Do icebreaker ships breaking through ice contribute to ice melt, and changes in the ecology (i.e. make life harder for polar bears) given they are constantly smashing through ice that would otherwise remain intact?
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They do contribute to global warming by the emissions from their engines, but not more than any other ship of similar size. The ice they break is still there after they passed through, just in a different place. Also, they (mostly) only go into areas where the ice melts each summer anyway (because where it doesn’t, the ice is too thick to break it apart).
And you have to remember that the total number of ice breaker ships in the world is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total number of ships producing emissions.
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