4 | NewScientist | 22 September 2012

THE Arctic sea ice shrank to a new record low this week, but Shell has failed to capitalise on one of the warmest summers on record for the northern hemisphere. The oil giant has announced it will postpone its controversial drilling programme off Alaska’s north coast until next year.

According to the latest figures from the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, the sea ice has waned to just 3 million square kilometres. The previous record low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square km. It’s not clear why so much ice has disappeared this summer, but a major storm in August may have helped to break up the ice.

The news comes as Shell admitted defeat in its efforts to drill in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas before the ice returns. The firm has overcome opposition

Lows in the Arctic and lawsuits from environmental advocates, but problems on the ground have ultimately frustrated its drilling bid.

The final straw was the failure of equipment on Shell’s oil spill recovery barge during tests near Seattle this week. An oil-collection “dome” cracked as it was being lowered from the ship into the water, for reasons that are still unclear, says Shell spokesman Curtis Smith.

“We are disappointed that the dome has not yet met our stringent acceptance standards; but, as we have said all along, we will not conduct any operation until we are satisfied that we are fully prepared to do it safely,” Shell said in a statement.

The firm will now wait out the winter – which could turn out to be a severe one for Europe and North America. Less Arctic ice has been linked to wetter summers, drier autumns and colder winters in the two regions, although Adam Scaife of the UK Met Office in Exeter points out that other factors affect winter temperatures too. “It’s too early to predict this winter,” he says.

Robot workmateHE’S big, red, strong and has an enigmatic gaze: meet Baxter, your future workmate. Unveiled this week by Rethink Robotics, based in Boston, the $22,000 robot is being touted as the next big thing in robotics: an affordable, intelligent bit of manufacturing equipment that can safely work alongside humans. Although $22,000 might sound a lot, a multitasking PR2 robot from Willow Garage, in Menlo Park, California, still comes in at more than $280,000.

Baxter is designed to work in a human’s world. With a pair of dextrous arms, a 360° sonar sensor and a force-sensing system, Baxter avoids harmful contact with people and toils safely alongside them.

Most significantly, Rethink claims Baxter can be re-tasked in a matter of minutes by people with no knowledge of software programming or robotics. If true, the company has achieved a breakthrough in software that lets their robot carry out a wide range of tasks, cheaply and safely.

–Too late for them–

Paid to stay high and drySTOP fishing in the Atlantic for a decade and you will boost profits for a lifetime. At least, that’s the conclusion reached by a UK-based think tank, which says that paying the fishing industry to keep its boats on dry land while stocks recover makes good economic sense.

The New Economics Foundation examined 49 overfished fish stocks in the north-east Atlantic. NEF concluded that if all fishing were stopped, stocks would recover within 10 years, depending on how fast the species reproduce. Equivalent salaries for this period would cost €10.56 billion ($13.81 billion).

However, larger catches from recovered fish stocks when the moratorium ended would recoup those costs within 4.6 years.

Assuming the stocks were then fished sustainably, the larger yields would generate €139 billion of extra revenue within 40 years of the start of the ban, according to the NEF report.

In reality the costs would be higher, because the report doesn’t consider job losses in the fish-processing sector, says Callum Roberts at the University of York, UK. But he says temporarily stopping fishing would probably still work out financially in the long run.

European governments have tended to allow overfishing to avoid unemployment in the fishing industry. The European Common Fisheries Policy is being reformed for the first time in a decade – but major restrictions on fishing are not on the table.

“Shell has admitted defeat in its efforts to drill for oil off Alaska’s north coast before the ice returns”

VIRGINIA is for lovers – especially lovers of rockets. On 17 September aerospace firm Orbital Sciences of Dulles announced a deal with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority to launch cargo runs to the International Space Station (ISS) from a private spaceport on the state’s eastern coast.

If Orbital’s pre-mission tests go as planned next month, their first demonstration flight could happen by the end of the year, and the

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Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island will become the first commercial spaceport to launch a mission to the ISS. The new deal formalises Orbital’s use of the Virginia spaceport, where a launch pad has been built to send the company’s Antares rocket beyond the stratosphere.

“We’re down to the last operational tests to get certified by NASA that the pad is safe to use,” says Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski.

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