SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
martyb
on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:12AM
from the Henry-Hudson-was-ahead-of-his-time dept.
from the Henry-Hudson-was-ahead-of-his-time dept.
Beneath the Aurora Borealis an oil tanker glides through the night past the Coast Guard ice breaker Amundsen and vanishes into the maze of shoals and straits of the Northwest Passage, navigating waters that for millennia were frozen over this time of year.
Warming has forced a retreat of the polar ice cap, opening up a sea route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for several months of the year.
Commander Alain Lacerte is at the helm as the vessel navigates the Queen Maud Gulf, poring over charts that date from the 1950s and making course corrections with the help of GPS.
[...] Today, taking this route cuts 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) off a trip from London to Tokyo, saving time and fuel.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Warming Opens Famed Northwest Passage to Navigation
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 26 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
sillema sillema nika su
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 21 2015, @02:15PM
The naval aspects of this are interesting, I remember reading something about the Russians commenting about territorial waters.
The seasonality is going to be really weird, you can ship crude or whatever 4000 nm quicker but only during northern hemisphere summer.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 21 2015, @04:00PM
"I'm sorry that we had to triple the price of heating oil at the start of winter, but you see, it not our fault: the northern route closed a bit earlier this year"