The potentially competing Nicaragua canal is not yet under construction (topic here last year). The Panama canal has been upgraded with larger locks and water recycling, but the upgrades are not yet in use. It is in the news because low rainfall in the country has reduced water levels. Now, only shallow-draft (draught?) vessels can pass. The current locks as you may know release water directly to the oceans. Similar happened in 1998, and now again the situation is attributed to El Nino. For me, however, this is different. Panama dry season is December to April. Dry in these months is very unusual. The upgrade is to drought-proof the canal, along with fitting the next size class of cargo ships. Almost got it done in time Somehow, this was not a problem 100 years ago, but I'll not speculate...
100 years ago, ships were sinking trying to sail around cape horn? if we were doing it over again with todays tech, would it be easier to put the ships on a rail from shore to shore?
Maybe move the shipping containers by rail to another ship, but moving an entire ship, not considering how big they are.
About Efforts for the Northern Sea Route In recent years, there has been a trend of sea ice in the Arctic melting faster, and in 2005, the Northern Sea route opened for the first time in history. In 2009, the world’s first commercial shipping voyage sailed through the seasonal opening. The global shipping industry has been eager to capitalize more on the Northern Sea Route as a shorter and therefore more fuel-efficient alternative to sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, or through expensive and busy canals like the Suez. A voyage via the Arctic is half the distance of a typical route via the Cape of Good Hope, thus reducing vessel bunker consumption and in turn CO2 emissions released by their engines. In order to realize polar voyage operations safely, Weathernews established the Global Ice Center and a team of specialists in 2008 understanding the need for detailed observation data of ice in the Arctic. In 2011, Weathernews began providing Polar Routeing Service to support shipping companies choosing the Northern Sea Route. To make even more accurate predictions of sea ice, Weathernews entered in to a partnership with start-up Axelspace to develop the first private weather satellite dedicated to ice monitoring. The result was the ultra-compact, WNISAT-1 which achieved orbit on November 21st, 2013. Starting in March of 2014, Weathernews will begin to use data from the satellite in Ice Route Service for areas other than the Arctic, and then to enhance the effectiveness Polar Routeing Service to this summer. Source: Total Fleet Management Service | R&D Bob Wilson
It will be another decade (or more??) before real cargo ships go North. Who would insure that? Panama canal must endure some time of little rain to get canal V2.0 into service. It will be 'drought proof', but can't start until Lake Gatun gets refilled by rain. Does not look like 2016 can manage that. Shipping costs affect both sides, Asian manufactured goods and the return trip with soybeans or paper for recycling. Tellin ya, I was shocked to read the Panama canal draft restriction now. Rainfall data are not so easy to get. I know who to ask, but that will remain my little secret. Sorry kids.
Probably not. Ships are designed to have constant even support over the whole hull. The Americans are said to have a torpedo that kills ships by creating a bubble of air beneath the hull, the keel is briefly unsupported in the middle and the whole ship breaks in two. No amount of armor helps because it is an attack against the frame, not the armor. Could be just a rumor. Imagine the size and number of rail cars that would be needed to have well distributed support, the endless complexity of adapting them to a different hull before each trip, the difficulty trying to have no curves and no angles for the full run of the track, the practical problem of getting the ship gently on top of the cars and then off the cars. There is an island in the Mediterranean where they used to drag , I think it was galleys, over a narrow waist in the island for military purposes (Hey, where'd they come from?) but other than that I don't know of any cases where ships are brought up on land except for storage and repair.
The Morris Canal in New Jersey used a series of locks and inclined planes to get boats over an elevation change of 1,674 feet along its length. The boats were hauled up the inclined planes by water power; while the canal is long gone, remnants of it can still be seen. Locks and Planes of the Morris Canal Here's a period photo of a boat being hauled up a plane in Newark:
Both the Northeast and Northwest passage are open. However, the ship needs some level of ice handling capability. There are ice foes and floating chunks and the hull has to resist nominal puncture. Still, adding an Arctic capability for new hulls makes a lot of sense for future shipping. Bob Wilson
Yeah, open Arctic... Global shipping uses big boats, 12 months/year. Pan Can 2.0 will accommodate 2.5 x larger hulls, and (allegedly) be drought proof. It may stall/kill the Nicaragua canal, which of course delights eco-weenies (again, thanks to ETC/SS for that). A small amount of merchandise will take Arctic routes, few months/year. Maybe (probably) the 'hole' will persist longer. But none of us will see Arctic ice free all year. It is not even something to wish for. Not the world you want.
Want vs. get, sometimes not the same thing. I spend a lot of time diagnosing what is broke and some times there is a flash of joy when finding the root cause. But that never means I like and admire the problem. Two days ago, I was looking at the Arctic and Antarctic ice cover and was sadden to realize what it means for our planet and species: loss of land from sea rise changes in habitable land loss of sea productivity various extinctions We had 10,000 years since the last ice age to develop our 'civilization.' Because of the track record of empiricism vs other approaches, we can only hope. Bob Wilson
