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Impassable Northwest Passage Open For First Time In History
An anonymous reader writes "The Northwest Passage, a normally ice-locked shortcut between Europe and Asia, is now passable for the first time in recorded history reports the European Space Agency. Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said in the article: 'We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme.'"
I'm sure the Northwest Passage Cruise Line vacation scam spams will begin soon.
that prime waterfront property in Kansas....
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
What could cause this?
The Northwest passage was first traversed in 1903 by that famous Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. This was no small feat given the technology available at the turn of the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen
You mean impossible.
Alice
So does this mean they'll be able to find Franklin's hand?
~JW
Now ships can transport manufactured goods from Asia at much cheaper prices.
Global Warming actually has some upsides after all.
Plus, those big ships'll have a shorter route on which to belch their nasty so-called "greenhouse gasses" (and will, therefore, not pollute as much!); this could be the best thing to happen to the environment in 30 years!!
If its never been passable before why was it called a passage?
Perhaps one day someone will travel to Norway and discover... Norway, thus making history. Roald Amundsen
A shortcut between Europe and Asia? How long will this shortcut reduce the time it takes to cross between these neighboring continents?
Yes, yes, I know, there is a great historical importance to the Northwest Passage, as the pursuit of it led to Western explorers crossing the Atlantic (more frequently than the random exile), but a bit of specificity here could go a long way - like, perhaps, a shortcut between western Europe and southeast Asia (although, I'd think the Suez still provides a much shorter route for most trips).
The passage has only been tracked like this for the last 30 years. I think history goes back a tiny bit further than 30 years, especially since I am older than that.
Tech Support: "No, sir...clicking on 'Remember Password' will NOT help you remember your password."
...is now passable for the first time in recorded history...
Wherein "recorded history" is 30 years?
Shit, all this time I was hoping someone else was making backups of recorded history. Guess not.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Where is Linux gonna get a new mascot when their home is gone?
-1 wrong pole
Table-ized A.I.
You can not disprove this fact.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
all this global warming, freak weather and now the northwest passage is open? I'm losing my faith in coincidences here...
the neo-cons will say that the planet is not warming up. They will also point to a few glaciers that are growing, and discount the nearly 95% of the glaciers that have shrunk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
"Former submarine commander Gavin Menzies in his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World claims that several parts of Zheng's fleet explored virtually the entire globe, discovering West Africa, North and South America, Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica and Australia (except visiting Europe). Menzies also claimed that Zheng's wooden fleet passed the Arctic Ocean. However none of the citations in 1421 are from Chinese sources and scholars in China do not share Menzies's assertions."
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ for the details.
Swings and roundabouts.
it's open for the first time that we have noticed in the past 150 years.
barely a fart in the scope of time but hey it sounds like a long time to the uneducated.
Yawn, we have far more important shit to be working on than wasting time on this global warming crap.
Call me when we cured aids, cancer, and world hunger... THEN I'll care about global warming.
So just because this guy looks at real-world economic implications of a problem instead of jumping on an 'al gore is right!' bandwagon, the comment was modded to 'troll' - that's some kind of wrong there, somehow.
For anyone not intimately familiar with the geography of the Arctic, here's a map in roughly the same orientation as the article's picture.
Maybe it a troll because there is no -1 "Ignorant enough to kill us all" moderation available?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
...just so I can tell my grandkids (ok since this is slashdot, someone else's grandkids): "Yep, I was there. Just miles and miles of ice as far as the eye can see, all floating on water. 'course it's gone now, all melted away because of global warming - I hear the US just recently acknowledged it might be a possibility too."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
With this route open ship routes between certain points become competitive with air routes again. The ships travel less, some planes don't fly at all, CO2 output goes way down, global warming is reduced... causing it to freeze up again.
Its teh global warming!!!!!!!!!!11111111oneoneoneone
Let the battle begin......Canada has already asserted complete rights to the passage, Russia and the United States want it to be international waters. It matters because this passage is incredibly lucrative for the months of the year it's open.
This is assinine given that in the past 30 years the worldwide population of polar bears has climbed 500%. Just don't tell any members of the Church of Global Warming.
Thanks for reporting that untruth, Winston will fix that once he returns. - Ministry of Global Warming
Everyone thinks that "global warming" is a political thing. That's not the case. The "politics" is about whether you think humans have much to do with it.
While it is popular, in some circles, to say people are contributing to global warming in a meaningful way, the science is still out, and in many cases pointing towards a "shit happens" point of view, if it turns out badly for people.
Personally, I strongly believe in the "shit happens" model of the universe. In the cosmic scheme of things it doesn't matter one wit if a big rock wipes out all life on this planet tomorrow. A lot of people can't handle that idea.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Hotter summers, cooler winters = climate change
Seriously, the Antartic is cooler because southern hemisphere areas over the tropics are hotter than usual, so cooler air masses from Antartic can't go trough them and accumulate down south.
You are not talking about the same thing. THIS route is not "incredibly lucrative" at all, because it has not normally been traversable. Therefore, it was NOT a commercial route. But it might become one.
I don't think so.
God and I were having bacon cheese burgers at Hooters the other day, and He told me He doesn't have a Slashdot account. Why would He lie to me?
Then I told him a ribald joke that He hadn't heard before, and he snorted milkshake out his nose.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
...that ice breakers keep checking out the passability of the ice, and busting big swaths of it up.
He just put TFA in perspective. And with documented facts, no less.
I get all of my global warming news from the Drudge Report, so I know for a fact that global warming is a liberal conspiracy created by pencil-necks like Al Gore for their own financial gain. Hell, there was a record snowfall somewhere in the US just last winter!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I can't hear you. La la la. Are you from some foreign country because I can't understand what you are saying.
PS. The climate is not changing. Please go about your business people.
... naming it "The Northwest Passage" was incredible foresight?
To turn your virgin children into islamofascists. I'm sure I saw this on Fox. No no no a thousand times no. If Global Warming were caused by man God would have given us gills.
Interesting: if manufactured goods can be transported easier, then it would only seem logical that consumption will increase: Thereby increasing demand and thus manufacturing. Obviously more manufacturing will actually lead to more global warming. I'm curious about what may be frozen deep in the coldest ice and what it will be when thawed onto the conciousness of mankind. I think it's funny to think that mankind is the conductor of the orchestra: More than likely we are baton the conductor uses to keep time. An agenda is at hand, far greater and more complex than could ever be imagined or concieved by the conscious minds of men, but in our dreams some of us are given clues, which we attempt to grasp while waking, only to discover we are reaching to grab smoke from a fire that is not constrained by the concepts of time and space and unbenownst to us we are the stewards of that fire: It is our free will that fuels it. If one had super-perfect foresight, then one might see that what the doomsayers preach as our destruction, could very well be our salvation. Perhaps all this warming is in preparation for the cold. Fear is the strongest/greatest motivator of the masses. The mantra for today seems to be "think globally." The mantra should be, "Think for yourself."
It's important to know that I forgot what I thought I knew when I thought I knew it all:Now I don't even know whatIknow.
Well, considering the years of study of the Northwest Passage are in the 30's, I'm sure someone will get a little hyperbolic with their rhetoric.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
We should keep denying climate change!
Why bother.
Humanity has been truly recording history for how long? And has been trying to get through the NW Passage for how little a time compared to that? And has been able to actually measure the ice differential for even shorter than that? It's only remotely extreme with such a small geologic data set. It amazes me how people automatically characterize conditions they haven't seen before as extreme.
Yeah, just think about how much fuel ships will save being able to take this route as a shortcut. Not only that, the quality and grade of fuel most of cargo ships use is pretty bad.
The blue is growing. White is neutral. All else is shrinking. Notice the LARGE amount of Brown. Just out of curiosity, what has been CLAIMED to be shrinking, but is growing? And do you have some real links, say science mag?
As to you saying that there is little cause for alarm, I would like some links from those in the know. Or are you just BSing like many others here?
See the lyrics to the Stan Rogers song Northwest Passage
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Eh, you have to expect that. I find it hilarious that the Internet eco-set doesn't seem to know where the technology they use comes from or why it's cheap enough for them to afford.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
It's not global warming, it's intelligent defrosting. Oh, and in Soviet Russia the Northwest Passage melts YOU!
Get a web developer
It took him 3 years AND they had their ships frozen in ice for a good chunk of that. In this case, this passage is open without having ships frozen in the ice. Big difference.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This laptop is powered entirely by my own sense of self-satisfaction.
Congratulations on your Mac purchase :-)
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Explorers looked for northwest passage from 1400s to 1900, mapping the artic area. in 1906 Roald Amunsen navigated the passage in an ice-fortified ship. Been done with other such ships since then.
Are you referring to the 1530s and Hernán Cortés? You're jumping the gun a little — it wasn't until 1576 that Martin Frobisher first tried to find the Northwest Passage. Of course, you could be referring to the 1630s as several attempts were made after this to find this passage that did not exist. Perhaps (but surely not) you're conflating the (prior lack of) existence of the Northwest Passage with the satellite record — which only stretches back about 30 years or so. Still, we know that the Northwest Passage has not been passable for well over 400 years.
Now, sarcasm aside, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't agree with the scientific consensus on global warming. You no doubt extol the virtues of having an open mind and being skeptical. Has it occurred to you that the scientists are just as likely to have underestimated our impact as to overestimated it? In fact, evidence suggests that, being the conservative people that scientists are (not in the political sense, mind you), scientists have repeatedly underestimated our impacts. That doesn't mean that certain non-scientists aren't greatly exaggerating things, but I'm guessing (again) that it's the mainstream science view that you're taking umbrage with.
Ben Hocking
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Nope, no global warming here Bob...
If we wanted to do good things for the environment, we'd have an mostly-nuclear merchant shipping fleet by now. That and producing more goods locally rather than schlepping them over from China. As far as environmental effects, I'm sure the saving in energy for heat and transport will be more than offset by increased cooling costs in other regions.
-b.
Read that article carefully to see exactly how he "traversed" the Northwest Passage. It wasn't open then, and hasn't been for at least 400 years (and probably an awful lot longer) — until now.
Ben Hocking
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The first attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage happened well over 400 years ago (did your school not teach this in history class?), and several attempts have been made since then. This is the first time that it's been open as far as we know — and not for a lack of looking for it. I love the uncertainty and doubt, though — perhaps you can find some fear now?
Ben Hocking
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That puts it in perspective. Read up on Roald Amundsen's trip — that will help you get some perspective.
Ben Hocking
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Read the story. It wasn't just a matter of different technology. The passage didn't exist — he forced his way through.
Ben Hocking
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Can we have a mod for ignorant? I know there's an underlying "what's the problem with it" if technology causes it, yes I know I'm getting flamed for this, but come on. Gee cool, so we loose New York and Florida as well as most of the world's coastal cities and half the world starves from famine, look on the bright side we got a cheaper way to move crap from China to Europe. Sounds like a deal to me! We aren't talking about more days of summer we're talking about extreme weather like the human species has never seen before. I've heard quotes as high as 18 degree rise in temperatures over the next 100 years, there is reason for that number. That will never happen for one major reason. Increase Ocean temperatures by two or three degrees and and you get a massive cloud build up. Cool you say see nature takes care of us. Wrong. That's nature getting pissed at you like in the old Warner Brothers cartoons were storm clouds formed over character's heads. Drop that little bomb shell of 2 to 3 degree rise in ocean temperatures on a climatologist and after he gets through telling you it'll never happen ask him what would happen. Force five hurricanes normally rare would become common and all storms would get dramatically more intense. Droughts would get worse in one area where as others would be flooded out which can be equally bad. A 3 degree rise would raise water levels several feet without even factoring in Arctic ice melting. We aren't talking end of the world but you can kiss your comfortable life good bye. I don't call half the people starving to death, loosing our coastal cities and a massive increase in storm intensity Hysteria. The radical numbers I heard five years ago are what the conservative people are saying now and no one knows how bad it could get because it's never happened this bad this fast in known history. Come on don't mark people insightful because they can't see the forest for the trees. Dude the trees are on fire and it's seriously time to wake up. Okay flame me.
If so much ice has melted already, have the ocean water levels risen any appreciable amount?
Try reading up on the history of the Northwest Passage. Sure, we've only had a complete meter by meter map for 30ish years, but we've known about the lack of a Northwest Passage for centuries.
Ben Hocking
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Requiring an icebreaker to get through means that the passage wasn't really open (not that you're disputing that, but some on this thread can't quite seem to grasp the difference here).
Ben Hocking
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If you take a quick look at even ancient maps you might notice that Asia and Europe are right next to each other. The shortest route would be over the Ural mountains, I think.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
oh fuck me
this is worse than the OP
at least the OP was obviously fake/troll/spam/what-the-fuck-ever
but yours is disturbingly real
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Ben Hocking
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Ben Hocking
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It's such a pain to drag my kayak over all that ice.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The polar bear is Ursus maritimus and the grizzly bear is Ursus arctos horribilis. I think you're confusing the polar bear with the brown bear, Ursus arctos, of which the grizzly bear is a subspecies. There is one recorded instance of these two (distinct) species breeding in the wild, and that individual was shot and killed. It was considered quite the oddity, if you recall the story.
Ben Hocking
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If you had ever actually read Drudge, you'd know he doesn't say the things you think he says.
/., dailykos, and democraticunderground so keep up the good work, the echo chamber needs more smart people like you!
But it makes for good fodder on
plant corn,
make ethanol
get rich
spend the money, in beautiful KC Beach
Dupe! 1 year ago: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/05/2012222
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
If there was anyway to definitely prove it. We don't know anything about the entire passage prior to 400 years ago, but people have been interested in trying to find a way through continuously since then. If the passage in the last 400 years was ever as wide as it is now, it would have been easily spotted. Have you seen the satellite pictures? Here's a source that has a history for this summer.
Ben Hocking
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Maybe the solution is telling a lot of Americans that they can expect to earn approx. the same amount as workers in China for equivalent work. That would level out the labor market and take away the advantage from building stuff all the way around the world, then using 'greenhouse depleting' methods to ship it here. Perhaps it's just another instance of greedy lazy Americans.
Oops, but that would 'split' the coalition of Union Bosses and Environmentalists who rally under the 'progressive' banner.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
I would suspect that the dust bowl had a bit to do with it, but that's just a guess. You should keep in mind that the "double checking" you're talking about had very little effect on the US temperatures as well.
Ben Hocking
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...for very small values of history.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
Actually, there's a lot of evidence (ice core samples and such) that the arctic hasn't been warm enough for a passage to form for at least 100,000 years.
The scary thing is that losing the polar ice cap has effects way beyond creating a new shipping route. All that ice reflects a lot of heat back into space. It's one of many effects (methane outgassing from melting Siberian tundra; carbon released when drought causes forests to burn) that create a positive feedback look in the global warming trend. In theory, these feedback loops could get so severe they won't stop until the oceans boil. OK, that's pretty unlikely. But it wouldn't have to be nearly so severe an effect to do something relatively minor, but quite nasty. Like wipe out our food supply.
In other words, it's a mistake to phrase the global warming debate in terms of compelling evidence. We can't know for sure — and that should make us more scared, not less. To quote Dirty Harry: You have to ask yourself if you're feeling lucky. Well, do you, punk?
You are jesting, surely.
If you had any idea about the condition of the merchant ships and the way their crews are hired, you would have never said that.
Deep sea marine merchant fleets are governed by something which can only be described as a "law of the jungle", where the disposable crews (literally! I heard stories of men simply dumped in the next harbour, regardless of location, after losing arms or legs in accidents on the ship, without any concern about their means of medical care or transportation. Insurance? You gotta be kidding!) and rust-covered ships worked until they literally fall apart at sea, after which the owner simply collects more then their value, having shrewdly adjusted the insurance payout in anticipation. Any attempts at regulation usually result in the owners re-registering all of their ships in places in which bribery, corruption and non-existant regulation make up for an "ideal" merchant shipping home port. What did you think the words "flag of convenience" mean? Ever notice that all of those ships in the news which broke up on some rocks are flying weird flags from strange places, even though they are clearly owned by western conglomerates?
Adding nuclear power to this mix would be truly suicidal.
Check out this http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000EABE4-BDFF-14E5-BDFF83414B7F0000 Scientific American article from over a year ago! I Guess it was many fewer years.
Ben Hocking
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Wow, argument by claiming the absurd, and then saying "but it's probably not that bad." Nice, emotional, effective to manipulate stupid people, but clearly a crock of shit. You must feel right at home surrounded by the slashtards.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The hottest year on record (for the Earth) was either 1998 or 2005 (they were both very close to each other, and different measuring techniques give slightly different answers). The hottest year for the US, however, was 1938. I hope you understand that the US is not the world, though.
Ben Hocking
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Apparently, the south polar ice cap is the largest it's ever been since 1979, don't hear much about that. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/a_new_record_for_antartic_total_ice_extent
I for one welcome our Northern Passage overlords!
But seriously, this is without a doubt Canadian waters and I believe they have every right to capitalize on this opportunity. I'm usually not one to defend Canada, but this is their sovereign territory. They have every right to demand compensation for passage through their waters.
Actually, there is data going back thousands of years in the form of ice cores — or there used to be. Of course, these haven't been done along the entire passage, so it's easy to manufacture uncertainty and doubt in there, but you have to be a true believer to believe that it's ever been like it is now in the last several thousand years. I know you don't believe me, but do you think it's possible you'll be a little less skeptical next year if the Northwest Passage is open again? What if it opens up on an annual basis? Will you then acknowledge that this is at least unprecedented in the last 400+ years?
My problem is that I have a good memory. I remember people 20 years ago saying wait 20 years and then we'll see. Now you have people saying, wait 20 years and then we'll see. For some reason, I suspect you'll still have some people saying that 20 years hence, when the arctic sea ice is mostly gone (in the summer).
Ben Hocking
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NORTHWEST_PASSAGE
1) who says that the Northwest Passage myth has anything to do with water? As traveling west and then north from Europe will lead to the land-bridge between Siberia and Alaska before written history but within oral history (one would think given ape capacity for language.) 2)What is to say we don't have a pre-history Death Valley? i.e. Death Valley was a passable route during the winter, when it was recorded in written records. However, the infamous deathly crossing took place in spring to summer...when there were indeed desert conditions in effect. But I'm ruling out global warming here, as our current energy cycle is far from carbon neutral...(bio-diesel bias here)
Actually, having the Chinese, as well as all other nations, being well off frightens only the proponents of "globalization" (who are usually some variants of "conservative" these days - although any greed blinded individual will do) which hypocritically, depends on vast inequalities which can be exploited for profit.
Wealth and responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
The answer of course is to enable other nations to grow sustainable economies, centered around local products and services.
"Globalization" as it is envisioned and conducted at present is the bastard child resulting from an orgy of greed and colossal waste, orgy conducted with gleeful, utter abandon and contempt for the future generations.
It is the crowning achievement of the "I got mine, so Fuck You All!" world-view
To be fair, your point has one valid element: the Western working class is just as guilty of in this very attitude as the Western business elites, and so, by extension, also complicit in this. Only now do they realize the true implications of their short-sighted political apathy.
Ben Hocking
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The funnier part is that the posts were one minute apart, leading us to believe that the poster was the same.
Funnier why?
The AC post got the karma-affecting mod (Insightful), while the account-holder was moderated up so we can see it, but with no effect to the karma (Funny).
Yes, I can't see the database so I don't know that this is reality; Occam's Razor cuts both ways. :)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
It should read: "But I'm *NOT* ruling out global warming here, as our current energy cycle is far from carbon neutral...(bio-diesel bias here)
Ben Hocking
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That original post was only of mountain glaciers. You are showing Greenland. But even as you look at greenland, it suffers the exact same issue that Antarctica does; the center is growing, the edges are breaking off, and the ice structure is decaying. The center of these are expected to grow bigger due to increased humidity. The edges breaking off indicate that the ocean waters are getting warmer. The mountain glaciers melting show that at higher altitude the temps are increasing.
Terrestrial heat is simply being redistributed from the north pole to the south pole. Of course, that fact won't bolster the case for socialist-style central planning schemes, so count on the IPCC and the media to avoid it. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/a_new_record_for_antartic_total_ice_extent
Society is nothing but collaboration.
You can't take the sky from me...
Ben Hocking
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The Sun is getting warmer.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The downside to your post aside, I don't consider the loss of comfortable life a bad thing. After all, the raping of the natural resources of the world and the people in poor countries happens because us first worlders selfishly hold on to our microwave dinners, game shows and other aspects of first world life.
I hate printers.
What specific ice core data suggests that the passage wasn't open in the Medieval Warm Period?
It's no mystery. It was a whole lot warmer in the last interglacial, 120kya, than any serious predictions for this one. The significantly warmer temps of the last interglacial are not in dispute. No "runaway global warming" ensued. Rather, an Ice Age ensued, just like after all the other interglacials.
This is insightful, not a troll.
A ship sailed from Vancouver to Halifax via the Northwest passage in 1940. The ship was called the St Roch. It was captained by Henry Larsen. The achievement was overshadowed by the start of WWII. Larsen made a return trip in 1944.
Subject says it all. Reports of activity conspicuously related to global warming deserve something more than an Einstein head.
The problem has nothing to do with actual climatology. The problem is the crap that Al Gore says, and people believe, and advocate economic policy based upon.
is beginning the awakening, let's convene the council and launch a solar shade for the moment.
.....than the British explorers. The bowheads hang around the edge of the ice (partially so that they can escape from Killer whales whose large dorsal fins aren't favourable to icy conditions). It appears like the bowheads from the Beaufort and the ones from Baffin Bay were able to get together during that abnormally warm period of ~9,000 years ago, but since then they have been very distinct stocks.
Besides for seeing that the two stocks just haven't gotten it on over that time, scientists can reconstruct the ice extents based upon where they have found the whales remains along todays coastlines (the carcasses often became incorporated in what are today raised beaches and the permafrost has helped to preserve them).
http://www.pcsn.ca/pubs_2006/Fisher,%20F.%20et%20al,%20Natural%20variability%20of%20Arctic%20sea%20ice%20over%20the%20Holocene,%20EOS,%2087,%202006.pdf
Anyhow, I guess the two whale stocks will have some great stories to tell after all these years.
What you mean those boats registered to countries who don't even tough the ocean are flying the flag of convenience ! How dare you speak of that.
It's been done for years. And the scams that smugglers use is to change the flag and repaint the boats at sea based on where they are going.
For instance a freighter destine for Canada will have a friendly nations flag and registry info on board so as to avoid customs. They do it in the us as well since we only inspect roughly 9 % of cargo into the US.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
Hence the disclaimer "related to traveling this passage". :P
Ben Hocking
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In summary, yes, I concede, the devil is in the details.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
http://whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=icecap&tld=us
Administrative Contact Email: jdaleo6331@aol.com
Some republican with an AOL account. But hey, he has an official-sounding domain name -- consider me convinced!
I think most shipping companies will think politically stable Canada a preferable route to Panama.
It sounds to me like you're very angry about the Iraq war. I am too but it's not the fault of the American people. Our government is being controlled by the special interests. How we became so Dependant on oil erroneus explained fairly succinctly. It is the fault of large corporations and government 'servants' that take special interest money and then betray the people's interests.
The people no longer have a place at the table. They have no real voice.
I would say that it was the fault of the voters but I don't see any candidate that can change a system that is so full of corruption. It would take a real house cleaning.
My father use to joke that each five years we should vote for the most corrupt politician and hang him. It wouldn't take too many years and they would probably all straighten up and fly right.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
...Of all the greenhouse gases that will be reduced by having shipping take the northern route instead of the panama canal!
One metric to tell how long the Northwest Passage has been closed off is by looking whale migration. When the Northwest Passage was open, whales could travel through the Arctic unimpeded. By dating whale remains, it has been about 3000 years since whales have been able to travel through the Northwest Passage. The probability is also high that the passage has remained at least partially cut off most of the year since 8000 years ago.
Amusing. Yes. How...*yawn*...interesting.
Cyberspace is a better place now. Thanks a bunch, Thing 1.
kthxbye
It's not narcissicism if it's true!
(b) That error wasn't very large. Since many right-wing "think" tanks have taken upon themselves to distort the science and misrepresent the evidence. Do you have any idea how many right-wing sites reported on the NASA data adjustments? What fraction of these do you suppose misrepresented those adjustments as making the 1930s the hottest in the world? It seemed like a large fraction to me. It's not all right-wing sites, of course. Fox News, for example, is finally coming around — although a little slowly.
Ben Hocking
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Off-Topic, so don't thrash-mod me, y'all just don't need to waste mod-up points on this.
"God works in mysterious ways" is meant as a controlling statement, such that you are not meant to understand the situation. It is a scriptural mechanics tool as part of a religious debate.
$hit Happens means that natural laws operate, and if your IQ is high enough, you might understand them. If provided sufficient original state data, you can duplicate the $hit-happened result. You still have no one to "yell at", but there is no emotional overlay either.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It says very specifically it's been noted in 30 years.
No assertion is made that the Northwest Passage has been closed for the entirety of the last 4,000 years. Maybe it was, but we don't know, and that's not what's being asserted.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Informative? What is this site? A joke?
You do realize that there is more to life than economics, right? Because if there wasn't I'd gladly kill you for a quarter.
The Farewell Tour II
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
well OK, there IS global warming but it's a natural cycle of thing, look, the Earth is always warming or cooling, it has NOTHING to do with man, OK??
fuck karma, I like saying the truth better
The thing is, we used to have things as crappy as China (or wherever) here in the USA - and nobody flipped a switch that made things the way they are now; it happened gradually over many decades. I am not an economist or an anthropologist to tell you why exactly things are they way they are, but there is currently great disparity in the value of people's time in different countries. People in the US and many other countries with high hourly wages use this to their advantage; to not do so would be economically irresponsible.
I suspect we can agree that the current situation can not last. It is not sustainable, for us or them. However, that does not mean drastic measures must be taken. Things tend to work themselves out, especially in the long term.
As time goes on there will be gradual changes in China and the rest of the world, and eventually the disparity we feel now will tend to balance itself out, in no small part because of the exploitation of the current discrepancy; invisible hand of the market and all that. The whole local products and services argument won't cut it: specialization is more efficient then subsistence, and specialization encourages/requires lively trade. Eventually, the world will act as a single economy, with wage equality and whatnot, and at that point "sustainable economies, centered around local products and services" will be unlikely unless you consider the entirety of human civilization "local".
Economic isolationism tends to slow the advancement of growing economies, and does nothing to resolve disparity in living conditions. The current incarnation of the global economy my seem, may even be, an orgy of waste and greed, but the long term result will not be the destruction of our respective economies or societies, but rather their fortification.
Unless we kill each other in a war; there is always that. But cheer up; we'll soon both be dead.
Apathy; it does a body good.
If you had any idea about the condition of the merchant ships and the way their crews are hired, you would have never said that.
*OR* the hypothetical nuclear fleet would have better hiring and maintenance practices, you dumb fuck.
Seriously, you just blindly grafted on an aspect of reality onto a hypothetical alternative. How pig shit stupid can you get?
"It was a whole lot warmer in the last interglacial, 120kya...balh, blah, blah"
It's not the temprature itself that people are concerned about (go back 250MYA and CO2 concentrations were 4X what they are now and the planet was 10C warmer. It's the unprecedented rate of change that is "unatural" and a "clear and present danger".
The melting of the North pole was predicted and it is now undeniably occuring, one of the predicted "flow on effects" of an ice free Artic ocean is desertification of midwest US ( modern humanity's "breadbasket"). Perhaps you would be happy to return to foraging for grubs and shellfish or hearding goats in an arid wasteland (re: middle east), me - I'm kinda fond of the idea of growing our staple diet in a predictable and sustainable manner. If you think discussing the possiblity of a global famine is hyperbowl then take a good look at what is happening to SE Australia (where I happen to live), if you prefer history then take a look at the "dustbowl" years in the US or the many cases where ancient civilizations crumbled due to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Not to mention global fisheries have been collapsing like dominoes since the 1980's....opps - I just did.
Currently the Artic is predicted to be ice free in 40-50yrs so (according to predictions) the US still has a while before it "dries up", but this year's data (to quote TFA) was "extreme". I have no idea what a 25% reduction from last years record low does to the statistical trend or the predictions of when (no longer "if") the Artic will become ice free in the summer. However using the figures from TFA, if the next three years are as "extreme" as this one then the ice will have receded into oblivion before kyoto even comes up for renewal in 2012.
"It's no mystery."
It is a huge mystery but it's not a total mystery thanks to thousands of scientists who have been very actively working on the broarder question of the "dynamic stablity" of the biosphere in general and climate in particular. Thanks to this large but much maligned group of boffins there have been huge strides in our knowledge over the last three decades (including the sources for your "facts"). Yet when the consensus predictions of these "grant seeking leaches" start occuring in front of our very eyes at a much more alarming rate there are still those who will brush it all aside with some self-serving babble about our distant ancestors who had not even developed language let alone a global econmy and infrastructure that is TOTALLY dependent on the predictability of annual weather patterns (ie:climate). Arguing about the exact definition of an "open" as it pertains to the N.W. passage is the preverbial arranging of deck chairs.
Disclaimer: Sorry to pick on you personally, please take it as a general comment about the level of anthropogenic arrogance on slashdot regarding AGW.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
1. Look at the 1997 IPCC predictions.
2. Look at the figures in TFA!
3. Look at the current IPCC predictions for the midwest USA.
Conclusion: This IS alarming!
Why do you continue to stress the importance of a the unlikely possibility that the N.W passage could have been "open" and we somehow missed it because we weren't constanly looking at it? Are the "deck chairs" really that important to you in everything you discuss or is it just a rationale for your wishfull thinking?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That's not entirely true; globalization _does_ strive to level the economic playing field and certain areas of the world _are_ simply more suitable to do certain things with than others. It makes great sense to designate places of the world for certain types of production, given climate and presence of ore.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
If you think discussing the possiblity of a global famine is hyperbowl
Is this some new sequel to the superbowl that I haven't heard about?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Fraudian "food bowl" I suppose, but you get the point.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
False. Please check the Vostok data. Going all the way back to 400,000 years ago, the time resolution is about 500 years. No one can tell you what happened on the 50 year scale this long ago, and thus no one can say how quickly temperature fluctuated on this time scale back then. In fact, if you check the data, you will see that it only has data on the 50 year time scale going back about 5000 years. And on the 40 year time scale going back a mere 2000 years. Therefore we cannot say what precedent was set any farther back than this. (Notice how in a plot of this data, the short timescale fluctuations in temperature increase substantially as you get closer to the present. This is due to this resolution time scale.)
Now, if you look for examples of large change within this time frame, you can see a few. For example, from 397 to 552, 155 years, it changed 2.94C. From 397 to 420, 23 years, it changed 1C. From 2291 to 2331, 40 years, it changed 2.14C. But you can't look much farther than that, because ice core data smooths out all of the long timescale changes as you go farther back.
Any way you look at it, calling a 2C change over the next 50 years unprecedented is complete crap. (I mean no offense by this. You were probably just repeating what someone else told you, since there's a lot of propaganda flying around on this topic. But now hopefully you will correct people in the other direction in the future when this topic comes up.)
Bah! In my day we used to walk the Northwest passage, barefoot. Once I got three quarters of the way there, ran out of food had to turn round and go home. And it was uphill both ways.
At the bottom of the
This explains why mine has been running on a single charge for two weeks now...
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
Am an in awe of your grasp of the situation, specially when highlighted with such creative epithets. Now, do please explain how does this hypothetical fleet has its maintenance and hiring practices improved, given that vast majority of it is registered in, say, that bastion of high standards of regulation: Antigua, and owned by companies registered in, say, Dubai. For a bonus question: explain away your method of forcing the merchants to use the astronomically expensive (in relation to everything else) nuclear reactors followed by your gracing us with your enlightening views on the methods of securing the nuclear fuel and the ships themselves from falling into the hands of some bearded and beturbaned individuals with somewhat antisocial attitudes.
I am reeling under the assault of your great wit, so cleverly based upon words of "shit" and "pig". As to being blindly "grafted" on an aspect of reality, I am afraid I got you beat there, since your entire rant consists of "hypothetical" hot air, which does not even withstand most cursory of "hypothetical" searches for traces of common sense.
I swear /. does some weird things to my posts sometimes after I hit Submit! That was supposed to read "I am". Oh well.
The people fuel in more ways than one.
At the bottom of the
He's spelling it how it's pronounced if you pronounce it wrong.
Yeah right, the Artic ice sheet pops in an out of existence but we don't see it becuse our resolution is too low.
However you are technically correct in that there have been 5 other "great extinctions" over the last 2 billion years, so the one we are experiencing now is nothing new.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If we wanted to do good things for the environment, we'd have an mostly-nuclear merchant shipping fleet by now.
Probably not. There have been some experiments with nuclear-powered freighters, but these were all stopped after only a few years of operation because they were more expensive to operate than their fossil-fueled ships. Now, you could argue that those experiments sucked. The Otto Hahn, for example, was an inefficient design (carried less freight than other ships its size, despite not needing fuel bunkers). There has been no attempt to series-produce reactors, so you end up with expensive one-off designs. Nuclear technology now is much better than in the '60s (current naval reactors are built to last the lifetime of the ship without refueling).
But all that said, you'd have to come up with a pretty amazing design to beat the current generation of large ship diesels.
Also, a nuclear reactor requires more (and better) manpower than a diesel. The largest freighters these days have a crew of maybe 30, most of them low-wage, low-education types. Nuclear reactors require personnel with college degrees.
A nuclear-powered freighter might pollute less per km traveled, but you'd have to calculate the lifecycle cost, not just the 'fuel used per km'. Building a reactor is more labor- and power intensive than building a diesel, I suspect.
If you go to the source, you can compare the southern and northern anomolies. Those graphs show that while the antarctic ice coverage is about 1.25 million square kms higher than the 1979-2000 mean, the artic ice coverage is over 2 million square kms lower than the 1979-2000 mean. The antarctic increase is not making up for the artic decrease: there is a net loss of ice worldwide. This data points to higher average temperatures and more extreme seasonal variations. Neither of those are good news.
This was done for many reasons. Firstly, it's mostly damned cold up here. We were continually traveling south to get warm. It was expensive, time consuming and we now have to get bloody passports just to visit our friends south of the border. As the fruits of our labours are paying off, more and more Canadians are staying at home to bask in balmy 5 degree celcius weather.
The second reason for this work was that much of the north was not economically viable because the cost of getting goods up there was prohibitive. This new route appears to have solved that problem once and for all.
Lastly, don't get any ideas about what any of you other nations are going to do with our sovereign arctic territory. We have one (1) very fired up diesel submarine lurking somewhere off Nova Scotia which can get up to the northwest passage in mere months with only four refueling stops to wreak havoc on any of you saber-rattlers.
Please send thank you emails and letters to any email address ending in .ca
P.S. Sorry about the desertification thing in the equatorial latitudes. We have a lot more money and resources than the countries down there, so we used them as best we could. Hey, why not get away from all that oppressive heat and sand and c'mon up and visit!
Brought to you by the people of the Great White (now brown) North!
*** Don't be dull.***
Geez, all of us who believed that Global warming wasn't a myth apparently have some apologizing to do.[/sarcasm]
I'm not surprised by hearing people say that Humans are not causing Global Warming, I find that hard to believe myself. I am more inclined to believe, based on the evidence I've seen so far, that we're making a natural cycle worse. What surprises me is that there are still idiots who believe that Global Warming is NOT occurring at all....
But this is the same as "Evolution is only a Theory." and "Intelligent Design" is plausible.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
while you guys cry about global warming or not the fact remains that the ice is melting and it has the chance of lowering the temperature in the ocean, something which would affect all of us. global warming or not.
Well that sounds good in theory, but it is not true in practice.
What actually happens is that as the living standards of the "target" of the products are very rapidly lowered (attendant with creation of astronomical and unsecured debt) and the living standards of the source are slowly (as slowly as one can manage as a matter of fact, as this reduces profits) raised. When that fails, the "source" is moved to yet another poor country, and the previous one simply abandoned. Ask those border-factory Mexicans, who were such gold makers for the corps in the 1980s, how they are doing to today...
Since there are very many potential "sources", the process can be repeated for several generations yet. Its bonus feature is an ability to destroy any worker's protections in the "target" countries, by beating the working class over their heads with demands to be more "flexible" and "competerive" with their "competiton" who gets paid $2 a week and has no rights or benefits. Since those protections took centuries to acquire, they will take centuries to regain once lost.
Also, there are very few types of products which cannot be made everywhere, and very few types of ores which do not occur on every continent in quantity. It makes more sense to transport the extracted and purified raw materials then the goods since it requires much less volume and fuel waste for that process.
Which brings on another point: globalization is not sustainable, simply due to the amounts of energy (and types of thereof) required to transport the goods all over the world. We are used to extremely cheap (even at $80 a barrel) energy which is the result of millions of years of slow accumulation and which we are blowing from out asses in mere historical seconds. When that runs out ... globalization will be a word one uses a punchline of a sad joke.
When container ships are using the passage then you can call it open.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
Isn't fhat normally called the Mississippi?
"The answer of course is to enable other nations to grow sustainable economies, centered around local products and services."
The track record of being "centered around local products and services" is continuation of poverty. Almost all 20-21st century examples of countries leaving massive poverty has been driven by export-lead growth.
We're starting to see the benefits of global warming. Warmer winters, better trade routes, less polar bears to eat our children; things can only get better the warmer it gets!
The rate of temperature change is "unprecedented"? You can't be serious. The rate of change is nothing compared to the end of the ice age around 12kya. Nor is there any evidence that the rate of change is unusual compared to the relatively stable temperature since then. Nor is there a shred of evidence that the existing change is unnatural.
The dustbowl and the current Australian drought are examples of cyclical local climate fluctuations. While it is a serious thing, it is neither global nor because of CO2.
The arctic was melting during the dustbowl as well. It didn't last 40-50yrs, and this one won't either. Such predictions are wishful thinking on the part of apocalypse mongers. When we don't understand some process, it's natural to be afraid it will never stop. Like some stereotypical savage seeing an eclipse and thinking the sun isn't going to come back. However, I think that actual savages were more rational than us, as they observed that nature operates in cycles -- something that modern man is apparently oblivious to.
I agree that understanding the climate is vital to the preservation of civilization. Most importantly, there is an Ice Age coming, and if we want to preserve our way of life, we have to find a way to stop it. I to admire the work of scientists over the last few decades, but when you talk about "consensus predictions" it makes me think that you haven't actually read the work.
There was a recent analysis of peer-reviewed climate research that finds that the work of over 500 scientists is undermining what is trying to be passed off by as "consensus" by snake oil salesmen. The ACTUAL scientific consensus includes the facts that
"1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age; 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance; 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate."
Oh, yes, I forgot, Al Gore has the new formulation of morality, all based upon his climatological alchemy. You would refrain from killing me because doing so would release carbon into the atmosphere. Of course you could do it anyway if you could afford the carbon offsets -- oops! back to economics again.
One has to wonder though -- why do merchant vessels have to be crewed at all?
Why not have them sealed in port, guided out of harbor and robotically navigated until the local pilots board near the destination port? Or have a remote operations center in which a crew controls hundreds of ships for its shift, then goes home, the way we fly our Predator drones?
Of course there are security concerns, but nothing that couldn't be addressed with a little imagination. In the end the situation might even be more secure.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Maybe a military risk then ? because wildlife seem pretty resilient to radioactivity as seen at Chernobyl, where owls or wolves, local species of wild horses, prosper since the radiations have kicked out humans. I'm not at all a PETA kind of people though I like animals, still I'm not sure to understand how radiations could be worse for the environment than the constant spills, which unlike the radiations give no chance to the wildlife.
Yes, yes I do. I made a lot of posts on a topic that I care about and know a bit about. That they might be disproportionately directed to you could be because you meet the criteria of being (a) wrong about quite a bit, but (b) not loony wrong. (I tend not to waste my time with true crazies.)
Well, since it wasn't a y2k bug, I would think such a search technique would bias one towards inaccurate articles. You probably consider a site run by climatologists to be "left-wing", but in case I'm wrong, read what Real Climate has to say about it. I really don't want to read a bunch of misinformed blogs, but if you can find something from someone who actually knows what they're talking about, I'd be happy to read it. Ah, here's something from junkscience, which is much less accurate than realclimate, but at least you can't accuse of having a left-wing bias: Do you consider the journals Science, Antarctic Science, Climate Dynamics, Journal of Physical Oceanography, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Annals of Glaciology, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, and Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics to be left-wing? Actually, I know this from original research. See, I have many right-wing relatives, and when I stay with them I'm often subjected to copious amounts of Fox "News". It's not only right-wing — it's frequently wrong (even when compared to more accurate, openly right-wing news sources). Then what did NASA post on their web-site when they claimed to be posting the corrected numbers? Sure, and on top of those cycles is man-made contributions to global warming. Keep in mind that the same people who were saying that 20 years ago were predicting that it'd be cooler now than it was then. So, unless you think that the 25% sea-ice loss is part of some conspiracy just to back up some fraudulent numbers for global means (which themselves are backed up by satellite data)...Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
In other words, you're absolutely convinced, beyond any doubt, that humans have no significant impact on global climate. I envy you your sense of certainty.
Since you asked, I went back and dug up some information. You can verify this stuff yourself with very little effort on the Web. In fact, I strongly suggest you do that, rather than believing everything you are told by the mainstream media, or asking others to do the work for you! You have no way to know if ANYBODY is telling you the truth unless you look things up and verify them to your own satisfaction. The very popularity of An Inconvenient Truth proves that point.
One point made in that movie (and repeated, seemingly endlessly, by news sources) has been the retreat of the snows and glaciers around Kilimanjaro. While those have in fact been retreating, it has long been known (and there were two more recent papers released in 2004) that the cause is lack of moisture due to deforestation at lower altitudes. Temperatures around Kilimanjaro are actually colder now than before the retreat.
Another misleading point made in the movie was about the ice shelves in Antarctica that have been melting. However, some ice shelves around Antarctica are ALWAYS melting. Others are growing. The ice sheet on Antarctica continues to get thicker.
Gore says that melting ice could raise the levels of the oceans by many meters. What he does not mention, is that it would take thousands of years to do so at the current rate -- which according to IPPC reports has NOT accelerated during the 20th century! And you know what that rate actually is? 1 to 2 mm per year, and it has been pretty steady for the last 8,000 years!
So much for "the blue is growing"... if by blue you mean ocean water. Does more fresh water make you nervous for some reason? But as for glaciers... NOBODY is denying that the earth has been getting warmer! I repeat: it has been getting warmer for 6,000 years! Big frigging surprise! The debate is not about warming, it is about whether WE are causing it! And guess what? Most of the evidence says: little if at all.
There is lots more. Here is one reference (University of Pennsylvania):
http://www.upenn.edu/researchatpenn/article.php?1247&soc
I am sure you can find many others yourself, if you were to go look them up rather than asking others to do your homework for you.
Sure, but when your pre-conceived ideas are that the arctic sea-ice will melt more during the summer, you have to admit it's a pretty easy thing to do. Also note the story behind the story. The arctic summer sea-ice has been decreasing by about 100,000 km^2 per year (averaged over the last 30+ years). This year, it decreased by more than 1 million km^2 (which is undoubtedly a fluctuation on top of the trend) to about 4 million km^2. If it resumes at 100,000 km^2 per year, it will be completely gone in 40 years (during the summer). If it increases to 200,000 km^2 per year (which some scientists think is possible), it will be completely gone in 20 years. (Presumably at that point, most people won't think this is just something we've observed because we have satellites in space.)
No, I think that's a very reasonable point. However, keep in mind that there's a difference between post hoc analysis and detecting patterns that were expected a priori.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Someone else, however, suggested that this was done by sailing around Cape Horn. Sans finding evidence in the Great White North, it'd be very difficult to separate these two conjectures. Still, fascinating stuff.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Sorry. Typo. That should have been IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change). While it has been shown that their report conclusions have been highly politicized, there is less debate about the data they contain. And according to that, ocean levels have been rising by 1-2 mm for about the last 8,000 years, and have not changed significantly during the 20th century.
An interesting web-site that has weekly updates on the Arctic sea-ice is http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
I found this graph quite interesting: http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070910_timeseries.png
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
There are times when it's good to zoom in on detail, but I always feel that absolute scales should be shown first, so that you realize what you're zooming in on.
Ben Hocking
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That exact same area? Then why didn't we know about the ridge that was recently discovered there? Top secret?
No, despite the fact that you'll hear this reported on many right-wing blog sites, it's not. Antarctica is losing ice mass — unless you think that the NASA satellite people are in cahoots with Hansen...Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
'm sure that the global warming hysteria will try to make this look like a bad thing, but it's a real boon to nautical industries like shipping and such. There just aren't that many ways around continents. Having an extra option is great.
Thats like saying an epidemic of flesh eating bacteria is really just an economic boon to the medical industry. The frighteningly rapid melting of arctic ice should be a major warning alarm of impending economic disasters that come with rapid climate change. The negative impacts of climate change completely outweigh the few silver linings like the opening of the northwest passage.
The Bolachek Journals
I'd kill you for free. People like you aren't worth keeping around and we surely have enough of you morons that no one would miss a few here and there.
No, I was referring to the Boise - Minneapolis channel.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
http://www.esa.int/images/Envisat_ASAR_GM_Sep2007_2_passages_and_mask_L.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth
The reason for that is, of course, that the supposed "helpers", which "helped" these nations to "grow" their economies, were in fact parasitic predators whose objectives were the exact opposite. So the only remaining game plan available to those countries was to play the predator's game, and to try out-predator the parasites at their own shtick, consequences to society and environment be damned. Some succeeded at this, some did not.
Look at the AGX expedition blog. They are actually trying to navigate but cannot because ice is THICKENING. http://agx.firetrench.com/?p=224
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I am sending an SOS out to whomever can hear us. The North Pole is now underwater due to melting ice, and the elf workshop has been flooded to the second floor already. So far, 21522 of my 50219 elves have drowned and I have good reason to believe the rest of my elves are in danger. I have had to relocate my reindeer and sleigh because of your "global warming". If this continues, how are kids to have a merry and gift-filled Christmas each year?
but I sure was acting like it.
Apathy; it does a body good.
The headlines are ripe with discussions of the northern cap shrinking. Apparently it is less interesting that the southern cap has reached record size and the average temperature has come down.
I guess we need another aircraft carrier battle group now and a major naval base to protect the "Northwest Passage" from the Russian baddies.
E Proelio Veritas.
So thanks to global warming a major shipping route is becoming economically viable. So much for the dogma that global warming is a Bad Thing.
It's the ultimate crime.
The needless destruction of the earth's biosphere is a crime beyond all other crimes. Who gave humanity the right to eliminate the habitate for countless numbers of animals and plants?
If your fear god's judgement, how do you think he will judge you after humanity foolishly exterminates nearly all life on this rare jewel of a planet we currently live on??
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Seeing as how the first attempt was made well prior to this, why do you think we wouldn't have the ability to detect a large Northwest Passage if we were looking for it?
Since I'm expecting that you're still going to be credulous, try this one on: do you think we would have noticed if it were ice-free? If so, will you change your story if/when the Arctic is ice-free during the summer?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Beer served in a saucer has a greater surface area than beer served in a mug. Do you automatically assume that the saucer contains more beer? If so, I have a beer to sell you...
One could take the entirety of the Artic ice cap and dump it whole on the Antartic ice cap - you'd end up with a thicker ice cap with no increase in surface area. Surface area on its own is meaningless as a measurement of volume, making it useless as an argument that there is a nett loss of ice. If the ice in the antartic is thicker, it is quite possible that there is even a nett increase in world ice...
Unfortunately, determining the depth (and thereby volume) of ice in the polar ice caps is somewhat trickier than simply looking at a satelite image.
From TFSummary: "The Northwest Passage, a normally ice-locked shortcut between Europe and Asia, is now passable for the first time in recorded history"
From TFA: "The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage - a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable." (boldface mine)
The first (recorded) attempt was by Cabot in 1497.
So while "all of recorded history" is a really impressively big number on the order of 5000+ years, in actuality they mean "since 1497" = 510 years, and the article really only refers to measurements of the last 30 years.
(shrug)
It's hard for me to care much about a climactic change which is clearly cyclic over time. All the evidence points to a strong current warming trend, it could be that we're even accelerating it, but the trend itself is probably a simple cycle far older than the human species. But humans are the most successfully adaptable creatures that have ever lived on this planet, as far as we know.
-Styopa
It isn't a perfect solution, but it beats living in a world where you have a massive non-working population being supported by a handful of workers shelling out vast chunks of wages in taxes to support them.
I hear what you're saying, but it's only true -- or even an option -- in the short* term. Paying for people's retirement by replacing each old worker with 1.5 younger workers just isn't sustainable as a steady state. Eventually you find some limiting condition or other, and things break down. Highly industrialized societies can prevent hitting that limit for a long time (although I would argue that there are serious quality-of-life consequences as a result of increasing your population density, but that's purely subjective), but eventually something's gotta give.
So looking ahead, societies must find a way of dealing with their non-working populations that doesn't rely exclusively on continual growth; robbing Peter to pay Paul and then giving birth to a few extra Peters to pay the interest. Exactly how we should deal with this is a very open question, but I think it's one that we should begin to tackle now, rather than just closing our eyes and hoping for the best later. It's not something that Western civilization has had to deal with recently (you have to look back practically to pre-agrarian societies to find examples of balanced, constant populations, and there you find a lot of examples of gericide; putting old people on ice floes and such).
Some pretty fundamental assumptions about what it means to get old are going to have to change. Just as a guess, I'd say that the idea of physically-able individuals 'retiring' from the workforce while they are still capable of contributing productively is probably going to disappear. You don't see a lot of retired people in societies that have stable populations (hunter-gatherers or subsistence agriculture communities); it's a concept that's totally predicated on growth.
* "Short" on evolutionary timescales. Human beings have only been aggressively growing for probably about 12000 to 15000 years, since the beginning of agriculture, prior to which (for some 235,000 years or so) the growth rate was much more limited.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
To sum up your unoriginal and widely debunked argument: "It's not happening and even if it was it'a a GoodThing(TM)".
As for the "recent analysis of peer-reviewed climate research" that is the source for your entire post - here is what I found with a couple of clicks: The source for your source (at the bottom of your link) is this book. IANAClimatologist but I know enough about "psuedoscience for hire" to recognise the name Singer as it's unrivaled master.
"it makes me think that you haven't actually read the work."
Even though the answer is obvious I just gotta ask: have you?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The NY Times article said one hundred private boats have traversed the passed in the 21st century. Its almost not a nvoelty anymore.
Sorry to keep you up.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Sorry to answer twice and don't take this the wrong way. I dismissed your post when I saw the name Singer but it struck me later that you may not be aware of what "the work" actually is.
The IPCC reports are here (the the attribution section of the 2007 SPM is a good place to start), also this site is run by some world class climatologists who contributed to the reports. A couple of names you might want to check out on wikipedia are James Hansen (Head of NOAA and IMHO a model of what a "public servant" should be) and James Lovelock ("The eccentric father of Earth Sciences"). Of course you could always watch the movie, politics to one side, Al Gore's movie is actually just a "slide show" of what the IPCC reports say. Hansen has a cameo in that too.
I'm an old fart and feel it's my duty to tell you a story....
I have followed this subject since I saw the imfamous "ice age" article in National Geographic back in the 70's, I thought it was BS and the story died a natural death, OTOH: I was about 16-17 and was firmly convinved that Uri Gellr could bend spoons if he frowned in the right way. In the early 80's a thin book about skepticisim written by a magicain taught me more about science than all my high school teachers put together (bless them, they tried). Sadly I don't remeber the title of Randi's book but Carl Sagan is a good read.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Bah! Formatting was up the creek. Climatology site
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Among others, such as terrorists getting hold of the fuel to make "dirty bombs" and what not.
The thing with radiation is persistence. Oil decomposes in sea water much, much quicker then even the half-life of typical nuclear fuel. As to Chernobyl wild-life, what you neglect to mention is the fact that most of it is very short lived and thus able to recover from such setbacks by simply evolving all sorts of immunities simply be the force of numbers, but at the expense of massive mortalities and deformities in the few initial generations after the accident. The cancer rates amongst Chernobyl area animals are still orders of magnitude higher then elsewhere. But because the humans left, the animal's numbers increase rapidly despite of the mutations and cancers, because the human presence is far more destructive to wild-life then nuclear radiation. And there is something rather sad in that realization.
Having said that, nuclear fuel sunk in oceans is less likely to cause wide-spread disasters because water acts as a shielding factor for most of the radiation types and so the range of the damage is severely limited to very localized areas.
My understanding is that the crews are mostly needed during the preparations for docking, loading/unloading and for maintenance (of which the rustbuckets otherwise known as "shipping vessels" need extraordinary amounts). Also it is apparently much cheaper to haul very underpaid crews on their ships into places where unionized long-shoremen would have to take their place if the ships were automated ...
And then of course is the problem of reliability of remote controls and automation, liability for ships going off course and colliding, say, with a cruise liner, etc and so on.