Sure, environmentalists say global warming could be catastrophic, but the shipping industry is pysched that melting sea ice has opened the long-sought Northwest Passage.
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But What About the Good News?
15 Sep 2007 07:00 pm
Comments (20)
Yes, that's good news.
On the other hand, aren't boats less bouyant in freshwater?
And less buoyant?
Oh good.
The warships will be able to move around MUCH more freely as everyone tries to conquer the bits of land in the northern hemisphere worth living on.
The main impact is the Europe-Asia passage, and US-Canada-Denmark just got a lot more important. 8,000 miles shaved off trade routes and large vessels just got a way to avoid offshipping in Panama/Suez.
Downside of global warming is high breed-rate populations at the equator will have to either limit family size or hope against hope temperate region countries will continue to submit to being dumping grounds for surplus 3rd Worlders.
The NYT had a piece some months ago illustrating the potential new routes which might be opened up by the recession of pack ice from the northern coast of Canada (and Russia): it's no wonder shipping interests are jazzed: from Far East ports (Japan in particular), to the east coast of America - and also Europe - the sailing distance would be something like halved over half the year (even the most pessimistic global-warming advocates don't think the new Northwest Passage will become a year-round thing. Yet.)
Funny, global warming skeptics never seem to take issue with these claims.
I'm waiting for the skeptics to refuse to believe that ships can bypass the Panama Canal. Or maybe they'll just claim that whatever ships do take the shortcut aren't conclusively "man-made".
Downside of global warming is high breed-rate populations at the equator will have to either limit family size or hope against hope temperate region countries will continue to submit to being dumping grounds for surplus 3rd Worlders. Posted by Chris Ford
Don't worry, I'm sure the Neo-Confederate Jewish Southern Bankers are working on a spray for that.
Hey El Cid,
by any chance are you the same el cid who commented on Gry Bay on imdb?
For those of you who don't know gry bay, she's the danish supermodel who did explicit sex in a mainstream movie in denmark. She shows everything and fucks real good.
I've been telling our fucking city council to start planting palm trees down University Avenue (here in Toronto) for twenty years now. Ho humm.
Instead of breathing life into snot-faced new born shoats at forty below zero, from here on out I guess we're going to be doing it at twenty below.
Uh, thanks George.
But that's not fair: the conspicuous, indeed aggressive ignorance and stupidity of the Bush Administration is not a root cause sort of thing. It's just the stoned frat kids being dopey stoned frat kids.
Obviously the cause of our screwing up the environment -- and I remind people that "environment" really means the entire joint we live in -- is not the Bushlet's fucking anything up, no matter how much the little bastard is emblematic of every mistake our civilization is capable of making. One way I think of it is, we went and industrialized without, at first, understanding what this meant; subsequently, we figgered out what it meant.
It's going to take work and thought to pull this one out. The good news is, it's probably going to be a very profitable enterprise...
Does anyone know what the fuck David Lloyd-Jones is talking about?
Man, Chris Ford's "I'm not a racist, but..." schtick is really getting creepy. Consistent, though.
"Does anyone know what the fuck David Lloyd-Jones is talking about?"
I could be wrong, but he may be referring to our frequent use of the "shoot first and ask questions later..." method of environmental stewardship.
Nor'west passage, get the spelling correct.
"We'll all die, but at least big boats can get around faster."
Come now. The earth has warmed about a half of 1 degree Celcius in the last century. You might think that spells catastrophe, but more sober observers will look at things with clearer eyes.
Please don't count me among the much derided skeptics. I am willing to accept what seems to be the prevailing view among climatologists: that the earth is warming, that human activity is contributing to that, and that it could have a negative impact on us in the future. Indeed, that is why I agree with Greg Mankiw's proposal in the Times to impose a carbon emissions tax (and to use the revenue from the tax to fund tax cuts elsewhere).
But let's not allow hysteria to prevail. Global warming is a problem and we ought to consider the costs and benefits of different policies to address that problem in a sensible way. What we should not do is to allow chicken little panic to overwhelm us. The world is not ending. To borrow from some well-known philosophers:
You say you got a real solution Well you know We don't love to see the plan You ask me for a contribution Well you know We're doing what we can But if you want money for people with minds that hate All I can tell you is brother you have you have to wait.Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright, alright...
Hey El Cid, by any chance are you the same el cid who commented on Gry Bay on imdb? For those of you who don't know gry bay, she's the danish supermodel who did explicit sex in a mainstream movie in denmark. She shows everything and fucks real good. Posted by YoyoyoUnfortunately, up until this very question, I was unaware of the talents of Gry Bay, but I thank you for bringing her to my attention.
"The earth has warmed about a half of 1 degree Celcius in the last century."
Past discussions of evolution theory assumed that evolution occurred in a slow, methodical manner over eons to produce the species best suited to their environment. Further study revealed that contrary to conventional wisdom, evolution occurred in massive fits, starts, stops, die-offs, and stability over remarkable short geologic periods.
Recent study of historic climate patterns has revealed the same phenomena. Rather than experience a "moderately warmer breeze" over several millennia, the earth has been revealed to experience extra-ordinarily "unusual" (as if there was such a thing when discussing such complex phenomena) and unpredictable cascade effects resulting from "unforeseen events" triggered by such "moderate" temperature increases of only 1-2°.
An excellent example is the enormous quantities of frozen methane at the bottoms of our oceans. Even small changes in ocean temperature could result in huge releases of the most potent greenhouse gases that would then trigger higher temperatures, higher ocean temperatures, and release of more methane....
It's all fine and good "consider the costs and benefits of different policies to address that problem in a sensible way". However, the coincidence of these "unusual" climatic instances and massive extinction events is more likely causality rather than mere correlation. Perhaps you should begin listening to everything that Chicken Little is saying before you assume the sky isn't falling.
Oh, and thanks for ruining a beautiful Beatles song for me...
It is not racist to hope that countries already being subjected to accelerated desertification (N. Africa, ME, The Sahel, India) will limit breeding rates that reach up to national averages of 7.1 children per female. China has a one child policy. Nor is it racist to hope that high breeding rates are limited in lands very exposed to extreme weather or flooding due to the Earths warming...Bangladesh, various island nations like Haiti and Indonesia.
And it is not racist to assume that nations with low or negative population growth rates - committed to renewable energy and sustained yield ecosystems like China, Japan, Italy, USA will continue to or inaugurate efforts to take in a small portion of 3rd Worlder economic OR political refugees. Let alone go with Open Borders and take in the "excess" billions from ecosystems that collapse, or from what looks like regions that will war or sue in the 21st Century over lack of water, arable land with nations that still have "extra" water, land...
Comments closed September 29, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
One wishes Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson were around to see it.
Posted by Ben Cronin | September 15, 2007 7:46 PM