(2016)

There could be open water at the Pole in the summer within a few years, and the Arctic will be fully navigible in all but the winter months by 2040, easily. Perhaps even much sooner.

This is an extraordinarily significant development, one of the most dramatic geographic changes in all of recorded human history. You would have to go back twelve thousand years to the end of the last Ice Age, well before recorded history, to find something more significant, though back then of course no would have recognized it as such. As far as global perceptions go, this will be the biggest change since Eurasians realized there were two entire continents between Europe and the Orient. If you are in your twenties now, in fifty years your perception of the lay out of the world will be completely changed because the Arctic Ocean will by then be where Eurasia and North America meet. It will connect them the way the Mediterranean and Carribbean connect the lands that surround them. If you live in the northern Hemisphere now, you see the world on an east west axis. Once the Arctic is open, that axis goes north and then south, up and over. The Arctic will be as central to civilization as the Mediterranean was in Roman times. And if you live in Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and especially Australia, you will be more isolated from the northern hemisphere than ever.

This is happening so fast….