On Oct 19, 8:40?am, "BillP" wrote:
"Chuck Gould" wrote in message

ps.com...





All of those explorers of a few hundred years ago were just slightly
too early.

Thanks to climate change, the fabled NW Passage between Europe and
Asia is now open during the summer months, no longer blocked by ice.

Adventurous cruisers can really plan a "great circle" route now,
circumnavigating the entire western hemisphere.

Apparently there is a major squabble between Canada and some members
of the international community regarding who will control the newly
available shipping channel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6995999.stm

For what it may be worth, you have to wonder whether the rumors of the
NW Passage that sent the Europeans into the Canadian arctic might not
have been founded upon tales handed down for scores of generations
from a time when a similar warming trend (one that obviously couldn't
have been created by internal combustion engines) made the passage ice
free?

This is nothing new- the passage has been navigable many times before. This
ship did it twice in the 40's.http://hnsa.org/ships/stroch.htm

And by the way- records on the passage ice have only been kept since 1972.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Attempts to navigate the NW Passage have been regularly thwarted since
the 16th century, with no navigable channel available. Cook,
Vancouver, etc all searched for the NW Passage....so it's not entirely
correct to say we didn't have any idea what when on up there prior to
the early 1970's. Thanks for letting me know it had been open briefly
in the 1940's, it will be interesting to see how long it remains open
this time.

Beginning in the 1970's we had satellite and other data that allowed
us to track the arctic ice coverage, so we can establish with fair
certainty thta in the last 35 years the NW Passage has not been
navigable during the summer months.