The Arctic Ocean summer ice is melting rapidly, and Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe’s most northerly outpost to the North Pole.
Governments are jockeying for position for the shipping lanes the are expected to open up. A journey through the North-East Passage from Europe to Japan is 7,000 nautical miles long and takes 22 days. A comparative trip through the Suez canal is 11,000 nautical miles and takes 35 days.
WWF reports that NASA data shows that arctic perennial sea ice, which normally survives the summer melt season and remains year-round, shrunk abruptly by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005.
Now an expedition to Peary Land in Greenland, lead by Danish geologist Svend Funder, has found that for 1500 years, from 9000 to 7500 years ago, there was no summer ice covering the Arctic Ocean.
“There is no reason to downplay the current greenhouse effect, but our research shows that the planet and humanity have been able to survive a previous greenhouse event. There is no reason to fear the worst, because future horror scenarios are a repetition of the past,” says Svend Funder.