Northern Sea Route Through Arctic Becomes a Reality 373
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."
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ice melting or technological advance ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:but but but.. (Score:3, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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 [ucar.edu]
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
Lowercase "nm" is nanometer. NM, Nm or nmi are appropriate for nautical mile. Neither of which are to be confused with the newton-meter, which is N m. (N.B. there is a space between N and m for newton-meter.)
Here we go again! (Score:3, Informative)
Climate myths: It's all a conspiracy [newscientist.com]
Climate myths: Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans [newscientist.com]
Climate myths: Mars and Pluto are warming too [newscientist.com]
Why do these discredited myths get moderated up on Slashdot again and again? Seriously.
More discredit climate myths! (Score:4, Informative)
Climate myths: The cooling after 1940 shows CO2 does not cause warming [newscientist.com]
Climate myths: The lower atmosphere is cooling, not warming [newscientist.com]
Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998 [newscientist.com]
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.
Re:but but but.. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Yeah right (Score:1, Informative)
The article says it "saves fuel" and you're saying it merely turns distance in yet another weird medieval unit.
While I'm usually all for metric units, nautical miles actually make sense. One nmi is one minute arc of latitude (on average), so it is quite usefull for navigation.
Re:More discredit climate myths! (Score:5, Informative)
people like you keep providing links to 'discredit' them that are complete BS.
Ah, yes, It's all a big conspiracy! And New Scientist is in on it! [newscientist.com]
In fact, if you had read beyond the first few paragraphs you would have answered your own question:
As a result, the planet is gaining as much heat from the sun as usual but losing less heat every year as greenhouse gas levels rise...
How do we know? Because the oceans are getting warmer.
and:
Since the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere
Re:More discredit climate myths! (Score:5, Informative)
The global surface temperature is a part of the bigger picture - just because the oceans store the majority of heat, this does not imply that the global surface temperature is useless. As for the "Hockey Stick": Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong [newscientist.com], quotes:
The conclusion that we are making the world warmer certainly does not depend on reconstructions of temperature prior to direct records.
And:
Most researchers would agree that while the original hockey stick can - and has - been improved in a number of ways, it was not far off the mark. Most later temperature reconstructions fall within the error bars of the original hockey stick. Some show far more variability leading up to the 20th century than the hockey stick, but none suggest that it has been warmer at any time in the past 1000 years than in the last part of the 20th century.
The "Hockey Stick" was investigated by the 2006 report of the US National Academy of Science, which found:
the key conclusion is the same: it's hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 years.
Of course, if you believe that the US National Academy of Science is in on the conspiracy, then this is what you'd expect them to say!
Re:And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:3, Informative)
also, a warmer more tropical climate benefits the deadliest creature on earth - the mosquito.
A great example of lying with statistics (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Re:More discredit climate myths! (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you need to brush up on your reading comprehension and science skills. The sentence does not undermine surface temperature as a valid metric. It is simply pointing out that because year-to-year variability is driven by heat exchange between the atmosphere and the oceans, there will be noise in this metric.
Or, to put it even more simply, you gotta look at the long-term trend and not just a few years.
Re:And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:3, Informative)
Current global temperatures are, to the best available evidence, both higher and rising faster than they have ever been in the time in which there has been any human civilization. Certainly, during the Medieval Warm Period (a period of somewhat elevated global average temperature--though cooler than the current period--and particularly elevated average temperatures in the North Atlantic region) Greenland had a milder climate, though it wasn't anything like the paradise you paint. But, even if it was, Greenland isn't the world. Global change that makes arctic regions more livable also makes the places where people actually live now, and have built agricultural, industrial, and other infrastructure, less livable.
The source you point to ends with this note: Peter Cox, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset, said: "This looks like an interesting study. However, the conclusion that Sahellian rainfall will increase under climate change must be considered as highly uncertain. Models differ in their predictions, with about as many showing decreases in rainfall as increases."
The source you point to doesn't support that that is the "absolute worst case" (which, in fact, it suggests is a couple orders of magnitude worse, at something over 68 meters), but that it was viewed as the worst likely case in a 1995 IPCC report, and its worth noting that more recent studies have suggested that the IPCC reports estimates were too conservative, e.g., this study [nature.com], which concludes "Using MIS-5e to gain insight into the potential rates of sea-level rise due to further ice-volume reduction in a warming world, our data provide an observational context that underscores the plausibility of recent, unconventionally high, projections of 1.0 +/- 0.5 m sea-level rise by AD 2100."
Re:Yeah right (Score:3, Informative)
What the fuck are you talking about? We use real money here.
Why I just made a kayak load of moose nuggets selling walrus tusks and baby seal furs on Ebay
Google it... (Score:3, Informative)
You could have asked Google before discounting his claim entirely. After about a 5 minutes' search, I found at least two [lewrockwell.com] resources [google.com] 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.
Re:And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:2, Informative)
Why do you think Russia is called Russia?
It was settled by a tribe of Vikings called "the Rus" circa 850 A.D. who sailed far into the ICEFREE northern sea along Siberia, and traded silk with the Chinese. Not until 1250 A.D. did the planet cool-off and close the northern route.
That's why I said the article is wrong - this German ship is not the first time the northern sea route has been used. It's merely the first time since the last global warming spell (200 to 1250 A.D.). But nobody ever talks about that. Nobody talks about the vineyards the Romans grew in Britannia, or that they crossed Alps that had no ice on them, because it's inconvenient to acknowledge that global warming is sometimes natural, rather than manmade.
"An Inconvenient Truth" indeed.