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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.
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Warming Opens Famed Northwest Passage to Navigation
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(Score: 1, Informative) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:13PM
It's kind of inconvenient for the AGW message, but the Northwest Passage does open up periodically. The Northwest Passage was apparently open for three years in the 1940s [nationalgeographic.com]. It was open at least briefly in 1957, when the US Coast Guard sent ships through it, and again in 1969, 1977 and 2000 [blogspot.ch]. Probably other years as well - there doesn't seem to be a single location with all of the information.
While still lower than the historical average, there is more arctic ice in 2015 than there was in 2012 [nsidc.org].
I know, I know, I'm an evil denier. Actually, it's not even true, but I do get tired of (pardon the pun) overheated, deliberately misleading, headline grabbing articles. Earth warmer? Yes. OMG we're all gonna fry? Not so much.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:26PM
Its not even Earth Warmer. If it's CO2 , energy is getting more quickly redistributed from the daytime near equator to nighttime and poles. With no additional energy this will appear to be "warming" if you take averages the wrong way like they do.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @05:18PM
No, it is warmer. Because of the way photons work at particular wavelengths, CO2 allows more photons in at higher energies than the ones it lets out. True, there is no additional energy from the Sun to the Earth as visible and ultraviolet photons; but there is less being radiated away from the Earth to space, in the form of infrared photons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @05:30PM
What project has this data?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @08:21PM
What I am looking for is W/m^2 by latitude and time of day. Does this data exist?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:44AM
There are solar insolation tables all over for various places. Solar panel companies and the like will probably have the data for your area. Another is to do the math yourself using nearby installations on sites like http://pvoutput.org [pvoutput.org] or using climate and weather data from NOAA and the NWS.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:39PM
It's kind of inconvenient for the AGW message, but the Northwest Passage does open up periodically.
I know it may be inconvenient for deniers, but these years, Northwest Passage opens up almost every year. And there is less ice then ever before.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/ice-seaice.shtml [noaa.gov]
Also, as you may have guessed from the NOAA link, the Northeast passage has been ice free for many many years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage#Ice-free_navigation [wikipedia.org]
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/detection-images/climate-ice-seaice-extent-trend-sep14.png [noaa.gov] -- don't know, seems like a trend to me.
And from your own link,
September 17, 2007
The famed Northwest Passage—a direct shipping route from Europe to Asia across the Arctic Ocean—is ice free for the first time since satellite records began in 1978, scientists reported Friday.
Seems that getting a ship to pass behind a big icebreaker is not the same as ice-free. These days, you tend to get ice free. And in near future, "what ice?" conditions will be almost guaranteed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @04:59PM
Forget facts, he is obviously a true believer.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by dboz87 on Wednesday October 21 2015, @08:33PM
http://www.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com/permanent-exhibit/st-roch-national-historic-site [vancouvermaritimemuseum.com]Here is the link about the St. Roch (a wooden ship) making the passage in the 1940s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 21 2015, @03:41PM
(applause) came here to say the same thing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 21 2015, @06:13PM
Wow, literally none of those links support your argument.
Mods: please check links before modding "Informative."
The Northwest Passage was apparently open for three years in the 1940s: This article simply does not say that. There is no mention of the 1940's at all.
again in 1969, 1977 and 2000: This blog post alleges this fact, but their link to some actual evidence is a 404.
there is more arctic ice in 2015 than there was in 2012: The only mention of 2012 is in a graph and it is clearly greater than 2015! So it says the exact opposite of what you claim.
(Score: 1) by shipofgold on Wednesday October 21 2015, @11:11PM
I agree, the argument made was pretty poor.
The Northwest Passage was apparently open for three years in the 1940s: This article simply does not say that. There is no mention of the 1940's at all.
.
The link referencing 1940 says nothing about it. But the next link states that some icebreaker made a passage in 1940-1942, and then in the other direction in 1944...I would hardly call that open though...a normal ship wouldn't make that passage. I am guessing that icebreaker pushed a lot of ice around.
there is more arctic ice in 2015 than there was in 2012: The only mention of 2012 is in a graph and it is clearly greater than 2015! So it says the exact opposite of what you claim.
Which chart were you looking at? The chart at the top of the page for Arctic clearly shows that 2015 has more ice than 2012...but then again 2012 was pretty far down, and 2015 is still below the 1981-2010 range, so I am not sure what, if anything comparing 2 datapoints has to say about trends in global warming.