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Comments: 373 +- Technology: Northern Sea Route Through Arctic Becomes a Reality on Wednesday July 29 2009, @07:10AM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Wednesday July 29 2009, @07:10AM
from the admiral-peary-i-presume dept.
from the admiral-peary-i-presume dept.
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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."
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Yeah right (Score:5, Funny)
A wonderful, magical route that can turn kilometers into nanometers?
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Informative)
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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.)
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Re: (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
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So Global Worming?
And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:5, Funny)
Please, this news is worthless compared to other coming attractions. Just think about the vast amount of land that is working its way towards being tropical climate beach front property! All those rich people living in the current beach front property will lose their places and be forced to buy new places! You should buy up some land in those middle regions now while it is still cheap. I for one welcome our ice caps melting! Travel is expensive so bringing the ocean to me is a much more cost effective vacation solution.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
All those rich people living in the current beach front property will lose their places and be forced to buy new places!
There actually are a lot of very interesting transformations that a warming earth could bring us, many of which are arguably positive (making much more of Canada, Russia and Scandinavia accessible to large-scale habitation; increased access to existing tundra for growing; etc.) However, this isn't actually one of the likely outcomes. Unless the IPCCC's initial estimates for sea level rise are radically off, 10-50cm of sea level rise isn't going to be forcing any but the most absurdly exposed to move inland.
Re:And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to burst your bubble, but "our habitat", of large mammals in general becomes actually much better (esp. much larger, but also easier to farm) at a higher global temperature. Lush forests in greenland house a hell of a lot more creatures, and humans, than ice valleys and gletsjers.
There are probably disasters that global warming causes, if it indeed happens in any significant way (ie. not like it's currently happening), but there are many good things too. The last "globally warmed" climate saw a rich civilization in Greenland, with huge orchards and wineries, lush forests, rich wildlife, etc. The same goes for a sizeable part of Siberia. With but a few degrees temperature gain, life there (and it's a fucking huge place) will become much, much easier.
The same goes for quite a few spots on the southern hemisphere. There is also the little tidbit that global warming stops desertification, and makes e.g. the sahara [guardian.co.uk] lose ground. The advantages of that can hardly be overstated.
But, of course, coastal cities might be in for a world of hurt (although given that holland has an average elevation of -2 meter, whereas the worst US coastal city has an average elevation of +3 meter, and something like New York has over 5, the absolute worst case sea level rise of 95 centimeters by 2100 [howstuffworks.com] should not be a problem for any US coastal city, or for Holland for that matter. A more problematic city is Venice, but whether or not the sea level rises, we will have to move Venice or give it to the sea in less than 150 years anyway).
We are warmblooded mammals. The reason we beat the dinosaurs was the fact that dinosaurs don't do well at all in colder climates. Mammals on the other hand, can live in temperatures as low as -40 degrees celcius on average. At current global temperature, most reptiles are limited to tropical climates. The larger reptiles are even limited to warmer-than-their-surroundings rivers in very warm climates. Not that a 6 degree rise will allow crocodiles to live in Europe, but they might colonize the mediterranean coast and a few other rivers than the nile.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Sure Greenland and Siberia might become great agricultural centers. Go tell that to the midwest farmers. Furthermore, there ARE negative changes that will happen. Part of Siberia might become open for farming, but a good chunk of it will turn into a permanent bog. Diseases and vermin will reach parts that have been safe from them so far. West Nile is one, and the boring beetle is another.
The point is not that global climate change is going to destroy us. The point is that it is change that will cost us an e
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!
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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, dur
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also, a warmer more tropical climate benefits the deadliest creature on earth - the mosquito.
Re:And they said that GW would be a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't news.
This isn't the first time a northern route was used.
The Vikings, prior to the ~1250 onset of global cooling, routinely used a northern route to reach Siberia and sometimes even China during the 900s, 1000s, and 1100s.
You're going to have to provide some sort of citation for that, I'm afraid. Better, that is, than this one:
http://www.smirking.com/cms/gallery/signs/scadinavian.jpg.html [smirking.com]
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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:
Ice melting or technological advance ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not the boat design, except indirectly (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Hardly news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Soviet's have regularly sailed through the Northern Sea Route [wikipedia.org] in summer since, at least, the middle of the last century. There is some great prose [konetsky.spb.ru] 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 [wikipedia.org]. (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.
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The perfect way to minimize our carbon footprint! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:The perfect way to minimize our carbon footprin (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The perfect way to minimize our carbon footprin (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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Re:The perfect way to minimize our carbon footprin (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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Re:The perfect way to minimize our carbon footprin (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The perfect way to minimize our carbon footprin (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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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.
Hope they pack a few rifles. (Score:3, Insightful)
Beluga Fraternity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why Russians love Global Warming (Score:5, Insightful)
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Slightly warmer MIGHT be okay, but it's a slippery slope and there's currently no end in sight to the warming. Not good.
No, it's not. First, the earth has been warmer than even the most dire GW predictions. Next, the hockey stick model has been disproved repeatedly. Finally, the earth has seen GW several times before. Every time the earth has seen an ice age, it has ended due to GW. Never has any of the earth's warming cycles ended in a "slippery slope" scenario or caused some sort of runaway warming loop.
The fact is that earth has heated and cooled all on its own for billions of years. For that matter, the earth is al
Re:Why Russians love Global Warming (Score:4, Funny)
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Arctic ice melt heralds vast opportunities (Score:4, Funny)
The Arctic Ocean is now largely clear of ice, heralding vast new business opportunities [today.com], 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."
Whoops (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Re:but but but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:but but but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 deforestati
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.
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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.
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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 li
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.
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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.
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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
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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!
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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.
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Re:Just remember who's Artic it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Why bring up the Americans? Isn't this a German company?
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Re:Just remember who's Artic it is (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Just remember who's Artic it is (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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