4 Countries Race to Destroy Remaining Arctic Sea Ice
Posted by Physical_Ad5702@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 134 comments
Canada, the US, Russia and China are all building fleets of new ice-breaker ships to carve paths in the dwindling Arctic Sea ice. It's a mad dash to see who can establish dominance in the Arctic Sea and gain geopolitical leverage in the form of controlling shipping routes, access to minerals (oil/gas/rare earths) and establish military / naval power in the Arctic. This is related to collapse because what little Arctic Sea ice remains is playing a crucial role stabilizing our climate. Many of us on the sub are familiar with the possibility of a "blue ocean event" - where we lose the remaining sea ice in the Arctic which results in rapid warming of the water, much like a drink with ice cubes stays cold on a hot day, until all the ice melts, and then rapidly heats up. Related to collapse as the economy once again triumphs over a habitable planet.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/04/canada-icebreakers-arctic
pegaunisusicorn@reddit
wut? i hate this timeline so much.
if a does b then c can't do b! haha a wins except everyone dies.
VorgrynSW@reddit
Ok, but have you thought about the new greener shipping routes that will be unlocked because of this? We're saved!
/s
CrystalInTheforest@reddit
Needs some reference the "Hydrogen Economy" too, just for good measure.
jbiserkov@reddit
Hydrogen-powered ice-breakers!
Green mega-container ships.
Narrator: green as in ship paint color
Narrator 2: isn't it amazing how this literal "green washing" works on our stupid brains, improving our perception of the company, even when we know it's happening.
CrystalInTheforest@reddit
100% Blue Hydrogen powered bucket excavator for our new Sustainable Lignite mine! 🥳Totally net zero, bro. Trust me.
StoopSign@reddit
As long as the icebreakers buy carbon offsets we're all good.
dawemih@reddit
Need to juice up the moon with an ocean. Start pumping!
mvm2005@reddit
Wasn't someone working on sun screens for blocking the sun in space?
Previous-Pomelo-7721@reddit
It almost seems laughable to think that there is some other “hell” that exists outside of this reality. We clearly live in hell already. The amount of human suffering since the dawn of humanity is staggering, and it’s only going to get worse (for the finale)
AlunWH@reddit
This is both terrifying and terrifyingly predictable.
You’d think an ice-free Arctic would be the point at which countries would say hold up, this is actually really bad, but, no, capitalism trumps common sense once again.
We absolutely deserve the future we’re making.
Instant_noodlesss@reddit
Our dear leaders are old. They want to grab theirs before they kick the bucket.
What's after that they don't give a damn about.
CrystalInTheforest@reddit
Agro-industrial civilisation absolutely deserves what's coming to us. I 100% agree.
But trillions of other lives do not deserve what's coming to them.
Any sense of vindication I get from seeing the global north learning the consequences of our actions is offset a hundredfold by seeing the suffering of those whose cultures played no part in this, be they any of the myriad of human cultures which did nothing to cause this, or the untold numbers of our sibling species who will face displacement, starvation and extinction because of things they have no conception of whatsoever.
Possible-Prize-4876@reddit
Exactly how I feel. This is the greatest tragedy in the history of the planet.
itsmemarcot@reddit
I concur it's a tragedy, but even the bad case of humans the planet is experiencing pales at the Permian-Triassic extinction event. Probably it's won't the greatest.
And still, it's saddening. Who knows which forms life will take place after all the millions years it will take to recover (we will be long gone). But I'm kind of partial to our neozoic life (you know, the tigers and the whales and the rest of it). It's all so majestic and that it saddends me to see it go.
Possible-Prize-4876@reddit
I don't know mate, it might not be as big of a temperature change, but the rate of change is massive and will prevent adaptation and evolution because there simply isn't time for species to change. Plus the introduction of novel chemicals and microplastic pollutions.... it's going to be a nasty extinction event for sure, ranking up there with the biggest.
itsmemarcot@reddit
I think we are saying the same thing, becayse my "it probably won't be the greatest", and your "it will rank up there with the biggest" are fully compatible.
The point, we agree, is that it can easily be enough to sweep clean most of the fauna (and more), and make the after-recovery life, in millions of years, substantially different than what we see now. The sense of loss is immense.
(Obligatory "But who knows" ending, because large scale pedictions are always uncertain.)
CrystalInTheforest@reddit
Yep. It's kind of odd to me that people are (100% legitimately and rightly) calling out the Isreali government for genocide of an entire culture and people, yet when it comes to exterminating entire families of species from the Earth herself, people get upset, sure... but not with the passion, the anger, the digust that overwhelms me every time I drive through the "cleared" lands and see the forests on the hillsides and remaining patches, and reflect for a moment on how much has already been exterminated in the name of Western convienience
Possible-Prize-4876@reddit
I concur, very sad all around. Sometimes it's hard to carry on in the face of all this destruction
All4gaines@reddit
We aren’t making this future. It’s the few oligarchs in control who are making this future.
throwawaybrm@reddit
What about people who
?
Opazo-cl@reddit
Great comment
MoodProsessor@reddit
Its an ever-reinforced ideology, pressed upon the masses and portrayed as the end goal. Sure the individual can take some flack in your examples, but there’s powers at play that limits choices and life styles.
throwawaybrm@reddit
Yeah, totally - the system is built to make us feel like there's no other way to live. Capitalism sells itself as the only option, and it definitely limits what people can realistically do. But at the same time, it's not just imposed from above. A lot of people go along with it, defend it, or just don't want to question it because it’s comfortable or familiar.
So while the big power structures are a huge part of the problem, everyday choices and beliefs help keep it all running too. Not saying it’s all on individuals - just that change won’t happen unless enough people stop accepting the way things are. That’s the hard part: breaking out of the mindset, not just the system.
Bromlife@reddit
This is a classic example of Prisoner's Dilemma. That countries are too pig headed to collaborate on avoiding the collapse of our ecosystem is very disheartening.
Decloudo@reddit
All problems of humanity stem from us not understanding our behaviour, especially in a collective.
itsmemarcot@reddit
We understand it perfectly well, down to minute details. We even formalize that understanding as a science.
Yet, in the big picture, we are proving unable to do much about it, again and again.
TopSloth@reddit
Most people on this planet do NOT actually understand it though, like you said its a branch of modern science, but most of humanity lives in poverty and many couldn't tell you the first thing about psychology
zerosumsandwich@reddit
Knowing the problem doesnt eliminate all the vested interists benefitting from maintaining the problem, unfortunately
springcypripedium@reddit
And many scientists believe (⬇️ )geoengineering will eventually need to be implemented on a massive scale which would require global collaboration. We know how that will go. It is delusional at this point to believe countries will come together to do what is right for the natural world---- including humans and Earth's ecosystems ----which, to me, translates into: WASF
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-wins-reluctant-interest-from-scientists-as-earths-climate/
Disclosure----I am not a fan of geoengineering. We have already messed up the balance of life on Earth bumping Earth out of the miraculous (it really is when you think about it) goldilocks zone for life.
gmuslera@reddit
The problem is that we’ve been doing geoengineering all past century and this one, and we are seeing the results of that.
And news like this one points that we keep doing that, and still in the wrong direction. It is more profitable to move the dial into the global apocalypse direction than in the trying to fix things one.
Amazing-Marzipan3191@reddit
Don't worry, there's a solution. We can replace the ice with plastic! Plastic floats, and we can make money doing it too. Think of the profits for shareholders and pension funds!
It sounds like hyperbole but for the people who are putting profit over the planet, destroying all our futures for their limitless avarice, there must be a wall they can be lined up against.
Grose2424@reddit
i could more likely get the proposal to replace the arctic with plastic grant funded (just write in science jargon that a big white plastic thingy in the arctic would increase albedo thus helping prevent climate change) than to support legitimate conservation efforts to remove plastic and introduce payment for ecosystem services into biodiversity hotspots (things I currently do on my own time/money with no grants "environmental science" has sold out long ago.
hmmm... might have to start submitting red herring grant proposals again soon...
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
Based off of the shifts in the DoD, and I am theorizing this as a DoD employee, we are currently being prepared for both a downsizing in manpower AND standards are being realigned to a war footing. Reasonable people are being intentionally pushed out. Leadership was purged to bring in loyalist. And this isn't to deploy us abroad. I very much believe the reason they are pushing for a reduction in the enlisted force is to pare it down to loyalist, just like they did the officers, so they can use the DoD to stomp down on the American public when the inevitable crash comes from the policies they are implementing. The OBBB is going to result in considerable financial harm to the average American. For the lower class, it is going to be devastating. And people will push back. So a subsection of the troops will be used to deal with that, while the remainder keep aircraft in the air to control the air space over the arctic. The US can do this, because Canada does not control its own air space, the US does. If one controls the air space, they de facto control the groun below it.
At the end of the day I believe that what is happening right now is the wealthy preparing to make Americans poor enough that they have no choice but to comply with an oligarchy that intends to save only itself in the coming years. They are accelerating scenarios that end in depopulation in order to conserve resources for themselves. And you merely have to look at Israel to see it happening - they are no longer even offering the pretense that their are attacking Hamas in Gaza, the last 5 days have been intentional attacks on crowds at food and distribution cites and a UN medical tent. The entire world is watching an ethnic cleansing and doing nothing.
It's sad to say but at the rate we are going a lot of people will be dead we'll before the climate worsens to the point it kills them.
SweetCherryDumplings@reddit
Drones.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
Your issue is our bases are everywhere and all of them are virtually drone proof unless the drone operator can afford to build their own chips and operate them on abnormal frequencies.
Drones cannot take out our aircraft.
Our DoD has a very distinct home field advantage here that nullifies any advantage the civilian population would have.
AlunWH@reddit
Your air force bases have had drone incursions for more than six months. The drones cannot be stopped, and yet most people are completely unaware that this is happening.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
Our Air Force allows non-hostile drones even if they have laws against flying them over the base and doesn't use our counter-measures on them even though they are breaching our air space. We can tell you from miles out if they are armed, what their payload is and what kind of drone it is.
Just because we don't counter them doesn't mean we cannot. Why reveal to our enemies how our tech works when the Wikipedia articles are all borderline useless about the capabilities of our anti-drone systems.
AlunWH@reddit
The FBI can’t even track them despite their best attempts.
And from the sound of things you’re not aware of them.
AgitatorsAnonymous@reddit
The FBI is not publicly stating they can track them. I can tell you no more than that we, the denizens of those bases, are aware of them. You can look into the C-SUAS systems we use on your own and draw your own conclusions. Most of them have brochures for their civilian variants online.
Hell, you can see videos of some of them in use on YouTube during the 12 days of Israel's unlawful strikes on Iran. The US intercepted drones that had trajectories that would take them over US bases in the region.
Those same systems are in use on almost every US Air Force Base.
keyser1981@reddit
A-Greed! These countries better not turn around and then wonder why people are choosing not to have kids, right? 🚩🌎👀
When are we projecting to be completely ice-free, resulting in a blue ocean event? One report said by 2030, but by the looks of things, next year it might happen? Let's continue to sit tight and assess...
Ok-Dust-4156@reddit
Do you really think that socialism eliminate need in logistics and resources? And things just magically appear from thin air?
YYFlurch@reddit
The political system doesn't matter at all; living sustainably does.
Ok-Dust-4156@reddit
Meaningful recycling needs a lot of energy. Other form of "sustainably" is crippling poverty.
AlunWH@reddit
Not in the slightest, no.
Cthulhu__@reddit
Yup, same with Iceland, at the moment only its coastline is exploited, the rest is still covered in ice, but the US especially is eyeing it up for its potential.
But also, everyone thinks “if we don’t do it or we’re not first, someone else will”. This’ll be the catalyst for upcoming wars.
Ironically a factor is green energy; EVs will save the world from emissions (not really but you know what I mean) and need a lot of batteries, which need a lot of rare earth materials.
Formal_Contact_5177@reddit
You mean Greenland rather than Iceland.
Turtleflame-extra@reddit
WE don’t deserve this, but we will suffer the most.
Second_breakfast90@reddit
Wildlife will suffer the most.
Local_Vermicelli_856@reddit
Personally, I don't feel that I and my family deserve what's coming. I think the global elitists most certainly do... but they will also be the ones most insulated from the disaster they are causing. The masses will suffer and perish while the rich endure fewer consequences of the coming collapse.
If only we could put all the perpetual growth capitalists on a climate change island, I'd be fine with that.
Or you know, we could also actually get the collective balls to have a revolution.
AlunWH@reddit
The sad truth is that the people who think like you are a tiny minority.
Individually, humans are wonderful. Collectively, though, our track record is damning.
External_Tangelo@reddit
Humans tend to follow the system that they are involved in. Even people who are highly aware of and critical of that system find it very difficult to act contrary to the dictates of that system. However, there are certain humans with enough wealth and power to be considered architects of the system.
whereisskywalker@reddit
You can't escape the system without major consequences, if it was possible to go off grid and leave society behind i think you would see a large portion of people do that. But that requires a trust fund, like most things in our capitalist caste system.
The best I can do is grow a small garden, adopt dogs, and try to provide care for my loved ones.
But people are mostly squares because we spend the first 18 years conditioning them to be slaves, bombardment of constant advertising, and promote the worst personalities.
It's hard to be thoughtful and educated about reality in a culture that celebrates having enough wealth to be insulated from consequences and uses violence and brainwashing to achieve their goals.
Most people don't have the capacity to excel in a world governed by a hidden legal language that justifies injustice and punishes things like feeding the homeless.
lavapig_love@reddit
See, if we destroy all the ice covering all the oil, we can get at it faster. That's a plus.
For the remaining couple billion who will need it this time next century.
mrblahblahblah@reddit
look at the optimist
LysergicWalnut@reddit
This would be scorned as Doomerism but I do agree with it.
Sure, the pathological hoarding of wealth is not the fault of a child in Bangladesh. But this is the societal system our species has created and these are the people that have flourished and risen to the top of said system.
I do think that, as a species, we deserve what's coming.
Dangermouse0@reddit
Not to mention the massive rise in sea level, obliterating coastlines worldwide, killing millions and pushing millions more inland… and there’s no talk or emergency plan for it.
Fox_Kurama@reddit
In fairness, sea ice doesn't do that. Its the glaciers and ice on land and the shoreline that do that when they melt. Which they are.
Dangermouse0@reddit
Yes, absolutely
dbutler1986@reddit
I don't think some ice cutter ships are gonna melt all the ice. The cow farts are doing that just fine.
Top_Hair_8984@reddit
Canada? Shame on us. :(
MaddogBC@reddit
Should we just concede it to arrogant assholes with zero regard for our environment?
kartoffelkartoffel@reddit
so we better become arrogant assholes with zero regard for our environment ourselves.
MaddogBC@reddit
No we should defend it from becoming a Russian dumping ground. Are you stupid? Shortsighted? Immature? Wtf is wrong with people?
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 1: In addition to enforcing Reddit's content policy, we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
Top_Hair_8984@reddit
What you posted seems logical to you? Seriously?
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
collapse-ModTeam@reddit
Rule 1: In addition to enforcing Reddit's content policy, we will also remove comments and content that is abusive or predatory in nature. You may attack each other's ideas, not each other.
_Tar_Ar_Ais_@reddit
we already exploit south and central america with mining, this isn't new
YoSoyZarkMuckerberg@reddit
it's going to be China lol
mixmastablongjesus@reddit
Is that sarcasm? What's supposed to mean?
YoSoyZarkMuckerberg@reddit
no.
it means China is going to win.
mixmastablongjesus@reddit
You seem to be so happy and cheerful about that for some reason judging from the tone?
YoSoyZarkMuckerberg@reddit
text has no tone. There's no cheer in what I wrote. It's just a matter of fact statement.
Grinagh@reddit
I am both terrified and completely sure that I will live to see a blue ocean event. I've tried explaining it to people and why it's a bad thing and people don't really seem to get it.
So in case you don't know what a blue ocean event is it's when there is less than 1 million kilometers squared of sea ice in the Arctic. The reason why this is a problem is because the Arctic Ocean facing one month of continuous solar warming is a disaster it would cause untold harm to the Arctic Ocean. Currents and basically weather patterns around the world would be completely fucked up for the next year, if not longer.
As if that isn't bad enough the exploration of petrochemical resources has long been a fascination with industrialists seeing the Arctic as the next big gold rush.
StoopSign@reddit
I've tried to explain BOE to my dad who doesn't believe in climate change and he just responds with "technically this is an ice age. Historically the earth has been much hotter" and he quotes a timeline much longer than humans have been around. Fuck I learned the technical definition of an ice age in Astronomy class at the community college, but it's irrelevant because humans can only survive in a technical ice age. Certain talking points are being pushed by right wing and traditionalist left wing media--which draws from the right on social issues, and climate for some reason.
Popular_Dirt_1154@reddit
Yea it’s hopeless trying to reason with them, algorithmic content is devastating to the mind.
ThirstyWolfSpider@reddit
You don't have to consider interruption in Arctic sea ice to be like a weather event that is hard to predict. If you look at extent (area) it can appear volatile from year to year, but if you look at volume then it's a much steadier march to zero (from PIOMAS).
The ice continues to be thinner, and younger over time, and when either extent or volume hits zero the other will too.
You're looking at somewhere in the 2030s, or perhaps a bit earlier if nonlinearities kick in (mainly if extent drops and albedo along with it).
Given the long delays between emissions and consequent warming, we've likely already emitted enough to force it.
lavapig_love@reddit
"Because hundreds of millions of people will drown" is a better way to explain it.
zefy_zef@reddit
That will come way after the famines.
rdwpin@reddit
Melting sea ice doesn't raise sea levels. There are lots of bad things here pointed out in other posts but rising sea levels and drowning people isn't one of them. Of course the warmer Arctic and melting Greenland glaciers do raise the sea level.
thisjustblows8@reddit
Exponential growth has always been hard for humans to grasp...
thebatmanbeynd@reddit
It’s stupid that this is even a thing. The Artic is Canadian territory and yet might have to fight other countries off a potential invasion.
extinction6@reddit
George W Bush said that if needed they are just going to use the route through Canadian waters. No negotiations needed.
jaymickef@reddit
I'm sure he also believed that opening up a northern passage was going to be the only effect of climate change and everything else in the world will remain exactly as it is.
If the climate is changing enough to open a northern passage it's hardly going to be business as usual everywhere else. But it's the only change we acknowledge.
jaymickef@reddit
What’s crazy is we’re going to spend billions on our military to claim this passage and that’s the only adaptation to climate change we’re going to make. We’re going to continue to believe this will be the only effect of climate change in Canada.
thebatmanbeynd@reddit
That’s also very crazy, we need to be doing more. Provincial premiers like Moe and Smith make this very difficult.
JesusChrist-Jr@reddit
Suddenly the motive for annexing Greenland and Canada is becoming clear.
mhouse2001@reddit
So... Greenland's importance skyrockets.
Artistic-Jello3986@reddit
Imagine all the oil and minerals just waiting to be mined once that pesky ice goes away 🤑
extinction6@reddit
Are you suggesting it's time to make it go away......he........he........he
YYFlurch@reddit
Just like your market and its consumers
extinction6@reddit
Russia has 57 icebreakers and Canada has 18.
https://www.statista.com/chart/33823/icebreakers-and-ice-capable-patrol-ships/
The nuclear-powered icebreakers Arktika and Sibir—the first two in a class of five—are fully operational and were accepted into Russia’s Rosatomflot fleet in late 2021 and early 2022. Both are escorting commercial cargo vessels in winter sea ice along the Northern Sea Route (NSR)—Russia’s National Arctic Waterway.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/may/worlds-most-capable-icebreakers-russias-new-arktika-class
In this lecture by Peter Wadhams he mentions that they believe that the darkening of Earth's albedo by the loss of Arctic sea ice and the darkening of surrounding lands as snow melts may add an equivalent warming to half of the warming caused by our emissions. When he first started studying in the Arctic the ice was 30 feet thick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-qdbICw2f8 start at 5:07.
May 12, 2015 - FEEM Lecture: "Arctic Amplification, Climate Change, Global Warming"
YYFlurch@reddit
I remember how horrified I was some years ago when they began seeing floating corpses of polar bears in the Arctic Ocean. No propeller marks, no Orca bite marks, no disease, nothing. It was beyond strange.
Biologists soon figured out that these polar bears had died from, literally, total exhaustion, all alone in the sea, and desperately swimming and searching for ice floes, on which to rest. Ice floes that weren't there because they had all melted in the summertime.
I think I knew, at that point, that we were, as a species, totally unable and incapable of unfucking ourselves.
I guess smart phone addiction is more important than polar bears.
eieio2021@reddit
And burgers and fancy vacations by air. Those are super important too
Who_watches@reddit
It’s like watching scavengers fight over a carcass
mk_gecko@reddit
What's wrong with that?
Through all of history people have fought over resources, especially when they're scarce. And nature does it too.
Odd-Complaint-8534@reddit
What humans have always done
yimmy51@reddit
Humans
YYFlurch@reddit
Save the K-Fed!!!
Physical_Ad5702@reddit (OP)
Accurate. lmfao
hazmodan20@reddit
And the carcass is the boat they are sailing on.
-Calm_Skin-@reddit
Beating a dead horse with ever increasing frenzy, futility, and self-injury.
mk_gecko@reddit
What a very stupid and misleading title. They're not racing to destroy the ice. They're protecting their northern borders. As the Northwest Passage becomes navigable again, we will need icebreakers to free trapped vessels. And it's bizarre to reply that we shouldn't take the shorter sea routes -- would you then close the Panama Canal because of the huge damage to local ecosystems and water management? I'd say no, these things just need to be managed properly. You want to not have any ice breakers because they break the ice?
Ice breakers cause blue ocean event ?
SavingsDimensions74@reddit
It’s heartening to see, as a species, we’re doing all the right things to accelerate our demise and possibly save a few species by our speed running what is obviously insanity.
I was worried we might exist until 2100 and take out so many more species, but we’re on game so we’ll just be offing ourselves quicker, thank fuck, that expected.
It might - just possibly - stop the planet from moving to a hot house. I doubt it, the feedbacks have already kicked in. But it gives me some hope that some species might make it out of this cluster fuck we’ve created.
We, most certainly, won’t.
StoopSign@reddit
I still think nuclear murder suicide is on the table for our species.
Physical_Ad5702@reddit (OP)
I'm pretty much on-board with this philosophy lately. We humans show no signs of salvaging this ship so the faster we exit, the better it might be for whatever remains. Prolonged collapse just means more time spent in overshoot and a lower carrying capacity for all other life on the planet. Bleak as fuck, but that's what I see.
Comeino@reddit
Oh it gets worse. By the very nature of living beings they are in a predicament to destroy the environment which their life relies on. You can't convince bacteria to limit their devouring of an apple since rotting it will lead to the bacteria's demise, the bacteria will do what it was designed to do and subsequently perish, and so will we.
Be it reindeer on st. Matthew Island or humans on Easter Island, it all leads to the exact same outcome as yeast in a Petri dish. We will grab at every unit of energy that we can until we no longer can.
we won't.
Physical_Ad5702@reddit (OP)
I think most of the examples you've listed are free of any negative feedbacks and therefore, yes, will lead to a population explosion and subsequent collapse in short order. I don't know that we can characterize all living beings in this way when they are part of a healthy ecosystem where there is restraints to unbridled population growth. You're examples - reindeer on St Matthew Island, bacteria in a petri dish, have no negative feedbacks and will consume the basis of their existence, much like humanity is doing to the whole planet. But in a rainforest, or a coral reef, or a savannah, there would be other species all competing for similar resources, preying upon each other and keeping each others populations somewhat in check. Not all creatures necessarily destroy the environment which they rely upon. There wouldn't be a diverse web of life on the planet if that were the case.
Comeino@reddit
They are competing not for a healthy ecosystem but for a chance to overwhelm it. All species to ever exist for a prolonged time on this planet go through growth and bust population cycles until a major growth and final bust.
Every eco sphere ever attempted goes through the exact same scenario. A group of living organisms are stuck in an environment they can't escape -> A hierarchy forms with a dominant species -> dominant species takes control of key resources and spreads -> they overwhelm their environment and die off, if not completely the cycle starts from scratch -> with time a new usually smaller dominant species takes their place -> repeat until the eco sphere is dead and there is nothing left to eat.
The same thing is happening on our planet, out lifespans are just too short to notice the predicament on a cosmic time scale.
Rare-Imagination1224@reddit
That’s because of the complexity of the relationships within each eco system. Earthworms however control their own populations. If there’s not enough food they stop breeding until there’s more( food) they are geniuses.
SavingsDimensions74@reddit
Most animals are simply not good enough to overwhelm, much as you indicate.
Homo sapiens are just at that terrible level where we’re incredibly powerful and technical, but somehow lost wisdom along the way. That’ll be whatever tombstone 🪦 remains
inkoet@reddit
There’s a book series by Margaret Atwood I’ve been thinking about revisiting thats built on exactly that premise/philosophy. Oryx and Crake is the first book in the series. I remember quitting after the first book because it seemed so bleak at the time, 10-12 years ago… think it might resonate a lot more now
SavingsDimensions74@reddit
Indeed, bleak as fuck, but logical
StoopSign@reddit
I remember in the Mid 00s I was reading a libertarian magazine (Liberty) and it talked about how climate change would bring new efficient shipping lanes to the Arctic. I thought that was completely fucked.
Malgioglio@reddit
Do we realise that it is not the citizens of these nations but the oligarchies of super-rich people who are fighting over control of the Arctic (and the earth)? These people will always have their own havens to hide in, once they have made the earth uninhabitable and made us even more dependent on what they consider 'wealth', i.e. selling us what used to belong to everyone.
CriketW@reddit
At this point, we’re just speedrunning the apocalypse.
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
"A rapidly changing climate has reshaped the region, reducing perennial sea ice. As ocean currents spin what is left of the gyre, chunks of ice now clog many of the channels separating the northern islands."
So...ice has entered the paths that used to be open. And icebreakers are needed to open those paths again. It's not like they want to chop up the 6-7 feet thick (in some areas) ice sheets on the north pole.
Bored_shitless123@reddit
This is why trump wants Greenland and Canada
wonderduck1@reddit
If you live anywhere in the northern hemisphere, the arctic becoming accessible is one of the only true upsides of climate change.Â
markodochartaigh1@reddit
And of course the methane clathrates on the East Siberian Sea Shelf will be destabilized more rapidly with the ship traffic, adding to the methane in the atmosphere.
Living-Excuse1370@reddit
Seriously this should be the fucking crisis of the century! This is something that countries should be coming together to try to act. Instead....it's a race to see who can fuck it up the quickest! All for money.
123Catskill@reddit
A few paths in a sea of ice isn’t gonna make much difference.
lightweight12@reddit
No, no don't you get it? Those icebreakers are going to be running 24/7/365 doing just that. BREAKING ICE! There's going to be other ships constantly bringing them supplies so they don't have to stop their evil plan!
4r4nd0mninj4@reddit
It's not an Evil plan. If Canada doesn't establish a presence there, then Russia and / or the US will, and we won't be able to tax the ships using the routes in exchange for search and rescue services in an area that's clearly inside our territory. These ships only cut a small path that quickly closes up behind the boats and refreezes....
Fabulous_Night_1164@reddit
Canada is doing it partly in reaction to the threats to our sovereignty from the other 3.
4r4nd0mninj4@reddit
Yep. If Canada fails to establish a presence there, we could lose the rights to it...
Strenue@reddit
Insanity
crewsctrl@reddit
It's not "much like it," it's exactly the same phenomenon. Latent heat of fusion, but on a oceanic scale.
lightweight12@reddit
Here's a couple links for info about BOE
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BenGay29@reddit
Racing to our graves.
Middle_Manager_Karen@reddit
Do you have your arctic fast pass? No? Then to the slow shipping lanes and 10% more pirates.
isseldor@reddit
This is the part in Don’t Look Up when they realize how much money they could make from the comet…
Calm-Limit-37@reddit
But but but new transit routes