Arctic may be ice free in four years.

At least, in the summer (BBC):

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

Once again, damn people with their "science" forcing my thesis into obsolescence before it is even finished. Sure, I could revise my methods section. Again. But by the time I am finished, there will be a new study which proves it actually happened 20 minutes ago. Think I am exaggerating? From the same article:

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. "So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."

My methods are premised around a timeframe of about 50 years, as arctic ice was not expected to disappear until then (and thus free up Churchill for shipping year-round, or as close as matters for the economic impact). Now that could be compressed by more than 40 years and there is the additional possibility of a rapid collapse of the polar bear population followed closely by the ecotourism business it supports.

Nanisivik chosen for Canadian Deepwater port

Picture from the CASR.

A excerpt from my thesis in progress:
Canadian claims to the Arctic Ocean hinges on their retention of the massive northern archipelago ceded to them by the British in the 1880s. Efforts to enhance the strength of said claims include making the area a separate territory (Nunavut) and subsidies that drive population growth and the economy in the strategically chosen capital, Iqaluit. This falls under the stipulation by international treaty that remote islands and their coastal waters have their title established by a “continuous and peaceful display of state authority”. Besides perhaps Russia, Canada has been most visible with its Arctic claims due to the possibility of controlling access to the newly opened Northwest Passage. The Harper government has commissioned new armed icebreakers and a new deepwater port is planned for the military base on Nanisivik (CASR, 2006). Such shows of force combined with withdrawal from international judicial bodies are an attempt to compensate for the precariousness of Canadian arctic claims.

Land is one thing - comparatively easy to defend a claim on, but the extent of Canadian exclusive claims to the Northwest Passage are going to be difficult to sustain in the face of pressure from every other state with an interest.

Churchill isn't the only likely boom town

They don't get as much press as I would like, and finding the ones I did took forever due to lack of easy to obtain data; fast growing arctic communities manage to occur in multiple nations and for a variety of reasons. One generally ignored player in the Arctic is the Danes, who have sovereignty over all of Greenland. One of its territories, according to The Economist, is exploding:

...warming is good for business. Unemployment in the town is zero. A glacier next to a nearby zinc and lead mine has retreated since the site closed in 1990, exposing an outcrop of metal-rich ore, where drilling will start again soon. Ships supplying the only factory in town, which processes the local catch for Royal Greenland, a huge state-owned prawn supplier, can now use the harbour throughout the winter (it was previously inaccessible for three months of the year). The warmer water seems to be bringing back the cod fishery as well.

Also greatly effected is the tourist industry. This is of particular importance to my thesis as it is currently the major base economic activity in Churchill.

But the tourist industry is warming fastest. Around 15,000 tourists visited last year and twice as many are expected this summer. Hotels are booming and additional tourist guides are being trained.

I do not expect this will happen in Churchill. The glaciers are long gone and the bears simply can't survive as they are accustom when the ice disappears. They can live like their extremely close grizzly cousins (whom they can mate with and produce viable and fertile offspring in the wild), but then they are not nearly so viable for ecotourism. That is, assuming the land-based environment can support the influx of suddenly starving bears. Perhaps whale watching and historic tourism - Fort Churchill and the old Cold War sites - will supplant the bears in the future. Greenlanders are also farming as their doomed Viking ancestors did during the medieval warming period, but it is rather unlikely the people will suffer a similar fate. The other side of the coin for Greenland is this screws the Inuit hard. Of all of the indigenous people's of the new world, they have perhaps been the safest due to isolation and the otherwise lethal climate they've adapted impossibly well for. The while the Vikings mentioned above starved to death, they lived comfortably in the same climate. You need not match the technology or organization of a group if they cannot survive in the very ground they live on. Or as Dennis Miller once put it, "Sure, the lion is the king of the jungle. But throw him in Antarctica and he is just some penguin's bitch."

Coast Guard Establishes Base near Barrow

From the NYT, picture from the AP:

For most of human history, the Arctic Ocean has been an ice-locked frontier. But now, in one of the most concrete signs of the effect of a warming climate on government operations, the Coast Guard is planning its first operating base there as a way of dealing with the cruise ships and the tankers that are already beginning to ply Arctic waters.

The New York Times has been especially good about keeping up on arctic/subarctic news as it relates to warming. In fact, my thesis was in part inspired by the multipart series they put out on the subject - with some of the geopolitical consequences this blog attempts to address - a year or two back.

One key concern for the United States in regards to sealanes in the Arctic is the shared border with the Russian Federation. Russia has been particularily bold in its claims on the Arctic; often invoking Stalin's immense claims to the area (almost a half of the sea) from his commissioned expedition in 1937.

Still, the only major Arctic claimant that hasn't signed the UN Law of the Sea is the United States. Simplified, this treaty stipulates the continental shelf as the seaward border of the territorial claims that could be made. The result has been a scramble to chart the Arctic Ocean's bathymetry using deep sea sonar.

Regardless of the method of delinating the borders, it is only a matter time before conflict arises over the distribution of artic resources. With the big prize being undersea oil and natural gas, it would not at all be a stretch to suggest slant-drilling (if not feasible now for undersea oil exploration, it will likely be by the time large scale exploration ramps up) may be the cause of such a conflict. It undoubtably has been the given reason for a number of armed conflicts, the most immediate example being Saddam Hussien's justification for the invasion of Kuwait.