Word: icing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Explorers have been searching for the Northwest Passage-the legendary sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific-since the 16th century, but their way has always been blocked by ice. Global warming is changing that. The deterioration of the Arctic ice pack, which had been shrinking at the rate of 10% per year, is starting to accelerate. Last year?s ice covered the smallest area ever recorded, and scientists now estimate that the passage could be ice-free-for at least part of the year-by 2050, if not sooner...
...Hudson bay trading post built in 1689 put Churchill on the map, but today polar bears outnumber humans and the town's main businesses are tourism and hunting. It is the nearest port to the cereal fields of central Canada, however, and when the ice melts, it could find itself at the nexus of the first new trade route since the construction of the Panama and Suez canals...
...offers is a sea-and-land short cut for ships carrying goods along a north-south axis between Europe and the Americas. Cargo from, say, Murmansk, Russia, can be unloaded at the port and carried by rail to Canada, midwestern U.S. states or even Mexico. The port is already ice-free five months of the year, and with some judicious ice- breaking that season could be extended by a full 30 days on either end. Broe, who happens to own North America's largest privately held railway, profits from both legs of the journey. "No one has ever paid attention...
...century and that will have two major impacts. First, sea level will rise. The last time it was 5?F warmer than now sea level was at least 80 feet higher. It may take a few centuries for most of that rise to occur, but once started, the ice sheets would continue to disintegrate out of our control, so every several decades we would need to rebuild above a higher shoreline. Those costs would dwarf any costs associated with learning to use energy more sensibly. Second, we'll lose animals and plants. We would push the polar species and alpine...
...Hansen: Not really, but not enough thought was given to the potential for large sea level changes, probably because of the assumption that it takes the ice sheets millennia to respond. I have argued the importance of sea level and I think that realization is catching on. I do think, on the other hand, that many scientists are spending too much time trying to figure out the effects of possible changes in the ocean's circulation. Europe, and the U.S., will not freeze over or get colder if the Atlantic circulation slows down. Global warming overwhelms the modest effects...