Capitalizing on Melting Polar Ice

efuzzyone writes "As an affect of global warming, the polar ice caps seem to be slowly receding, what do you do? The NYT reports it is a gold rush, 'the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars.' Also, 'polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries.'"

Comments

Nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Sacramento is in the middle of a valley with a big river (coincidentally *also* called Sacramento) running through it. If anything, Sacramento will be on the bottom of the California Archipelago's Great Central Sea.

Sovereignty a huge issue...

[Hamster Lover]

Canada considers the Artic to be an internal water way and as such maintains dominion over all shipping in the area. The U.S., no surprise, considers the area to be international waters. As the ice recedes and the fabled Northwest Passage becomes a reality look for increased tension between the United States and Canada over control of shipping in the area (like we need more tension than already exists).

Unfortunately, Canada will probably roll over and let the U.S. have it's way on the sovereignty issue as we've done in the past when the U.S. ice breaker Polar Sea transited the Northwest Passage in 1985.

Pretty rocks.

[jericho4.0]

I live in the Selkirk range in BC. Every summer the glaciers retreat a little further, and I've been making a point of trying to explore some of this newly uncovered land. I have found lots of pretty crystals and other mineral samples.

Still, global warming is not a plus for me. The ski season is getting shorter :-(

Re:Anyone..

[Yorrike]

Having almost finished a geology degree (3 exams to go), I've run through the exercise of calculating exactly how high the ocean would go if the ice caps melted many a time.

Here's the thing, if there's more water, there's more weight on the crust, which will subside a bit. Cutting a long story short and without explaining the ins and outs of crustal isostasy, if your house, water source and farmland is above 75m in elevation, you'll be alright.

Otherwise, to quote Tool's very appropriate song Aenima, learn to swim.

Re:Kyoto is useless...

[bleaknik]

A.C. you make an excellent point!

I find humor in the root-level comment, but there is a deeper underlying issue with the Kyoto agreement that doesn't settle well with my view on it.

Sure the U.S. pollutes a great deal; we also use something like 1/6 of all of the world's resources. But to my understanding (and I may be wrong), we put out a lot less pollution than China or India.

I have family that has recently travelled to this part of the world, and they've had a hard time adjusting to the pollution that exists in that part of the world... Smog is everywhere I'm told.

Yeah, the U.S. can do a lot to clean up its own act, but the rest of the world has a long way to go, too.

Now, why should the U.S. foot the bill for the rest of the world?

Re:Wow!

[operagost]

If you look at the temperature trends for the Arctic region since 1880, it appears that the Arctic generally warmed somewhat until about 1938. From 1938 until about 1966, the Arctic cooled to about its 1918 temperature level. Then, between 1966 and 2003, the Arctic warmed up to just shy of its 1938 temperature. But in 2004, the Arctic temperature again spiked downward.

Now if the 1880-1938 warming trend had continued up until this day, there certainly would be some significant warming in the Arctic region to talk about. From 1918 to 1938, alone, the Arctic warmed by 2.5 degrees Centigrade. But the actual temperature trend is much different, showing that there's been hardly any overall temperature change in the Arctic since 1938.

Not only does the temperature data contradict the claim that global warming is overtaking the Arctic, but data on greenhouse gas concentrations ought to drive a spike through the heart of the claim.

During the warming period from 1880 to 1938, it's estimated that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide - the bugbear of greenhouse gases to global warming worriers - increased by an estimated 20 parts per million. But from 1938 to 2003 - a period of essentially no increase in Arctic warming - the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide increased another 60 parts per million. It doesn't seem plausible, then, that Arctic temperatures are significantly influenced by atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases.

And even when the Arctic re-warmed between 1966 and 2003, the warming occurred much less aggressively (about 50 percent less) than the 1918-1938 warming and at about the same rate as the period 1880-1938, despite much higher greenhouse gas levels in the 1966-2003 time frame.

See article here.
Especially take note of this chart

Re:Yep

[jcr]

Actually, the Kyoto treaty was unanimously rejected by the senate. See Senate Resolution 98 (1997).

-jcr

Re:Yep

[TheDracle]

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/pressrelease.c fm?ContentID=499

It's easy to overlook 'facts' when they are in reality fiction.

In reality Clinton's administration negotiated, supported, and he personally eventually signed the Kyoto protocol.

"Former President Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, negotiated the treaty for the United States and had a major role in its final form."

According to Wikipedia:
"On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification."

The criticism is that Bush doesn't support the Kyoto protocol. If Clinton commanded a congress with a dominant Democrat majority, as Bush commands a Republican majority, the Kyoto protocol would have passed under his administration.

His administration undeniably supported the Kyoto protocol.

It seems very strange for me to hear conservatives, which I'm sure you undeniably are, cry foul at simply criticizing the policy of the Bush administration. The only way you could find these criticisms innately negative, is if you agreed that the policy they criticize is innately negative. Clinton suffered an array of actual 'shots' that had nothing to do with his policy, by 24 hour cable news networks, and independent councils; working full time to dig up information on fabricated crimes he supposedly committed (yet predictably never yielded anything substantial).

Re:Blame Canada

[Keebler71]

No offense, but you cleary have incomplete knowledge about international maritime law. What you are missing is a key piece of info known as innocent passage(UN Convention on Law of the Sea, Articles 17-28). This right allows ships to pass through territorial waters for the purpose of accessing international waters. It is even extended to warships, provided they take additional steps to appear more "neutral" (for instance, aircraft carriers may not launch/recover aircraft and submarines must be surfaced). This right is exercised on a daily basis through the straits of Hormuz, and Bosporus, amoung others.