French Oil Company Warns Against Arctic Oil Drilling. French oil company Total SA says the costs to be incurred from an oil disaster in the Arctic outweigh the potential resources that could be extracted. Total CEO Chrisophe de Margerie told The Financial Times in an interview published Wednesday that the risks of Arctic drilling are too great. "Oil on Greenland would be a disaster," de Margerie said. "A leak would do too much damage to the image of the company." De Margerie said he's not entirely opposed to Arctic drilling in principle. Indeed, he specified that gas leaks were easier to deal with than oil spills. The company's main Arctic energy assets are natural gas-related, including a part of the Shtokman field in the Barents Sea. CBC News

An Alaskan Town Threatened by Climate Change Loses in Court. In the wake of the Supreme Court's seminal opinion on climate change last year, a federal appellate court in California has rejected a case against Exxon. Mobil, Chevron, and a handful of other energy companies accused of emitting greenhouse gases that endanger the remote Alaskan village of Kivalina. Forbes

Russia Holds Navy Maneuvers in the Arctic. Russia is holding navy maneuvers in the Arctic seas of Kara and Barents. Among other ships, the atomic missile cruiser "Pyotr Velikiy", or "Peter the Great", will take part in the maneuvers. The maneuvers will include landing on an inhabited island in the Laptev Sea. The Russian navy in the Arctic protect important energy facilities and scientific stations, as well as the security of passenger ships. Voice of Russia

Reindeer Hate Rain. Arctic reindeer have no problems with snowstorms but are badly affected by rain, a finding that has implications for assessing how climate change affects wildlife, a study on Wednesday says. Norwegian researchers looked at population figures for a well-studied species, the Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus), which inhabits the island of Spitzbergen. Over 17 years of observations, from 1995 to 2011, the number of calves per female fluctuated sharply according to rainfall patterns during the November-April winter. TimesLIVE

North vs. South: Polar Sea Ice at the Extremes. In the wake of last week's announcement that Arctic summer sea ice extent had reached its lowest level in the satellite record - and possibly the lowest for the last several thousand years - a few 'skeptic' blogs were keen to trumpet what they proclaimed to be a different sea ice record. Discovery News

Spending Bill Adds Money for Well Cleanup in Alaska Arctic. A proposed federal spending bill would increase funding for cleanup of abandoned wells in the Alaska Arctic. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who sits on the appropriations committee, announced that $6.5 million is being proposed for the cleanup and remediation of so-called legacy wells. A spokesman says a focus of that funding will be work in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Some 136 wells were drilled under the federal government's direction as part of an exploratory oil and gas program from the 1940s to 1980s. The wells are managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Arctic Bigfoot? Balding Polar Bear? Inquiring Minds Want to Know. Is there a Bigfoot on Alaska's North Slope? One Barrow family thinks so, and it has them worried about a remote cabin property they own about 35 miles south of America's northernmost community. Sarah Skin has been camping at the cabin every year for the last half-century. In the last three years, she and her family say they've repeatedly seen 10-foot tall, bipedal creatures that are black, brown or grayish in color. Skin said that they've seen the creatures three years running, each time in the fall when the family heads to the cabin to hunt for caribou. Alaska Dispatch