Tuesday 18 September 2007

Great news for international shipping! (2)

Those BBC wankers are still at it, y'know.

Yesterday on the News At Ten they had a piece on the melting of the Arctic ice cap, saying that the Northwest Passage was now ice-free for the first time since records began*, and showed footage of two icebreakers laboriously smashing their way through 6' thick ice (which is not very thick by Arctic standards, but hey).

Seeing as this passage was navigated a hundred times in the last hundred years (per Sunday Times) I don't see what there is to get excited about.

This story was torn to pieces by Peter Risdon and DK (links here).

Maybe the Panamanians ought to get on with widening that Canal after all.

* in 1978.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, Greenland cores, not Iceland cores.

One country is named after a supermarket. Easy mistake to make.

I worked in a freezer centre one summer and it was hell. Every customer came in saying 'You are working in the right place' which was rubbish because every freezer put out gush of hot air.

To ward off heatstroke the staff took it in turns to go and stand in the coldstore/deep freeze next to the hanging lambs. You had to have a mate outside for the obvious reason that if they left you, you'd be dead in not very long.

In those days they didn't put up signs such as 'do not lock yourself in the deep freeze as being frozen to death can be injurious to your health and frostbite is unsightly' as they trusted us to have just enough sense not to do it.

Thinking about it, a sign might have been a good idea.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Or even better, just have a handle on the inside?

Penny Pincher said...

I just thankful that we do have Global Warming as I spent so many of my teen years been frightened about the mini ice age 'they' told me was on its way...

Mark Wadsworth said...

Yup. global cooling (caused by pollution and Co2) always frightened me more than global warming (caused by pollution and CO2) does now.