Global Warming will Open Northwest Passage

Makarand writes "For the most part we dread global warming. However, some experts from the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, studying the polar ice caps, are now pointing out some of the advantageous side effects of global warming. They are predicting that in 5 to 10 summers from now the polar ice caps would disappear for around 2 months each year opening up the fabled Northwest passage for commercial shipping. This would effectively reduce the shipping distance between Europe and Asia by 6800 miles compared to the route using the Panama canal."

Comments

Re:Uh...

[Hays]

Nope. The northern Icecaps are floating. Their melting does nothing to change the global water level. The frozen water is already displacing as much water as it would in liquid form.

Re:Uh...

[kmellis]

"Wouldn't that polar ice that melts have to go somewhere? Like maybe a few feet inland along the coasts of the world. That probably isn't good is it?"

The north polar ice is already floating in the water. It is (almost exactly) displacing the same volume[1] of water it would be if it were to melt.

The rising sea levels due to global warming are/would be the result of the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps partially melting, which are on land and are enormous. Only minor melting of small, outlying portions, decreased global, glaciation, and increase movement of glaciers to the water all have a major impact.

It's also safe to assume that any influx of fresh water into the ocean will cause an even distribution of increased depth, but I know what you meant. :)

[1] The masses are necessarily the same, but the volume slightly differs because of the variance of the density of fresh to salt water.

Canada

[stew-a-cide]

This isn't good news as far as Canada is concerned. The following is from an E2 w/u I did a while back (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Canadian %20Arctic%20Sovereignty):

Arctic sovereignty has long been a pressing issue in Canada. While ownership of the Arctic Archipelago islands is no longer disputed seriously by any nation (and the inhabitants of this region are professed Canadians), control over the surrounding ocean is still a contentious issue.

Canada claims full ownership of all the seas in the area up to its usual (and accepted) 200-mile limit, as well as full ownership of any sea ice extending northward from it's cost to the North Pole (since, in its opinion, sea ice is effectively land). Many countries, including the United States, refuse to recognise its sea ice claim - and while allowing that the open waters in the area are a Canadian possession, claim that the Northwest Passage (an indeterminate rout through the maze of the Arctic Archipelago) is an international strait that that they cannot be denied passage. This is despite the fact that the Northwest Passage is perhaps the least navigated waterway in the world (the number of ships which pass through it in a year can be counted on one hand, and most of these are government icebreakers).

The United States has, on a number of occasions, attempted to flout Canada's sovereignty by sailing both civilian and military vessels through the passage unannounced. Matters came to a head in the 70's when the United States attempted to navigate a reinforced oil tanker through the passage (an oil tanker break-up in the high arctic would have unimaginably disastrous effects), but public outcry forced it to concede to at least giving notice to the Canadian government before attempting any further navigation.

Also, Russia and the United States have both challenged Canadian sovereignty by sailing submarines under the ice and seas claimed by Canada. During the Cold War they would often conduct cat and mouse games in the area, much to the chagrin of the Canadian government. Canada currently does not have submarines capable of conducting under ice patrols, and does not expect to have this capability until around 2010.

To counter the moves of other countries and to assert its sovereignty, Canada has taken a number of steps. First, it has invested large amounts of money in the people of the area. The Inuit people of the region are provided with full health insurance and welfare (as are all Canadians), and recently efforts have been made to maintain as much of the traditional culture and economy as possible. Recently, the Inuit were even granted their own territory, Nunavut, where they comprise the majority of the population and Inuktitut (the tongue of the Inuit) is an official language. Recently, youth unemployment and lack of housing (because of the high birth rate and rapidly rising population) have both become a cause for concern.

Additionally, the government operates a fleet of icebreakers and aircraft used to supply far northern settlements and outposts. These have presented something of a Catch-22 for the government, since an arctic presence (largely by way of military vessels) must be maintained to assert sovereignty, yet these vessels breaking up the sea ice has a negative effect on local hunting activities (something the government would like to support).

The native people have also been employed directly to assert sovereignty by way of the Canadian Rangers, a program that employs Inuit hunters on the sea ice to patrol for foreign craft and assert Canadian sovereignty (the fact that many Inuit live a large part of the year on the sea ice also gives credence to Canada's claims).

Another aggravating factor in maintaining sovereignty is global warming. The Arctic has been disproportionately affected by warming, and it's expected that commercial navigation of the Northwest Passage will become feasible in the next 10 to 15 years. Many nations (including immerging Asian powers) would have an interest in opening up the passage to free navigation. Not only would such a scenario threaten Canadian sovereignty, but it would also cause immense harm to the lifestyle of the people of the region - and would contribute massive amounts of pollution in an incredibly fragile environment.

Re:Canada

[lommer]

"To counter the moves of other countries and to assert its sovereignty, Canada has taken a number of steps. First, it has invested large amounts of money in the people of the area. The Inuit people of the region are provided with full health insurance and welfare (as are all Canadians), and recently efforts have been made to maintain as much of the traditional culture and economy as possible. Recently, the Inuit were even granted their own territory, Nunavut, where they comprise the majority of the population and Inuktitut (the tongue of the Inuit) is an official language. Recently, youth unemployment and lack of housing (because of the high birth rate and rapidly rising population) have both become a cause for concern."

Puhleez! As the damn article said itself, us canucks provide free health care to everyone in our country, so that point is completely moot. And our recent efforts to "maintain as much of the traditional culture and economy as possible" are what we do everywhere in Canada. Our government invests huge amounts of money in protecting the traditions and heritages of our native peoples, not to mention those of everyone in Canada. And finally, the reason we created Nunavut is because now there is (barely) enough people to justify making a territory there! Granted most of these people are native, so I suppose it could be seen as a victory for first nations, but really it's just common sense.

Finally, the concerns about youth unemployment and lack of housing that you cite are almost universally applicable in Canada's indian reserves. So really all of these points are some idiot's poor attempt to BS his way into sounding legit. If had left out this paragraph, his article actually would have been decent because he does have a good grasp of the technical aspects. But the above shows an appalling lack of knowledge regarding the situation in Canada's north.

Re:Uh...

[MajroMax]

If you fill a glass to the brim with water, and ice sticks above the rim of the glass, the glass WILL overflow when the ice melts.

-1, Wrong.

The block of ice floats because it displaces as much water as the ice weighs -- if a glass of water is at a given level with a block of ice of mass X grammes in it, then removing the block of ice would require one to put X grammes of water back in the glass to return the liquid to the same level as with the block.

As the block of ice melts, the water from the melting will combine with the water in the glass, tending to increase the water level in the glass -- however, there is now less ice in the glass, so it displaces less, tending to decrease the water level in the glass. As it so happens, for ice the equation is balanced and there ends up being zero net change in the water level -- as in the above example (removing the block), we just happened to remove the block (X grammes) by melting the ice (returning X grammes of water).

This isn't the complete story with regards to the ocean, of course, because the ocean isn't pure fresh water -- but the effects of melting ice in seawater would still be orders of magnitude less than you're predicting with an 'overflowing glass of water'.

Re:icebergs

[Hays]

Yeah I'm sure that would be a conern to the shipping. But it is manageable. Already North Atlanta Sea ice is monitored very actively in order to keep icebergs from hitting ships and oil rigs.

I believe the US Coast gaurd's International Ice Patrol takes care of most of the monitoring relevent to shipping.

It's Canadian Territory

[youbiquitous]

The Northwest Passage is not, as the article says, "above Canada". The "tangle of islands about 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle" - those islands are all Canadian territory. The Northwest Passage passes through Canadian inland waters. Google for Northwest Passage and have a look for yourself. The USA usually respects the sovereign territory of its allies. Think the Canadian government might have something to say about commercial shipping polluting one of the last (semi) pristine environments left on the planet?

Re:icebergs

[WatertonMan]

Canada and the United States map all iceberg activity by satellites and by aerial surveys. So they know where the icebergs are, their movement and so forth. So while it is a danger, with modern GPS equipment and modern communications and mapping it is a managed danger.

For existing oil rigs they use the above, plus will actually tow large icebergs out of the way of oil rigs and the like.

A lot of the advanced tracking has actually only come on the last few years. NASA put up a satellite back in I think '98 that started tracking a lot of icebergs. This helped eliminate the problem of losing icebergs when they were being tracked by plane and ship based radar/sonar.

If the northwest passage opens up that will be a huge benefit for shipping. Not to downplay the other problems to the environment, but the west has wanted the northwest passage ever since Columbus first sailed the ocean blue.

The Northwest Passage

[Tempelherr]

A year or so ago in my European Studies class we had a speaker from the University of Trondheim in Norway, Willy Østreng, who is an expert on the northwest passage and it the various areas associated with it. He also has a book out titled "The National and Societal Challenges of the Northern Sea Route: A Reference Work" Østreng has been trying for years to get various countries to recognize the importance and possibilities of the Arctic passage, both as an economic factor, and the various environmental problems that would be associated with it too, but for many countries this area has only been seen in terms of military importance, especially in the past during the cold war. It looks like some of these countries are starting to pay attention, especially the US.

I think it is a rather interesting topic myself and one that the various governments with a partial stake in it should be further investigating. The northwest passages provides a very good alternative to the Suez canal, which has been closed twice since WWII, and could possibly get closed again if war were to somehow break out in that area. The northwest passage also eliminates over 3350 miles in the route from Trellheim, Norway to the west coast of Canada, which could improve trade between these areas.

Re:what's missing in the Global Warming argument

[cp99]

Positive effects are in the various IPCC reports. For example, my home country, New Zealand should improve the supply of power (NZ generates a good proportion of it's electricity from hydropower, increased tempertures should lower the seasonal effects on the power supplies). As another NZ example, the following is suggested: "Grain phenological responses to warming and increased CO2 are mostly positive, making grain filling slightly earlier and decreasing drought risk (Pyke et al., 1998; Jamieson and Munro, 1999). Although grain-filling duration may be decreased by warmer temperatures, earlier flowering may compensate by shifting grain filling into an earlier, cooler period."

All of this was taken from Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability by the IPCC.

Re:Uh...

[daniel_howell]

Actually the melting of sea ice does have several, albeit indirect, effects on the sea level, since it influences world climate.

Firstly sea ice is white, the sea is not. So melting the ice lowers the albedo in the polar regions, which will have a small warming effect as less heat is reflected.

Secondly differential melting and freezing at the base of the sea ice is a major driving force in several ocean circulation systems, notably the 'Gulf Stream'. This plays a major role in transporting heat around the globe, especially to North West Europe and Iceland. It is believed that extensive reduction of the sea ice will reduce or even eliminate this current. There is evidence that in the last few tens of thousands of years the current has turned on and off several times.

Regional changes are likely to include colder winters and drier summers in western europe, and warmer waters and thus potentially more active tropical storms and huricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, although these changes would also depend on the (unpredicatble) response of other major ocean currents to the change.

Exactly what effect such a large change would have on overall world climate is difficult to predict, but since our current population and land-use patterns are based on existing climatic conditions, the maxim of 'any change is likely to be bad for us in the short or medium term' probably applies here.

And now the bad news

[Black Copter Control]

If you followed the talk about how much a melting ice cube raises the water in a glass, consider the other effect of the melting ice.

What happens when the ice finishes melting?? The water temperature rises.

Ice acts as a thermal buffer. It keeps the water temperature near freezing... When it gets too cold, freezing ice releases heat as it freezes. When it gets too warm, melting ice eats a lot of thermal energy.

As the size of the ice drops, it's ability to regulate the temperature lessens. Temperature swings in the northern hemisphere are going to get larger and generally go towards the warmer. (I'm guessing that this has something to do with the already noted amplification of global warming in the far north).

Of course, Europe could be the ones that get royally worked over in the long run.... if the predictions mentioned on slashdot some time ago come true about the shrinking icecap messing up the ocean currents that keep europe unusually warm for their latitude.....

Great: You can get from Japan to Europe far faster, but most of the farms in Europe are now frozen over for most of the year. (kinda like the George Karlin skit: "The good news is that you'll live to a ripe old age, but you'll be bleeding from both eyes for the whole time")