Blog: Climate

If you use a smartphone, Facebook, email or any sort of online storage then you're using what is referred to as "the cloud". Every day, our lives revolve more and more around the phenomenon that is the cloud. We check our email, store our music, and share photos and status updates. It’s a key part of how we connect with our friends and family.

But have you ever stopped to wonder… where does the cloud actually exist?

Ten days after the leak began, Total is still struggling to contain the gas pouring from its North Sea Elgin platform, citing bad weather as the cause of the delays. Yet, in just 100 days’ time, Shell wants to start drilling for oil in the remote and extreme Arctic environment – claiming it has the technology and the tools to deal with any spill.

Here are six reasons why an oil spill in the Arctic would be so much harder to deal with than a gas leak in the North Sea, and so much more catastrophic: