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Northern Sea Route Through Arctic Becomes a Reality
Hugh Pickens writes "Andrew Revkin writes in the NY Times that since 1553, when Sir Hugh Willoughby led an expedition north in search of a sea passage over Russia to the Far East, mariners have dreamed of a Northern Sea Route through Russia's Arctic ocean that could cut thousands of miles compared with alternate routes. A voyage between Hamburg and Yokohama is only 6,600 nm. via the Northern Sea Route — less than 60% of the 11,400 nm. Suez route. Now in part because of warming and the retreat and thinning of Arctic sea ice in summer, this northern sea route is becoming a reality with the 12,700-ton 'Beluga Fraternity,' designed for a mix of ice and open seas, poised to make what appears to be the first such trip. The German ship picked up equipment in Ulsan, South Korea, on July 23 and arrived in Vladivostok on the 25th with a final destination at the docks in Novyy Port, a Siberian outpost. After that, if conditions permit, it will head to Antwerp or Rotterdam, marking what company officials say would be the first time a vessel has crossed from Asia to Europe through the Arctic on a commercial passage."
A wonderful, magical route that can turn kilometers into nanometers?
As long as our global economy is stimulated, I don't see any issue with destroying our habitat...
Can we use this as a clear proof of a unique ice sheet retractation or was the news really about the boat design ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
A voyage between Hamburg and Yokohama is only 6,600 nm. via the Northern Sea Route â" less than 60% of the 11,400 nm. Suez route.
So it sounds like this new route will conserve fuel and cut out at least 40% of their CO2 emissions.
Imagine the benefits to the environment if we could just figure out a way to melt the ice caps completely. Our greenhouse emissions would plummet!
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Nope GW is a fact (as well as Global Cooling). The question is whether it is man-made or just natural climate cycles.
Canadians and Russians would certainly save a fortune on heating bills.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Imagine the benefits to the environment if we could just figure out a way to melt the ice caps completely. Our greenhouse emissions would plummet!
Of course they would. Melt the ice caps, flood the most populated areas of the planet, and bingo - mankind's greenhouse gas emissions drop dramatically!
I am officially gone from
So that they can put any polar bears stranded on isolated ice floes out of their misery.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Beluga Fraternity? My Russian is so rusty I might just be typing the measurements of the playmate of the month, but wouldn't that portmanteau mean "White Brotherhood"? They've gotta mean something other that that, right?
I am not a crackpot.
Why bring up the Americans? Isn't this a German company?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Eh, no.
The questions are how much is man made, what are the consequences for our long and short term survival prospects and what actions to take if these consequences are unacceptable.
There is no question on whether it is man-made or just natural climate cycles. There is sufficient evidence to support the fact that it is a man made phenomenon.
I would direct you to the sources listed at the bottom of the wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
Here is an interesting quote:
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century."
Source: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
The Artic Archipeligo is Canada's. Ask permission first. Despite what the American government may think, there is no international waterway through the Artic Archipeligo.
The Canadian claim doesn't extend all the way to the Northern coast of Siberia and Russia, does it? TFA specifically says they're not using the "Northwest Passage". And WTF would the US Government care about a territorial dispute involving Germany, Russia and Canada anyway? Especially since there's no mention in TFA (or TFB) about Canada at all.
I am not a crackpot.
If I lived in a country like Russia (or Canada, Norway, Finland, etc, for that matter), I'd be an enthusiastic supporter of anything that might even possibly tip the balance of the climate towards Global Warming for exactly these sorts of reasons. I mean, if you owned the largest frozen mass of land anywhere, why even care about such a cause?
http://www.beanleafpress.com
The Artic Archipeligo is Canada's. Ask permission first. Despite what the American government may think, there is no international waterway through the Artic Archipeligo.
This has nothing to do with US imperialism, despite your attempt to make it sound bad. The article merely mentions the possibility of passage through Canadian waters. If the ice melts and there is some benefit to its economy, Canada will work something out with its neighbors to allow access.
Regardless, passage through Canadian waters wasn't the main focus of the article...
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Imagine the benefits to the environment if we could just figure out a way to melt the ice caps completely. Our greenhouse emissions would plummet!
Of course they would. Melt the ice caps, flood the most populated areas of the planet, and bingo - mankind's greenhouse gas emissions drop dramatically!
The arctic ice cap has ALREADY displaced the amount of water it currently contains. Melting it would have no additional effect on sea level. I, for one, welcome the removal of that troublesome ice sheet up north. For too long, the Suez and Panama Canals have stifled global competition. Just think of the fuel savings!
Bearded Dragon
Mod parent up.
I'm personally sick of being told how $POINTLESS_MEASURE will solve GW at either a cost of billions or by making everyone's lives worse, with unproven potential benefit, but the real solutions are being left to wither (at least in the UK).
Banning plastic carrier bags, putting up a few wind turbines or raising the tax on X won't do anything. If AGW was really concerning them they would just build a load of nuclear power capacity (or at least a big tidal barrage) and be done with it. At the moment all they can do is hope that people will start to 'save power' (they won't) and desperately try to come up with ways to tax electric/alternative cars to hell, removing any cost advantage they might ever have over petrol/gas power (top tip: fuel currently costs $6.31/USGal in the UK, the gov't is trying to apply similar levels of taxation to electric/hydrogen/whatever cars in the future using GPS-based 'Road Pricing')
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
That panel of "scientists" is all about pushing the global conspiracy of man-made global warming, instead of acknowledging the solar activity cycle that has already been shown to follow the ups and downs of Earth's temp. Global Warming is a socialist conspiracy to thwart industry and send us back into the dark ages.
Mars is suffering global warming, too. Gee...I wonder why? And Pluto. Seems every planet in the Sol System is warming up. What is the one thing they all have in common? Al Gore invented them. No, wait, could it be the solar activity cycle?
Bearded Dragon
The arctic ice cap has ALREADY displaced the amount of water it currently contains. Melting it would have no additional effect on sea level. I, for one, welcome the removal of that troublesome ice sheet up north. For too long, the Suez and Panama Canals have stifled global competition. Just think of the fuel savings!
Good thing we don't have to worry about all of that ice covering Greenland and the Antarctic displacing ocean water ... oh. Wait a minute.
The OP of the message I replied to made no reference to the ice sheets on land.
It also didn't exclude the ice caps on land. It just said "ice caps", which I would imagine includes both kinds.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Think of the Darien Gap. It has been navigated by vehicles, rather special purpose ones. If you read that it was now being served by a regular truck route, you might suspect things had changed a bit.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The OP of the message I replied to made no reference to the ice sheets on land.
Next time, when you think you are about to be witty. Stop. Because you aren't.
Which part of "ice caps" confused you into thinking the OP was only talking about the Arctic?
Soviet's have regularly sailed through the Northern Sea Route in summer since, at least, the middle of the last century. There is some great prose written with such sailing as a backdrop, in fact (in Russian, not sure about translations).
The sailing was not easy and the airplanes were occasionally required to investigate movement of ice-fields. At the beginning and the end of the season, the ships were organized in convoys, that were headed by icebreakers. (USSR even had a few nuclear-powered ones, first one built in 1959). But in the middle of the summer a regular ship could make the trip on its own...
Maybe, there is less ice there now, but it is not like the trip has only just become possible.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Because in the dispute over the ownership of the waters in the Arctic the Canadians and Russians each claim various pieces, while the American government claims that it's international waters and anybody can take a share of the resources. The GP is siding with Canada and claiming that the Arctic is Canadian waters, not international waters as claimed by the Americans.
Surely we are smarter now than nature... we could just take over everything and tweek things as we need.
What could possibly go wrong?
Climate myths: It's all a conspiracy
Climate myths: Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans
Climate myths: Mars and Pluto are warming too
Why do these discredited myths get moderated up on Slashdot again and again? Seriously.
Climate myths: The cooling after 1940 shows CO2 does not cause warming
Climate myths: The lower atmosphere is cooling, not warming
Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998
I'm surprised you didn't mention Mars and Pluto.
I wonder why these discredited myths keep getting moderated up on Slashdot time and time again - it's almost as if there's a conspiracy to make skeptics look ill-informed.
You're right. I am a member of this global conspiracy. We figure that the research grants are going to be worth more than this whole 'economy' thing.
I'd tell you more, but I've got to run to a meeting. You don't think this conspiracy shit just happens by itself, do you? It seems like every week there's another mess of retarded Action Items. Distribute these talking points, falsify that data, coordinate every climate scientist all over the planet. It's hell trying to get anything done, even without people like you posting the truth about us all over slashdot.
Oh, and I wouldn't go anywhere. The black helicopters will be there shortly. Did you ever wonder what was happening to those "vanishing" polar bears up in the Arctic? You'd be amazed at how well they take to SWAT work.
Have fun at your re-education camp!
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This sounds like a troll, but I'll bite.
Your examples are easily refutable, yet never seem to go away on the conservative talk show circuit.
Pluto is warming up because it is on a highly-elliptical orbit, and has just recently passed the point at which it is closest to the Sun. So it is expected that it be going through a warming phase. And a little bit of logic would tell you that since Pluto is so much farther away from the Sun than the Earth, if energy output from the Sun were responsible for warming on Pluto, the effect on Earth would be many magnitudes greater (i.e. it would have to be hot enough on Earth to melt lead before you'd notice an appreciable temperature difference on Pluto).
Mars is indeed warming up slightly, but that can be explained by Milankovitch cycles, and Mars is much more susceptible to climate change because it does not have any large moons to stabilize it's rotation axis.
Conservatives jumped on the news that Jupiter was experiencing "climate change". But it only takes two minutes to find out that the climate change being talked about is a shift in temperature (warmer near the equator, colder near the poles). Jupiter is not warming overall. Of course, that little clarification doesn't seem to make it into news stories from Fox News.
And there are 5 other planets (and many many moons) in the solar system which show no signs of warming.
Sorry...but anthropomorphic global warming is likely true. Without any CO2 in the atmosphere, Earth would be entirely covered in ice. And therefore, you cannot double CO2 levels in the atmosphere (which could happen by the end of this century) without expecting some effects. And you cannot deny that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere are not the result of human activity (we've burned approximately 1 trillion barrels of oil so far....do you really think that would have no effect?).
And even if AGW is all bunk, so what? We should be trying to reduce our oil consumption and investing in alternate energy for other reasons, like national security, and the fact that we've very likely reached, or are about to reach peak oil production, and that future oil price spikes are going to be the norm from now on.
I would caution you against using the periodic solar activity claim to back your argument. This idea has been injected into the public dialog as a farcical talking point and is lacking in evidence. If you would like to examine a great source of information and a healthy debate, check out: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=2&t=515&&a=18 I'd also recommend Thomas Friendman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, which very clearly outlines many important issues and facts connected to climate change.
The Arctic Ocean is now largely clear of ice, heralding vast new business opportunities, President Sarah Palin announced today.
The famed North-West Passage is now permanently navigable, with huge shipping volumes between Arctic nations. "We're considering just building a highway straight across," said Mrs Palin, "though those long desert drives can be dangerous to health without air conditioning."
Tourists have been flocking to Alaska and northern Canada to get away from the boiling oceans and sulphurous atmosphere around Hawaii. The Nunavut Tourist Bureau has shipped 60,000 swimming polar bear shirts this month alone. "It's also clear," said Palin, "that the bears have no business claiming to be endangered when there's so many jobs in tourism for them."
Oil drilling in Alaska will also be much easier, and will of course further the conditions leading to this Arctic economic boom. "No it won't," said Palin. "What are you talking about?"
"I'll say one thing for them evilutionist climate change conspirators," giggled Palin, "their hard work to take away the ice and make it look like they were right has done wonders for us good and decent folk."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
To think of all that effort the US went through during the Cold War to deny Russia any good year-round ice-free ports.
Now, thanks to our profligarate lifestyles, Russia is about to have hundreds of them. I hope they at least thank us...
as we go north.
Being warm-blooded, we don't need heat. In fact we get problems getting rid of it (sweating wastes valuable water and minerals).
And we can't farm desserts nor steep hillsides and the only way to get food out of a mountainside is to grow goats on it. And they're partial to water too...
Pests love CO2 too. For corn, the natural poison they produce in their leaves is reduced under high CO2 loads. The beetle eating their leaves loves this idea.
Cassava produces toxins under high CO2 loads. African staple diet is Cassava. People are already dying from the toxins there.
"It's been 1 hour, 3 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Oh dear...
You do realize that at some point, people don't repeat known information? The sun's energy output that you quote is the sun's energy output as averaged over known cycles.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think the concern about the arctic ice is not that it will raise sea levels (by itself it won't), but rather, that losing them will reduce the earth's albino, or reflectivity, which would accelerate the warming.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Right. They "average" significantly higher than the expected sea level. So only PARTS of our highly expensive coastal real estate will end up underwater. That shouldn't be any problem at all. Not mention the fact that much of the densely populated and very low-lying nation of Bangladesh, for example, will end up submerged. And this:
Except that the great plains, the breadbasket of the US, is predicted to become significantly drier... to the point where agriculture would become essentially impossible over large areas currently being farmed. But that's OK, Greenland is going to become very productive!
You could have asked Google before discounting his claim entirely. After about a 5 minutes' search, I found at least two resources of note. Here's a blurb you might find interesting:
Although I was not able to find any references that the Vikings made use of a northern route into Siberia, the general understanding is that a warm period occurred during this time that would have (potentially) opened up parts of the northern sea routes to curious travelers.
Naturally, this doesn't fit in well with the notion that never before has enough warming occurred to have accomplished this. It's telling that the parent is rated +5, insightful when he could have spent a couple of minutes (just as I did) in effort to disprove the original poster's claim.
I'm not suggesting whether the original poster is correct as I haven't found evidence to prove it, but near as I can tell from the resources available from Google, it appears he may very well be correct.
He who has no