Vocal Voices

A commercial LNG tanker has sailed across the Arctic's northern route from Europe to Asia without using an ice-breaker for the first time.

The journey in the specially designed tanker only took six days giving a window for some 20 crossings each summer - there were 19 tanker/ice breaker journeys in 2016. The company, Sovcomflot, is to have a fleet of 15 such vessels giving a total of about 300 crossings.

Each of those journeys will be breaking some ice further diminishing the Arctic's ability to repair itself during the winter months; and that is before exhaust pollution or any potential accidents are taken into account.

We are stark raving mad!

Workingman wrote:.
We are stark raving mad!

It depends who you mean by 'we'.

Probably you mean 'us humans'. That I would agree with. I honestly think that the human race
will eventually transform Planet Earth to such an extent that life for humans will prove to be
impossible, and we will pass into history just as the dinosaurs did. In the process there will be
much weeping and gnashing of teeth. But it's future generations who will have to be worried.

Yes, Aggers, I did mean humans - well most of us.

Brazil has announced that it is to auction off mineral and mining rights to an area of Amazonia the size of Denmark! The area includes part of the Amazon river delta: What could possibly go wrong?

I remember the Bible saying "And the meek shall inherit the earth."

I take "the meek" to now mean the jungle tribes, bushmen and nomads - those for whom "technology" is little more than their hands and their brains.

The destruction of both the Amazon and the Arctic is pretty worrying, really. It's sheer human greed. The Amazon rain forest is often described as the "lungs" of the earth and we've already seen mass de-forestation.

The Bible also says that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. Lot of truth in that ....

The Northern Sea Route has long been a target of shipping companies. I expect that opening it now will only be the beginning and that as the Arctic declines these routes will be used more and more.

After all, to reach the east coast of the US or Europe, you either have to go through the Suez Canal, at high cost, or across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal or round the horn of Africa.

Using the Arctic route cuts thousands of miles off the return trip, reduces fuel consumption and cuts cost.

Other options such as the land rail links being created right now are there, but land borders, politics and terrorism are an ever present threat to that.

As for the Amazon? Brazil takes the money and pays lip service to the commitments. Until they break it all over again and hold their hands out for another chunk of money.

The human world, as we know it, is heading to a crisis from which it will emerge very different from the human world we know today. Rights and Freedoms are going to become constrained and wars will happen again.

Stupid is as Stupid does...

Yes, Suff, the future for the human race does seem to look very bleak.

It's a pity one cannot 'fast-forward' to see what will eventually happen.

We "humans" have been on fast-forward for decades.

And we are heading full-throttle to the scene of the crash, but ever so many of us seem to not care.

People have become used to humanity being able to surmount huge problems, create truly massive engineering works and be able to trigger a Nuclear winter with our power.

On a planet wide scale we are ants playing with sand castles whilst the steamroller slowly rolls down the beach. People think the atmosphere is vast, yet if we reduce the scale of the planet to the size of a basketball, the atmosphere would only be one quarter of an inch off the surface.

Once more, this year, it seems, the Arctic ice gets a summer reprieve, but this will not last for much longer. No more than a decade. When it finally goes ice free in summer, whacky weather will seem like a blessing compared to what we will experience then.

it's beyond madness and I really wish people would just sit up and take notice before it's too late, but I fear we're already past that point

I come from a family of five, my four siblings all have children; and as much as I really really would have lovedto have my own, there are just too many times now I am so beyond grateful that I don't, because the world we're passing on is a ticking time bomb

I am seriously beginning to think that I would not be too unhappy if I do not become granddad.