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

icebergs

[dollargonzo]

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?

Re:Just Doing My Part ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Supertankers...

[chrispy666]

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 ...

Re:Canada

[WatertonMan]

Related to this is that if the northwest passage opens up and Canada claims it, then many nations will expect Canada to put up the maintanaince. i.e. having something like the US coast guard in quantities to handle the new traffic.

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.

Wishful thinking

[dragons_flight]

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.

Good for Canada? Not bloody likely

[trotski]

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 :).

Quick Freeze, actually. . . The Mammoths say so.

[Fantastic Lad]

Here's a neat quote. See my notes at the bottom. . .

"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 animals were robust and healthy when they died." Unfortunately, in spite of this admission, this poor guy seems to have been incapable of facing the reality of worldwide catastrophe represented by the millions of bones deposited all over this planet right at the end of the Pleistocene. Hibben sums up the situation in a single statement: "The Pleistocene period ended in death. This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive"

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

Natural Global Warming

[caveat]

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"...

Mother Nature's against the northwest passage

[Genady]

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?