Melting Arctic Ice Opens New Ship Frontier

Rapid Thaw Creates Navigable Ocean In Extreme North - An Area Rich In Natural Resources

(AP)  Rapidly melting ice on Alaska's Arctic is opening up a new navigable ocean in the extreme north, allowing oil tankers, fishing vessels and even cruise ships to venture into a realm once trolled mostly by indigenous hunters.

The Coast Guard expects so much traffic that it opened two temporary stations on the nation's northernmost waters, anticipating the day when an ocean the size of the contiguous United States could be ice-free for most of the summer.

"We have to prepare for the world coming to the Arctic," said Rear Adm. Gene Brooks, commander of the Coast Guard's Alaska district.

Scientists say global warming has melted the polar sea ice each summer to half the size it was in the 1960s, opening vast stretches of water. Last year, it thawed to its lowest level on record.

The rapid melting has raised speculation that Canada's Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could one day become a regular shipping lane. And there is a huge potential for natural resources in a region that may contain as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.

But scientists caution that it could be centuries before the Arctic is completely ice-free all year round.

Still, conservative estimates indicate the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in the summer within 20 years, although some scientists believe that will occur much sooner.

As it thaws, the receding ice has made ocean travel along Alaska's northern coast increasingly alluring, but ships can still be trapped by ice.

Earlier in August, three oil industry vessels bound for Canada became stuck in ice about 60 miles north of Point Barrow. The Coast Guard sent the icebreaker Healy to help, but before it could arrive from 300 miles away, the wind shifted and pushed the ice apart, freeing the vessels.

"They were able to get away," Brooks said. "The problem with this ice is it's very unpredictable."

Because of such risks, the Coast Guard established temporary bases this month in Barrow, the country's highest-latitude town, and at the North Slope's Prudhoe Bay, the nation's largest oil field. The bases will operate for a few weeks while Guard officials evaluate the need for the agency's services.

The Northwest Passage is also increasingly popular with tourists.

Chuck Cross has been leading excursions to the North Pole with his Bend, Ore.-based Polar Cruises since 1991, and he's noticed a big change over the years.

"It's amazing to me when I go to the pole how thin the ice is, huge open spots of water in some areas," he said. "Before, you spent more time getting there and more time in the ice. We'd have helicopters looking for breaks in the water for us."

The thaw has added urgency to the race among neighboring nations to claim a piece of the North Pole's resources. The U.S. is compiling mapping data that could bolster any claims for drilling rights.

Many countries have launched scientific expeditions, hoping to take advantage of a provision in international law that allows nations to claim rights over their continental shelf beyond the normal boundary of 200 nautical miles, if the claim can be supported with geologic evidence.

The Coast Guard is concerned that the increasing volume of ship traffic brings greater potential for oil spills, lost boaters and other mishaps.

"We have to ask ourselves whether we're prepared for these ships coming to our shores," said Mead Treadwell, who chairs the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He testified in Congress this summer about the need to build new Coast Guard icebreakers to better protect traffic in its Arctic waterways.

Before the Coast Guard opened its base in Barrow, the nearest station where ships could stop for fuel and provisions was Alaska's Kodiak Island, almost 1,000 miles away.

Richard Glenn, an official with Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a Barrow-based company that represents the business interests of Alaska Natives, said the Coast Guard's arrival in his community is "like bread to starving people."

"When everything goes wrong - fall-time storms, tragic loss of vessels, lost people on land - there's nothing that's ever been so far away than the Coast Guard."

The town of 4,000 people has welcomed the agency and even supplied hangers for two helicopters.

But the warming climate has also disrupted an ancient way of life for many in the region, particularly hunters who use the floating ice as platforms for hunting marine mammals like bowhead whales and walrus. The same ice is vital to survival of polar bears, which are the first species declared as threatened because of climate change.

Snow also thaws much earlier each spring than in the past, meaning hunters can't travel as far along the tundra after it turns soggy. And the late arrival of fall affects weather patterns, creating dangerous sea currents and strong winds.

To adjust, Arctic communities hold later hunts, take smaller whales and share their food with others who have less to eat.

"It's affecting our hunting practices in more ways than one," said Harry Brower Jr., chairman of the Barrow-based Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. "If you take a step back and look at it, you definitely see the changes."

The head of the Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen, carefully avoids the debate over climate change. It's too early to say what the Coast Guard's future operations here will be, but Allen is certain his agency will have a key role as the Arctic landscape is transformed by warmer temperatures.

"I'm agnostic to the science and the debate about what the cause is," he said. "All I know is there's water where there didn't used to be."

[tulcak]

"Scientists say global warming has melted the polar sea ice each summer to half the size it was in the 1960s, opening vast stretches of water. Last year, it thawed to its lowest level on record.
The rapid melting has raised speculation that Canada''s Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could one day become a regular shipping lane. And there is a huge potential for natural resources in a region that may contain as much as 25 percent of the world''s undiscovered oil and gas."
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This thinking is absolutely insane! It boggles my mind. Burning fossil fuels melts the ice with disasterous consequences to our survival on this planet...AND then we say, "Hey! The ice is gone! We can drill for more oil! Yippeeee!!"
I think its obvious at this stage of the game that we really aren''t going to make it. Are we?

[beehive21-2009]

Its called Evolution folks ,you will not last forever ,neither did the Dinos? Man kills everything that moves, including themselves ? The Earth is going to Buck man into the Universe in the future, prepare and enjoy it.

[cbs_tom]

Claim: Proof (%u201Ccanary in the coal mine%u201D) of man-induced global warming can be found in the recent,
rapid rise of Antarctic surface temperatures.
Wrong. The temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence for the CO2-induced global
warming hypothesis. In fact, it argues strongly against it.
The IPCC, environmentalists, the Media and recent Senate hearings have for years crafted the public
focus only on a tiny area of the Antarctic, the Antarctic Peninsula, a mere 2% of the total area of the
continent. That little area has experienced a recent natural warming due to interaction with the Southern
Ocean. However, the other massive 98% of the continent has been in a cooling trend over the last 35
years in complete defiance of what the man-made theory of global warming says should happen.
Antarctica. Comiso (2000) assembled and analyzed Antarctic temperature data obtained from 21
surface stations and from infrared satellites operating since 1979. They found that for all of
Antarctica, temperatures had declined by 0.080C and 0.420C per decade respectively, when assessed
via these two data sets.
Center for Science & Public Policy www.scienceandpolicy.org
I thought that I would throw this out for a little insight.

[concorde5]

We can''t drill our out of this oil problem. Buring fossil fuels is what caused global warming in the first place. So now they want to drill in the arctic so we can burn even more fossil fuels.

We can''t drill our way out of this problem and we can''t conserve our way out of this problem. The solution is a combination of increased drilling, Conservation, and finding new clean, renewable sources of energy.

[usclimey]

cbscrash: Greenland will be green again, just like it was in the 1200s, when it had cattle and arable land and when Britain produced wine. I wonder what caused their global warming back then, huh?

Posted by dukakislives

Greenland might not be green yet, but England IS producing wine again. The first wineries opened in the South about 30 years ago, already they''ve been proved viable as far north as Yorkshire.

[juwboy]

The Northwest Passage was first navigated from east to west by the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen just over 100 years ago.

The voyage took 3 years (1903-06) because the ship was trapped in the pack ice during each of the three winters.

His ship, the Gjoa, arrived in San Francisco in October 1906, about a month after the earthquake and was "parked" at the west end of Golden Gate Park, overlooking Ocean Beach, until 1972 when it was returned to Norway.

[j_mcdonald-2009]

Greenland was somewhat warmer 1000 years ago, but that was local warming, not global. Temperatures elsewhere were the same or lower.

The current warming is radically different because temperatures are going up globally--the arctic warming is just the canary in the coal mine.

[ubrew12]

A 100 mile by 100 mile array of solar thermal collectors over the desert Southwestern U.S. absorbs enough energy to power the ENTIRE U.S.: day and night. A solar thermal collector is just a mirror, a pipe, and a molten salt solution running through the pipe. The hot salt is later used to drive a steam turbine. These are all 19th century technologies: a competent plumber could build a solar thermal collector in his/her backyard using ordinary materials, and it would last for decades depending on how well built/maintained.

This country, and the world, is going to pay a HUGE cost for its oil addiction. And the cost of avoiding that fate is available at your neighborhood hardware store, and has been for a century.

[ubrew12]

Seafang said: "Who cares if there''s 25% of the world''s oil there; Nancy Pelosi isn''t going to allow the US to drill it "

Even if they did (and you know they will, Pelosi doesn''t order Canada and Russia around), all the oil in the Arctic wouldn''t last the world more than 3 years at current consumption levels.

[lovesamerica]

on Fox news there is a disturbing article about polarbears.

[tothestars2]

I know it may be a stretch, but anyone here familiar whith polar shift?

[lovesamerica]

You know what I mean

[on_alert247]

how sad that a virtualy untouched area now has to be INVADED by people. dam shame.

Posted by lovesamerica at 07:16 PM : Aug 21, 2008


Uhhh, the Inuit aren''t people?

[aerhed]

Yeah, there''s the ''fang we all know and love! Never mind that there is undeniably less ice, he''s fixated on some spurt of ice growth. By the way, the NW passage was theorized way back in the Hudson days, nobody could ever find it for real. Interestingly, a guy named Tony Dachsa? canoed the passage twice in the sixties. Took 2 years each time. He owned the Anchor bar in Grand Rapids, MI. His slide shows were awesome arcticness at it''s best.

[aerhed]

Yeah, there''s the ''fang we all know and love! Never mind that there is undeniably less ice, he''s fixated on some spurt of ice growth. By the way, the NW passage was theorized way back in the Hudson days, nobody could ever find it for real. Interestingly, a guy named Tony Dachsa? canoed the passage twice in the sixties. Took 2 years each time. He owned the Anchor bar in Grand Rapids, MI. His slide shows were awesome arcticness at it''s best.

[Syndicate]

Is Greenland green yet?

[seafang]

" Last year, it thawed to its lowest level on record. " What a crock; the record goes back to precisely 1979 when the first polar orbit satellite was launched; and also when the arctic ice had advanced to its greatest extent (remember the new ice age fears of 1975/6).

Who cares if there''s 25% of the world''s oil there; Nancy Pelosi isn''t going to allow the US to drill it because she has too much invested in T Boone Pickens wind farm scam.

I wouldn''t plan any north pole Kayak trips just yet.

And for the record ubrew12, last October/November, the ice regrew at the fastest rate ever recorded; over 58,000 square miles per day for more than ten days, and it grew to about 20% thicker than normal.

[downsteamjim]

The article failed to mention recent claims by Russia for much of the Arctic basin. They even used a sub to plant a flag on the bottom to show their claim.

[lovesamerica]

how sad that a virtualy untouched area now has to be INVADED by people. dam shame.

[cyberus-2009]

What I find amazing is that with the Northwest Passage opening comes all the cries of doom and disaster.
If the NW Passage has never been open before why was it even mentioned in the past?