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Posted on 02/27/2008 9:55:09 AM PST by gallaxyglue
Arctic Meltdown The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming Scott G. Borgerson The Arctic Ocean is melting, and it is melting fast. This past summer, the area covered by sea ice shrank by more than one million square miles, reducing the Arctic icecap to only half the size it was 50 years ago. For the first time, the Northwest Passage -- a fabled sea route to Asia that European explorers sought in vain for centuries -- opened for shipping. Even if the international community manages to slow the pace of climate change immediately and dramatically, a certain amount of warming is irreversible. It is no longer a matter of if, but when, the Arctic Ocean will open to regular marine transportation and exploration of its lucrative natural-resource deposits.
Global warming has given birth to a new scramble for territory and resources among the five Arctic powers. Russia was the first to stake its claim in this great Arctic gold rush, in 2001. Moscow submitted a claim to the United Nations for 460,000 square miles of resource-rich Arctic waters, an area roughly the size of the states of California, Indiana, and Texas combined. The UN rejected this ambitious annexation, but last August the Kremlin nevertheless dispatched a nuclear-powered icebreaker and two submarines to plant its flag on the North Pole's sea floor. Days later, the Russians provocatively ordered strategic bomber flights over the Arctic Ocean for the first time since the Cold War. Not to be outdone, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced funding for new Arctic naval patrol vessels, a new deep-water port, and a cold-weather training center along the Northwest Passage. Denmark and Norway, which control Greenland and the Svalbard Islands, respectively, are also anxious to establish their claims.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignaffairs.org ...
Artic?.........They have melted paintings?......
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I thought all the ice came back this winter.
And now its the largest its been in 15 years.
One million square miles? Maybe if the temperature was 33ºF for an entire year.
Not only did all of the ice come backer this winter, there is more than normal..and it’s thickening. Satellite images show a Northern Hemisphere with more ice and snow than has ever been recorded by satellite, dating back to 1966.
The Arctic ice has already returned with a vengeance, with more coverage than there has been in years.
Yesterday's news isn't any more palatable than yesterday's sushi.
It did and it’s actually thicker than it was at this time last year.
“Even if the international community manages to slow the pace of climate change immediately and dramatically, a certain amount of warming is irreversible.”
Cute, in one short phrase, he allows for the warming to end, the cooling to begin and still remain cocksure that it will warm again and maintain that it was merely recess time.
All of nature strives for equilibrium over time; global warming demands the alteration of time itself.
Well....the CFR...and its publication Foreign Affairs is on the Globalist Whoring bandwagon
Should expect that from a liberal globalist organization
What we need to do is assign the Marxist socialists their own continent and see how they do. Wait! Hasn't that already been tried?
If global warming was a real problem, we would also see discussions of real solutions. Like this:
If Greenland melted down completely, 88% of the excess water produced could be contained by flooding the uninhabited Qatarra Depression in northwest Egypt, producing thousands of miles of valuable lakefront property, generating electrical power as water flowed from the Medditerranean to the depression and potentially turning much of the surrounding Sahara Desert into arable land.
It took Greenland 18,000 years to accumulate as much ice as it has now. How long do you think it will take it to melt?
Near LaPorte, IN overnight 2.6 inches of global warming fell in only 45 minutes as part of a lake effect event.
This article is seriously out of date. It’s been one of the coldest winters on record up there.
Is gore ghost writting again?????
This guy gets his facts from Al Gore.
Verifiable records of Arctic ice go back only 35 years, so his statement about a 50 year record low is bunk.
The “fabled” Northwest Passage was navigated two times between 1890-1910, by the much less durable ships of that period. The Passage was NOT - repeat NOT - completely navigable in 2006 by ships with exponentially better technology.
Where are the fact checkers at “Foreign Affairs?”
It is a shame that a former Coast Guard Officer is in the “I lie for Green†business. The Arctic ice is the largest in many years this winter and if all goes as it is now going it will start to move the Canadians out in the next 20 to 50 years as the ice flows south.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/southern_hemisphere_ice_cover_remains_well_above_normal
Fact checkers? Fact checkers?! Don't need no stinkin' fact checkers>
In the words of Colonel Potter: “Horse Hockey”!
So, while you worry about the melting arctic and global warming, the scientists are meeting in New York (or someplace, according to John Fund, at the WSJ) to discuss the fact that global warming is over and that we are entering a serious cooling phase.
From the article:
The United States today funds a navy as large as the next 17 in the world combined, yet it has just one seaworthy oceangoing icebreaker — a vessel that was built more than a decade ago and that is not optimally configured for Arctic missions. Russia, by comparison, has a fleet of 18 icebreakers. And even China operates one icebreaker, despite its lack of Arctic waters. Through its own neglect, the world’s sole superpower — a country that borders the Bering Strait and possesses over 1,000 miles of Arctic coastline — has been left out in the cold.
From the article:
The United States today funds a navy as large as the next 17 in the world combined, yet it has just one seaworthy oceangoing icebreaker — a vessel that was built more than a decade ago and that is not optimally configured for Arctic missions. Russia, by comparison, has a fleet of 18 icebreakers. And even China operates one icebreaker, despite its lack of Arctic waters. Through its own neglect, the world’s sole superpower — a country that borders the Bering Strait and possesses over 1,000 miles of Arctic coastline — has been left out in the cold.
What a stooge! Hey Scott, abort, abort, abort! The ice is all back!
Recall that one year sea ice is about three (3) feet thick. Multi year sea ice in about eight (8) feet thick. Rafting can increase the effective thickness.
Global warming on Free Republic
Too bad it would be salt water.
It's revealing that Foreign Affairs is willing to go ahead and print an article based on a premise that is not merely false, but that they must have known was false by their publication date. It's much like the way the NY Times reports on the economy during a Republican Administration - all negative data is reported; all positive data is ignored.
Salt water flowing downhill can generate electricity just as well as fresh water flowing downhill.
Melting polar ice caps don't care whether they melt into fresh water or salt water.
I guess they didn’t get the latest news about the Global Cooling going on. Theahas way too much coolin’ goin’ on out theah!
And yet the ice packs have expanded in the last 12 month at a frenetic pace.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/arctic-ice.html
“”There’s an upside to the extreme cold temperatures northern Canadians have endured in the last few weeks: scientists say it’s been helping winter sea ice grow across the Arctic, where the ice shrank to record-low levels last year.
“Temperatures have stayed well in the -30s C and -40s C range since late January throughout the North, with the mercury dipping past -50 C in some areas.
“Satellite images are showing that the cold spell is helping the sea ice expand in coverage by about 2 million square kilometres, compared to the average winter coverage in the previous three years.
“”It’s nice to know that the ice is recovering,” Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.
“”That means that maybe the perennial ice would not go down as low as last year.”
“Canadian scientists are also noticing growing ice coverage in most areas of the Arctic, including the southern Davis Strait and the Beaufort Sea.”
http://sermitsiaq.gl/klima/article30834.ece?service=print&lang=EN
“Deep freeze in western Greenland
“13. February 01:01 (Last updated 13. February 19:25) By Mariia Simonsen
“The ice between Canada and southwestern Greenland has reached its highest level in 15 years.
“Minus 30 degrees Celsius. That’s how cold it’s been in large parts of western Greenland where the population has been bundling up in hats and scarves. At the same time, Denmark’s Meteorological Institute states that the ice between Canada and southwest Greenland right now has reached its greatest extent in 15 years.
“’Satellite pictures show that the ice expansion has extended farther south this year. In fact, it’s a bit past the Nuuk area. We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south. On the eastern coast it hasn’t been colder than normal, but there has been a good amount of snow.’
“But how do these new reports fit in with continual reports that ice in the Arctic Ocean has been melting at a record rate due to increasing temperatures? And isn’t global warming at the top of the political agenda these years?
“Shifting weather
“If it’s up to meteorologists from Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, there is not anything inherently contradictory that extreme cold is replaced by higher temperatures than average. Or that melting sea ice occasionally is replaced by expanding ice sheets.
“’Weather is a phenomenon which changes from year to year and right now the atmosphere has changed so we have cold weather. That will certainly mean that melting ice in the North Pole will be less this year, but next year the situation can look completely different,’ according to Henriksen.
“To sum things up, global warming hasn’t been called off. In the meanwhile, western Greenlanders will have to accept that the cold weather continues for some time. At least until next Tuesday when milder weather could be on the way, according to Polarfronten online.”
THAT IS DARNED FINE THINKING!!!!
I’m sure there are a dew other depressions we could pond, too.
The Dead Sea area comes to mind. I’m sure Israel wouldn’t mind having a moat to it’s south east.
Great news! So why isn't the article titled "Northwest Passage Opens: How will this improve global economic efficiency?"
Oops! They should have read this before they went to print.
“”It’s nice to know that the ice is recovering,” Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Branch of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, told CBC News on Thursday.
Why? Can one of these brain trusts explain why sea ice is a good thing? What is so nice about it?
I’ve actually calculated shipments via the Northwest Passage unloading in, say, Churchill, Manitoba will save us one week from Asia unloading at Seattle-Tacoma and moving by rail to Pittsburgh.
I have no idea.
I mean, aside from building our ABM systems on massive piecrete ships (a kind of ice frozen with a wood-pulp slurry that is VERY strong and a cheap way to build mile long ships to serve as military bases) so we don’t have to tussle with the Canadians over putting them in their territory.
Heheheheh!
What to do about it? Laugh everyone who brings it up to scorn, and utterly ignore them.
Cheers!
Thanks for the ping!
Thanks Rurudyne.
bump^ to the top, your debunking of the BS in this story.
He’s been pinged already.
And go figure ... I’M the Standup Philosopher. –.^
(Yes, I did BS last week.)
Great. So who'se gonna save us from the frenetic ice packs?
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