[Layers and layers of fact-checking fail dramatically yet again]: Cargo ships navigate Northeast Passage for the "first" time - Times Online

It is a dramatic symbol of global warming and a potentially lucrative new trade route between Europe and Asia.

Two German container ships have successfully navigated the Northeast Passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic for the first time in a voyage that was considered impossible until just a few years ago.

More debunking at EU Referendum

Since the whole purpose of the journey, therefore, was to deliver cargo to this Siberian town, it defies imagination as to how the ship owners were actually saving money, compared with taking a different route. They took that route because they were obliged to take it. There was no realistic alternative. And as the ships required not one, but two icebreaker escorts – as we now learn – it is extremely hard to see how the route could save any money at all for normal commercial traffic.
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In short, the Mail story is garbage, a turd amongst turds, churned out by the never-ending legions of witless hacks whose sole purpose in life is to fill space, heedless of quality or accuracy of content.

The point, of course, is that in this particular story, the fact-checking is relatively easy and the errors very obvious. In other stories, the errors are equally grave but less obvious and much harder to check. But an industry which is capable of producing the low-grade material that we have just seen is capable of anything. Nothing, but nothing, should be trusted...

Previous debunking at EU Referendum

It has been commercially exploited since 1935 when four cargo motor ships passed through the route during a single navigation season. In 1936, warships of the Baltic Fleet successfully arrived in the Far East. Russia, we are told, has invested enormous material and human resources in exploring and equipping this route. Powerful icebreakers and icebreaking cargo ships have been constructed, navigational and hydrometeorological systems established. And furthermore, up until the end of the 80s, the Arctic transportation system was self-supporting. The volume of sea traffic reached 7 million tons in 1987.