Global Warming Opens Arctic for Undersea Cable

By: Clean Skies News, Published: 01/22/10 12:22pm

Global warming is apparently melting so much arctic ice that a project not thought possible only a few years ago is moving forward.

The telecom group Kodiak Kenai is in a partnership to lay underwater fiber optic cable connecting London with Tokyo by way of the Northwest Passage.

The plan is a 10,000 mile path from Japan to the Aleutian Islands, then north through the Bering Sea. A regeneration station likely on the northern coast of Alaska would boost the signal, and from there it heads through the northwest passage, around the southern tip of Greenland, and across the North Atlantic to the UK.

The company says the project, called ArcticLink at an estimated construction cost of $1.2 billion, will cut in half the time it takes to send messages from the UK to Asia. It has applied for $350 million in federal stimulus money.

Summer sea ice melted to its lowest level ever in late 2007, and most climate modelers predict a continued downward spiral.