Ship crosses Northwest Passage, sails into history
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
> “The Canadian government needs to take a firm stand on shipping via the Northwest passage in order to safeguard the environment and to enforce Canada’s sovereignty,
This is a big deal in Canada right now. There have been a bunch of rumblings from our neighbor to the south that maybe Canada doesn't really own the islands in our north and that the Northwest passage should be considered open water for everyone.
This is troubling for a number of reasons, specifically sovereignty, mining and oil rights and most importantly shipping of oil and nat. gas through the passage. There is a bid debate going on as to what sort of cargo should be allowed to go through the passage, specifically should oil tankers be allowed.
many people want this shipping lane closed to oil tankers, some for environmental reasons, other because they've spent billions on pipe lines. The only consensus you can get in Canada is that we own the shipping lanes and therefor can control what and who goes through it.
We will have no choice but to partner with the very same folks who are eyeing these lucrative areas. I guess we'll get a taste of what it feels like to be a country where to protect our resources and land we'll be forced to give some (most?) rights away in exchange for military augmentation and favourable procurement prices.
However, our territorial claims will be ignored if we don't boost funding in a navy fleet, coast guard fleet and/or ports to assist with patrolling. Unfortunately, it's easier said than done given our lack of appetite for even higher taxes which would probably come in the form of a GST hike.
It seems our options are:
1) Raise funds to patrol or enforce our territory;
2) Partner with other countries and attempt to negotiate minerals, resources or access in exchange for adherence and continued international recognition of Canada's territorial claims; or
3) Do nothing.
look at climate changes during last 2-3 thousand years and how whole empires/civilizations got appeared and disappeared as a result.
On the [kind of] positive side [for high-tech industry i mean] Canada will become a big customer for air-, ground-, navy- and submarine drones :)
We're talking shipping that's not coming from or going to Canada. According to Canadians in this discussion, we're talking about that shipping going through remote, unsecured areas where the Canadian government struggles (or fails) to provide services like search and rescue.
All fringe interest in banning shipping through these waters aside (as Canada will not actually do that), the Canadian claim here seems to be a naked grab for money. It can't provide services in that area and it can't meaningfully regulate shipping activities there. All it can do is sit at a few choke points and collect fees.
Similar debates have happened with respect to developing Canada's oil and potash resources (in the interior). I don't see the need for the military to get involved.
I don't think so, because those ports won't be ice-free, and will therefore be of little use.
Valdez (the end of the AK pipeline) is the most northerly year-round ice-free port, and it's not North at all, by AK/Northern Canada standards (I have to drive many hours South to get there...)
My point is not that we must go to war, but that if we expect other countries to obey our laws typically the best way of enforcement is an actual show of force via patrols.
Ironically, as I read about the Canadian Coast Guard, it is one of the few coast guard services that has a strictly civilian mandate with no military nor law-enforcement responsibilities[3].
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/jul/11/climatech... [2] http://opencanada.org/features/the-think-tank/comments/2013-... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Coast_Guard#Civilian_r...
When your so-called friends ignore your sovereignty and we are so small population-wise what choices do we have for defence? I know the US wouldn't stand for it if the situation was reversed.
Good luck with search and rescue too we have a tough time now finding ships and planes we know about let alone some unknown ship who knows where. The recent Coast Guard helicopter crash is a good example the ship that the helicopter came from knew where they were but still couldn't get to them before they occupants froze to death. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/three-die-in-ca...
Prime Minister Harper is putting a push on lately to visit the north but it's more PR than anything but his party has spoken about building massive Coast Guard ships to patrol the arctic in the winter. I think they had giant tracked wheels on the front to help break ice; the bows of ice breaking ships ride up onto the ice they don't push through the ice.
I guess it's useful for Canadian politicians that they can wrap things like jockeying for a cut of international shipping in both the maple leaf flag and the Canadian inferiority complex.
"Good luck with search and rescue too"
Waters you can't secure, waters you can't patrol, waters you can't provide search and rescue for...You need to be able to at least give a decent pretense of doing those things in order to board ships and demand money without being called a pirate.
Canada could bargain with the US and seek to get backing for their EE zones and counter any claims by EU states. Canada and the US already have a close military relationship and the trade between the two countries is larger than any other trade between nations at ~$300B USD thanks to NAFTA.
Military warfare is a thing of the past when it comes to nations of our size and strength and what it would do to both. Economic warfare is the new way that Canada can fight.
IMHO Canada has a lot to negotiate with.
But yes, Canada could do that in hopes of getting a cut of potential future shipping money. Their politician probably aren't that foolish, though.
As a plus, -40 is fun.
And you could probably hide a weather station on a tanker for a while as well :)
There would still be exclusive rights to economically exploit, of course, but Canada would not be able to forbid international shipping through such a passage.
Even if Canada prevails on ownership of every single Arctic island, a passage more than 24nm wide would mean supertankers could come through, and Canada would not be able to forbid it.
The only exception I can find is for nations which are made up of an archipelago of islands, and Canada is not one. So again, so long as there's a wide enough route through the islands, it doesn't matter what country owns the islands -- the sea passage between them would be open to international shipping.
If the Mississippi river suddenly grew up to 25 miles wide, you can bet no foreign boats will be allowed to navigate on it as "international waters". Basically the limits are imposed by the respective naval forces.
Inland lakes and rivers are internal waters; the state they're within has absolute control over them.
Territorial waters end 12 nautical miles from the coast.
The exclusive economic zone ends 200 nautical miles from the coast.
The firing upon and seizure of a Spanish boat in international waters would, if they chose that course, have been legal justification for Spain to declare war.
Some people (like here the other day regarding the post about the guys who bought an island) think international waters are kind of sacred, the truth is that it depends on what the powerful nations want to do. Boats are routinely boarded and inspected in international waters.
So in the case of Canada actions would depend on the nationality of the ship; if it's not a nuclear power and Canada has the logistics you can bet it will be engaged regardless of 12 or 200 miles.
The article seems to end by identifying Canada's first major problem. Then you move into things like ice breakers etc. where Russia leads, while Finland and Sweden are ahead of Canada/USA.
Here's a nice infograph on world's ice breakers. It tells you something about short-term capabilities / general knowhow in this area. http://news.usni.org/2013/07/23/u-s-coast-guards-2013-reivew...
"Presently, 60% of all diesel icebreakers are produced in Finland, 100% of all nuclear icebreakers are produced in Russia." Meaning Finland and Russia have a big head start here... http://barentsnova.com/node/1573
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/shipbuilding-contract-holds-...
I would think that any nation calling it "international waters" is going to cause a lot of problems. Now that doesn't mean they should tax anyone that passes through, but fishing and port rights will obviously be part of it and there will probably be an agreement made through organizations such as the G8 or WTO to counter any threats to that exclusivity.
Basically it's just going to be negotiation time and Canada will come out the winner. IMHO.
Edit: why on earth was I down voted? Err, whatever. Sorry for my fact-based opinion. Loons.
In this particular case the coal was being shipped from Canada, which benefits Canada, who happens to claim to own much of the Arctic. Presumably ships carrying Canadian cargo would be cleared to use this route, and legally be required to seek such clearance in order to be cleared to leave Canadian port. Other ships which do not leave from, refuel at, or stop on Canadian land, would presumably be asked to seek permission to pass through what most of the world considers international waters. There are only certain countries that would even want to, but it would obviously be useful for China, Japan and Korea to use this route for shipments to Europe.
Eventually someone will take the route without permission, and then Canada will need to figure out to what extent they can assert their claimed ownership of the Arctic.
Should Canada succeed in their claims internationally, it may be a good opportunity for other countries to make use of the new doctrine as well. For example Somalia has long claimed that ships going through the Suez canal are passing through their territory, and other nations claim that these are international waters not subject to Somalian boarding for inspection and collection of fees (which other countries call piracy). It will be interesting to see if Canada prevails in its Arctic claims, while maintaining Somalia has no similar claims to control of what they consider national waters, which don't extend anywhere nearly as far from land as Canada is claiming here.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Northwes...
The northern islands have been part of the territory since 1880. Claiming the water in between them aren't part of Canada's territory seems odds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Canad...
Note: I'm no specialist in this domain and I've only done a cursory research to form this argument.
>Somalian boarding for inspection and collection of fees (which other countries call piracy)
for it to not constitute piracy it should be performed using guided missile destroyer, not an inflatable rubber boat.
i somehow don't see how actions of Somali pirates wouldn't be considered as such even if it happened inside the 12 miles zone. Piracy inside or outside of territorial waters is still a piracy.
Compare that to a hypothetical situation - if Somali could gather a presentable navy and start harassing ships outside of the 12 miles zone and a presentable looking spoke-person would communicate some theory why it is a right of Somali people - then we'd have just a legitimate territorial dispute :)
Don't you mean the Bab el Mandeb strait?
To be fair this statement is pretty inflammatory.
There is no new doctrine. Canada has always claimed they owned these island and no other country has ever disagreed with this(1), until the past 20 years or so when oil was found under the water and the north west passage started to open up.
And to be clear, Canada has claimed ownership, of these islands since 1880, so this isn't exactly a fresh land grab:)
As can be seen from this diagram, any ship going through here sails directly through Canadian waters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Northwest_passage.jpg
(1) with the exception of Denmark and hood island. However here both countries disagree about which side of their territorial borders a small island lies on.
Let's stipulate that Canada owns every island in the hemisphere. Now what? If enough ice melts that there's a passage between them which doesn't come within 12 nautical miles of an island's coast, then there's a passage that isn't in Canada's territorial waters, and Canada can't, under current international law, forbid ships using the passage.
The Suez Canal is half a continent away, and completely bounded by Egypt.
The tight point of the Bab el Mendeb, where it narrows to about 20 miles, is between Yemen and Djibouti anyway. Where Somalia is, the Gulf of Aden widens out to around 150 miles, of which only 12 miles are recognised as territorial waters, same as everywhere else. I am not a shipping expert though, this is not shipping advice.
There's also the point that shipping has been using the strait for as far back as we have records. The same can't be said of the Northwest Passage.
Huh? How could Somalia possibly claim this? Seven other countries' coastlines stand between the Suez and Somalia. There is nearly a 3000km distance between the Suez and Somalia's closest border.
Goodbye, Polar bears, we like you, but we don't think your survival is in our "national interests". Meh.
Do you think there will such a furore over Canadian tar sands, when the oil from the middle east comes to a trickle ? When the fertilizer plants stop, plastics manufacturing ends, and transporting coal becomes harder ? Should governments care for the Earth or its subjects ? I'm sorry for being so dystopian, but I don't think Science has the ability to bear the burden of, what will be, 10 billion people. This will happen sometime, I just wish I'm not alive to see the day; climate change makes it much worse.
on that side. Other side is already full steam:
The first cargo ship to make it unaided through the passage carries a load of coal.
It's sad and funny.
Iridium constellation consists of LEO satellites which have an orbital period of less than two hours.
Trivia: Iridium is #77 in the periodic table.
For all the vitriol he spews, Rush does an impressive job at framing situations so that he's impossible to argue with.
Since 1979 the IPCC report has published a best estimate for the climate sensitivity. Its latest report says "No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.".
It is not a question of denying or conspiring. It's a matter of discovering the science behind our climate. Let's do it without the silly rhetoric.
By the way, if you believe the very worst prediction (proposed on the basis of failed models) then you will be interested in this link which asks what the cost of 'doing something' is. http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/petergleick/files/2012/02/Glo...
More generally, why do we assume that a linear trendline is the appropriate way to analyze this data? Has anyone actually done an analysis that doesn't start from that assumption?
The full article is here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-wa...
However, the curve fitting is still subject to error, because you don't have the trend before 1880, at least not in this dataset. What if the temps around 1880 were anomalously warm compared to, say, 1800? (Which we have reason to believe they were.) Then the actual trendline from 1800 or so might still be roughly linear.
But more importantly, 1880 is still an arbitrary starting point; any starting point is arbitrary unless you know you have the entire dataset, which we obviously don't. If the actual trend is, say, a sine wave with a period of roughly 800 to 1000 years, with the last peak being around 1000 - 1200 AD and the last trough being around 1600 - 1700 AD, what we're seeing now could just be the approach to the next peak.
I note that the article links to a GRL paper, which I'll have to read; its abstract doesn't make it quite clear what is actual data and what is extrapolated from models.
Top graph is slope of a linear trend line for the 15 years prior to each indicated year. Bottom graph is the underlying temperature data.
For 30 of the 15-year blocks the trend was negative; for 88 the trend was positive. The last year in which there was a linear cooling trend for the 15 years prior was 1977.
Reading between the lines, their numbers for "trapped heat" are based on computer models, not on actual data; what they're basically saying is "the only data we have doesn't show the heat, but our models say it should be there, so we assume it went into the oceans".
Belief in global warming can really only come down to belief in the experts, especially the IPCC. My understanding is that the most important evidence is global temperature trends. This is (and should be) analyzed very critically since the data is very complex and suffers from many issues. However it seems that the debate has already been won.
Let's transfer this claim to another domain: "Belief in how to best organize our economy for prosperity can only come down to belief in the experts, particularly Wall Street investment bankers." Does it still seem reasonable? (And, btw, I suspect you may not have meant that you think belief in the experts is a good thing; if so, I'm giving another reason for not thinking it is.)
Also, it's easy for people to believe in experts that say things they want to hear; not so easy to believe in experts who say things they don't want to hear. How well are the experts in biology doing in convincing creationists to accept the theory of evolution? (Which, by the way, is much better supported scientifically than any theory about how the climate works.)
The plain fact is that you can't trust experts. You can't trust anyone. You also can't verify every single fact for yourself. There is no magic formula that will guarantee that we can get the right answers.
There may not even be any right answers. With regard to climate change, even if we accept for the sake of argument some particular set of predictions about how the climate will change, there will still be plenty of disagreements about whether that change is good or bad. China and India don't seem to care much that they are pumping CO2 into the atmosphere by building new coal-fired power plants like gangbusters. If we in the US decide to emasculate our economy in order to "prevent" global warming, all we may end up doing is making ourselves into a much poorer country while China prospers.
That said, any set of beliefs can be self-reinforcing, and I was initially skeptical of global warming because there are strong incentives to toe the official line. I'm sure that many researchers keep on playing with their data until they get a "result" i.e. evidence for global warming. However there has also been a lot of outside scrutiny, and I also think that in spite of this bias, academia also has the ability to be self correcting.
I've never heard any argument that global warming might be good. China and India both recognize the importance of CO2 emissions. However, they claim that since their per capita emissions are lower than the West, it is the West who should reduce their emissions first. They claim that any global cap-and-trade system should be based on per-capita quotas.
Experts in climate change are not obviously biased
...square with this?
there are strong incentives to toe the official line
Doesn't that equate to bias, at least in practical terms?
They do not profit directly from the outcome of their recommendations
They most certainly do. Recommendations that there is a big problem that needs lots of analysis lead to secure jobs and political power for the scientists doing the analysis. Recommendations that "there is nothing to see here, move along" don't.
they are in principle paid by the government to be objective.
Perhaps they are, in principle, though I would argue that that isn't really true. You can't combine scientific objectivity with a political agenda, but that's exactly what government funding of science does.
academia also has the ability to be self correcting
This is certainly possible, but it's not easy, and the mechanism by which it happens is thwarted by claims of "consensus" or that "the science is settled".
I've never heard any argument that global warming might be good.
Google is your friend:
https://www.google.com/search?q=benefits+of+global+warming
China and India both recognize the importance of CO2 emissions.
No, they recognize that CO2 emissions give them a political lever to use, and they are using it, exactly as you describe:
They claim that any global cap-and-trade system should be based on per-capita quotas.
In other words, they want to make sure that cap and trade, if it happens, does more economic damage to us than it does to them.
>They most certainly do. Recommendations that there is a big problem that needs lots of analysis lead to secure jobs and political power for the scientists doing the analysis. Recommendations that "there is nothing to see here, move along" don't.
This is indeed a significant bias. First, there is also an incentive for disagreeing with the mainstream since people with other political views or agendas are willing to fund it as well. I can't remember the name (google might be your friend here) but there was a group of skeptics who reanalyzed temperature data so as to better account for heat islands. They ended up confirming global warming. Second, while as a group researchers benefit from belief in global warming, an individual researcher could do very well from finding convincing evidence against global warming.
These are all reasons why in spite of this bias the conclusions of mainstream researchers are probably valid.
This might be an incentive for scientists to serve other political agendas, yes. (Though it's not much of an incentive unless those other agendas have a realistic chance at political power.) But it's not an incentive for scientists to be more objective; it's only an incentive for them to be biased in a different direction.
while as a group researchers benefit from belief in global warming, an individual researcher could do very well from finding convincing evidence against global warming
I'm not sure they could; at any rate, I think it's a matter of opinion, and opinions are going to vary widely.
These are all reasons why in spite of this bias the conclusions of mainstream researchers are probably valid
No, they're not. None of these reasons have anything to do with whether the mainstream conclusions are valid. That was my original point in this subthread: to know whether or not the conclusions are valid, you have to actually look at the data and the arguments based on the data. Trying to figure it out by looking at who is biased how doesn't count.
Also, there's a bait and switch here regarding what "mainstream conclusions" we are supposed to accept. Are we supposed to accept that (1) the climate is changing? Are we supposed to accept that (2) the direction in which it is currently changing is a warming direction? Both of those claims strike me as fairly obvious.
Are we supposed to accept that (3) the IPCC's predictions of what the climate will be like in 2100 are reasonable? I don't think anybody knows enough about how the climate works to say that.
Or are we supposed to accept that (4) we have a planetary emergency and if we don't take drastic action now to keep the climate from changing, we are all doomed? I think that's wrong, and worse, it's dangerous, because acting on this recommendation will squander huge amounts of resources that could be better spent on (a) bringing more people out of poverty, and (b) making it easier for the entire world to adapt to change (climate or otherwise).
Much of the furor over climate change is people talking past each other: people who hold opinions like the ones I've just expressed on #3 and #4 are accused of denying #1 and #2, while people who are only trying to argue for #1 and #2 are accused of arguing for #3 or #4. That makes it almost impossible to have a discussion in which #1 and #2 are reasonably common ground, while #3 and #4, which are the claims that are important if you're trying to decide what to do, can be rationally disputed.
Granted, even that size is not large enough to accommodate a monster like a Maersk triple-E class container ship (which is 59m wide and has too deep a draft to dock anywhere in the Americas), but the vast majority of the largest container ships in the world (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships) will fit (91 out of 100 by my count). Whereas none of the ships on that list could pass through the current locks in the Panama canal.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panamax Interesting, if nothing else.