The Arctic melt that has opened up the Northwest Passage again may be good for business, but it’s bad for potential terrorism against the US.
In the past, the remote gray waters of the Alaskan Arctic saw little more than the occasional cargo barge and Eskimo whaling boat, but that’s changed: There are now so many ships in the area that the Coast Guard can’t keep track of them. They have no idea what these vessels are carrying or who is on them.
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For the last 60 years, the Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the Earth, and some Asians business people are taking advantage of this fact. The thawing at the top of the globe gives access to incredible mineral wealth and drastically shorter shipping routes to the Atlantic through the now reopened Northwest Passage.
The Arctic waters not only contain fish, the US Geological Survey estimates that 30% of the world’s undiscovered reserves of natural gas, and 13% of the undiscovered oil, are there–as well as coal, iron, uranium, gold, copper, rare earths and gemstones.
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In his dynamic new Insight, Whitley Strieber points out that time is running out–it’s time for big business AND environmentalists to WORK TOGETHER to curb greenhouse gases, because the arctic melt is accelerating at a rapid pace, as can be seen by these stunning "before" and "after" NASA photos.read more
NASA doesn’t just search for life on other planets, its satellites also search the Earth for evidence of melting glaciers. Their "IceSat," which uses lasers to measure the thickness of ice, has discovered that Arctic ice is vanishing 50% faster than expected–at a rate of almost 500 cubic miles per year, since 2004.The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet.
On BBC News, Roger Harrabin quotes climate researcher Seymour Laxon as saying, "We have to be cautious until our data has been properly analyzed as part of a climate model, but this does suggest that the Arctic might be ice-free in summer for a day at least by the end of the decade.
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