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Global Warming will Open Northwest Passage
Makarand writes "For the most part we dread global warming. However, some
experts from the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, studying the polar ice caps,
are now pointing out
some of the advantageous side effects of global warming.
They are predicting
that in 5 to 10 summers from now the
polar ice caps would disappear for around 2 months each year
opening up the fabled Northwest passage for commercial
shipping. This would effectively reduce the shipping
distance between Europe and Asia by 6800 miles compared to the route
using the Panama canal."
Destory the environment so my grandson's console will arrive in time for Christmas.
At least I'll have left him something.
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.
Nope. The northern Icecaps are floating. Their melting does nothing to change the global water level. The frozen water is already displacing as much water as it would in liquid form.
The rising sea levels due to global warming are/would be the result of the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps partially melting, which are on land and are enormous. Only minor melting of small, outlying portions, decreased global, glaciation, and increase movement of glaciers to the water all have a major impact.
It's also safe to assume that any influx of fresh water into the ocean will cause an even distribution of increased depth, but I know what you meant. :)
[1] The masses are necessarily the same, but the volume slightly differs because of the variance of the density of fresh to salt water.
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>
-1, Wrong.
The block of ice floats because it displaces as much water as the ice weighs -- if a glass of water is at a given level with a block of ice of mass X grammes in it, then removing the block of ice would require one to put X grammes of water back in the glass to return the liquid to the same level as with the block.
As the block of ice melts, the water from the melting will combine with the water in the glass, tending to increase the water level in the glass -- however, there is now less ice in the glass, so it displaces less, tending to decrease the water level in the glass. As it so happens, for ice the equation is balanced and there ends up being zero net change in the water level -- as in the above example (removing the block), we just happened to remove the block (X grammes) by melting the ice (returning X grammes of water).
This isn't the complete story with regards to the ocean, of course, because the ocean isn't pure fresh water -- but the effects of melting ice in seawater would still be orders of magnitude less than you're predicting with an 'overflowing glass of water'.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
They should read some Archimedes.
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
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.
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.
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<
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Thank you for writing what I was going to, you are correct and with the proper equations.
Now for the exceptions to this. The oceans are salt water (more dense) the ice caps are fresh water, so they are floating a bit higher in the water then they would be in fresh water, so when the melt it would raise the sea level. When I solved this once it came out to an extremely small number so it doesn't really matter. Where the sea level change comes from is from ice in antartica and greenland melting. There you have ice miles thick that's on land. Basicly a lot more ice than the floating Ice, this will raise the oceans and is where the global warming floads come from.
And to the person wondering if all the ice is held up by the water in the artic, yes it is, there is no land there, it touching land like N. America and Russia will not hold it up as water lowers below, just look at a pond or river in the winter as an example, near the edge as the water drops the ice drops, usualy causing a inclind ice sheet that makes getting on and off the river or pond really hard. Also with it moving up and down with tides, it does, the artic is a very broken up pile of ice, ice, it's very dangerous do to pressure ridges and such. If you ever want to see such a break up watch a river in spring when the ice breaks, often you get jams and pressure ridges, when it all blows rivers can rise at feet per second! very dangerous. I had the Susquahanna (live near it, can't spell it) River do this just as I went to get on it, luckily I got away.
Actually the melting of sea ice does have several, albeit indirect, effects on the sea level, since it influences world climate.
Firstly sea ice is white, the sea is not. So melting the ice lowers the albedo in the polar regions, which will have a small warming effect as less heat is reflected.
Secondly differential melting and freezing at the base of the sea ice is a major driving force in several ocean circulation systems, notably the 'Gulf Stream'. This plays a major role in transporting heat around the globe, especially to North West Europe and Iceland. It is believed that extensive reduction of the sea ice will reduce or even eliminate this current. There is evidence that in the last few tens of thousands of years the current has turned on and off several times.
Regional changes are likely to include colder winters and drier summers in western europe, and warmer waters and thus potentially more active tropical storms and huricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, although these changes would also depend on the (unpredicatble) response of other major ocean currents to the change.
Exactly what effect such a large change would have on overall world climate is difficult to predict, but since our current population and land-use patterns are based on existing climatic conditions, the maxim of 'any change is likely to be bad for us in the short or medium term' probably applies here.
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.
"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
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
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