Global Warming Opens Northwest Passage

Global warming refers to an average increase in temperature of the Earth's near surface air according to Wikipedia. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth tried to shed some light on the subject, but Al Gore's movie has been accused of being poor science and not very good cinema. Whether or not An Inconvenient Truth is a good documentary, the recent polar ice recession that opened the Northwest Passage has caused some concern amongst scientists.

Global warming causing the polar ice to retreat has given navigators a boon and explorers long in their graves a blow to their egos. A recent article announced that receding polar ice due to global warming caused the Northwest Passage to open. The Northwest Passage was a trade route sought by early explorers of the North American continent to bypass the longer routes then needed to reach islands in the Pacific.

The Northwest Passage, which is a fabled trade route that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific, normally has at least some parts blocked by the polar ice all year around, but ocean going vessels have been able to make the complete voyage this year. In prior years, ships traveling through the Northwest passage would have to take a less direct route to reach their eventual destination.

The Northwest Passage being clear of polar ice may be a boon for the commercial shipping industry, but it has causedscientists who study global warming to call the cycle of receding ice a death spiral. Other scientists urge that calling the receding polar ice a death spiral may be premature, but stress that the recession is happening too quickly to be the result. One model has the arctic being completely ice free during summer due to global warming by the year 2040.

The Northwest Passage's Melting polar ice causes concern not only because it will raise sea levels around the globe, but the liquid waters of the ocean absorb heat, potentially aggravating the global warming problem. In a much shorter time wildlife native to the arctic such as polar bears could be negatively impacted as they depend on the polar ice flows to obtain food.

In the meantime, those of us stuck in the Northeast still have to deal with Winter. Perhaps speeding up the global warming process just enough to keep it from snowing in the Mid Atlantic states and then stopping the process if we are not merely helping along a natural one would be ideal.

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7006640.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming