By JONATHAN CRIBBS
January 2009

As environmentalists and scientists debate the effects of global warming and sea ice melting in the Arctic, shipping experts are quietly weighing how quickly — and how dramatically — international commerce might see a silver lining.

The Arctic has become a lightning rod of debate as regional nations, including Russia, Denmark, Canada and the United States, jockey to take advantage of lucrative natural resources beneath the fast-melting ice. About 90 billion gallons of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried underneath ice north of the Arctic Circle, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But melting sea ice would open new, previously treacherous and unnavigable passageways over Asia and North America, shortening some routes by thousands of miles. For example, access to the currently blocked Northwest Passage over North America would reduce a trip from Yokohama, Japan, to Rotterdam in The Netherlands to just 5,618 miles — a far cry from the popular 11,209-mile trip that currently requires ships to pass through the Panama Canal, said Scott Borgerson, an ocean governance expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.

“It’s not a matter of if than when,” Borgerson said. “It’s going to be sooner rather than later.”

Scientists predict at some point over the next century, ice will disappear from the Arctic during the summer, opening new passageways. Borgerson has predicted that could occur within the next several years. Walt Meier, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., predicted 2025 at the earliest. Both acknowledged the difficulty of predicting those patterns, however.

Estimates released around 2000 claimed the Arctic would see ice-free summers near the end of the century, but nearly all scientists now acknowledge that warming has accelerated much faster than they predicted then, Meier said. It would also be nearly impossible to reverse that trend soon. Ice melting is a long, delayed process. Vast swaths of sea ice reflect solar heat back into space, but as the air temperature rises and that sea ice begins to thaw, the melting process speeds up, he said. With less sea ice reflecting heat, the ocean temperature rises, and the ice melts faster.

“Even if we stopped emitting CO2 today, which is quite unreasonable… what’s already in that atmosphere will continue warming,” Meier said.

Shipping companies aren’t ready to redirect their fleets, said Joe Cox, president of the Chamber of Shipping of America, which represents shipping companies in the United States. The industry has established reliable routes through the Suez and Panama canals, for instance, and even if ice was completely gone tomorrow, the Arctic wouldn’t be set up for easy navigation, he said. There are few working lighthouses and ports. There is little data about treacherous obstacles, and satellites haven’t been used for commercial navigation there.

Ships might still face dangerous chunks of ice, requiring them to strengthen the hulls of their ships, Cox said. Those ships might also need to be insured at a higher cost, and despite the shortened distance, the trip might still not be financially feasible, he said — and all that for a region that would only be ice free for several months each year.

“There’s a lot of questions about the Arctic, OK?” he said, chuckling. “I think companies will begin to take the risk of transiting the Arctic when they’re assured they aren’t going to be hitting any ice. … What point will there be an assurance that there’s not going to be any non-navigable ice in the Arctic? On that, I bet a lot of scientists aren’t going to be able to help.”

Borgerson agreed.

“There are people who put a lot more energy into the stock market and get it frequently wrong,” he said.

(This article was published in the Mother Nature Network.)