Prof. Byers is losing it

Does the good professor want to encourage large-scale, possibly polluting (gasp!), maritime traffic through the Northwest Passage? Is cash the goal? How, er, un-Dipper:

Foreign ships in North underline sovereignty issues for Canada

A historic voyage this week by two German cargo ships across the Northern Sea Route above Russia highlights the challenges — and potential missed opportunities — confronting Canada in the Arctic, says a leading expert on polar issues.

UBC professor Michael Byers, whose book Who Owns the Arctic? is being launched this month, says the transit of the German vessels in the company of Russian icebreakers — widely reported Friday as a landmark commercial passage from East Asia to Western Europe via Arctic waters — underscores Canada's current inability in the Northwest Passage to match Russia's readiness to exploit economic opportunities [emphasis added] and assert sovereignty in the melting polar realm.

"The Russians have enough icebreaking capacity to escort convoys of commercial vessels through the Arctic. And with those kinds of time and fuel-savings on offer, they could make a lot of money doing so [emphasis added]," Byers told Canwest News Service. "It also helps their sovereignty claim over the Northern Sea Route to be providing such a service, since ships relying on Russian icebreakers are self-evidently asking permission to sail through."

By contrast, he says, Canada's icebreaking fleet is so limited and overtaxed that the director of the Canadian Coast Guard's northern operations recently acknowledged the Arctic region lacks icebreaking capacity because the ships are only on loan from southern ports and must return there each winter to keep clear the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes and elsewhere...

Byers called the trip a wake-up call for Canada.

"Sadly, Canada does not have surplus icebreaking capacity and our ships are growing old," Byers said in an e-mail message. "Which means that we may be missing financial [emphasis added] and sovereignty-strengthening opportunities, and risking the possibility that foreign (i.e., probably Russian) icebreakers might one day lead convoys through our waters, with or without our consent."..

Dear dumb professor: the icebreakers go south in the winter because the northern ice does not then permit sea traffic. You might have reflected on the fact that this transit north of Russia took place in the summer. And icebreakers were still helpful. Anyone going to do it in the winter for a while?

Dear dumb professor: are the Russians in any real world likely to "lead convoys through our waters, with or without our consent"? At that point we would back in a truly cold war. A war I somehow don't think you were terribly enthusiastic about. So now would you have us gird our icebreaking loins against the nasty polar bear in a way you would not have done against all the serious threats from the Soviet Union?

Utter tripe and scaremongering hypocrisy from a Canada Research Chair. Fie. Academia on the deathbead. And our media, who incessantly quote the ideologue, on intellectual life-support.

Update: A reflection of honestly progressive concerns (via Terry Glavin in "Comments"):

Quite.