But if we don’t want to exacerbate sea ice melt, shouldn’t we keep our icebreakers away??
That’s silly. The effect of one icebreaker is negligible compared to the effect of the …planet’s climate changing.
This is like complaining about the campfire some rangers might light while visiting the site of a wildfire. Sure they might end up burning a few logs, but that’s negligible compared to what they have gone to witness.
We are also not talking about a huge volume of commercial icebreaker traffic consistently and systematically carving up ice floes. It’s one scientific mission.
It was a fair question, and you gave a reasonable answer. No need to call the person silly for not knowing something you do.
I didn’t call them silly as a person. I called their comment silly. Also, silly is no grave insult.
Anyone who has such an insanely incorrect sense of scale that they even begin to consider a single icebreaker ship as having any sort of measurable impact compared to the sheer size of the Arctic is, indeed, silly in my book.
It’s a fair question in the same way asking if a speck of dust is an effective barrier against a tank is a fair question.
I’m not Arctic expert but I imagine icebreakers aren’t chipping away at glaciers.
They are probably only breaking ice that forms each winter and melts each summer so have no effect on the permanent Arctic ice.
If anyone know more correct me if I’m wrong.
But that’s exactly what the article says they’re doing. Exploring a previously inaccessible body of water due to the previously permanent Arctic ice.
And how exactly does putting a boat with an armored hull in there exacerbate melting? You’re flipping cause and effect.
There are plenty of studies showing how smaller ice pieces melt faster.
Dude they didn’t break the ice to explore. They are exploring because the ice itself has receded due to climate change.
The ice that gets broken by icebreakers is the frozen surface ice, not the glaciers.
Right, the surface ice. The surface ice that has remained unbroken for centuries that they now have access to. So they sent in an icebreaker ship to break the ice and survey the water underneath. I read the article, not really sure what your point is.
Did you? Did you read the article? Lol
Yay?
