There’s a sickeningly ignorant article at the New York Times about the vast amounts of money and untapped resources we should look forward to enjoying once the ice caps melt.

70 metres. That’s how much higher sea level will be if all the ice melts. Your pathetic economies and useless precious resources will count for squat when a large percentage of the world’s land is inducted into the club known as continental shelf. Entire countries will disappear, others will become mere scraps of their former glory (think of all the history that’ll be consumed). But hey, if you can leverage this new oceanic dynamic using bleeding edge economic realignments to maximise profit throughput, who cares?

Basically, there’ll be more oil fields to plunder, more fish stokes to depleat and more locations for fat retired Americans to visit on cruise liners. Yipee. Here’s an idea for the companies and countries exploring oil field options in the Arctic, and unfortunately Antarctic; why not use the billions of dollars you’d use to build new oil rigs and the like, towards research in cutting your reliance on fossil fuel? There maybe resources up north yet to be pumped, but they’ll run out one day too, and then you’ll be in the same situation you are now, but the bill for the switch to alternative power sources will be much, much greater.