Rotterdam port welcomes first ship via the Arctic route

Explorers have searched for the Northwest Passage for centuries. They were just born too soon.

 

Wooo-Hoo!
An extended growing season, waaaaaay fewer hurricanes, and now we have a more fuel efficient shipping routes!

And they said that Climate Change was a bad thing...


BTW... I thought it was "an ill wind".
I'm not picking nits, I'm just making sure that there's no hidden meaning to using "and"

’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Someone profits by every loss; someone is benefited by every misfortune.

 

Most natural disasters have many people damaged and few rewarded. That was definitely true of the Texas wildfires of 2011. I don't know anyone that was a winner in the Yosemite fire this year.

On climate change Al Gore is the biggest winner. I think he even made personal wealth off of now bankrupt Fisker, and he got a very rare car, although it may be bad karma. Michael Mann seems like a rather poor scientist, but has gained fame and fortune from it too. Anhony watts, who would just be another no name meteorologist, has also gained money and fame from it. You don't need to be a good guy to gain from others misfortunes. Those that are harmed though, are likely a much larger group than these "winners".

The northwest passage is one of those simply good things, where the people that benefit far out way those that are harmed. Climate change is not a natural disaster like fires and floods, its well it just is. We need to deal with it, and saving fuel and labor by taking a shorter route not covered in ice is one good way to do this. We also need to move people away from zones that are likely to have natural disasters, and change crops to those that do better in the new climate.

 

That's all well and good, but unpredictable weather is not conducive to establishing new crops and new growing areas. And to "move people away", entire cities will have to be relocated.

 

Well you can say can't and be ostrich like, then pretend that putting up carbon taxes in the US will work and stop climate change in its tracks or you can look at what is going on.

You can stop subsidiesing growth in huricane and tornado country by cutting off federal insurance. You can put out zones, and tell people that if you are still living there in 20 years fema isn't likely to help you.

You can stop the corn mono crop from eating more of the farm land. You can grow more drought resistant varieties where its getting dryer, and more flood resistant food where floods are likely to occur.

You can build flood walls in front of cities like NY instead of thinking that saying denier a thousand times will stop the next tropical storm. NY/NJ/Connecticut were hit by stronger storms before sandy. It just was a long time ago. Galviston was hit before too, and rebuilt. NY may be underwater in 150 years, whether we pass a carbon tax or not.

 

No, no, no. Please don't mistake me for a denier. I'm not at all suggesting we do nothing.

We could stop subsidising climate change.....does the oil industry really need all those grants, tax breaks, and looking the other way on pollution and habitat destruction? Carbon taxes are a poor substitute for pricing energy at its true cost.

 

I was making fun of the politicians that yell denier, but seem to deny climate change is going to happen whether or not they pass new taxes, along with tax subsidies for their friends.

As you know I am also against energy subsidies, and for some new energy taxes, but its not going to stop climate change. New oil taxes will reduce oil dependency. New pollution regs will stop unhealthy coal pollution, but its not going to stop china and india from burning it.

 

^ Great!
Then the next time somebody yells about security on the Sinai Peninsula, we could just stay home, pop some popcorn, and tell the UN to handle it.

 

An enviro disaster from one of those ships in the passage is just a news story away. Will ETC and AG take any responsibility for being so freaking short sighted ?

 

It's ETC(SS) and NO.
Unless I have the bridge watch at the time of the incident, I'm not going to take the wrap.
If I do have the bridge watch, then we'll talk about it.

I personally believe that since I pay every cent of my taxes in full and on time, and I'm in the very bottom quintile of energy (ab)users that I'm no more or less liable for the world's climate woes than the 'eco chic'.

Stuff happens.
If there's a NW passage?
There will be winners and losers. Maybe if we spent one tenth of the energy in solution management that we spend slinging piss at each other in circular firefights we might actually get some forward traction on energy development, politics, pollution, the population bomb, etc.

 

Climate change IS a bad thing, and using the NW passage IS a bad thing. Your inability to see the obvious IS a bad thing.

You tongue and cheek 'winners and losers' crap is just a rewrapped 'cannot do anything about it, so why worry?' argument that blindly ignores that the 'losers' lose infinitely more than the 'winners' win. Of course, we cannot do anything about it expressly because of people like you. who refuse to take responsibility today.

Pathetic

 

I looked at ignored comments, to see what you were talking about, and I don't get the sagebrush comment, but I guess that is why I ignored him in the first place.

No, saying that something is good for someone, does not mean you are responsible if it is not. I know of a great many shipping disasters, but can't think why they would be worse "evironmentally" in the nw passage.

Now if you fire some missiles into a place and claim its not war, and there is blowback, you are responsible. It might be a calculated risk, but its a risk none the less and you have done something. If you say a northwest passage is good for the russians, and they have a ship wreck, you are not responsible. Saying it did not put ships there. Although its likely that the saved fuel and hours on the ships will be good for many more people than any down side. Saying its bad and cursing, won't stop it. Trying to block the russans from using a northwest passage just is trying to cause trouble. So I don't get the whole responsibility thing for having an optimistic point of view here. Its not as if my optimism will cause bad actors to do something wrong.

 

Climate change isn't new, and I hate to break it to you but it's not entirely anthropomorphic, but you already know this...and so do I.
I give you credit for being at least smart enough to know that the climate has never been static.

Political (and environmental) hacks have never had what you would call a very agile sense of humor, which sometimes makes them about as much fun to be around as Southern Baptist Preachers.

Sarcasm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You should loosen up and try to relax a little bit.
If the Climate Apocalyptics are correct.....then there's not much time left.
If the Climate Apostates are correct...then your ire is wasted.

My bet?
Both are wrong, but then....that's an intellectually lazy bet.
You'll forgive me if I'm a bit of a skeptic, but when I was in school all of the hippie teachers used to tell us that we were 20,000 years overdue for the next ice age, and the government was studying programs to put pot ash in the polar ice caps.
The population bomb folks were crying about the fact that there was going to be mass starvation by the turn of the century (the last one, not the next one) and pollution was going to turn the rivers and lakes on the planet into a toxic goo.
Just a few years ago, NOAA was saying that life in the Gulf of Mexico was going to be extinct because of the Deepwater Horizon spill, and a few years before that it was Prudhoe bay, which may REALLY get spilled on again because they're going to have to ship oil via ULCCs instead of pipelines becuase pipelines are (wait for it.....) "dangerous".

Shortsightedness?

Sorry......but I've been hearing that for decades.

That's your call to make. I'm as hypocritical as anybody else, but I try to avoid personal insults when I can.

YMMV

 

The other little issue at play in all this is a country's right to control access to its territory. Most of the islands in that area are Canadian, which makes the routes between them internal waterways. Other countries can ignore this by pretending they're international waters with unencumbered access for all, but that doesn't make it so.

 

Are these ships not getting permission from the Canadian government? They should be. I am not sure under what right the Canadian government would reject all shipping, but they could definitely put restrictions on it.

 

Reject all shipping? No, that wouldn't be reasonable. But passing through a customs office - even if it's on a coast guard ship - sounds like a normal requirement for entering a foreign country. (Yeah, OK, maybe the Canadians need to build a few more of those customs thingies...)

But for Russia to plant a flag on the seabed and claim the North Pole (Where should Santa's mail go now?), and for the US to routinely operate submarines in foreign territory, without even bothering to inform anyone, let alone ask permission, is just plain wrong. It shows a profound lack of respect.