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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."
>For supertankers, which now must sail all the
>way around Cape Horn at the tip of South America,
>the trip would be shortened by 11,800 miles.
Really hope that those ships won't pollute the last clean spot on Earth ! If one of those supertankers hits onto iceberg, that's really horrible.
Who was to blame for the previous global warmings? You know... the car industry wasn't around back then.
If you're really concerned about the environment, then buy goods that are produced near you instead of goods that needs to be transported halfway across the globe. The transportation industry is a big contributor in polluting our environment. But as long as there's a demand for cheap goods from overseas, the pollution will continue to increase. The opening of the Northwest passage will most likely be better for the environment than shipping the stuff through the Panama or Suez canals.
It's rather like saying, "One fringe benefit of cancer is you'll lose weight." Problem is getting people to take risks seriously until they've got the disease, once they've got it, they're all eyes and ears, wanting to know how to make the problem go away. Well, on the bright side, maybe the flooding will clean the streets of D.C., NYC, SF, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't want to appear too anti-capitalist but it would be good if we could manage to contol its excesses. One of the uncontrolled excesses is pollution. We are being given the wrong signals by the system - by advertising and by price - so our everydayday actions screw up the world.
Energy use, in particular, should be very much more expensive in order to cut our consumption. Our energy excesses are damaging the environment of the planet and have set the scene for the dangers current security situation.
In Europe we don't quite reach US levels of pollution mostly because we are not as wealthy - but we obviously would like to catch you up.
I believe energy use is our primary ethical issue. We must change the rules of world trade so that the "hidden hand of the market" does not choke us all. A good example would be a global agreement to tax air travel for its pollution.
BTW. I saw a protest plackard on TV saying Americans are over 100 times more polluting to the world than the inhabitants of Bangladesh. I know Londoners are pretty bad (See CityLimits) but surely you can't be that much ahead of us.
I forecast the weather for a living, and have been doing so for 20 years. I'm not sure about Global Warming and know no one in my field who is. I have been invited to the White House to listen to then Vice President Gore speak masterfully on the subject and read as many learned papers as is possible.
However, here's what's bugging me. In talking to everyone, including James Hansen (who first popularized the thought), I have never heard anyone say anything positive about Global Warming. Even in a worst case scenario there should be positive aspects. The fact that those are never mentioned makes me worry that this is more a political agenda than scientific certainty.
New England will need less fuel oil. Crops will grow longer in much of the US Midwest, Central Russia, Canada, etc. Less people will die from cold weather related trauma.
It would be as if we decided to eliminate the internal combustion engine without looking at the downside of living without cars, trucks and planes... or the air pollution that dried animal poop particles used to bring to our cities.
The atmosphere is incredibly complex. Processes that work to warm the atmosphere can later turn and cool it. Heat causes more evaporation, causes more clouds, causes more cooling (very simplified).
I just worry we're not getting the full story. That's all.
Thank you for writing what I was going to, you are correct and with the proper equations.
Now for the exceptions to this. The oceans are salt water (more dense) the ice caps are fresh water, so they are floating a bit higher in the water then they would be in fresh water, so when the melt it would raise the sea level. When I solved this once it came out to an extremely small number so it doesn't really matter. Where the sea level change comes from is from ice in antartica and greenland melting. There you have ice miles thick that's on land. Basicly a lot more ice than the floating Ice, this will raise the oceans and is where the global warming floads come from.
And to the person wondering if all the ice is held up by the water in the artic, yes it is, there is no land there, it touching land like N. America and Russia will not hold it up as water lowers below, just look at a pond or river in the winter as an example, near the edge as the water drops the ice drops, usualy causing a inclind ice sheet that makes getting on and off the river or pond really hard. Also with it moving up and down with tides, it does, the artic is a very broken up pile of ice, ice, it's very dangerous do to pressure ridges and such. If you ever want to see such a break up watch a river in spring when the ice breaks, often you get jams and pressure ridges, when it all blows rivers can rise at feet per second! very dangerous. I had the Susquahanna (live near it, can't spell it) River do this just as I went to get on it, luckily I got away.
You have no solid data because there is no solid data. Are there more hurricanes than 100 years ago? Well, no not really. Do they cause more damage? Yes, but that's because there are more people living on the edge of Florida.
There is a huge cost associated with global warming which we really cannot avoid. That is, we can spend loads of money now trying to stop it, but the cost (in dollars and lives) will be higher than if we just let it run its course and mitigate the effects as they occur (e.g. build flood defences to stop land from being inundated). The reason for this is that we cannot just grab the money out of the air, we have to take it away from other needy causes.
It's important to realise that global warming will probably stop after a while once alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power become cheaper than fossil fuels which will happen some time in the next 100 years. The sooner this happens, the sooner global warming ceases to be a big problem. It follows that cutting carbon emissions is the wrong thing to do. The money spent on this (well some of it) would be better spent on research into alternative energy sources.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
An article is written that the Northwest Passage *MAY* open in the future, and already many of you are saying screw 'Canada we are going to use it without your permission because you don't have an adequate navy to enforce your rights there'. Some of you have even hinted at NUCLEAR retaliation if we do try to enforce our rights.
WTF is wrong with you people?
Why must Americans stick their finger in everyone's eyes? Is this honestly how your country feels about us and other countries' rights? Your arrogance astounds me.
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