People often seem to think that climate change eventually will lead to a catastrophic event, but before that they can live as always and are not concerned. And with some luck, that event would be in some indetermined future. But that is not how climate change is going to impact us. It is more like death by a thousand cuts. It already is started. We are experiencing a multitude of climate caused changes, most of them detrimental. Especially for those, who argue against moving to more green technologies, because that could endanger "their prosperity". It is exactly the other way around. We are globally losing prosperity because of the changes that are already happening. Like with this example. Humanity would certainly survive, if the Panama canal had to close for good. But it would be a large economic impact. And that is only one item on a very long list.
I think it is fairly clear to most people that moving to carbon-free technologies is usually bad for their future profit/utility/quality of life. Thats because the individual person/city/state/country won't have much impact on climate change alone, so they'll have the downside/cost of moving to green tech, without the climate benefits.
For it to have benefits, everyone has to do it. And getting everyone to do something costly worldwide for the benefit of others is hard. Basically the only way it's going to happen is if the west decides it's a good idea, and puts sanctions (backed with military threats) on any country that doesn't comply. So far, there is no appetite for such an approach, and therefore climate change won't be solved.
That seemingly isn't as clear to the many companies and households who move to carbon-free technologies with the goal of decreasing energy costs, thus increasing profit/utility/quality of life by simply investing in energy efficiency.
Oh yes - there are some green technologies that are a good idea even ignoring any climate impacts. But those technologies alone won't fix the climate. The painful changes will need to be made too. For example CO2-free production of steel and concrete, which, even if you assume magical 100% efficiency and zero R&D and capital costs, still don't make sense economically - and in a competitive world market, that means whoever goes green goes bankrupt shortly afterwards, unless governments step in with rules, caps, credits, or subsidies.
> bad for their future profit/utility/quality of life.
Even EV's suffer this - it's a bore to have to plan your whole life around your EV's battery - detouring to charge up, remembering to precondition and charge up to 100% before you leave, telling the kids not to open the windows because it drains the battery like crazy, if you're travelling with another car, you can't stop in the same place because different cars need different chargers and charge at different rates, etc.
Heat pumps seem to suffer the same - arrive home from work at an unusual time, and a gas boiler will bring the whole house up to temp in 45 mins. Whereas a heat pump will take 6 hours to do the same. Worse quality of life.
First of all, a properly insulated house won't need a huge warming up. And for that, there are timers or these days there is this thing called internet, which allows you to control your home devices from afar.
Actually, I think most transitions to a cleaner future are going to increase our quality of life. EVs beat combustion engined cars in most aspects. Cleaner air benefits everyone.
gas systems normally are very powerful because gas is cheap and houses weren't well insulated. The boiler therefore had to be very powerful to overcome losses of the coldest nights, but the rest of the time could heat the building fast.
Heat pumps are far more expensive per btu, both to buy and to run, so it makes more financial sense to insulate the house well and have a heat pump just big enough for the coldest nights losses. But that means that any other time, heating up the thermal mass of the house can take days.
This is only a problem for those who want their house to change temperature.
In my experience neither of your points is true of a modern heat pump nor a modern gas system. All heating systems are generally optimized to bring homes from 16°C to 22°C in about two to three hours. If your heat pump can't do that it's too small (or your radiators are too small). If your gas system can do it in an hour it runs way too hot and you're wasting a lot of gas.
So basically the West giving up any and all claims it has or ever had had (given morally questionable behaviors in the history books) to moral legitimacy for the sake of climate programs?
I already strongly question the legitimacy of the US and anything it claims to be based on how they claim a permanent parasitical right to my life (e.g. worldwide taxation of nonresident US persons)
Your comment seems to imply such a world order could be stable enough to accomplish your goals, I counter that with: it wouldn't be more than a few months before we(poster exclusive) would turn to any level of force necessary to put them down.
None of the social engineering projects of the 20th century turned out, a wholesale violation of our most basic rights to try variations on the theme now really isn't negotiable. I almost hope it is tried while the memory of Covid is fresh enough that the number of people we need to be awake still are.
Just to be clear - climate change has an impact, but what's not said in this article nor here is that El Niño is the real culprit for this unusual drought in that region (and flooding in others). El Niño is totally natural, albeit it's likely to be stronger than usual due to climate change.
They expect these restrictions to remain in place until next September as it's also until then that El Niño shall be active.
If anything it's just a preview of what's to come, El Niño always existed it's just that now, the problem is that the current baseline make it even worse than in the past
As long as there’s a thousand of highly motivated surgeons, thousand cuts will not cause death. The balance between doing something and business as usual is already gradually shifting: demand for climate adaptation solutions is growing and investment is going in that direction, meaning more surgeons. We will not stop climate change and will see +2-+3° eventually. Mass extinction is going to happen, sea level will rise, huge areas of land will become uninhabitable, but we will adapt and survive. Scars will be ugly though.
For anyone interested in how the new (bigger) locks use less water than the old locks (reclaiming 60% of the water - without pumps!), this old Practical Engineering video explains with diagrams:
They store the water in a series of basins at different levels, and use those basins to fill the portion of the lock below. It's more obvious with diagrams.
Therefore, the Canadian commercial marine transport industry does not anticipate the route as a viable alternative to the Panama Canal within the next 10 to 20 years (as of 2004).
Curious if there is an update. Seems a no brainier for Canadian sovereignty to invest in this, so I expect we won't.
A friend is sailing it right now. There is still a good deal of ice. It's almost a certainty to open every year now, but only for 1-8 weeks, then it's blocked by ice again.
20 years ago there was no guarantee it would open at all during the summer.
... he would rather not have Starlink, the whole point is to get away (and he lives in the Yukon anyway, being away from connection is the whole point)
I don't mean live updates (while that must exist at some level, at least for sharing with family), but a lot of blogs and channels that I follow from people living aboard do have some updates posting, either scheduled, weekly for example, when they have easy access to ports or internet in the sea (there are some expensive, high latency satellites), or no schedules, just updates when they feel like it [1].
No pressure anyway, is just something that I'm enthusiastic about :)
If they ever put out some records on how it went after it finished, it would definitely be something that I would read
> when they have easy access to ports or internet in the sea
They're a LOT further out that you think. There are no "ports with internet".
> there are some expensive, high latency satellites
When I drove around Africa, any kind of useful satellite internet was going to cost more than the entire 3 year expedition right around the whole continent cost!
(Starlink changes that, but as I said, they're not interested)
>If they ever put out some records on how it went after it finished, it would definitely be something that I would read
Dozens of private yatchs sail it every year, there's plenty of info out there
The Tally Ho fella talks about taking his boat up north once it is finished a lot, and I'm sure there will be a lot of high quality vlog content, but that might not be for another year or more.
So when it's open, you sail through it. When it's solid, you drive over it. They just need to build a couple of ports on either coast. It's a good thing we have an abundance of truck drivers...ooops.
This might be true in an absolute sense, but I'm really skeptical that it's true in a meaningful relative sense, because nobody has ever listed (to my knowledge) environmental habitats or biomes which are not sensitive.
Like, if someone said "the Aleutians are extremely sensitive, but the Marianas are an OK place to have an oil spill all things equal" I'd grant the former more weight.
And if the the counter is "all environments are sensitive" well OK, great, but that doesn't really help us make decisions in the real world.
> This might be true in an absolute sense, but I'm really skeptical that it's true in a meaningful relative sense,
It's thousands of (square) kilometres of land virtually untouched by humans. Even in the skies. I'd wager that other enormous remote areas (Sahara, Amazon, Himalayas, etc) have significantly more human intrusion. Even Antartica, due to its various research stations.
The only other place that I can think of that is equally sizeable and equally untouched is around the Northeastern Passage. Basically, the only parts of the planet that are almost impossible for humans to get to.
So that is quite different from just about every other possible habitat on this rock.
I think you might be mistaken about Antarctica. It's a whole continent, 40% larger than Europe, there are bases on its edges, and Amundsen-Scott at the pole, but the rest of the continent is basically empty and unvisited, and the interior is extremely hostile to life, the penguins make it look easier than it is to survive there. So unlike, say, New Zealand, where when humans arrived they brought rats which decimated the wildlife [and then white people brought even better rats which made it even worse] our impact is very limited.
In July, mid-winter, there's a skeleton crew for the entire interior. Only the Americans, with too much money and a prime research facility (the only place on Earth that is "dry" land and effectively not spinning) operate a winter base here, the Russians used to have one at a less interesting location but they decided that it's too expensive and of too little value and so they only staff it during the summer now.
It certainly can be meaningful (whether or not it is in this case). Obviously oil spills are devastating to any habitat, but some habitats are home to a wider variety of (and more critically) endangered wildlife and fauna than others. An oil spill in the Gowanus Canal, while terrible, would be far less meaningful than an oil spill in a much more pristine environment because the place is already mostly toxic (although not nearly as bad as it was in the past).
Of course environments which we've already denuded of all ecology are more expendable. Can you name a pristine (or at least, not-sterilized) natural environment which it's relatively OK to destroy relative to the polar arctic?
On land, I guess we would agree that an oil spill in a pristine rain-forest is worse than a pristine desert.
If you need a quantitative measure, one can use e.g. the number of difference species per area (biodiversity) to know the area where an accident has the least impact. Or maybe the number of endangered species.
Granted, computing these metrics are however quite difficult. However, what is easy to measure from space is the amount of chlorophyll in the surface water of the ocean. Besides coastal areas, the Arctic stands out as relatively chlorophyll rich.
> If you need a quantitative measure, one can use e.g. the number of difference species per area (biodiversity) to know the area where an accident has the least impact.
>This might be true in an absolute sense, but I'm really skeptical that it's true in a meaningful relative sense, because nobody has ever listed (to my knowledge) environmental habitats or biomes which are not sensitive.
I listed a habitat which was, "not sensitive" in response to his comment that, "because nobody has ever listed (to my knowledge) environmental habitats or biomes which are not sensitive." You could list thousands of habitats and biomes around the Unites States that are "not sensitive" without doing much research at all. It is a falsehood that has to be debunked because the implication is that industry should be able to build pipelines and send ships through any area that they want because all of these ecosystems are equally important, so that the risk of a spill is all the same regardless of the location. The truth is that some pristine areas and ecosystems are much more important than others (even ones that haven't been polluted and denuded). Suggesting that it is okay to despoil some of the most untouched, pristine and diverse ecosystems in the country just because it is also bad to despoil other areas is the worst sort of false equivalency.
There's multiple orders of magnitude in difference between the amount of fuel a ship carries, and the amount of oil a tanker can hold. Think measured in hundreds of thousands versus tens of millions of gallons.
If we start accounting for every single externality for every solution for a problem we come up with, we might as well stop leaving the house at all.
The Fremantle Highway was burning and at risk of sinking in the Wadden Sea, off the Dutch coast of just a week ago. This would have severely damaged the entire habitat - and that was a car carrier only. Spills from minor incidents are a concern as well, especially in habitats that are important, slow to recover and already under a lot of pressure.
A fuel oil spill from a cargo ship is not a trivial externality to be ignored! Yes, it's a smaller order of magnitude than an oil tanker. But it's not de minimis.
That's really a throw away answer. Is there something concrete you want to share? As written it just sounds like a lazy excuse for not engaging with something, which could have been done by not commenting. I don't understand what the point of even writing it was.
You seem frustrated with the environmentalist perspective. I think it's a common sensibility to just want to engage with engineering problem and theory craft solutions, don't let ant pesky things like conservation slow the discourse down, it's ballast!
The fact is we're all playing at our ideals here. This is a message board, we dont decide policy. Consider having some more empathy for people who prioritize different things than you do.
I don't see how it's a perspective. It's the equivalent of "that's probably like, bad for the environment or something", which is the exact opposite of "curious conversation". If people want to have an adult conversation about the environmental negatives of a northwest passage shipping, cool. A shallow dismissal like the post I replied to isn't that, it destroys intelligent conversation. People are entitled to their opinions of course, I can see people didn't like my comment.
If you go on the attack immediately, that shuts the door on most intelligent conversations. If you re-read what Sp332 said, and your response, do you think there's much incentive for Sp332 to "share something concrete"? Do you believe that, in a vacuum, your comment looks like it came from someone who would engage with an alternative opinion in good faith?
The fact that you're talking to me now makes me think you might engage in good faith! Ya built a wall to climb with your opener though. Every word of it reads like you're telling them to shut up.
It's annoyingly content-free, but since I didn't have time to look up details at the time, I thought I could at least bring up some of the stakes involved. I didn't try to convince anyone that shipping up there was a bad idea. It's just a nudge so interested people have a direction to look in.
TFA says Panama canal slots routinely exceed $350k so who knows. If there are times of year it's navigable, there could be lots of potential support services offered - keeping it clear of icebergs (if that's a concern), monitoring, ensuring a channel with the right depth, managing traffic etc., whatever is normally done in shipping channels.
I suppose if you used powerful ice breakers, ideally nuclear like the Russians, and escorted ships through in a line, it could work.
You couldn’t justify taking them through one by one.
This kind of thing requires Canada to have long-term vision and will, things they’ve been lacking politically in the last decade or two, in my opinion.
Well, you could technically connect some bodies of water and make the trip shorter, but ice would still be a problem.
The biggest issue while building the Panama canal was the accidented terrain, a lot of mountais in the way, something that is not a big of a problem so far north.
Glad I read the article. At first I (naively) thought "why? just pump more seawater?" But according to the article "it takes around 50 million gallons of fresh water to move a ship through a lock. The panamax locks lose more fresh water than the neo-panamax locks, which have a recovery system that can reclaim 60% of the water" -- A spot check on the maps shows Gatun Lake (freshwater) in the center of the isthmus. Wikipedia says it is fresh, but human made.
Is anyone aware of the reason for creating the interior of the canal as a freshwater passage, as opposed to just mixing ocean water willy-nilly? Such mixing of water would probably not pass current environmental concerns (with good reason), but curious what the reasoning was from a 1913 perspective?
Zonian here. There was zero chance of ever creating a lock free canal. The amount of digging required for that was not possible in the early 1900s. I think pumping water in those days was far too impractical. Ships need to get raised 85 ft and then lowered 85 ft for the passage. Using gravity to fill the lock chambers was an ingenious solution and minimized the amount of digging. Thousands of people died building the canal and digging from Gamboa to Gatun just wasn’t going to work.
In the rainy season there aren’t any water issues. It’s the dry season that is the problem.
I’m not up to date on things now. Thanks for the information.
Prior to the handover of the Canal there weren’t any issues with water during rainy season. But Panama City has ballooned in population and the ships going through the canal now are bigger on average. We Americans kept people out of the drainage system for Gatun Lake. We left the jungle alone. I don’t know if there has been a destruction of the jungle around Gatun Lake.
Panamanian here. The forest in the Canal watershed is pretty well conserved. The issue now is related to climate change and reduced rainfall. The new locks demand more water, though I can't say if not having those would make a difference in the current situation.
The Canal authority wants to dam more rivers and displace 10k people to make sure there is enough water to keep the thing running. Tens of thousands were forced out of their homes to build the Canal originally. It's fair to question how far Panama should go to keep being a canal country
I had read about rainfall problems some years ago. I thought it was more of one time occurrence sort of thing. Humans have done a remarkably good job of messing up the environment.
> how far Panama should go to keep being a canal country
Country resources that provide wealth need to invest into other areas that will supplement income. Is the canal taxing and putting that into other projects that are on a trend to displace the income from the canal?
As a Canadian I don't know Panama for anything but the canal. Are there things that place it in the top 5 of the world that would justify not being a canal country?
It seems like a perfect storm of more dry years, deforestation (although not much in the last decade), more water demand from the city, and more electric demand on the dams.
I hope my prior comment isn’t taken as derogatory toward Panama. Based on when I was last in Panama they’ve done a great job of governance. At least compared to when the Canal Zone was still an American territory. I think, overall, we Americans by 1970s ended up being detrimental to the growth and development of Panama. While it bothered me to lose my hometown I can see the Treaty was the right thing to do.
I didn’t take it that way. I think Panama owes its existence, the canal, and its democracy to the United States. Also the close ties have been a huge cultural and economic boon.
Panama has developed nicely since Noriega was deposed.
I wonder how many megaprojects get kicked off from a nose bender, especially in it's heyday. Perhaps the hubris of humanity is just the hangover of a boardroom bathroom break.
I mean for a lot of megaprojects or crazy ideas like "just dig a tunnel lmao" or "let's dig a canal to connect the oceans" it's not a matter of "is it possible" but "who's going to pay for it"; the rest is time and work, worst case it can be done with a shovel and a lot of patience.
This is why I don't understand this notion of ancient projects like the piramids, stonehenge or the moai being impossible; it just took a long time and a lot of people to do.
Salinity issues aside, in my understanding locks generally don’t pump water at all: they work entirely on gravity. In effect this means that a burst of water flows downstream every time the lock is cycled.
Exactly, they basically harness the natural water cycle (rain to watersheds to waterways to ocean).
The one exception is with these new locks, I bet they pump a bunch of the water back now instead of releasing it, that's how I expect they get the 60%.
Nope, it's not pumped. It's a clever system where there are several storage basins at different levels.[1]
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a nuclear reactor mounted on a ship to provide power for the Panama Canal. This reduced water loss via the hydroelectric plant at Gatun Dam, leaving more water for the locks.[2]
Perhaps the solution is as simple as invest in more electric generating capacity in Panama. At 8 degrees off the equator, solar is plentiful. One could use lake Gatun for pumped hydro storage as well.
Another commenter noted that they did this in the 60s and 70s, apparently there was a floating nuclear reactor there so they didn't need so much hydro power, keeping the reservoir more full
Apparently it’s 6 MW, which ain’t nothing, but isn’t a tremendous amount either. I don’t know what a typical battery storage facility can put out instantaneously - I would think more, perhaps substantially more. Though the lake certainly would have the capacity advantage!
But they therefore depend on rain to work; thanks to climate change and changing weather patterns, that's no longer as predictable as it once was.
I mean when it comes to the Panama canal, pumping water upstream is an option, but as another commenter mentioned, it's a lot of water and will therefore cost a lot of energy to do.
It's because the Panama canal was constructed by connecting several previously naturally existing (fresh) waterways and a big lake, to the ocean on both side. The whole point of the locks is to raise and lower the ships to the higher elevation at which the lake sits. Water runs downhill, it starts as rain, then to rivers and lakes, then the ocean. So in this case rain and natural watershed basins drain into the lake and then the locks release it slowly down to progressively fill each lock, until the water is at the ocean, at which point it can't efficiently be separated from the seawater, so it just becomes part of the ocean.
The people there drink the fresh water and chose to settle in that area originally because ot was there. We then built a canal after. It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a water source for the local folks.
> It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a water source for the local folks.
Right, I am saying that the effect it would have on the existing water source is a probably a factor in why “allow more free mixing of saltwater / pump more seawater to deal with drought conditions impacts on the canal” is not done.
Gatun lake is man made. There was no lake as such prior to the building of the canal. There also weren’t a lot of people living in the area of what is now Gatun lake. Between Colon and Panama City was very sparsely populated.
About 40k people were displaced after building the Canal, not necessarily because they were in the way[0]. We like it there and I'd rather have fresh water than have the canal
I’m surprised it’s that many people. I’d be interested to know if the displaced people primarily lived near the railroad. Colon was a small city back then so I did not think it could be so many people. We in the Zone weren’t taught much about the darker side of the building of the canal.
It seems like you could build a separate salt water basin that would hold the pumped sea water, so as to avoid having to pump it into Gatun lake. Then the salt water could be pumped into the locks to supplement the fresh water, when fresh water levels are running low. The pumps could be powered through solar or hydropower.
From the article: "This was to reduce salination of the freshwater in the canal and the lakes and rivers that make up its watershed, which also provides fresh water to three cities, including the capital."
One of the reasons was to control the Chagres River. The creation of Gatun Lake created a freshwater reservoir higher than sea level. Vessels enter the Canal, climb up to the level of the Lake and are dropped back down to sea level. I have to wonder if the third set of locks (what I think they're calling Neo-Panamax locks) uses more water than the original 110 x 1000 locks. There must be a way to recycle water for use in Panama City and Colon. It's not practicable to re-use the water for canal operations because the water would have to be raised back up to the level of Gatun Lake and it would take an enormous amount of energy to do so. As I recall, spillage from canal operations was never used to generate electricity, but that might no longer be the case.
Draught is correctly used in this article to mean the depth of water required to make a ship float. In American English this word would be spelled as it sounds, "draft" but not everybody is an American.
That's why the article uses both Draught and Drought, because these are Draught regulations (heaviest ships can't use the system) caused by a Drought (unusual dry period). Since you chose an unrelated meaning of Draught I can't tell if you actually knew this and are joking.
