Slashdot Mirror
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."
won't there still be icebergs? i wouldn't approach an area where the icecap is going to be in 1 month and was 1 month ago. there will be plenty of ice to be careful of and frigid water. OR: is technology good enough to avoid all these obstacles and still make a profit?
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
actually, the predicted rising of the oceans has a lot to do with the effects of heat on water molecules. namely, water will take up more room when warmer. there's a lot of water out there to take up more room.....
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
...greatly increase the possibly of disaster. Just because the surface ice isn't there anymore or is greatly reduced doesn't mean that there aren't icebergs to contend with. Remember, at least 2/3 of an iceberg is under water. At least. And in all truth icebergs aren't always floating at the surface. They can and have been found hovering below the surface of the water. I forget what the reason for this was but I saw the video. Pretty neat. I do remember that artic ice (icebergs) is formed from the bottom up very slowly (read: below the surface of the water and up). This eliminates the trapping of air in the ice which makes artic ice transparent rather than translucent. This was also the last bit of evidence needed to counter the biologists claims that Snowball Earth couldn't have happened. They claimed that if the Earth was covered in 60-90m of ice at the thinnest point, no life could survive on the planet. No sunlight could reach the basic organisms and obviously nothing could survive above the ice. The transparent artic ice disproved the biologists claim. The ice allowed an abundance of light down to the single-celled organisms in the water below.
Ozone hole. Global warming. Entirely different things, and only related in some minor (for both) and subtle ways.
Global warming is mostly due to carbon dioxide and methane; the ozone layer doesn't do so much in the atmospheric insulation process.
The ozone layer problems are actually more or less under control. (As best as we can do, anyway.) Under the Montreal Protocol, we all stopped using the nastiest self-catalyzing ozone destroyers, and now just have to wait out their effects. (admittedly, for 50+ years - they're persistent buggers.) There's a kind of hope there - rapid, multilateral action may have very well saved our vapid, multilateral asses.
It's just key to keep the two issues seperate. In part, because while the companies responsible for ozone-layer-depleting chemicals snapped to and helped out with the solution, rather than, (as some of the oil companies are doing - BP and Shell less so, Exxon/Mobil very much so) trying to create bogus "concerns" about the science.
In no small part, if you want to be a cynic, because DuPont et al., realized that outlawing ozone-depleters would create a market for their followons, (which they had ready for market.)
The article mentions that the Northeast/Northwest passages would probably be open for a brief period each year. I wonder, though -- once open, maybe the passage could be kept open with icebreakers. Perhaps for a few extra weeks? Maybe extra months?
It would be quite expensive, but the tolls for using the Panama canal can be over a hundred thousand dollars for some ships.
And learn to love the global warming.
There are many advantages to global warming, just b/c it is a change, doesn't make it bad.
HAHAHA Thank God all the ships are not like the Erika.
...
FYPG, modern supertankers have double hulls, and in any case, using this passage would definitely increase A LOT the premium that the charterers have to pay for a tanker vessel to go into that kind of waters, i.e. breaking the "IWL" (insurance warranty limits).
So, don't worry, the penguins there won't have any bad "fuelly" surprise anytime soon.
Most of the ships that would eventually use this route are grain loaders from US Gulf to Asia, because the cost of Panama Canal tax has a great influence over the price of the freight... and anyways, it's only for 2 months, roughly the time for a long round voyage... very negligeable.
And yes, I work in shipping
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
- makes Alaska and Minnesota more livable
- reduces global overpopulation by
- drowning people in sudden floods
- spreading disease
- making the ground water more saline
- altering precipitation patterns and causing famine
- create lots of new beachfront property in formerly hot, dry, inland
areas
- create lots of new islands, as coastal mountain ranges get surrounded
by water
- lets you grow Marijuna more quickly in Northern California
George is probably also not all that unhappy that the more liberal enclaves in the US tend to be coastal and will likely get flooded. But I suspect Texas won't be doing so well either. Sorry about that one, George.There have been many ice ages in the earth's past, long before humans ever existed and between each glacial period there was - GLOBAL WARMING! The earth warms and cools, the magnetic pole flips and every so often there is a mass extintion event that wipes out large portions of life (http://www.hi.is/~joner/eaps/tlm.htm). Just get used to it. Planet earth can be a real bitch.
However with probably trillions of dollars at stake, I have a feeling Canada will lose this battle. Canada simply doesn't have the power to back up their desires in this matter. And the nations wanting the passage to be international will include basically every nation on the planet other than Canada.
Canada could, of course, react by stopping support for the region and also not providing free navigational information as it does at present.
When one year is warm the surface of the ocean heats up and expands ever so slightly that you couldn't even notice. If the next year is a bit cooler then it shrinks a little and everything maintains a nice equilibrium. If instead that next year is also warm then the heat diffuses downward and everything expands a little more.
The oceans are such a large thermal reservoir that the heating of the last half century is only barely perceptible in the expansion of the ocean. The best available evidence is that temperatures globally have been incredibly flat over the last 10000 years (end of the last ice age) up till 1900 or so. The lack of significant long term changes in temperature has kept the ocean volume essentially constant during this time. The problem comes in if global average temperatures have a sustained increase.
If the temperatures jump even one degree Celsius and STAY that way, then the temperatures will gradually diffuse in the oceans over centuries until they reach a new equilibrium. A millenium from now when the entire ocean has warmed a fraction of a degree, the thermal expansion of the oceans will have raised sea levels 10-20 METERS.
Of course this assummes that we do nothing about global warming and simply bask in the warmth while the water rises. It starts at the surface, but if you keep things warm that warmth will saturate the ocean, it's just a matter of time.
"Scientifically, it's far, far safer for us to take nuclear waste and bury it deep in some mine shaft somewhere than to continue dumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from burning gasoline and diesel. We're contaminating our entire environment now because people are afraid of nuclear energy."
(Well, I'm not afraid of nuclear energy, I just know its waste is about the most poisonous stuff there is...but the man's got a point.) Anybody ever think about how much crap we spew into the environment on a yearly basis by using petroleum? Why not? You breathe it.
At least it'll be good for Canada's economy :)
:).
Funny you should say that.
The United States has claimed several times that it does not fully recognize Canada's sovereignty over the North. The US believes it can (and does) move it's nucular submarines through Canada's north (under the ice of course!) without notifying or asking the Canadian government for permission.
If Canada trys to charge some sort of shipping tariff, the US is quite likely to ignore such a request. Moreover, it would not be surprising if the US claimed (annexed I guess is the correct term) the entire northwest passage for itself. After all, Canada lacks the capacity to nforce any shipping laws or tariffs (look at our coast guard for christs sake!), it's only logical for the US to step in and take control. So, I wouldn't get too excited about this being good for the economy... most likely this will be a Bad Thing for Canada. Good for you yanks though
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
"Back in the 1940s Dr. Frank C. Hibben, Prof. of Archeology at the University of New Mexico led an expedition to Alaska to look for human remains. He didn't find human remains; he found miles and miles of icy muck just packed with mammoths, mastodons, several kinds of bison, horses, wolves, bears and lions. Just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, the members of the expedition watched in horror as bulldozers pushed the half-melted muck into sluice boxes for the extraction of gold. Animal tusks and bones rolled up in front of the blades "like shavings before a giant plane". The carcasses were found in all attitudes of death, most of them "pulled apart by some unexplainable prehistoric catastrophic disturbance"
The evident violence of the deaths of these masses of animals, combined with the stench of rotting flesh was almost unendurable both in seeing it, and in considering what might have caused it. The killing fields stretched for literally hundreds of miles in every direction. There were trees and animals, layers of peat and moss, twisted and tangled and mangled together as though some Cosmic mixmaster sucked them all in 12000 years ago, and then froze them instantly into a solid mass.
Just north of Siberia entire islands are formed of the bones of Pleistocene animals swept northward from the continent into the freezing Arctic Ocean. One estimate suggests that some ten million animals may be buried along the rivers of northern Siberia. Thousands upon thousands of tusks created a massive ivory trade for the master carvers of China; all from the frozen mammoths and mastodons of Siberia. The famous Beresovka mammoth first drew attention to the preserving properties of being quick-frozen when buttercups were found in its mouth.
What kind of terrible event overtook these millions of creatures in a single day?
Well, the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land, tumbling animals and vegetation together, to be finally quick-frozen for the next 12000 years. But the extinction was not limited to the Arctic, even if the freezing preserved the evidence of Nature's rage. Paleontologist George G. Simpson considers the extinction of the Pleistocene horse in north America to be one of the most mysterious episodes in zoological history, confessing that "no one knows the answer." He is also honest enough to admit that there is the larger problem of the extinction of many other species in America at the same time: The horse, giant tortoises living in the Caribbean, the giant sloth, the sabre-toothed tiger, the glyptodont and toxodon. These were all tropical animals. These creatures didn't die because of the "gradual onset" of an ice age, "unless one is willing to postulate freezing temperatures across the equator, such an explanation clearly begs the question."
Massive piles of mastodon and sabre-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida. Mastodons, toxodons, giant sloths and other animals were found in Venezuela quick-frozen in mountain glaciers. Woolly rhinoceros, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant jaguars, ground sloths, antelopes and scores of other entire species were all totally wiped out at the same time, at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 12000 years ago.
This event was global.
The mammoths of Siberia became extinct at the same time as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the mastodons of Alaska, the bison of Siberia, the Asian elephants and the American camels. It is obvious that the cause of these extinctions must be common to both hemispheres, and that it was not gradual. A "uniformitarian glaciation" would not have cause extinctions, because the various animals would have simply migrated to better pasture. What is seen is a surprising event of uncontrolled violence. In other words, 12000 years ago, a time we have stumbled across again and again, something terrible happened - so terrible that life on earth was nearly wiped out in a single day.
Harold P. Lippman admits that the magnitude of fossils and tusks encased in the Siberian permafrost present an "insuperable difficulty" to the theory of uniformitarianism, since no gradual process can result in the preservation of tens of thousands of tusks and whole individuals, "even if they died in winter." Especially when many of these individuals have undigested grasses and leaves in their belly. Pleistocene geologist William R. Farrand of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, who is opposed to catastrophism in any form, states: "Sudden death is indicated by the robust condition of the animals and their full stomachs
The conclusion is, again, that the end of the Ice Age, the Pleistocene extinction, the end of the Upper Paleolithic, Magdalenian, Perigordian, and so on, and the end of the "reign of the gods," all came to a global, catastrophic conclusion about 12000 years ago. And, as it happens, even before this evidence was brought to light, this is the same approximate date that Plato gave for the sinking of Atlantis."
--This is pretty intense stuff, (which, naturally, nobody likes to look at), so I went to check out the sources. Both Dr. Frank C. Hibben and William R. Farrand are real guys, and their observations were are indeed accurately presented here. Go check for yourself.
-Fantastic Lad
Seals make breathing holes in the ice. Both for the people and the bears, the standard method of hunting seals is to hang out near the breathing holes and grab the seals when they come up for air. As ice melt increases the open water, the seals have much more open space to breathe in, and hunting them becomes impossible. They're a major food source for the bears, and also for any people doing native subsistence hunting. Fishing is more possible if there's open water, but difficult. The people also do some bear hunting for food, and as the number of seals decreases, the people will probably do more bear hunting, greatly increasing pressure on the bears.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So, yes, you are missing a large part of the Global Warming argument - the effect on ocean currents, and their impact on the environment.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
before you all start screaming about us mere humans destroying the environment (what a streak of arrogance that is), please to be noting the flipping magentic field article, which points out that the magnetic field has decreased dramatically over the last 200 years, and the multitude of comments that intelligently put the "decreased magentic fields result in severe atmospheric disturbances and climactic changes" remarks in the article together with climactic data from the last 200 years and pointed out that we might not be responsible for global warming after all. of course, then it would have to be renamed the "Southeast Passage"...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/200 1/01-102.htm
Don't you people remember the hype around all the freshwater released into the north atlantic shutting down the gulf stream and plungeing Europe into a mini-ice age? What good will knocking 6000+ nm off of the europe-far east trade route be when the ships are frozen in European ports?
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
I read a book on German armed merchant cruisers during World War 2. The German merchant fleet was confined to harbour during World War 2. About two dozen of their fastest merchant ships were refitted with cannons, mines, and mine-laying rails, and sent out to raid allied shipping.
Large naval crews sailed aboard them. And they became really skilled at altering the ships appearance to resemble other, real, allied or neutral vessels. Some of these raiders were very successful.
Anyhow, prior to Germany attacking the Soviet Union, the Germans chartered a Soviet ice-breaker to escort one of these commerce raiders across this Northeast passage, so it could attack allied shipping in the Pacific.
Heh, yeah. I always hate to consider it, but you'd probably be right about that. I wonder exactly how many hard-core creationists there are in the U.S. . .
Still, peer-reviewed science, while it no doubt is an attempt at the best foot forward, doesn't impress me very much these days. I have seen and read too much, -and spoken to enough members of the scientific community complaining about stupidity and corruption to be much more than highly cynical of anything supported by the party line.
The writer of your quoted materials isn't a standard flood geologist / creationist. However, the claims made are similar enough (6k or 12k years ago, giant quantities of salt water temporarily covered vast quantities of land), that evidence against a global flood also applies to his case. Evidence from the talk.origins flood faqs [talkorigins.org] that doesn't support recent floods includes ice core, tree ring, lake bed sedimentation and desert pack rat nest samples. They don't show a layer of salt water 12,000 or any recent thousands of years ago.
Well, sure. I'd buy all of that. But the writer of the article I cut & pasted didn't make a single claim about flood waters of any kind, so the point, while well taken, is moot.
But as I browse talk.origins, I see they specifically address your writer. Quoting from this article [talkorigins.org]: "...their claim that hundreds of thousands of frozen carcasses have been found is simply incorrect. At most, only a few tens of frozen carcasses have been documented in all of Siberia and Alaska. In Canada, the frozen mammal material found consists of scraps of hide and muscle found attached to bones. All of these "frozen carcasses" that have been carefully examined show evidence of decomposition, scavenging, or both prior to be buried, e.g. Gutherie (1990). Also, the sediments in which these carcasses occur are clearly of noncatastrophic origin (Gutherie 1990, Lister and Bahn 1994, Pewe 1975, Uraintseva 1993)..." [bold added] Please note that the references are all articles you can find and read. And browsing talk.origins will find more links to mammoth articles...
Ah! Now here's where it gets interesting!
I've been able to find lucid arguments on both sides of the flash-freeze fence. --There is the general theory which attempts to explain the un-gnawed upon carcases. --That the dead mammoths which were discovered had fallen into crevices where predators could not get at them, and that snow and freezing mudslide covered them up so that they were preserved. --Though the scientists who promote this argument also describe how much of the tissues were in fact extremely rotted upon inspection 12,000 years (or so), later. They use this to discredit the idea of any flash-freezing taking place.
This makes me wonder, because the problem with that idea would seem to be two-fold:
For one, it would suggest that the method they indicate for the preservation of the carcas didn't work. (You can't freeze a subject for 12,000 years and still have have extensive rotting. At least not the way my freezer works.) --Indeed, when I did some further looking, it appears that a regular guy found one of the now famous mammoth carcases extruding from a melting ice flow on a melt river. He didn't report it for a whole year, (because he wasn't sure what it was at first; it took time for the ice to melt back enough to reveal the beast). When he finally did report it, the mammoth had been exposed to the elements and bacteria of the 1800's, which, I would think, should have offered enough time for the pre-historic meat to get a head start on rotting.
My point here is that the scientists who oppose a catastrophic world view jumped quickly and somewhat recklessly upon the whole rotting idea in order to discredit ideas which didn't fit with theirs, despite the fact that it didn't actually help their theories. This is exactly the kind of behavior which makes me hesitate before embracing main-stream science.
Anyway, I am now thoroughly intrigued. I'm going to be hunting down one of the quoted books, (by Frank C. Hibben, who by all accounts, appears to be a very reputable and respected scientist), in order to get from the horse's mouth exactly what he saw and did when visiting Alaska. Every other endeavor he was involved with during his long life, (which ended just earlier this year), leads me to think that he was a card-carrying member of the main stream scientific community. So if he really does write that he saw what he is quoted as having seen in the frozen north, then I will be willing to keep the book open on this and do some further research.
The main problem with catastrophism is that it's too much fun; far too many of the people who write about it seem to be inclined to exaggeration and hearsay, which does nothing but erode any credibility they might have.
And hopefully I'll also be able to validate another intriguing claim I ran across; supposedly among certain areas of the bone and tusk fields, were significant quantities of volcanic ash.
Okay. Enough for now. --Thanks for engaging me in this cool conversation! I don't often find such willing people on Slashdot!
-Fantastic Lad