warming is real and human-induced.

Yet that is what has just happened. ThinkProgress.org reported on July 28 that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) was poised to release its findings on the cause of recent global warming. The study's largest funder is the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation and BEST's scientific director is “climate sceptic” Richard Muller.

And yet a shocked Muller reported in a July 28 New York Times op-ed that not only did the study show global warming was human induced, but that, “these findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.

That must have been an interesting meeting when Muller reported on the findings. He must have looked through the report and announced: “OK, so based on our latest findings, the figures once again confirm that … ah ... hang on ... let me just read those again … wha ... oh shit … it would seem according to these … ah ... oh my god … the stats ... they seem to show the hippies were right!

“Christ. So do I still get paid?”

[Read more Carlo's Corner columns.]





