THE ROMANCE OF THE MELTED ARCTIC

Some excerpts from a most amusing article below -- an article which does the usual brainless straight-line extrapolation from recent trends. In the very last paragraph we see just how brainless that is however. It reveals that the Artic seas were more open in 1906 than they are now! Greenie thinking really does rot the brain!



How fast is the ice cap melting?

The size of the summer polar ice cap has shrunk 20 percent since 1979, reaching its smallest size last year. With average temperatures in the Arctic rising twice as fast as elsewhere in the world, climate scientists predict the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by the summer of 2050. In place of the white wilderness that killed explorers and defeated navigators for centuries, the world would have a blue North Pole and a seasonally open sea nearly five times the size of the Mediterranean. Last August, a Russian vessel, the Akademik Fyodorov, became the first ship to reach the North Pole without having to use an icebreaker.

Who stands to lose from all this?

The melting of the ice could shut down the Gulf Stream and wreak havoc with the world's coasts and climate. It would spell potential disaster for traditional Arctic communities, for ecosystems, and for plant and animal species-polar bears would drown or starve, and the species could become extinct. But fish would prosper. Warming Arctic waters are already creating new fishing grounds as fish migrate and adapt to new conditions. Pink salmon have been seen spawning in rivers far to the north of their traditional territory.

Who stands to gain?

The melting ice cap represents a colossal commercial opportunity. Russian icebreakers are already preparing to take tourists to the Pole for $30,000 each this summer, and the thaw could open up some highly lucrative shipping routes. A northeast sea route, north of Siberia, would allow shipping to sail from Europe to northeast Asia, cutting the journey by a third; and the fabled Northwest Passage through Canada's Arctic archipelago could be open to shipping in a few decades, cutting the journey from Europe to East Asia (now routed through the Panama Canal) by 4,000 miles. The greatest profits, however, are likely to be found under the ice.

What is being discovered there?

Oil and natural gas. A quarter of the world's untapped fossil fuels (including 375 billion barrels of oil) are thought to lie under the Arctic, and will become accessible as the ice melts. Industry experts now talk of a "black gold rush," as companies such as BP Amoco, Statoil of Norway, and the Russian giant Gasprom all race to tap already discovered reservoirs in the region. The Arctic, says Moscow-based energy analyst Christopher Weafer, "is the next energy frontier." .....

A passage across the Arctic

For hundreds of years, European explorers tried to open up new trade routes to China and Japan by using the fabled Northwest Passage through the polar coast of Canada. British mariner Martin Frobisher tried three times to get to Cathay the cold way. On his third voyage, in 1578, he sailed into Hudson Strait between the Canadian mainland and Baffin Island and ran into "a sudden and terrible tempest, whereby the ice began marvelously to gather about us." Frobisher returned to Britain defeated. The Northwest Passage claimed its most famous victim in 1845 when Sir John Franklin and 134 men, in his ships Erebus and Terror, were spotted by the crew of a whaler entering Baffin Bay. They were never seen alive again.

Finally, in 1906, Norwegian Roald Amundsen managed to sail right through. Learning from Franklin's fatal error, he realized the Arctic regions could not support large crews, and accomplished the feat with just six companions in a small, 47-ton fishing boat. Since then only a few, specially strengthened ships have made it through the mighty ice barriers that block the route even in summer. That all may soon change, as the ice melts into an open, wind-swept sea.

More here






What is that Suckling Sound?

Comment by Laer of Cheat Seeking Missiles

In the latest propaganda bomb from Kieran Suckling's Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the litigation-driven organization that has expressed the desire to depopulate the American West, made the following statement: "The Bush administration has the worst record of protecting the nation's wildlife of any modern presidency and will go to any length to avoid protecting the nation's wildlife."

Nice rhetoric, but it's just not true. The statement was made in conjunction with CBD's lawsuit demanding that 263 species currently on the candidate list for consideration under the federal Endangered Species Act immediately be moved forward toward listing. Of the 263 candidate species, five have been added to the list during the Bush Administration. That means that other presidents, dating all the way back to Gerald Ford's administration, have seen their terms come and go without acting on 258 of the 263 species.

So why the blame on Bush? Could it be because he's cut funding for listing species? Nope. He's increased funding for species listings.

Could it be that the Fish & Wildlife Service is so tied up fighting more than 20 ESA lawsuits filed by CBD that it has neither the staff time nor the budget to proceed with listings? That's exactly what's happening. While professing that ESA is a great success, Suckling's legions of lawyers is on a mission to destroy the ESA. Here's the proof:

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT "BROKEN" -- FLOOD OF LITIGATION OVER CRITICAL HABITAT HINDERS SPECIES CONSERVATION

Faced with mounting numbers of court orders from six years of litigation, the Interior Department's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will soon run out of funds to designate critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Craig Manson said today.

More important, the flood of court orders requiring critical habitat designations is undermining endangered species conservation by compromising the Service's ability to protect new species . Manson said. .

"The Endangered Species Act is broken. This flood of litigation over critical habitat designation is preventing the Fish and Wildlife Service from protecting new species and reducing its ability to recover plants and animals already listed as threatened or endangered," Manson said. "Imagine an emergency room where lawsuits force the doctors to treat sprained ankles while patients with heart attacks expire in the waiting room and you've got a good picture of our endangered species program right now."

The President's FY 2004 budget request for listing totals nearly $12.3 million, an amount that, if approved by Congress, is almost double the $6.2 million appropriated in FY 2000 and a 35 percent increase over FY 2003. [The 2005 budget proposed adding another $5.0 million for listing activities.]






ECONOMICS, CLIMATE CHANGE AND GOVERNMENTS

By David Henderson, Royal Economic Society, Newsletter, April 2006

Last year we published (Issues 128, 129 and 130) three pieces dealing with economic issues relating to climate change and the treatment of these issues by governments. In the note that follows David Henderson reports and comments on recent developments in this area.

Economic issues relating to climate change were highlighted in July last year by the publication of a report on 'The economics of climate change' from the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs. A notable feature of the report is that the Committee voiced concerns about the role and conduct of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is the chosen instrument of governments in relation to all aspects of climate change, and its work is widely taken to be objective and authoritative. It is all the more striking that a group of eminent, experienced and responsible persons, drawn from a national legislative body and spanning the political spectrum, with the help of an internationally recognised expert adviser and after taking and weighing evidence, issued a considered and unanimous report in which the work and role of the Panel are put in question.

The British government's official response to the Select Committee report took almost five months to appear. It is largely dismissive, and in particular it rejects in toto the line taken by the Committee on the IPCC. In my view this response does little credit to the responsible department. It serves as a further illustration of precisely those aspects of the IPCC process and milieu which prompted the Committee's concerns.

Going beyond the response, the government has set up a full-scale official inquiry by the Cabinet Office and the Treasury into the economics of climate change, under the direction of Sir Nicholas Stern and due to be completed in the autumn of this year. The Stern Review's website is now well stocked. Recent additions to it are (i) three documents issued as the first fruits of the Review process, including a major lecture by Sir Nicholas, and (ii) various comments that have been made on these.

In the latter category, nine of us have sent in a collective radical critique of the three Review documents. We conclude by saying that 'If the Review exercise is to serve a useful purpose, its treatment of the issues has to be more inclusive, more informed, and less dominated and constrained by questionable or mistaken presumptions.' Among their omissions - as distinct from mistakes which are also to be found - these documents make no reference to the debates of recent years on the IPCC's treatment of economic issues, and do not mention the Select Committee report.

Recent contributions to the debate have served to bring out a basic difference of opinion among economists. One school of thought, as represented in a statement of last December by 25 leading American economists including three Nobel prizewinners, as also in the Stern Review documents, holds that (to quote the latter) 'the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion supports the view that climate change represents a real and growing threat', so that 'strong action has to be taken quite soon' to limit greenhouse gas emissions. On this view, the role, procedures and conclusions of the IPCC, as also of environment departments and agencies across the world, are implicitly treated as beyond serious question; 'the science' is seen as providing a firm basis for far-reaching programmes of action.

As against this, the view which I and others have come to hold is that governments are mishandling issues which remain subject to huge uncertainties. The IPCC process, to which they have assigned a virtual monopoly, is deeply and increasingly flawed, both in its treatment of economic aspects and more generally. Rather than pursuing as a matter of urgency ambitious targets for curbing emissions, governments should take steps, the sooner the better, to ensure that they are more fully and more objectively informed and advised in matters relating to climate change. This requires action on two fronts: first, to improve the IPCC process by making it more professionally watertight; and second, to bring to an end the IPCC's monopoly status by providing for other sources of information and ideas.






Air purifiers make smog: "Here's how to create your own personal Stage 2 Smog Alert: Buy an indoor air purifier. Using a popular process called ionization, the air cleaners can actually generate ozone levels in a room that exceed the worst smog days in Los Angeles, a new study finds. The devices are popular in urban areas. They are touted as getting rid of dust, pollen and other airborne particles. Ionic air purifiers, one type of these devices, are said to work by charging airborne particles and then attracting them to metal electrodes. They emit ozone as a byproduct of this ionization process. In a small and poorly ventilated room, the ozone adds to existing ozone and creates potentially unhealthy concentrations. "People operating air purifiers indoors are more prone to being exposed to ozone levels in excess of public health standards," said study leader Sergey Nizkorodov, a chemistry professor the University of California, Irvine. The research, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, was announced today and is detailed in the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association. Ozone high in the atmosphere protects Earth from damaging ultraviolet radiation. Down here, it is called smog. Ozone can damage the lungs and cause shortness of breath and throat irritation, and it can also exacerbate asthma."



House passes $10 million hydrogen prize: "Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes reaching millions of dollars, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Legislation creating the 'H-Prize,' modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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