Global Warming May Open Northwest Passage

(AP)  Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.

The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.

Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.

"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.

Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected - but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.

A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.

Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.

Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.

Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack - sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.

Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.

"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.

"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year," Ragner said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes."

"Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route," he said, "but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there."

The opening observed this week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked.

[my2centss]

Know what happened when there was not enough CO2? Global cooling(Ice Age). Just think, your mother was full of it, when she said you cannot heat the whole outdoors.

[octavianfdlr]

raven1451 pointed out the (natural) political aspect of warming climates, whether anthropogenic or not. This aspect has been seen before. Remember how the Vikings exploded into Europe about a thousand years ago? That was during the Medieval Optimum, a warm period that the Intergovernmental Panel likes to deny.

The Medieval Optimum made it easier to live up North. (Wonder why a former Senator from Tennessee dislikes global warming?) The population in Scandinavia exploded. Then, when the Little Ice Age began, the Vikings became politically less important. The Viking settlements in Greenland died off.

PS: The Medieval Optimum was not caused by sport-utility vehicles in North America.

[hawksprings]

Think of the greenhouse emissions that will be saved by using this new Northwest Passage versus going all the way down through the Panama Canal!

You liberals are always so negative!

...

[ianlou]

When the NeoCons figure out that they will make more money fighting Global Warming than the are making contributing to it, They will admit that it does exist and they will start criticizing the Democrats for how little they have accomplished so far in fighting it.

Rush will explain away his previous position by saying "Global warming came into existence the same year Haliburton discovered a way to make cars run on C02 gases."

[raven1451]

This ice opening is terrible news. Not only for environmental, but political as well. The last thing we need is the worlds leading countries to start fighting over the north pole. This is article was awful as well. It presents global warming as a good thing. If you re read it , it supports the idea that this new evidence is a good thing. Easier way of exporting and importing freight, lower amount of fuel used, less money blah blah blah, when in reality you now have a huge problem. No polar bears = large amounts of seals = no fish, and if we cant hunt and eat the seals, what are we going to eat ? oil..

[roach9703]

The fact that we have a growing pollution problem is clear from brown fogs in Eastern Asia to the awful car pollution problem in Northern Virginia. So, we need to develop alternative fuels and find better ways to use the fuels we have. However, the complexity of weather and climate is enormous. The argument over global warming may be a waste of time The Percent gas of the total atmosphere for carbon monoxide is quite small.
Let us zero on the items we see, growing acid levels in soils of the world, growing rates of asthma among chidren, visible signs of growing accumulations of soot on buildings etc, These are the most important needs for changing what fuels we use how we convert these to energy and how we conserve energy.

[rushlimpdrug]

Posted by CharlesDJohn
dumbazz, your own post proves errors abound.
No global warming? The proof is?
Yes global warming? The proof is?
Obviously, the damm research was in ERROR.
To bad those smart idiots were to stupid to ERROR on the safe side.
Same is true with global warming.
To bad people are to selfish to error on the safe side.
meanwhile, enjoy the ski slopes.

[middleman8]

The Northwest passage will be something else for countries to fight over, oil and minerals, here we go again.

[goldesprit]

Once we get used to the idea that, because of the melt, increased ship travel and shipping in these areas is cool (excuse the pun)-- we will get busy as ants breaking up more ice and doing other things to promote short term commerce.
%u201CIt won''t be ice-free all year around and it won''t be a stable route all year,%u201D
--but apparently we can wish it would or could be...

[actornaught]

Even w acknowledges global warming is happening, only an inbred ''**** can disagree now...