What are we arguing about? The ice is already gone.
After hearings, a massive iron-mining and associated infrastructure project is expected to get under way in remote northern Baffin Island, where railroads are aliens. This is a complicated project on the grand scale of an Alaska Pipeline.
And it’s all possible largely because of global warming, which has left shipping lanes in the Arctic open year-round — and also partly because of rising commodity prices and demand for raw materials in developing countries far from Canada’s far north. The Mary River project is set to extract some of the purest iron ore anywhere.
Booking my next vacation there right now!
The best quote from the article, and Steve appears to miss it :
“One UCLA climatologist recently told CBC Radio that global warming is moving warmer climate north at a rate of five feet each year.”
ROTFLMAO!
I am dying here! Could someone please do the math on this? I figure I could have the same climate as those across the next ridge in only one thousand years. Give or take a few hundred depending on a “Speed-up” of the process.
It is alarming enough that a so-called Climatologist would say such a thing but equally alarming that the media would repeat it.
Tears flowed from my eyes on that one I was laughing soooo hard.
Is this the same climatologist who quitely changed “50 million climate refugees by 2010” to 50 million by 2020?
I caught that one, too. Actually, that climatologist may have some sense. It looks like the reporter is a typically innumerate journalist who can’t do a simple calculation to see that this is a mile per millennium.
I have a feeling, though, that it’s a botched quote, and the supposed movement was five miles per year.
In 5 more years, it will reach the other side of my yard 🙂
Has the “shipping lanes in the Arctic open year round” statement passed the mustard of being peer reviewed?
Nice.
With a heavy enough Ice Breaker and plenty of blasting material any thing is possible. If they can blast the top off of mountains they can surely make a shipping lane through a bit of ice!
It is spelled B-a-f-f-i-n island but it is pronounced fantasy.
These people pull stuff out of their butts.
Like other northern mines they will `mine year round’, and then they will ship the ore out using large, very large bulk carriers, and lots of them, during a very short summer `shipping window’.
The year round crap is just that…. crap……. the stuff I shovel in my back yard from my 100 lb dog.
“Part of the appeal was that shipping lanes, due to ice-cap melting, were now available year-round. Part of the Mary River project will be to keep a fleet of 10 ice-breaking cargo vessels running at a new port at Steensby Inlet, which will handle year-round shipments back and forth to Europe , one every 32 hours.
The iron horses hauling iron ore will be a half-mile long and will run for 21 years, says ArcelorMittal. Building the $2 billion railroad over 400-foot-deep permafrost will be the trickiest and most expensive part of this massive project.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/global-warming-prices-open-canadas-far-north-2011-05-17?pagenumber=2