Well I guess there's a first time for nearly everything -- here's another such first time milestone, probably destined to be noticed only by "Guinness" ... and climate geeks.
Rowers’ attempt through Arctic’s Northwest Passage to highlight climate change
www.siliconrepublic.com -- 03.05.2013
Three Irishmen and one Canadian will attempt to row across the Northwest Passage in a single season for the first time ever this July. Their goal is to become the first people to cross the 3,000km passage by human power alone, a feat that is only made possible as a result of melting ice in the passage.
Until recently, it was not possible to row across the Northwest Passage but melting sea ice has changed all of that, so the adventurers will also use their expedition as a platform to highlight the impact of climate change.
[...]
Here's where the Northwest Passage is located, with the ice-pack as recently as 2006 (see the lower red line.)
It used to take a bit more than "a row boat" to make your way through those ice-shrouded waters:
Boring correction: it seems there is yet another concern who has noticed the increasingly ice-free Arctic passage ways -- and has planned to set some records of their own ... some new fossil fuel profit records!
Gazprom given green light for arctic work
upi.com -- May 03, 2013
MOSCOW, May 3 (UPI) -- Russian energy company Gazprom has the right to try to access the estimated 63.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the arctic, the prime minister said.
Russian Prime Minster Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree Friday that gives Gazprom the right to explore four natural gas fields in the Barents Sea. The four fields combined may hold more natural gas than the 2.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas produced by Gazprom last year, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency reports.
Medvedev's decree means that Gazprom has to pay about $290 million for exploration rights through 2018.
[...]
Here's where the Barents Sea is located (lower-mid-right), along with the currents that chilled it back in 2000:
larger image -- Fig. 12 -- Sources of Ocean Circulation in the Arctic Ocean [16]
[16] SEARCH Science Steering Committee, Draft SEARCH Science Plan,
Polar Science Center, University of Washington, Seattle, 2000
http: //psc.apl.washington.edu/search/search_plan/Science_Plan_9.html {dead link}
Wonder what those arctic currents look like today? How much
they've changed recently?
Have to wonder what other earth-shaking records are waiting to be broken, unnoticed and unheralded -- except by the geeky-few. (... and most likely by the greedy-few, too.)