Climate Change, Sea Ice and Engineering New Trade in the Artic

By Vijay Jayaraj

Modern warming of the climate, contrary to the popular – though waning – narrative, has contributed to the flourishing of human civilization to unprecedented levels.

About 10,000 years ago at the end of the last glacial advance, our relatively warm Holocene era began and allowed for the development of agriculture and ever more complex technologies. This warmth is destined to end upon arrival of the next continental masses of ice at a time yet to be announced by nature.

Even though the post-glacial warmth is generally regarded as positive, climate alarmists would have us believe that future warming will be catastrophic to ecosystems.

Poppycock.

Firstly, there is no available scientific evidence to show that warming of the past seven decades or so – since industrial activity markedly raised concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide – has increased extreme weather events or adversely affected human life.

Secondly, such projections about the future do not account for palaeoclimatological records that fail to establish CO₂ as a major determinate of global temperatures. In fact, rising temperatures often appear to be the cause of higher CO₂, not the reverse.

Earth’s history poses all kinds of interesting questions. For example, the Antarctic was once a teeming rainforest supporting many life forms. Today, it is the planet’s most desolate, forbidding continent. Who is to say which is better? It is a terrible location for a beach vacation but a habitat well suited for penguins.

Yet, climate alarmists point to Earth’s poles as a source of worry. Melting ice supposedly will raise sea level to the point of flooding coastal cities. But the truth is that the creeping pace of sea-level rise, which started with the retreat of the continental glaciers, poses no danger to human civilization. Besides, we have long-tested and successful coping mechanisms already employed in places like the Netherlands, whose dike systems have been holding back the seas for centuries.

In the Arctic, melting sea ice, the fearmongers would have us believe, threaten polar bears. Yet, bear numbers have actually increased.

Even as alarmists fret about melting ice, data show that ice volumes are relatively high and governments are spending millions of dollars breaking up the Arctic’s ice to facilitate world shipping.

It is ironic that tax dollars finance massive icebreakers plowing through the Arctic ice while commuters are told foolishly to abandon the technology of the internal combustion engine that drives some of the ships.

While headlines fixate on melting Arctic ice, the more substantive story is the engineering of new trade routes through the frozen region.  This breaking up of sea ice for navigation is a historic endeavor that countries like Russia and the U.S. support to create shorter trade routes, which are used mainly for transporting oil and natural gas.

The Arctic’s Northern Sea Route (NSR) slashes 4,970 miles from the traditional Suez Canal passage, offering a 30-40% shorter path between Europe and Asia.  The NSR provides a dramatic reduction in time and fuel consumption for world shipping.

Nuclear Powered Icebreakers

Russia envisions the future of global shipping by way of an icy “silk road” that would redraw trade maps between Eurasia and Asia-Pacific, bypassing traditional southern routes at the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope. The country seeks to increase cargo traffic to 240 million metric tons (mmt) by 2035 from 36 mmt in 2023.

Studies on ship navigability project the NSR to be extremely lucrative in the next seven decades for Russia and other nations bordering the Arctic circle.

Russia has the dominant icebreaker fleet, with six nuclear-powered ships that place high in global rankings. Among these is the Arktika, the largest and most powerful icebreaker in the world. With 33,530 metric tons of displacement, this giant storms through open waters at 22 knots and methodically penetrates 9-foot-thick ice.

But it’s not just Russia. Earlier this year, Canada, the U.S. and Finland united to form an “Ice Pact” to challenge Russia and China’s icebreaker dominance, signaling a new power play in Arctic waters. The pact is expected to fund as many as 90 new icebreakers.

While climate alarmists obsess over melting ice and a faux threat of rising waters, the more substantive story is the purposeful business of engineering new trade routes through the frozen Arctic to serve the transportation needs and energy demands of world commerce.

Perhaps present-day climate alarmism will more widely be seen as a frivolous – and wasteful – distraction without foundation, allowing for more attention to be paid to such serious work as that of nations working in the Arctic toward positive ends.

This commentary was first published at Toronto Sun on November 29, 2024.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.