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The Arctic Could See Ice-Free Summers By 2035, Reshaping Global Shipping Routes
And monkeys will fly outta my butt! Al Gore famously predicted this years ago, and came up 100% wrong. Let's go for two! [CNBC] - Sick of shipping delays? There might be a faster way to ship supplies around the world in the not too distant future. With melting sea ice in the Arctic, Russia and China are expanding their shipping infrastructure over the Eurasian continent. Last year’s Suez Canal incident, when a ship got stuck and blocked global traffic for several days, was seen as just the argument to entice businesses to explore using Arctic shipping routes. "Many Russian officials are very quick to jump on the fact that Arctic sea routes are potentially much more useful for avoiding the kind of bottlenecks that one would see in either Panama or Suez Canal," said Marc Lanteigne, associate professor of political science at the Arctic University of Norway. China claims using the Northern Sea Route would shave almost 20 days off the shipping time now spent traveling through the Suez Canal. But Arctic transit is no small feat and is still highly unpredictable. Captain Kenneth Boda took the U.S. Coast Guard cutter HEALY through the Arctic over Alaska and Canada this past summer. Posted by: Raj 2022-02-16 |
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