Mustn't laugh! Sailing through the Arctic is nothing new

And, contrary to all the claims, it is nothing to do with global warming. The report below notes both that transit through the Northwest passage happened 40 years ago and that there were five prior transits. It kinda puts into perspective the erections that the Warmists have been getting about a recent transit through the Northeast passage by two German freighters. The two passages are different but are at similar latitudes and both are normally iced up. The Northwest passage is actually the more difficult one.

And I suppose it is evil of me to note that Finno-Swedish explorer Nordenskiöld made the first complete transit though the Northeast Passage way back in 1878! Global warming has been around for a long time, apparently. Perhaps the final humiliation for the Warmists, however -- and one not mentioned in most reports -- is that the two freighters were led by a nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker! Nordenskiöld didn't need that! Was it warmer in his day?

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the departure of one of the last of the great globe-spanning multidisciplinary oceanographic expeditions, a tradition that included the epic voyages of Challenger, Meteor, and Albatross.

During an expedition lasting 11 months, the Canadian oceanographic ship CSS Hudson of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO), Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, accomplished the first, and still the only, circumnavigation of the Americas.

The vessel worked in the South Atlantic, Antarctic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans and was only the sixth ship to transit the Northwest Passage.

On November 17, 2009, CCGS Hudson, still an operational research ship of the Canadian Coast Guard, will host a party at BIO to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the expedition, and a special exhibition is being mounted at BIO featuring films and photographs of the voyage.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here