Climate change sparks shipping boom in Canadian Arctic
Within 10 years, the tiny port of Churchill in the Canadian Arctic could be transformed into a hub of world trade, newspaper The Times writes.
Most climatologists outside the Bush administration now concur that the Arctic is melting like a candle, and a good deal faster than anyone expected, the newspaper writes. “It is beyond our worst-case scenarios, says Michael Byers, professor of global politics at the University of British Columbia, and quite terrifying in terms of its potential scope. Or, as Mark Serreze, senior scientist at a Colorado snow-and-ice data centre, recently told the Associated Press: The Arctic is screaming. This warming trend has meant the Hudson Bay is now navigable four months a year instead of three, and it wont stop there. Even the experts dont claim to know just how fast it will happen, but the harbour could open up six months, nine, even all-year-round, while the 21st century is still young. Thanks to the coming revolution in shipping, Churchill is poised to leap from municipal amoeba to world hub, the Times writes. Even a seasonally ice-free Arctic, likely within 10 years, would change the transport game dramatically. Vessels from Europe or northeast Asia, now ploughing centuries-old routes across the mid-Atlantic, would be able to follow the shorter northern arc into Churchill instead, cutting time by up to 40 percent.
