By Adrian Kempton-Cumber It's 100,000 years since the North Pole was ice free. The ice cap grows or shrinks on a daily basis, depending on the season, and you can watch it unfold if you want to at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/, where they have a daily updated image of the extent of the ice. This year Ocean Physics Professor Peter Wadhams (Cambridge) has predicted that it will be ice free this year by extrapolating data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. It's sort of snow and ice Technical Analysis. He's short ice. There is a vast amount of data on the site and lots of images like the one here which shows the extent of the sea ice on 21st June '16. We'll know in mid-September if he was right, as that's the time when the ice recedes the most. And even if he's not this time around it is surely only a matter of time before it is ice free in summer. This would change the global balance of power on a level akin to physically moving countries around the world. The countries with North facing coasts in the Arctic are broadly winners: Denmark, Norway, Russia, Canada and the US. With this becoming a reality I wonder just how long Denmark will stay in the EU. They'll be as rich as Norway thanks to oil and shipping from Greenland, plus the fact that Greenland, the world's largest island – and, if it were a sovereign state, the 12th largest country in the world – would presumably become more habitable... Click Here To Read The Full Story The Master Investor Market Report - The FTSE 100 closed the day at 6,690.42, a decrease of 4.47 points.
- The FTSE 250 rose 39.47 points to finish at 16,907.13.
- The FTSE All Share dropped 0.25 points to finish at 3,622.98.
- The FTSE AIM All Share finished at 730.64, up by 3.99 points.
Mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO) announced that its iron ore production during the first half of the financial year rose by 10% to 161 million, keeping it in line with output forecasts. There was also strong production data in bauxite and aluminium, but coal output fell due to changes at the Kestrel facility. However, shipments did not climb as quickly as had been hoped. Shares in the company fell 92.50p to 2,370p. |
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