Impassable Northwest Passage Open For First Time In History 528
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.'"
Maybe, maybe not (Score:3, Interesting)
"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."
Re:A non-passable passage? (Score:1, Interesting)
It seems as though the article defines "history" to be the last 30 years, since we've had satellites monitoring it. Doesn't seem nearly as amazing to me. I'm sure the people who published the article knew that they were being deceptive at the time (even if they are technically correct), but real headlines don't cause the hysteria they are seeking.
Re:Arctic minimum, antarctic maximum (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still a global warming sceptic. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions and the like. I'm just not totally convinved the weather patterns and carbon emissions are intertwined as some of the figures look.
Correlation is not causation.
Re:Poorly worded (Score:5, Interesting)
Try Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion map [bfi.org] for an interesting view of the world...
Re:Misleading info on Polar Bears (Score:4, Interesting)
Polar bears have historically required pack ice to breed and hunt. As the ice melts more and more bears drown. Their numbers are in decline. Officially they're listed as vulnerable, but I believe later this year that status will be downgraded to endangered. Hopefully they'll be able to adapt their behavior to the new, warmer conditions of the arctic. But I wouldn't expect that.
There's plenty of scientific research on this subject. Granted, Wikipedia isn't the best reference. But it will give you pointers to look further: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear [wikipedia.org]
Re:Misleading info on Polar Bears (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Winston Smith (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they're different species (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your version of history has some merit, but it's not the complete story. Streetcar lines were unpopular once a certain percentage of the traffic was automobile traffic. They were always in the fricking way. Static 'rail' lines have that problem in mixed traffic. And people like their freedom to come and go with cars.
For a long time I was an inner-city enthusiast and happy to not own a car and get around on public transit. Now, I'm sorta burned out on living all bunched in a crowded space. I like walking out to my small orchard of apple trees. I didn't 'sell out' to get my present circumstances, mind you. I just moved outta the city to an area of the country where the money from my two-bedroom attached townhouse (a fourplex) bought me a 100+ year old country house and 5 acres.
The countries where Americans would visit to see how well Mass Transit works are highly populated crowded places.
Questions like 'what is better for humanity' are complex ethical issues. What is 'freedom'? Is 'freedom' a social setting where one is 'freed' from having to make choices, i.e. where you can't even paint your house the color you like (townhouses)? There is a balance to arrive at.
The point I started out trying to take a stab at in the above and drifted from is that we can't blame a 'conspiracy' of corporations for the reduction in mass transit in the US. People didn't like it, it went away.
That doesn't sound like productive behavior at all. You're gonna throw pie in the face of some marketing dudes at GM from 1950?
Re:Cooler! (eh, ok, perhaps *warmer*...) (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest, I don't think that humanity's situation in general will really ever start looking up until the population decreases dramatically from it's current, unsustainable level. I just don't see how we can sustain the current growth rate -- or even the current level frozen in place -- particularly if the petroleum (which is a main contributor to the world's food supply) runs out. Eventually, you're going to hit a hard limit; maybe it's food, maybe it's energy, maybe it's environmental damage. Any of those things could cause a catastrophic population collapse (as could disease).
But I'm not a pessimist. I think there's a good chance that as a species, we can avoid either a catastrophic collapse, while also not having to devolve to agrarianism; modern Western societies have only had two or three generations of reliable birth control, and only a few more of universal education and literacy; the impact on those societies has been immense. If we can spread both the technology of birth control and the ideas that people (women in particular) are more than simply reproduction machines to all corners of the globe in the next few generations, I think we can stay ahead of declining resources.
Re:And yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider another glacier - a really big one with a lot of ice behind it and a large height difference and/or steep slopes. Something like this moves faster. When it gets warmer it will move faster again. These are the glaciers that are advancing.
Unfortuantely we have people that really just want to win an argument that just take the amount of advance and retreat of a lot of glaciers and average it without considering why. They are completely ignoring the temperature measurements in those locations since they are pretending to use a glacier as a thermometer instead of the real thermometers that may actually be there.
As for the warm is good argument - I recommend talking to a farmer. Whether it is a El Nino or La Nina effect in the Pacific in a paticular year is enough to drive farmers backrupt off the land in some areas - they know about warm weather in the wrong spot.
The Bowhead whales have a longer record..... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [www.pcsn.ca]
Anyhow, I guess the two whale stocks will have some great stories to tell after all these years.
Re:Cooler! (eh, ok, perhaps *warmer*...) (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Meh (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:By years of study in the 30s (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Poorly worded (Score:1, Interesting)
Canada is signatory to UNCLOS. Even if the international community acknowledges Canadas right those islands, it just means that it's Canadian archipelago and thus part of territorial sea, not internal water. That means right of innocent passage applies.
See: United Nations Convention On the Law Of the Sea [un.org].
Re:Slightly misunderstanding the story (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, the Haida band, who are the indigenous First Nation of Haida Gwaii (the archipelago which you non-PC foreigners are probably more familar with as "the Queen Charlotte Islands") display such a number of cultural similarities to the Norsemen that many reasonable people find it less of a stretch to presume that there was contact between them than to assume a remarkable cascade of coincidences. Let us take an example, boat design.
""Yakutat," or "Northern-style" canoes include a variety of design forms, including a characteristic curve and swelling near the bow. The prow of the canoe gracefully curves up from the water and can be adorned by elaborate carvings."
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/expeditions/treasure_fossil/Treasures/Haida_Canoe/canoe.gif [amnh.org]
Now, contrary to the learned discourse above, these are not actually characteristic of Haida design. There is one other culture that designed its ocean-going vessels with those same "characteristic" traits. Care to guess what that culture was?
http://www.geocities.com/dragar.geo/WSP/Pix/longship.gif [geocities.com]
Those are just the first two images Google search came up with for each; if you look into it further, you'll find that the similarities are more striking than those two make apparent. Striking enough that when Haida/Tlingit take their canoes on cultural exchanges to Europe, they constantly get questions along the lines of "why did you make a longship out of a single tree trunk and paint it funny?", as Europeans just assume that the design is a conscious imitation of the Norse, not their own.
Also, the Haida are physiologically distinct, rather dramatically so in fact, from every other American aboriginal culture; they are taller, whiter, grow facial hair, and produce significant quantities of brunettes and redheads.
"Marchand also described the Haidas of Queen Charlotte Islands whom he visited in 1791. He found them not differing materially in stature from Europeans, better proportioned and better formed than the Sitkans and without the gloomy and wild look of the latter. Their color he found did not differ from that of Frenchmen, and several were less swarthy "than the inhabitants of our country places' (Edward L. Keithahn, MONUMENTS IN CEDAR: The Authentic Story of the Totem Pole, Bonanza books, New York 1971:19-23, emphases supplied)."
This is not consistent with Haida mixing with Asian genetic pools, or any other Western North American genetic pool, or hell any other race bordering the entire Pacific for that matter. On the other hand, this is remarkably suggestive of significant admixture with a Scandinavian genetic pool, yes?
Anyhoo, if you'd like to look further into the theory that the "Vinland" of the sagas is actually British Columbia, specifically the Cowichan Valley of Vancouver Island, here's a page for you:
http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb4g1ev.html [spirasolaris.ca]
Actually living in British Columbia, I can attest to the plausibility of all the little details. The one that really struck me was his identification of the Oregon grape with the always-problematic 'grapes' of the sagas. As pointed out on this page, the presentation in the sagas does seem facially invalid:
"As for the grapes in the Sagas, James Robert Enterline wrote in VIKING AMERICA (1972):
In the Saga of Eirik the Red, after Thorhall the Hunter went off by himself, some writers have inferred that he found grapes and ate of them, becoming intoxicated, for he was discovered on a steep crag where:" he lay gazing up into the air with wide-open mouth and nostrils, scratching and pincing himself and muttering something
The corresp
Re:A non-passable passage? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to your wiki article, we have ice core samples going back 800,000 years. Not ice core samples from the Northwest Passage area, but simply ice core samples. The primary temperature proxy in ice core samples is isotopic concentration within the trapped gases. The trapped gases within an ice core sample tend to be younger than the ice itself, and can vary in age of anywhere from a few hundred to several (6+) thousand years. Additionally, the arguments I've seen posited before is that the temperature analogues are for GLOBAL mean temperature, not local temperature. Which means it's pretty much impossible to say with any degree of credibility whether or not the Northwest Passage has ever been open, or has been closed continuously over the past x thousand years. We just don't have the data at a fine enough granularity.
I'm not a global warming skeptic, per se. I am skeptical of the fact that it's taken on cult like status, with the cult like tendency to burn the heretics. Religions shouldn't masquerade as science, and good science can withstand a little skepticism.
Re:Time to buy (Score:4, Interesting)
Not in any great hurry ; in theory, the opening of the Arctic Ocean could make development and/ or extraction of minerals somewhat cheaper in the immediate coastal regions. But once you're more than a few tens of miles from the coast, then you're going to find that the costs of building rail lines or pipelines (depending on if you're talking about minerals or oil) gets up to the level where it's just as cheap in the long run to go overland with rail. And that's not going to be a quick option. Then again, building port facilities isn't quick either, particularly if you've got no port to bring the building materials for building your port.