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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.'"
I can hear Pres. Bush's spin on it now: "...Just imagine the further untapped resources we could discover by not joining the Kyoto agreement."
beachfront property in Sacramento!
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
When the air gets too polluted to breathe, I'll finally be able to make my money selling oxygen franchises! I love the free market!
With all of these benefits who cares about preventing damage to our environment?!</sarcasm>
"lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries."
:)
Great. Add more pollution to the area. Just what it needs!
AC comments get piped to
Not to mention the rising waters flooding pacific islands. Good trade off, cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded, and cruise destinations in the polar region open up.
After reading the title, was U.S. and Halliburton.
(I live in U.S.)
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Let's all hope the gold will attract more pirates!
that global warming would lead to new oil discoveries.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
"Also, 'polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage" I think the melting ice will unlock a treasure all right....and its a treasure that we should bother looking for....like pandoras box..???
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.
Anyone else feel sick when you read things like this? If the human race is that fucking stupid then we deserve to drown in the flood we'll end up making. Saddly a handful will probably survive it.. most likely the rich ones who can aford to hoard boats, food and drinkable water...
Money : Because killing 6 billion people just to make some more was so worth it, now that it's totally useless because everyones dead and paper has no use when it's already doodled on.
I like muppets.
This kinda reminds me of the simpson episode where bart finds a three eyed fish in the stream by the power plant. Mr. Burns decides to run for office and starts trumping up how good the three eyed fish is for the enviroment and is better to eat yada yada yada.
Great, I can fulfill my lifelong dream of going on a cruise from the Yukon to Siberia. Meanwhile, all the good cruise ship destinations will be closed off because hurricane season will last 10 months.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Maybe my acres of permafrosted land around hudson's bay weren't such a bad investment afterall! Drive those SUV's boys, I want palms and bannana trees in my scenery!
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
the coin :)
http://www.globalwarming.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4290340. stm
~jennifer.k~
Capitalism on the arctic can be a risky venture. When you bring in companies that are established to deliver on share holders profit, it is hard to guess what kind of a route these companies might take. Without clear laws and regulations limiting how companies exploit this new "gold mine" we might end up with something like the US Patent laws, where large corporations take advantage of the ability to patent anything they can think about. I the arctic scenario this could lead to fishing companies endangering many species, tour companies damaging the habitat of local wildlife, oil exploration polluting the air and water. We must establish clear baselines to prevent this happening! Lemmings look like fat furry hamsters. They have strong legs and claws for digging. Thick fur helps to keep them warm. Lemmings live in the arctic. --- Sydney Computer Support
Affect and effect are both nouns and both verbs, but the one you wanted was "effect".
:)
An effect (n) is something that happens as a result of some action.
To effect (v) a change is to cause a change to occur.
A affect (n) is a feeling or emotion you feel.
To affect (v) something is to change it through your actions. To affect something is to effect a change in it.
Being the intelligent people we are, with great precision in our computer languages, let's not ride the wave of many technologists who believe they are too good to condescend to write English properly. Strive to do well in all things.
Those who deny global warming are just so predictable.
First they say "there is no such thing as global warming."
Then they say "there is no proof that there is global warming."
Now they say "there is no proof that global warming is bad."
And they say "look, global warming is good!"
Soon they'll say "there is no proof that God didn't make this happen."
Then they'll say "it's written right here in the book that this will happen."
Then they'll say "it's one more reason to believe. God works in strange and mysterious ways."
Then they'll say "of course Haliburton should get a no-bid contract to build levees around North America."
Then they'll say "of course all the blue states on the coasts should pay for their own levees, while paying to subsidize the farms of the red states."
Then they'll say "isn't global warming wonderful! Praise the Lord!"
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.
'polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage
Primarily, this will open up trades route with Hell, which incidentally is short on handbaskets.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
That's nothing. The headline says "affect". Obviously it should be "effect".
Dumb humans.
I've actually heard someone say that they'd rather have more money than cleaner air. I guess they don't think breathing well would improve their life.
"I can always buy air filters with my money," or something to that effect. It's gosh darn arrogant goatse-holes like that that make the world a harder place to live.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Still, global warming is not a plus for me. The ski season is getting shorter :-(
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Not to mention the rising waters flooding pacific islands. Good trade off, cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded, and cruise destinations in the polar region open up.
Ever wonder why many Pacific islands are at sea level? Most are volcanoes eroded to sea level. They become atolls through processes of erosion and a buildup of calcium carbonate that form a ring around the eroded ediface. As sea level rises deposition by coral will equalize with rising sea level. Indeed, flooding by major storms is the *only* mechanism where new material is deposited above sea level at all! This is not new. It has going for the last 12000 years since the end of the last ice age as sea level has risen several meters. So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere. Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
an ill wind that blows no good
When the northern ice caps melt then the cold water starts to cool the ocean, and there would be fewer hurricanes. That is what the environmentalists told us all during the 80's and 90's. How come we have had the terrible hurricanes this year and last... Why is it happening if the ice caps are melting? How about explaining Antarctica's glaciers getting larger? http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1806
w s/20041002/Antarctic_ozone041001?s_name=&no_ads=
They also said we created the hole in the ozone; however in 2004 the hole in the ozone was recorded as getting smaller by up to 20%. http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe
Take a few hours and read about how much crap volcanoes spew into the environment (e.g. sulfur dioxide). Do some Google searches on how many erupt each year... compare that with our fossil burning. The environmentalists have always been pretty disappointed with the results. Don't forget to include the ocean volcanoes when you do it.
Still think we are causing global warning? Remember the Ice Age? Scientists are starting to dispute whether or not an asteroid caused it. Where were we with our wicked cars then? We all know that Solar activity had been written off as crap until recently when the numbers were just to obvious... the environmentalists account for it now by saying that ONLY 10-30% of the warning is being caused by the sun.
I just wish you guys would preface all your "we are killing the earth" talk with, hey we really don't know, but we THINK "we are killing the earth". I certainly will ay I don't know for sure, but the evidence isn't cut and dry in your favor. The media is, but not the facts. Just some food for though. I know I'm going to get slammed for this post, the same way I do when I defend MS, but hey what can ya do?
There are two other effects to consider however - you alluded to the ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica, which would have a much greater effect on sea level if they should melt or even just flow into the ocean faster than they do now. With the polar ice cap gone, the Greenland ice cap would probably move faster and possibly even disintegrate.
The other effect is that once you get above about 4 degrees C, water starts expanding again. So if the entire volume of ocean water becomes warmer on average, you may well get a rise in sea level even without the Greenland or Antarctic ice caps melting (the quibble is whether enough of the water will remain around 4 degrees C where it reaches minimum volume per unit mass - this is going to be difficult to compute because the effect of a melting polar ice cap on ocean currents is hard to predict accurately).
This can't be right. George Bush wasn't even born then. How could there possibly have been hurricanes, or any other evil or dangerous thing?
Oh! I see: Halliburton Co., founded 1919. That explains it.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Wow more unsustainable "resources" show up everyday due to the destruction on other non-sustainable resources.
Amazing, how stoopid humans are, we just deserve to be eradicated.
Content + Container; Content = Container; Content â Container... which is the question?
The short answer is, no it doesn't matter. If the ice is floating, that means that the part above the water level is supported by the ice below water level - and the volume of ice below the water level will displace a volume of water whose mass is equal to the total mass of the iceberg.
I gave the main caveats in my other post on this thread - namely that this doesn't take into consideration any change in the volume of ocean water caused by changes in average water temperature (this can actually be significant when considered on a global scale), and how much of the ice is not floating - that is, the ice in the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps, for example. There is some other ice in the Arctic that isn't floating, but the vast majority of it is locked up in the Greenland ice cap.
If you look at history, the melting and freezing of icecaps varys throughout history. The specs are skewed for everything. While i will admit we are doing damage, its also part of the natural course of our planet. Ya'll are to quickly to blame bush and polution for all the worlds aggricultural problems.
.5% due to illigal downloads. So statistics can be skewed to show whatever the heck you want them too. Look for trends and you see how green house gasses and temperature naturally fluxuate, and how one lags behind the other. I mean we could go way back and see how the abundance of CO2 and just water lead to oxygen and etc, which would be considered on todays terms to be 100% polution.
I'll put it in a voice that fellow geeks can understand. The skewed facts of global warming is much like that of music downloads effecting cd sales. Harvard did a study on it, and found out the facts were taken over a span that just tap the boost in cd sales due to everyone switching over from cassette. Of course sales were booming. After people rebought old music and started buying new, it slowed down. This just happened to start at the beggining of p2p. If you ignore the boost cause here, I believe the article said music sales were only lowered by
So you are right, stupid humans. Stupid for not seeing the other side of things.
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
If all the effort everyone is putting into Kyoto was instead directed into deploying current Feul Cell technology a good portion of the problem would go away.
Instead we have whiney Euro politicians who want to appease their Green parties and stick it to the Americans, while avoiding fulfiling their obligations as much as humanly possible.
International Treaties aren't worth the paper they are written on.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Looks like it's a good time to start investing in property along the picturesque Arizona Bay.
However, if you look at this map of possible routes for a northwest passage, they go right through canadian territory. Based on the three miles rule, the middle of lake superior would be international waters. It might be hard to get there without passing through canadian/american waters. And try passing off on your local game warden that you caught those fish in international waters. you'd have to navigate a pretty specific route to ensure that you didn't come within 3 km of any piece of canadian land while going through the northwest passage.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
No, we've got Euro politicians and businesses who accepted Kyoto - without "ruining their economies". Now they're ahead of us in conservation and development of alternative energy. Although we Americans are whining (well, *you* are, anyway) while we drag everyone else down with our pollution.
The worst American politician whiner was Bush, who whined "we'll give you something better than Kyoto" when he rejected it. Just another lie from Bush, who has given us nothing but tax rebates on SUVs that did nothing but further break the environment, and even break the American carmakers' future sales, driving them to the brink of bankruptcy.
Just to complete your Bushwacko rhetoric, your "aren't worth the paper they're printed on" was Bush's comment about our Social Security "lockbox" that he looted, referring to the debt he owes us to finance his $3TRILLION annual budget, his $45TRILLION in committed debt. When, in fact, those Social Security debts, backed by US Treasury Bills, are by law the highest priority debt obligation of the US government. Bush is talking about defaulting on America's $TRILLIONS in debt, which would do for our country what he's been doing to the economy and the environment. And you're happily parroting his insane talking points. You really deserve the ecocaust you're courting. But I don't.
--
make install -not war
It's commonly agreed that if Earth was warmer, humans would be better off while many animals would go extinct. Most of the argument now is about how creatures which can't evolve as fast as humans would suffer and less about how humans would suffer because everyone's settled that humans would just evolve out of any problems.
Humans would have to give up their multi billion dollar coastal mansions and their riverboat gambling. Eskimos would have to get real jobs instead of living off welfare in the middle of nowhere. Antarctic scientists would have to shift to rainforest studies. There wouldn't be any more arctic polar bears.
On the other side, we'd consume much less energy for heating. 1000 less marines would die every year extracting heating oil from terrorists. Russia and Canadia would become inhabitable.
The right way to judge a situation is not emotionally, or sentimentally, but through cost-benefit analysis. As an example, I'm afraid that environment==good :. kyoto == good is simply not a logical assertion. First of all, the environment is not intrinsically worthy... what makes a bunch of carbon atoms organized as molecular skeletons any more important than carbon atoms organized as a rock? You would be hard pressed to come up with a formula. Sentience on the other hand introduces a whole new prospect of morality and evaluations of worth that can exist without a reductionist deduction from particles and and particle properties. (You can argue that sentience does not make us any more important than other molecular aggregates, but then you are arguing the irrelevance of your own stake in the argument, so forgive me if I don't feel too bad about neglecting a critical analysis of that philosophy.)
So in an analytic, rational way, we should look at what outcome, subsuming all its possible advantages and disadvantages, is to the greatest benefit of mankind. Global warming is not ipso facto a bad thing just because that's how people spin it when they talk about it. The earth used to be rather more tropical than it is now. Is it's moving back in that direction a bad thing? Was it's moving out of the ice age a bad thing? Could global warming stave off what would cyclically appear to be the inevitable of another earth iceage?
I think most people are rather more reactionary than they should be about this topic. Global warming != the sky is falling, global warming == gradual climactic change we are faced with drawing up a reasonable response to. Rising sea levels over a hundred years is not a big deal. Coastal cities face infinitely more peril from sudden oceanic storms than waters that will take hundreds of years to reach them. We should certainly consider what the effect will be on ecosystems, what species will die off, and whether we want to accept this as another stage in earth's evolution (mass extinctions are nothing new) or if we want to stick our noses in and try to keep things the way we like it. But "The earth is doomed!" is not a terribly levelheaded approach. The sky is not falling, people. Climactic change is something that planets do. It is quite possible that a warmer earth may be a bad thing for us, and that we should invest to arrest its change. It is also possible that it is a very good thing, or that we simply do not have the capacity to affect it significantly at all. My recommendation is simply that we recognize (1) change != apocalypse (2) that doesn't mean taking action is not warranted, only that we should not be reactionary about it.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
If we took a leadership role, rather than being pulled by the ear, in developing renewables and conservation technology, then when China finally decides to face up to the music, because the enviro-riots they already have happening there every month get way out of control, we will have an export industry to sell them products to get their crap cleaned up. Might take a good chunk out of that huge trade deficit we owe them.
Unfortunately doing so would require both business and political leaders with vision. Something we lack bigtime.
Someone had to do it.
Have little effect on sea level. It is floating already. However, if the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt, there will be a serious increase in mean sea level. Greenland meltdown is estimated to yield about 7m (circa 23 feet) rise in sea level according to this. Should the Antarctic cap go as well, sea level would increase over 70m (about 230ft) according to this source. Seven meters puts me on the beach, 70+ meters puts me in the position of having to breath water, which I've yet to succeed at..
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1352
"The research described in this week's article demonstrates that over the last 1.3 million years, sea surface temperatures in the heart of the western tropical Pacific were controlled by the waxing and waning of the atmospheric greenhouse effect. The largest climate mode shift over this time interval, occurring ~950,000 years before the present (the mid-Pleistocene transition), has previously been attributed to changes in the pattern and frequency of ice sheets.
The new research suggests instead that this shift is due to a change in the oscillation frequency of atmospheric carbon dioxide abundances, a hypothesis that can be directly tested by deep drilling on the Antarctic Ice Cap. If proved correct, this theory would suggest that relatively small, naturally occurring fluctuations in greenhouse gases are the master variable that has driven global climate change on time scales of ten thousand to one million years."
This study of plankton cores combined with the recent study of bog hardwoods puts all these "sun output" and "natural cycle" arguments to bed. Good night. Usually it's a large catastrophic event releasing trapped methane from ocean depths that cause it. This time we did it all by our lonesome -- or is that loathsome -- selves.
Someone had to do it.
>>> cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded
>
> So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere.
But anything built on them or growing on them will be going away if/when they get flooded.
The islands may indeed catch up to even something like a 5m rise in sea level, but even if it's in such a ridiculously short time as 100 years, that means (a) they cease to exist as islands for the near future, (b) they're scoured of all terrestrial life, and (c) all buildings and equipment on the islands are destroyed.
In other words, the islands are gone, at least as far as current human use of them is concerned. Witness what 5m of flooding did to New Orleans in just 3 weeks.
> Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
A fine question indeed.
...and I feel fine. Global Warming is the new Capitalism. The irony is just so... ironic.
Never pet a burning dog.
All the glaciers through out the world are melting, except for the south pole. So who is right? a bunch of manipulated stats, or the very real data of 120 years of measured glaciers?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Vehicular pollution from a city like Shanghai or Mumbai (the smog that made your travelling family uneasy) should not be equated with industrial pollution of a country like USA.
The US contains 4% of the world's population but produces about 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions. By comparison, Britain emits 3% - about the same as India which has 15 times as many people.
Tat Tvam Asi
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.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
What's the unemployment rate in Germany? The GDP growth of France? If Europe keeps going the way it is going, then, the US will surpass the EU in absolute GDP within 5 years.
Besides, Kyoto is fatally flawed because it seeks to manage the atmosphere by controlling emissions, rather than by mandating or establishing a carbon sink. And its a consumer pays treaty, not a producer pays treaty, so the USA would have to foot the bill, when OPEC should be.
This is my sig.
Since Chrichton isn't a scientist I don't think we should mix his opinion piece with the work of scientists...n ews_lz1e21benford.htmlh ronicle/archive/2005/02/16/EDG49BAVBT1.DTL
Here's a little light reading for perspective:
http://info-pollution.com/mc.htm
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050121/
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
etc..
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
Perhaps once we are done drilling the arctic full of holes we can concentrate on rendering the magnetic field useless as well. This will make life on Mars so much more familiar by the time we get there.
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So you've finally worked it out, the truth being that your president is really Robobush !!!! (You'll have to imagine some dramatic chords). Yes it's true people of America, Robobush was made in secret by Jaque chirac and gerhard schroeder and deployed in place of the real GWB to cripple US science, pollute your air, get your schools teaching that the world was created by a spaghetti Monster, God , whatever, and piss your economy away on sending soldiers all over the world.
The only clues were that sometimes it uses the right words but not necessarily in the right order, needs constant recharging vacations and upon being told of the 2nd Tower being hit crashed and did nothing for several minutes.
Don't think that voting Democrat will help you as Robo- Hilary is having the final touches put on now.
MuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.