First, let’s get our bearings. Unlike the Northwest passage, which traverses the icy north above Canada, the Northeast passage is an entirely different route, shown on the map in red.
Source: UK Register graphic
From The Register: Also called the Northeast Passage or North Sea Passage, it’s a trade route that in summer months links the North European and Siberian ports to Asia, around the Arctic Circle. Orient-bound traffic heads east, then South via the Bering Strait. The route offers significant gains over the alternatives via Suez or the Cape, it’s shorter, quicker and cheaper. But until technological advances in the early 20th Century it was considered too hazardous for commercial operation.
The merchant ships MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight arrived this week in Yamburg, Siberia. Ownership is Beluga Group Shipping Gmbh. From the company website: “During the passed days which led through the East Siberian Sea, the Sannikov Strait and the Vilkizki Strait as northernmost part the Beluga vessels were part of a little convoy behind the Russian Atomflot-ice breakers “50 let Pobedy” and “Rossia”.”.
Icebreaker & Merchant ship - from the company website
“We are all very proud and delighted to be the first western shipping company which has successfully transited the legendary Northeast-Passage and delivered the sensitive cargo safely through this extraordinarily demanding sea area”, Niels Stolberg said, President and CEO of Beluga Shipping GmbH, after the masters Captain Aleksander Antonov and Captain Valeriy Durov had notified that they had dropped anchor at their port of destination. “To transit the Northeast-Passage so well and professionally without incidents on the premiere trip is the result of our extremely thorough and accurate preparation as well as the outstanding team work between our attentive captains, our reliable meteorologists and our engaged crew”, said Stolberg.
One newspaper is making the most of this “first ever event”, according to a story in the UK Register:
The Times has liberally papered London underground carriages with a fascinating new ad campaign. One poster shows a ship navigating some treacherous icy waters, with the accompanying copy reading:
Climate change has allowed the Northeast Passage to be used as a commercial shipping route for the first time.
The Times advertisment
Impressive – if only it were true.
According to the ad copy:
To help you navigate the changing world we have more dedicated science and environment correspondents than the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail or Independent.
Only one problem: The Northeast Passage has been opened for commerce since 1934 – and never ‘closed’.
Over the years hundreds of thousands of freighters have passed through, and after Russia put Soviet-era politics aside it was extended to foreign commerce in the 1990s. As the Register reported two weeks ago.
It’s a disaster all right, a disaster of bad journalism. I won’t mince words. It’s crap.
But we all know the MSM can’t get much right these days. My guess is that the MSM simply confused the difficult and almost always closed Northwest passage with the Northeast passage.
Bloggers once again were the leaders in discovering the real truth instead of paid journalists. Is it really so hard to use Google? For example the EU referendum had details and pictures of many previous transits of the Northeast passage. In this story, they show the history of this shipping lane.
Read the details of the latest failure of journalism turned advertising opportunity in the UK Register, here.
Thanks to Andrew Orlowski of the register for his assistance with this story.
===
Readers, especially those in the UK, I’d like to make a suggestion. Let the Times know they screwed up, not only for the journalistic failure, but also for the touting of the failure as advertising. Letters to the editor, letters to the managements, and to the advertising office might be a good start. If nobody calls them on it, they’ll never learn.
There’s also the UK Advertising Standards Authority, that works to keep advertising legal, decent, honest and truthful. The ad being run by the Times is failing most of those points. Here’s where you can complain:
The merchant ships MV Beluga Fraternity and MV Beluga Foresight arrived this week in Yamburg, Siberia. Ownership is Beluga Group Shipping Gmbh. From the company website: “During the passed days which led through the East Siberian Sea, the Sannikov Strait and the Vilkizki Strait as northernmost part the Beluga vessels were part of a little convoy behind the Russian Atomflot-ice breakers “50 let Pobedy” and “Rossia”.”.
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Britannic no-see-um
October 7, 2009 1:10 pm
Russian Atomflot-ice breakers “50 let Pobedy” and “Rossia”.
Incidentally I think that transliterates as ’50 years since victory’ and ‘(obvious)’.
Personally I think the more extreme and ridiculous the press on alarmist AGW becomes the better. Where comments are allowed, the tenor is so hostile in the UK now that many of the ‘environmental’ page pieces have withdrawn the readers comments facility. They actually are digging their own grave.
The transit of the Northern Sea Route has be annual event for years. In the early 1960’s when I was in the navy, we followed it closely as it was used to supply the forward (strategic) airbases the Soviets used during the winter. This year may have been the first open to non-Russian commercial shipping, but it has been a regular event for well over 50 years.
Stephen Skinner
October 7, 2009 1:32 pm
Out of interest if Franklin had attempted the Northwest Passage in a modern atomic ice breaker would he have made it?
Here is an excerpt from wikipedia:
During the winter, the ice along the northern seaways varies in thickness from 1.2 to 2.0 metres (3.9 to 6.5 feet). The ice in central parts of the Arctic Ocean is on average 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) thick. Nuclear-powered icebreakers can force through this ice at speeds up to 10 knots (19 km/h, 12mph)”.
And here is some specs for the ‘Yamal’:
Maximum speed: 22knots (40kmh), cruising speed 19.5 knots (35kmh) in calm open water. Ice 2.3m thick can be broken at 3 knots (5.5kmh). Maximum thickness of that can be penetrated is estimated at 5m, individual ridges of 9m have been broken.
And also of interest:
These ships must cruise in cold water, in order to cool their reactors. As a result, they cannot pass through the tropics to undertake voyages in the Southern Hemisphere.
Where does all that heat go?
State run media, it’s coming back and it’s just like Germany in the 30’s….mostly lies
Al Gore's Holy Hologram
October 7, 2009 1:45 pm
I’d just like to correct some commenters. News Intenarional publications such as The Times are far less alarmist than the competition who purposely set out to be alarming to compliment their leftwing ideology which must create crisis in order to further their agendas. Murdoch is not a leftwinger and Fox News is one of the few outlets brave enough to challenge global warming hysteria, even if they use the some what comical Glenn Beck to do it. Just two weeks ago we had a seminar at News International called ‘Hair Shirts and the Apocalypse’ I’m not sure what it was about but the title says a lot. But in general journalists really need to do their homework. Unfortunately we are seeing science journalism slide downhill. It has been like that ever since Carl Sagan died and the Internet gave voice to millions of cretinous activists.
PaulH
October 7, 2009 1:52 pm
No wonder the dead-tree media is crashing.
Ship Ahoy
October 7, 2009 1:59 pm
The German merchant ship ‘Komet’ made this transit in the summer of 1940, departing Norway in July 1940 and entering the North Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait in September 1940, she was also assisted in her passage, by then Soviet Union ice-breakers.
The ‘Komet’ was a merchant ship armed with concealed heavy calibre guns, mines and torpedoes, her purpose was to sneak up on unarmed merchant ships and then suddenly open fire and sink them.
Dave Andrews
October 7, 2009 2:02 pm
Mike McMillan’
No point writing to the Guardian. The paper I have read for over 40 years is, unfortunately, wedded to climate change. Its journalistic standards have dropped dramatically over those years, especially the last decade.
SunSword
October 7, 2009 2:33 pm
Folks. This kind of stuff is DELIBERATE. The meeting in Copenhagen is coming up. Does anyone seriously think that every editor was in ignorance before permitting this to be printed? The advertising campaign had to be planned in advance, and funded. No one, not one, fact checked it?
Face facts — how many people saw the advertising, read the stories in the Times, or the Register, or Guardian, or listened to the BBC — but won’t see the quiet buried retractions? Plus the papers copy each other. Go to, for example, google news and type in “northeast passage” and view all articles. See how many papers around the world picked up this story with the same wording.
This is organized, people. And it is deliberate. It is the technique of the big lie. Every week from here, from there, is another drip drip drip bogus global warming climate change story. And we, on blogs like this, know it is a lie. But only some thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people read here. But tens of millions read the lies, hear the lies.
Not much point in writing the The Independent, it’s locked in talks with the banks trying to stave off closure. I don’t think they have money for any real journalists. Their office staff just re-cycle stuff from the BBC, political parties and associated Quangos, but then in today’s UK, that is some job, there being in excess of 500 of them, each lobbying for more cash. Modern main stream journalism is easy, and it will continue to be until the public wake up.
rbateman
October 7, 2009 2:54 pm
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:45:59) :
Should we then consider the Times piece “paid advertising”?
i.e. – nothing more than a plug for Global Warming paid for by Alarmist money collected faster than previously thought.
Sometimes, the commercials get so out-of-hand one is reminded of fish stories…they grow over time.
IanM
October 7, 2009 2:56 pm
John Wright (10:31:31) wrote (in part):
“And in 2007 the NE passage seems to have been closed.
“How do the warmists explain that?”
IanM
October 7, 2009 2:58 pm
John Wright (10:31:31) wrote (in part):
“And in 2007 the NE passage seems to have been closed.
“How do the warmists explain that?”
I read just last night that the wind in 2007 was such that it piled up ice in the NW passage.
IanM
IanM
October 7, 2009 3:02 pm
When I send an ordinary e-mail, I hit the Tab key twice to indent my name. Unfortunately…..doing that at WUWT causes one’s message to be sent prematurely.
IanM
Gentry
October 7, 2009 3:28 pm
One would think the same folks that cry foul over George Will’s articles would find erroneous reporting about the Northeast Passage. I guess not.
Jeremy
October 7, 2009 4:16 pm
Don’t write to The Times – it would be far better to write to and alert all their competitors! The Times have made a complete fool of themselves – especially by portraying superiority and bashing their competitors publically over poor scientific journalism when they got their entire story muddled. Surely this was an April Fool article?
tallbloke (08:54:11) : “Fabled arctic sea route”
“Pity the journalism isn’t equally fabulous.”
Oh, it is, it is:
Fabled, adj.: known only in fables; fictitious
rbateman
October 7, 2009 5:38 pm
The Times has a Dan Rather dotted eye on this, and then some.
When this story originally broke, I had to spend all of 10 minutes on the net to know that is was contrived. I posted what I found same day. Anybody who spent a few minutes on the net could confirm what I posted.
So, why does it take months for the Times competitors to check out thier rivals claims?
My concerns at the time included the possibility that Medvedev or Putin would take exception to the Western Media using their good nature of allowing European ships to traverse the NE passage, to further political agenda.
Russia is not exactly keen on the warmist lean on everything.
Playing loose with the reporting can have unintended consequences.
Did anyone bother to clear the story with the diplomatic channel?
At the very least, Russia must think we’re a nation of crackpots.
Not the best foot forward when the US is trying to get Russia to help out with the Iranian nuclear problem, what with a story they have to know is bogus.
To me, this is very troublesome, not just the bad story. Things like this can get quickly blown out of proportion, and cause bad feelings.
Reel it in.
The story was published in The Australian a while ago. I wrote in, and they published my letter (but did not retract their original story).
My letter as published : http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/dont_let_facts_interfere
“Don’t let facts interfere
YOUR article (“German ships break the ice on trade frontier”, 15/9) begins, “It is a symbol of global warming” and goes on to say that the voyage of two German container ships through the Russian Northeast Passage was “considered impossible until a few years ago”. What tosh.
The Russian Northeast Passage has been known to be navigable since the mid 1800s. Adolf Nordenskiold navigated the Northeast Passage from west to east in the Swedish steamship Vega in 1878, and in 1915 Russian hydrographer and surveyor Boris Vilkitsky made the passage from east to west.
The passage was used regularly and commercially by the USSR, and the only reason that the route was “impossible” for Western ships is that Moscow refused access.”
I have written to the “science editor” of a national newspaper, and to MPs, but (of course) to no avail. Sooner or later, preferably before Copenhagen, the MSM surely has to change tack, if we keep up the pressure. (Or are they trying to hold out until after Copenhagen?).
JimInIndy
October 7, 2009 5:56 pm
During the MWP, Vikings used the Northeast Passage to reach the mouths of Russian rivers, thence into the interior as far as Constantinople. (Nat. Geo., 2004)
GP
October 7, 2009 6:04 pm
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:45:59) :
“I’d just like to correct some commenters. News Intenarional publications such as The Times are far less alarmist than the competition who purposely set out to be alarming to compliment their leftwing ideology which must create crisis in order to further their agendas. Murdoch is not a leftwinger and Fox News is one of the few outlets brave enough to challenge global warming hysteria, even if they use the some what comical Glenn Beck to do it. Just two weeks ago we had a seminar at News International called ‘Hair Shirts and the Apocalypse’ I’m not sure what it was about but the title says a lot. But in general journalists really need to do their homework. Unfortunately we are seeing science journalism slide downhill. It has been like that ever since Carl Sagan died and the Internet gave voice to millions of cretinous activists.”
Murdoch, in my opinion, follows his own path and makes that as good as it can be for Murdoch. Fair enough one might say but in reality I suspect he blows with the wind for political influence and what that might bring with it. The colour of his politics seems to vary with location and events as well.
Quite why an Australian American should have so much influence over the British media and political parties I am not sure.
Since he also works towards a pay per use model for the interent content of his media outlets one has to assume that he is not greatly in favour of free access to information. However whether he succeeds in making the internet pay and what his political stands are may be unimpportant once the EU bureaucracy takes central power for itself.
The title of the seminar you mention is indeed interesting but, absent attending and listening, could have been anything. It’s a jump too far tosuggest this may have been and internal MSM political change of direction. If it was it suggests a very dysfunctional philosophy, given the nature of the adverts.
Nevertheless we can but hope ….
Russian Atomflot-ice breakers “50 let Pobedy” and “Rossia”.
Incidentally I think that transliterates as ’50 years since victory’ and ‘(obvious)’.
Personally I think the more extreme and ridiculous the press on alarmist AGW becomes the better. Where comments are allowed, the tenor is so hostile in the UK now that many of the ‘environmental’ page pieces have withdrawn the readers comments facility. They actually are digging their own grave.
The transit of the Northern Sea Route has be annual event for years. In the early 1960’s when I was in the navy, we followed it closely as it was used to supply the forward (strategic) airbases the Soviets used during the winter. This year may have been the first open to non-Russian commercial shipping, but it has been a regular event for well over 50 years.
Out of interest if Franklin had attempted the Northwest Passage in a modern atomic ice breaker would he have made it?
Here is an excerpt from wikipedia:
During the winter, the ice along the northern seaways varies in thickness from 1.2 to 2.0 metres (3.9 to 6.5 feet). The ice in central parts of the Arctic Ocean is on average 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) thick. Nuclear-powered icebreakers can force through this ice at speeds up to 10 knots (19 km/h, 12mph)”.
And here is some specs for the ‘Yamal’:
Maximum speed: 22knots (40kmh), cruising speed 19.5 knots (35kmh) in calm open water. Ice 2.3m thick can be broken at 3 knots (5.5kmh). Maximum thickness of that can be penetrated is estimated at 5m, individual ridges of 9m have been broken.
And also of interest:
These ships must cruise in cold water, in order to cool their reactors. As a result, they cannot pass through the tropics to undertake voyages in the Southern Hemisphere.
Where does all that heat go?
Pearland Aggie (09:12:23) : Dr. Roy Spencer has the latest UAH update: 0.42 C
So far the Global Temp averages to 0.23 C, what was it last year?
State run media, it’s coming back and it’s just like Germany in the 30’s….mostly lies
I’d just like to correct some commenters. News Intenarional publications such as The Times are far less alarmist than the competition who purposely set out to be alarming to compliment their leftwing ideology which must create crisis in order to further their agendas. Murdoch is not a leftwinger and Fox News is one of the few outlets brave enough to challenge global warming hysteria, even if they use the some what comical Glenn Beck to do it. Just two weeks ago we had a seminar at News International called ‘Hair Shirts and the Apocalypse’ I’m not sure what it was about but the title says a lot. But in general journalists really need to do their homework. Unfortunately we are seeing science journalism slide downhill. It has been like that ever since Carl Sagan died and the Internet gave voice to millions of cretinous activists.
No wonder the dead-tree media is crashing.
The German merchant ship ‘Komet’ made this transit in the summer of 1940, departing Norway in July 1940 and entering the North Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait in September 1940, she was also assisted in her passage, by then Soviet Union ice-breakers.
The ‘Komet’ was a merchant ship armed with concealed heavy calibre guns, mines and torpedoes, her purpose was to sneak up on unarmed merchant ships and then suddenly open fire and sink them.
Mike McMillan’
No point writing to the Guardian. The paper I have read for over 40 years is, unfortunately, wedded to climate change. Its journalistic standards have dropped dramatically over those years, especially the last decade.
Folks. This kind of stuff is DELIBERATE. The meeting in Copenhagen is coming up. Does anyone seriously think that every editor was in ignorance before permitting this to be printed? The advertising campaign had to be planned in advance, and funded. No one, not one, fact checked it?
Face facts — how many people saw the advertising, read the stories in the Times, or the Register, or Guardian, or listened to the BBC — but won’t see the quiet buried retractions? Plus the papers copy each other. Go to, for example, google news and type in “northeast passage” and view all articles. See how many papers around the world picked up this story with the same wording.
This is organized, people. And it is deliberate. It is the technique of the big lie. Every week from here, from there, is another drip drip drip bogus global warming climate change story. And we, on blogs like this, know it is a lie. But only some thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people read here. But tens of millions read the lies, hear the lies.
Not much point in writing the The Independent, it’s locked in talks with the banks trying to stave off closure. I don’t think they have money for any real journalists. Their office staff just re-cycle stuff from the BBC, political parties and associated Quangos, but then in today’s UK, that is some job, there being in excess of 500 of them, each lobbying for more cash. Modern main stream journalism is easy, and it will continue to be until the public wake up.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:45:59) :
Should we then consider the Times piece “paid advertising”?
i.e. – nothing more than a plug for Global Warming paid for by Alarmist money collected faster than previously thought.
Sometimes, the commercials get so out-of-hand one is reminded of fish stories…they grow over time.
John Wright (10:31:31) wrote (in part):
“And in 2007 the NE passage seems to have been closed.
“How do the warmists explain that?”
John Wright (10:31:31) wrote (in part):
“And in 2007 the NE passage seems to have been closed.
“How do the warmists explain that?”
I read just last night that the wind in 2007 was such that it piled up ice in the NW passage.
IanM
When I send an ordinary e-mail, I hit the Tab key twice to indent my name. Unfortunately…..doing that at WUWT causes one’s message to be sent prematurely.
IanM
One would think the same folks that cry foul over George Will’s articles would find erroneous reporting about the Northeast Passage. I guess not.
Don’t write to The Times – it would be far better to write to and alert all their competitors! The Times have made a complete fool of themselves – especially by portraying superiority and bashing their competitors publically over poor scientific journalism when they got their entire story muddled. Surely this was an April Fool article?
The Telegraph picked it up
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6210015/Hopelessly-lost-in-the-North-East-Passage.html#
Thanks for the link Anthony. Appreciated!
Note also, Stolberg is something of a devotee of the climate change religion.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/09/triumph-for-propaganda.html
tallbloke (08:54:11) : “Fabled arctic sea route”
“Pity the journalism isn’t equally fabulous.”
Oh, it is, it is:
Fabled, adj.: known only in fables; fictitious
The Times has a Dan Rather dotted eye on this, and then some.
When this story originally broke, I had to spend all of 10 minutes on the net to know that is was contrived. I posted what I found same day. Anybody who spent a few minutes on the net could confirm what I posted.
So, why does it take months for the Times competitors to check out thier rivals claims?
My concerns at the time included the possibility that Medvedev or Putin would take exception to the Western Media using their good nature of allowing European ships to traverse the NE passage, to further political agenda.
Russia is not exactly keen on the warmist lean on everything.
Playing loose with the reporting can have unintended consequences.
Did anyone bother to clear the story with the diplomatic channel?
At the very least, Russia must think we’re a nation of crackpots.
Not the best foot forward when the US is trying to get Russia to help out with the Iranian nuclear problem, what with a story they have to know is bogus.
To me, this is very troublesome, not just the bad story. Things like this can get quickly blown out of proportion, and cause bad feelings.
Reel it in.
The story was published in The Australian a while ago. I wrote in, and they published my letter (but did not retract their original story).
My letter as published :
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/dont_let_facts_interfere
“Don’t let facts interfere
YOUR article (“German ships break the ice on trade frontier”, 15/9) begins, “It is a symbol of global warming” and goes on to say that the voyage of two German container ships through the Russian Northeast Passage was “considered impossible until a few years ago”. What tosh.
The Russian Northeast Passage has been known to be navigable since the mid 1800s. Adolf Nordenskiold navigated the Northeast Passage from west to east in the Swedish steamship Vega in 1878, and in 1915 Russian hydrographer and surveyor Boris Vilkitsky made the passage from east to west.
The passage was used regularly and commercially by the USSR, and the only reason that the route was “impossible” for Western ships is that Moscow refused access.”
I have written to the “science editor” of a national newspaper, and to MPs, but (of course) to no avail. Sooner or later, preferably before Copenhagen, the MSM surely has to change tack, if we keep up the pressure. (Or are they trying to hold out until after Copenhagen?).
During the MWP, Vikings used the Northeast Passage to reach the mouths of Russian rivers, thence into the interior as far as Constantinople. (Nat. Geo., 2004)
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:45:59) :
“I’d just like to correct some commenters. News Intenarional publications such as The Times are far less alarmist than the competition who purposely set out to be alarming to compliment their leftwing ideology which must create crisis in order to further their agendas. Murdoch is not a leftwinger and Fox News is one of the few outlets brave enough to challenge global warming hysteria, even if they use the some what comical Glenn Beck to do it. Just two weeks ago we had a seminar at News International called ‘Hair Shirts and the Apocalypse’ I’m not sure what it was about but the title says a lot. But in general journalists really need to do their homework. Unfortunately we are seeing science journalism slide downhill. It has been like that ever since Carl Sagan died and the Internet gave voice to millions of cretinous activists.”
Murdoch, in my opinion, follows his own path and makes that as good as it can be for Murdoch. Fair enough one might say but in reality I suspect he blows with the wind for political influence and what that might bring with it. The colour of his politics seems to vary with location and events as well.
Quite why an Australian American should have so much influence over the British media and political parties I am not sure.
Since he also works towards a pay per use model for the interent content of his media outlets one has to assume that he is not greatly in favour of free access to information. However whether he succeeds in making the internet pay and what his political stands are may be unimpportant once the EU bureaucracy takes central power for itself.
The title of the seminar you mention is indeed interesting but, absent attending and listening, could have been anything. It’s a jump too far tosuggest this may have been and internal MSM political change of direction. If it was it suggests a very dysfunctional philosophy, given the nature of the adverts.
Nevertheless we can but hope ….
If you look at the Times story it looks like some comments by readers were already calling the Times to book on the shoddy journalism.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6832885.ece