Propaganda Howler From Britain's Independent

Last Saturday, The Independent ran the following global warming propaganda article as fact:

 Screen cap from The Independent September 12, 2009

It has been one of the elusive goals of seafaring nations almost since the beginnings of waterborne trade, but for nearly 500 years the idea has been dismissed as an impossible dream. Now, as a result of global warming, the dream is about to come true.

Within days, a journey that represents both a huge commercial boon and a dark milestone on the route to environmental catastrophe is expected to be completed for the first time. No commercial vessel has ever successfully travelled the North-east Passage, a fabled Arctic Sea route that links the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific far more directly than the usual southerly cargo route. Explorers throughout history have tried, and failed; some have died in the attempt.

Even the slightest acquaintance with Google or Wikipedia would have unmasked this article for the utter hogwash that it is.

Encyclopedia Brittanica states the following:

After many attempts the Northeast Passage was first traversed by the Swedish explorer Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld in 1878–79. Since the late 1960s the passage has been kept open in the summer months by icebreakers, aided by aerial observations and radar and sonar.

That "dark milestone on the route to environmental catastrophe" is more correctly known as the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The NSR is Russia's main national transport line in the Arctic. It has been commercially exploited since 1935 when four cargo motor ships passed through the route during a single navigation season. It is a major shipping route to this very day. Much more here.

The story is still up on the Independent website even though commenters have exposed it. A Google News search reveals that dozens of other news outlets have picked up the false story and run it as is. So much for the notion that the legacy media employs an army of fact checkers to protect us from such garbage. An army of stenographers, maybe.

No wonder the old media are dying.