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."
But how does this compare to the route through the Suez Canal?
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Destory the environment so my grandson's console will arrive in time for Christmas.
At least I'll have left him something.
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?
So buying a 3 ton SUV does have benefits for the world!
for all the coastal cities suffering an extremely crippled economy due to the rising ocean levels that will destroy everything they have.
It is my understanding that last summer ('01) the geographical North Pole was open water.
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.
Anyway, I don't understand how they can declare this as an "advantage"! It's a serious problem with our clime, and all they think of is "how can our economy benefit from it"...
U.S. just returned the Panama Canal to Panama a couple years ago. Coincidence?
US authorities are urging people to buy more SUV's to make that happen faster and thus help the whole world reduce costs.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Yeah! And one good thing about having cancer is that you don't have to worry about haircuts anymore!
Jesus, what are these people thinking?
vk.
Bob and Doug MacKenzie setting up toll booths on top of some icebergs, to try and collect on this whole Earth-going-to-hell thing. At least it'll be good for Canada's economy :)
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
2) ???
3) FexEx gets competition.
I'll be spraying aerosol cans into the air for the next few years, and make sure to use old nasty coolants for my air conditioner. I mean really, who needs an ozone anyways, commercialize the enviroment!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
>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.
If it means saving a buck for some company, you bet they'd lobby for it really hard regardless if it screws the rest of the world over. And if that company's got $$ and congresscritters, they'd probabbly get their way too.
Venice is on the verge of becomming more of a water town than it already is - granted, the fact that the city is sinking doesn't help much - but damn, don't accelerate the problem.
Most cities are near some major bodies of water, which usually means that having the ocean rise a couple meters means deep sh*t for a lot of peope and a lot of financial centers. Before anybody goes "but but" - Even if the city does not drown, you will have serious sewage problems, kay?
Not to mention that melting tons of ice means releasing million year-old viruses and other goodness that we probabbly don't have defences for anymore / or never even had in the beginning.
sigh... this kind of "oh yeah global warming have these benefits" crap should not even be entertained and whoever came up with it really need a good spanking.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Nordenskjöld, the discoverer, should have lived to see this. He made 95% of the trip from Europe to The Bering Strait when he got stuck in the pack ice and had to wait for the next summer.
Also, way up north the skies will be clearer because there aren't any smoke plumes from burning forests.
See? There are benefits to global warming!
Stefan Jones,
Viridian Archbishop
http://www.viridiandesign.org
Just a thought...
When the poles flip will it still be called the North West passage because they redefined north...
Or will it be renamed the south east passage?
Polar ice caps?
We don't need no steenking polar ice caps...
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
You mean that if the polar ice caps melt there will be a Europe or Japan to be happy about this?
The switchover to ozone-safe refrigerants is actually an excellent example of how things can work out right. There's a good chance that the ozone holes will be a thing of the past, thanks to international agreements banning the bad stuff.
And all this time, I figured that cheap property I bought just east of the San Andreas fault line would be beach-front property in an unpredictable amount of time due to a catastrophic earthquake. Now I find out that it's not only going to happen within my lifetime, but in a predictable fashion and due to human influence? Amazing...
I suppose this is how one feels after seeing one's lottery number called on TV! Yahoooo!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Yet another reason why the greenniks should be locked in a cage and poked with red-hot branding irons.
On a side note, while this might be a potential consequence of global warming per se, it does nothing (and no one else has done anything) to plausibly correlate human activity to GW.
When I read this, I had a choice to either mod you as -1 Troll or respond. I decided to do the latter, since the former would be me reacting more out of emotion than logic, and at least by posting another moderator can decide if I did the right thing.
I will not go into a lengthy disseration about all the research that has been done that does indeed correlate human behavior in the past half century with global warming, for I am sure you will find fault with whatever study I cite, as I am sure other /. readers would.
At the same time, I think it can be safely said that many of the people to whom a clear connection has not been established in their minds still entertain the notion that it is possible that human actions have caused the current warming trend, or have exacerbated a natural warming trend. As a result, these people choose not to do anything about it until that connection is established.
My response to that is: you're taking one hell of a chance with the planet.
We have exactly one planet available to us to live on. While many may claim that there is no 100% hard and fast undeniable irrefutable undebateable proof of human-induced global warming, if there is even a possibility that there is indeed a link, do you really want to take that risk?
Here's a bit of a news flash for everyone waiting for that iron-clad evidence, including the environmentalists: You're never going to find it. The factors that control the Earth's climate are far too variable and numerous to calculate. Change a single variable and you get widely differing results. Yet at the same time, statistically speaking there is a general trend that says that it is possible we are causing it. If we're talking about the planet, I think that even that possibility, no matter how small, needs to be taken into consideration.
The reason for this should be clear: If we're wrong, and we ignore the problem, we will not be able to simply say later on "Oops, we'll go and fix it." You can't fix a planetary ecology once its been damaged that badly. Let me rephrase that: we will not be able to fix it to be habitable to us. The planetary environment will most likely adapt given time, but with no consideration for our civilization or even our species. The polar caps melt and flood our cities? Oh well, tough luck, so long as the overall ecology of the planet survives.
So think for a moment before you make comments like yours. Make a risk assessment. See if you really want to take that chance. Remember: one planet, no "backup copy", no spare parts, no warranty.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
...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.
So why is the National Academy of Science in "disagreement" about global warming? The story I hear is because of a guy named Richard Lindzen, and goes something like this. Every scientist on the NAS believes that global warming is a threat, except Dr. Lindzen. His "iris" effect claims that rate of heating is exaggerated and that there's a restoring effect to slow it down. But because of his conclusion, politicans can declare disagreement among the NAS and "nobody knows", so it's better to do nothing.
The man's brilliant, and if you see him give a talk then the guy's very convincing, but I wouldn't want the fate of the world on my shoulders.
(If anyone can corroborate this, then I'd be interested.)
Finally those air-conditioning units from Asia will become affordable...
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.
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.
Wife: "Great! Now we finally have that third door we've always hoped for. Now excuse me while I go vote for George Bush. We're going to need a lot more of that Iraqi oil to keep this place warm in the winter!"
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
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.
... that we here in Canada will let you all through, eh?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
Hey, before you discount the idea of bombing iraq, remember - all that smoke from what is left of their cities will help to block out light from the sun, which will reduce the heat the earth recives, and prevent global warming. I like how you think...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
This is a fucking ecological disaster waiting to happen. Oil floats and does not degrade as readily in the cold.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
The hole in the ozon layer is finally getting big enough to shoot through a rocket.
(So we'll finally are able to really get to the moon.)
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?
"Clean up the air and treat the animals fair" - Captain Beefheart
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.
- 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.Wrong. Volcanic emissions of CO2 are approx. 150 times less CO2 than humans. (Link)
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
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.
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.
"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"
>rimshot<
My deviantArt site
Technology won't solve flooding, disease, or famine, ever, because those are not technological problems. If they were, the orders of magnitude increases in productivity and safety we have achieved would keep those things from happening already. Instead, people just push the limits of population and risk to the same level. The only way to change that is to change behavior, not technology.
Great thinking there. I know, there are lots of other problems that can be solved by being lazy and ignorant! Let's start World War 3! It kills (pun intended) the overpopulation problem as well as this issue with too many nukes left. And it greatly helps in reducing the ground prices in several large cities, it gives the economy a fresh start as well and it's good for the geiger counter/gas mask/nuclear bunker industry!
I know, why don't we cut down the entire Amazon forest as well? That will create lots of job oppurtunities for lumberjacks! We will satisfy the global economy by seriously reducing the world price for paper and wood while still giving countries like Brazil more areable land to grow crops and build cities upon! It's a win win situation!
Get a grip people. Global warming needs to be stopped, news like this is not giving people the correct idea. What use would the passage be to sea traffic IF MOST PORTS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY FLOODING AND CLIMATIC SHIFTS?
Hate me!
see, it's like your doctor - he cannot predict whether you will drink yourself to death tomorrow, but he can predict that if you drink a lot every day, you will ruin your liver and/or brain eventually.
Here's a hint, for when the apocalyptic shit hits the fan, and we find out the northern ice isn't in fact a series of islands: check the marks on the little girl's freaking back!
Mariner : What are the markings on her back?
Helen: Some say it's the way to dry land.
Mariner: : Dry land is a myth.
Helen: No, you said it yourself, that you've seen it.
Mariner: You're a fool to believe in something you've never seen.
Helen: But the things on your boat!...
Mariner: The things on my boat, what!?
Helen: There are things on your boat that no one has ever seen. These shells, the music box and the reflecting glass. Well, if not from dry land, then where? Where!?
Mariner: You wanna see dry land. You really wanna see it? I'll take you there.
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")
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
now you are talking science fiction here. we (mankind) are in no way capable of developing a system to control climatic conditions on earth based on nano-sized robots real fast. sorry.
ok, i have to admit, that we can develop a nanotech-based weather-changing system real fast. faster, at least, than nanotech terraforming other planets... oh: and cheaply!
--
"gallia est divisae in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt belgae, aliam aquitani, tertiam, quo ipsorum lingua celtae, nostra galli appellantur."
de bello gallico
the computer is online
i am not at it
what a waste of ressources
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The South-West passage. Just 'cause the poles have been flipped, doesn't mean East becomes West.
--- My dad's political betting
So after years of american scientists pretending that global warming does not exist now they have finally admitted it does they are now saying that it is a good thing cos now we can pollute even more water with both sound and chemicals from frieghter shipping.
not groovy
A
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Come on, global warming is no problem. We'll just drop a giant ice cube in the ocean every year to cool the planet down. Then if we run out of ice, we'll send all the robots to the Galapagos Islands to fart......
ummmm, nevermind.
"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
Dams are actually the major cause of flooding; many countries are ripping them out again. Harmful flooding is most easily avoided by not building in flood plains and by not building dams.
Disease -- Vaccines.
Decreases in morbidity and mortality have mostly been due to low-tech improvements in public health, not medicine or vaccines. And the threat from many diseases is simply a consequence of high population densities brought about by technology.
Famine -- GM Food and technology in agriculture.
We have more than enough food to feed everybody on earth--producing more isn't going to solve famine. The real problem is distribution, as well as the simple fact that with every improvement in productivity, population size increases and people move into more marginal areas.
Technology is a good thing.
Technology is a good thing: it's fun, it's entertaining, it lets us experience more, and it helps us with some important things. I'm not against technology by any means. But almost all of the serious problems our world is facing are not technological problems and they can't be solved with technology. Furthermore, just because we have created the technology to do something and people can be convinced that they want it doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it.
since ice is less dense than water, less ice means lower levels. Put water in a cup. Freeze it. Note the little mountains that form.
This is also why ice floats, because it is less dense than water. Saturn is also less dense than water, but I doubt you will find a tub of water big enough to float Saturn in.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Unfortunately, the Slashdot readership won't believe any of that - it's impossible for them to blame Americans for it.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
I forget exactly how the carbon locked up in permafrost compared with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But it was frightening.
to have a hearty laugh at those people. Being 42 I can remember past recessions where all kinds of fantastic disasters were immenent - none of which came about. Earth going to hell must be a natural form of entertainment and/or psychological compensation / revenge for the unemployed. ("If only they'd listened to me, the earth could have been saved! Oh well, burn baby, burn!")
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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
The St Roch's first voyage, in 1942, was extremely dangerous. It took over two years. She was frozen in the ice over two winters. And she was almost crushed several times, when she entered a clear channel through the ice pack. Combinations of currents, tide and wind would clear a temporary channel. But on several occasions the changing combination of current, tide and wind would close it up after her or around her. These chunks of ice would have been closer to the size of a bus, rather than the size of a mountain or big hill, like an iceberg. But, being caught in a floating pack of them, with waves, would have ground her apart.
The RCMP recreated the St Roch's traverse, as a millenial celebration. They encountered practically no ice. The RCMP sent a small, modern patrol vessel to do the recreation. And the Canadian Coast Guard sent an ice-breaker as an escort. This time around the ice-breaker was never needed.
The original St Roch is the core of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. She is a wooden vessel, about 100 tons. Her hull is dish-shaped, and specially reinforced, so that if the water froze around her she would pop out, like a cork, rather than being crushed.
Okay, that was the clearly on topic part of this comment.
The Larsen B ice shelf that fragmented down in Antarctica in April is named after Henry Larsen, the St Roch's commander. The St Roch was an RCMP vessel. During the thirties she ferried personnel and supplies to the RCMP's more distant northern stations. In those days a few dozen RCMP officers were just about the only presence of the Canadian government up there.
The St Roch only had a crew of ten or so. Larsen was only a sergeant. But it was felt necessary to send them on this dangerous and arduous journey, during the war. The Germans did establish weather stations on Northern Islands. This was extremely important in the days before weather satellites. If they had established bases in Greenland, or Canada's Eastern Arctic, a vessel like the St Roch would have been useful to track them down. But many believe the real mission was to protect Canadian soveriegnty over the far north, from the Americans.
The Americans building the Alaska highway, across BC and the Yukon, were bullying the locals, acting like Canada was an occupied country, and they were the only legitimate authority. In this they were a very bad ally.
That every cloud of fluorocarbons has a silver lining.
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
Or will the nice age be localized to the western-hemishpere?
Yeah, it's called "Nuclear Winter."
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
This would effectively reduce the shipping distance between Europe and Asia by 6800 miles compared to the route using the Panama canal. ...the country of Panama has allocated 3 billion dollars to developing a gigantic freeze ray.
Live web cams
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
You, unfortunately, are doing exactly what you accuse the poster of. Our poster is referring, offhandedly, to the extensive posting on the topic of water level changes above -- on the very same Slashdot story. S/he didn't commit to one side in that argument or the other, if you'd kindly read the actual words rather than what you assumed they said. The rest of this post, the guts, is about temperate change, ocean currents, and potential effects on climate in places like Europe... or did you get that far?
You might want to read the message and respond thoughtfully to it -- rather than choosing to use an aside as a straw man to try to score debate points against. This is a pretty classic Usenet tactic, and all it does is expose your prejudices.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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?
A lot fewer people use the Panama Canal these days - with ships getting larger and larger, a lot can't fit through the locks, and the fast modern engines reduce the neccessity. And for the military, so far as I know there aren't many warships bigger than a missile sub or destroyer that can use the Panama Canal these days.
So, regarding the Northwest Passage, I wonder (a) how passable it will be for large ships, and (b) whether the hassle/risk of using the new passage will be worth it for commercial shipping and the military, especially if it's just two months a year.
Of course, if militaries do start using it, that could have interesting consequences - maybe something like the Straight of Gibralter, a chokepoint that becomes utterly impassable if you can delay your enemy's shipping long enough. Just a thought.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Five years later the Lusitania is sunk by a torpedo, with considerable loss of life. The British had a blue ribbon committee look into her design. They suggested that there would have been less loss of life if she had not had a longitudinal watertight bulkhead.
My recollection is that some of the same people sat on both committees.
As water filled up some of the compartments on one side, the ship started to list to one side. Once she was listing more than, IIRC, fifteen degrees, then passengers couldn't jump across to the lifeboats on the lower side. And while passengers could enter the life boats on the higher side, lowering them was a problem, because they slid down the side of the ship, and in those days the hull plates were sealed with big rivets. The boat deck was sixty feet from the water. Those rivets tore the lifeboats to peices.
Great! Once the Northwest Passage opens up, we'll be able to do more research to discover wether or not this whole 'global warming' thing is actually happening! You can't be sure, you know. Particularly with the right-wing in control of the US government, perhaps this will shake a little loose change out of their tight pockets for some scientific funding, as long as they know that the results will be inconclusive.
Canada may claim it is territorial waters, but the US has a stronger case in the claim that it's still an international strait and free passage cannot be denied or taxed.
Ironically, Canada itself contains one of the best precedents of this - the St. Lawrence Seaway is an international strait from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, even though substantial stretches of it are Canadian territory on both banks. (Other stretches have Canada on one side, the US on the other.)
There's also the pesky fact that the Canadian waters do not cover the entire distance - the western terminus will be in either US or Russian waters, and the US could use Canada's own claims to claim all sea ice and surrounding waters to the North Pole itself.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
How can this possibly be (-1) - off topic? The poster is absolutely correct. The Suez Canal was in no way designed for supertankers. The Suez Canal has no locks due to being at see level. However its draft (width) is too narrow to allow passage of supertankers. Currently the Suez is planning to widen the canal to accommodate these vessels but this is not expected to be available until 2010, almost 150 years after originally opening. Clearly the original poster who states, "Actually one of the main uses and design considerations for the Suez was to accommodate supertankers," is the worst kind of ignorant karma whore.
As a side note, when the Panama Canal opened there were already several ships that were too large to fit in its locks as well. However, the ship designers knew this and had no intention of sending their ships through the Panama locks. The world's largest ships do not use either canal and an open Northwest Passage would shave off considerably more than the 6000 miles listed in the article for these ships.
David McCullough (the critically acclaimed author of the recent biographies of Truman and John Adams) wrote a fascinating historical account of the building of the Panama Canal in, "Path Between the Seas: the Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914." I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the subject.
>This would effectively reduce the shipping distance
:)
>between Europe and Asia by 6800 miles compared to
>the route using the Panama canal."
It'll prolly flood the ports too.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Famine and health are directly correlated with governments and economies. Good governments allow free market economies to work.
Working free market economies are very efficient at delivering what is needed where it is needed through price feedback.
Moreover, working free market economies grow technology quickly because technology is the only effective way of achieving productivity growth once you get almost everyone working.
Governments break free markets through two major routes: currency mismanagement (Argentina, for example) and attempts to control industries in ways that break free market price feedback loops (Cuba, North Korea, Zimbawe). These can be done for either corrupt or benign reasons, but the end result is not much different.
And, oh yeah, if we ended all immigration controls, the world would become $150 trillion richer.
Who do real anarchists vote for?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The Shackleton Shipping Lines. Guaranteed deilivery in two years or less.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Mr Scot, I did read Samuel's original post. I read the whole thing. I read it several times. And after reading your comment I went back and re-read it.
Anyone who just read your comment would think I am a troll who posts flamebait. That bugs me.
You seem to be scolding me for taking the original comment out of context.
Well, Samuel's comment starts a new thread. It is not a followup to any previous comment. So far as I am concerned there is no context.
What prejudices of mine do you think I am exposing, anyhow?
Are you assuming that since I challenged part of Samuel's post I am challenging the idea Global Warming is a serious problem? You seem to be assuming this is obvious.
Global warming has come up in several threads this year. And in those discussions I have spent hours researching links to post that demonstrate that it is a terribly serious problem.
But, I don't think that I do the views I agree with a favour by refraining to challenge something that is clearly wrong merely because another part of that comment may agree with my views.
Actually, my guess is that, while an ice cube in fresh water won't raise the level as it melts, an ice cube in sea water probably would (but a good bit less), since fresh water is less dense than sea water -- but it would be far less than the 10% expansion of ice when it freezes -- but I'd have to test that guess to be sure.. That and thermal expansion of water as it warms can have an effect on sea levels.
Remember that the ocean is hundreds (and thousands) of feet deep, so a 0.1% overall thermal expansion would have a pretty noticable effect on sea levels.
The real threat to sea levels, however, comes from the antarctic ice cap which is not floating. When that sucker melts, we'll be in deep trouble (if you'll excuse the pun).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
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.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
I usually bakl at any kind of talk like this unless I see pictures.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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.
You are making the same point I'm making: famine in today's world is not a technological problem, it's a social problem.
You are confusing "technology" and "technological development". You are saying that there is a correlation between a country's technological development and their wealth. That's undoubtedly true, but it has nothing to do with whether the development of new technologies solves the problems that underdeveloped countries have today. What we are discussing here is whether the development of new technologies will help underdeveloped nations. Underdevelopment is not a problem of any lack of new technologies, it's a social problem of the lack of deployment of existing technologies.
With every technological improvement population size decreases.
Take a look here. Technological improvements bring about massive population growth. It is only that when individual countries become enormously wealthy that their population growth slows. It is wealth, not technology, that causes population growth rates to decline.
And even in most of the wealthiest and technologically most developed countries, populations are still growing today. There are very few countries in the world where population sizes actually are decreasing.
As you can see, the only countries that have negative growth rates (a decrease in population) are some of the former Eastern Block countries--because their infrastructure and economy are crumbling.
As far as I know, 10.000 BC is one of the dates estimated for the arrival of Homo sapiens to America.
The ancestors of American Indians and their weapons could have gone in a killing spree from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in just some centuries, preying unto animals that didn't fear men. They would have either killed for food or broken the species balance. That could do the sudden mass extinction of big animals in America. This is the first tiem I see it claimed that it happened in days instead of centuries.
By the way, why did humans survive according to your hypothesis?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I'm sure the thoughts of the average /.'er aren't considered when politicians debate government policy.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
So now you can quickly ship a rubber dinghy to me at my house on the Outer Banks/sea shore/bay?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!
I sure as hell don't read Slashdot for the floating-ice-cube arguments.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
As far as you know, hm? Now think: The same people who determined the public school curriculum and who paid for all of the text books we all read, have also most recently dismantled the American democratic system, (if there ever was one), and are sending the U.S. people into an illegal and greed motivated war. But sure. Let those guys determine what you think you know.
By the way, why did humans survive according to your hypothesis?
I'm just the messenger on this one. It's hard to cover up hundreds of miles of dead mammoths. Look it up, for goodness sake. It's easy.
Just because it causes uncomfortable, "doesn't fit in with what the Learning Channel told me to believe," feelings, doesn't mean that it should be pushed away. Perhaps one ought to question the party line. I would think, anyway.
-Fantastic Lad
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 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.
But as I browse talk.origins, I see they specifically address your writer. Quoting from this article: "...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...
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
About those mammoths- go back to the original articles and books, like you're planning with that one. I've seen too many theories put forth on the web where quotes out of context seem to support what they actually don't.
Anecdotally: my great-grandfather, a paleontologist, was one of the first Europeans to eat frozen mammoth (well, first for 7,000 years or whenever mammoths went extinct). Badly freezer burned, but not inedible.
Quoting from your quoted..."the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land...".
I'm late to the party, but I think this gives me some decent insight to the situation that you are describing. I'm surfing this article with a threshold of 3, and I don't see a single comment (not one) saying anything like "sucks to be you". One comment does state that Canada doesn't currently have enough clout to enforce taxation of the route, but it's stated in a logical (not inflamitory) manner.
There are certainly a lot of odd-balls that claim U.S. citizenship, and sadly the ones that scream the loudest and are the most often heard are those that are most passionate about their position. Thankfully, slashdot moderation allows those extremists to be filtered out. The majority of Americans who are rude are not rude out of malice, but out of ignorance.
Just like Slashdot, the U.S. does not have a single unified opinion or voice.
The good news is, those people who are threatening nuclear retaliation are very likely unable to back up thier claims.
All IMHO, of course.