Welcome to Media-Sport, where we score points watching a part of the media dance around the hysterical folly of an Antarctic climate science expedition trapped in sea ice for six nights (and counting). The Art of Propaganda is not just in the telling of one-sided lines, but is crafted through parts left unsaid.
More global warming, it is everywhere you look. View from Akademik Shokalskiy
With three ice-breaker rescue ships trying to reach them, the latest news is that the scientists and media entourage may have to abandon ship and be helicoptered to safety (though right now even that is not possible due to the very rough weather). The ABC news home page at time of posting this has zero references to “Antarctica”, but does say there are cracks in ice around a stranded ship.
The decision to abandon the latest attempt was made at 9am Australian EST. The SMH story appeared at 4.40pm, and the ABC reported it on “just in” at 5.40pm. Marvelous how “fast” satellite communications and social media can work. No mention on The Guardian Australia site (despite them having a reporter on the boat). No twitters seen on the @GdnAntarctica, or @guardian, @alokjha (their journalist), @loztopham (their documentary maker), or #spiritofmawson or @ProfChrisTurney. (Perhaps those trapped on the boat don’t know?)
Antarctica Live is the Guardian Live blog where you won’t find any live news at the moment.
The Guardian calls it “Antarctica Live” but the latest news is from yesterday. What use is a live blog if extraordinary events happen and you don’t cover them?
A month ago the mission of the $1.5m expedition was “to answer questions about climate change”. Now the ABC describes the Australasian expedition as “a Russian ship stuck in sea ice in Antarctica.” The BBC has a reporter on board, and it only took 8 hours for the news to reach the BBC feed. Who is spinning the message to neutralize an embarrassing story then?
Let there be no doubt, the mission was to document and record scientific changes in Antarctica and to broadcast that to the world. Most scientific missions don’t have a dedicated media team, but this one named a staff of five journalists. There is a journalist and a documentary maker from the Guardian as well as a senior producer from the Science Unit at the BBC world service. (See the media list.) If they’d discovered less sea ice, fewer penguins, or big cracks, we know the images would be all over the mass media and it would be evidence for “climate change”.
But with the MV Akademik Shokalskiy trapped by thick sea ice, the mission apparently is to call it a tourist boat. The BBC now tell us the mission was “to follow the route explorer Douglas Mawson travelled a century ago”. Don’t mention the climate. (Search for the word “climate” on the BBC story for example…). If there is any doubt this was a climate science crusade read about it here: SpiritofMawson –The Science Case. It tells us the full message of doom including that they are studying an ice sheet that would raise global sea levels by 52m (!) if it melted. It doesn’t tell us that there is no sign that could happen. The site doesn’t mention that temperatures on Antarctica have cooled in the last 30 years, nor that sea ice has increased to record highs (I bet the team have noticed that now).
…
The spin is that team has “met heavy ice“. Not “been trapped by unprecedentedly thick sea ice, unlike anything Mawson ever saw, and in record levels”. If they had met thin sea ice, would it have been described as a dangerously thin layer, a risk for penguins, and a stark reminder of how much the climate is changing? Would it have been an undeniable factoid?
It’s not what the ABC says, it’s what they don’t say (a.k.a. “lying by omission”). The headlines could read “Global warming scientists trapped in Antarctica by record sea ice they didn’t predict”. As if. That would be against the religion.
How touristy is this boat? The three leaders are scientists, there are 8 other scientists and 18 PhD students on the boat. There are also 9 scientists back on the shore who presumably modeled the conditions in Antarctica and are world leading experts on sea ice eh? One of those experts is Matthew England who still describes the hopeless IPCC 1990 predictions were “very accurate”.
The world awaits news of the trapped ship, and after 7 hours of waiting for the third icebreaker, the tweet from team leader @profChrisTurner while surrounded by impregnable ice-sheets is to say that “it’s so warm it’s actually raining!” #spiritofmawson.
These are the advertising graphics for this Russian tourist boat that is following Mawson’s adventure –riiiight.
Figure 1: The different components of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 science programme (aligned with the Australian Antarctic Science strategic plan 2011 to 2021).
UPDATE: On Christmas eve, they were apparently only “2 nautical miles from open water” when they got trapped. Today they were grateful the Aurora Australis got as close as 10 nautical miles. Hmm.
MemoryVault comment (edited):
Why is there nothing on this story on the ABC News homepage?
Because yet again the ABC are playing fast and furious with the truth.
The original story about the research ship getting stuck in the ice was belatedly posted in the “justin” section early Saturday morning (Saturday 27/12/2013 7.04am), when it became obvious the story couldn’t be hidden any longer. I say “belatedly”, because there is a BBC film crew on board. Plus there are reporters from the Guardian. So the whole drama could be being covered live.
Since then, rather than post each new development as a “new” story – such as the failure of the Chinese icebreaker to reach them – the ABC has simply gone back and amended the original story, which now lies about two thirds of the way down the second page of the “justin” section.
However, don’t bother going there if you want to find out any of the real facts. Just some of the things that remain unreported are:
* This is the largest and most expensive Antarctic expedition ever mounted by Australia.
* It is being funded almost entirely by the Australian Taxpayer, as is the rescue operation.
* It’s not about “tourists”. There is the ship’s crew, the BBC documentary crew, the Guardian Reporters, a bunch of mad climate scientists, and a whole heap teachers and PhD students who actually paid for passage so they could be unpaid “research assistants” to the mad scientists.
* By the time this little “Climate Change PR fiasco” is over, the cost to the Australian Taxpayers will run into several millions of dollars.
It is interesting to note that the alleged purpose of this little taxpayer-funded White Christmas jaunt was to study the effects of climate change since Mawson was there, 1911 to 1914. Well, when Mawson was there, he was able to get his wooden sailing ship to within 50 yards of the shore. He couldn’t get closer, not because of ice, but because the water was too shallow. Conversely, the purpose-built, steel construction, ice-strengthened research vessel is currently stuck 60 kilometres out to sea, which is as close as they could get to Mawson’s landing spot, on account of all the sea-ice.
Still, despite the total farce of the situation, not to mention the enormous waste of funds and effort, you have to laugh. Here we have a full, professional BBC documentary film crew, PLUS reporters from the Guardian and Fairfax, caught in the middle of what would, in any other circumstances, be a Pulitzer Prize, Walkley Award winning real-life drama, and because of the politics of climate change, they can’t report it and it’s unlikely that a single second of footage will ever be seen by a member of the general public.
Can you imagine the coverage if instead of being stuck in ice that isn’t supposed to be there, they were all in a small Victorian country town surrounded by bushfires?
In closing, a word from the Member for Goldman Sachs and Communications Minister on fraudulent mis-reporting by the ABC:
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Followed by a comment from Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education, on the misappropriation of $1.5 million of taxpayer’s funds by the University of NSW, to partially finance this PR folly:
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
We hope the 74 people on board stay safe, and wish them some global warming.
Resources:
NSIDC — National Snow and Ice Data Centre
Cryosphere – Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice
See also Watts Up “So much sea ice”
The Arctic sea ice extent is lower than average. (Not that that has anything to do with this story).
This is the latest from the BBC.
Lots of pretty pictures of thick ice, plus some curious penguins.
Apparently, the ice is much thicker than usual, that’s the problem – just waiting for someone to say this is because of global warming.
As might be expected, the irony of this is totally lost on the alarmist touting BBC.
In any event, this debacle in the Antarctic may prove to be one of the greatest setbacks for the alarmist cause in recent years – pretentious science hates being ridiculed.
This is just sooooooooooo hilarious.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25546462
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It won’t be so funny of people die as a result of all this. Heads should roll in that case, including some in Abbott’s government. This desperate and fraudulent attempt to prove global warming is out of control has to stop here and now. If Abbott doesn’t do it then he’s just as guilty and stupid as Rudd and Gillard.
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Exactly how is this the “fault” of any Govt ? People are fully entitled to be as stupid as they wish to be – they have only put themselves in danger (although I empathise with the crew, and the crews from the failed rescue attempts)
I agree with you that some danger has accrued to the stuck ship – if the ice moves under wind and crushes the ship in poor weather, rescue by chopper could be hairy
But the situation is very John Cleese. Especially since all the “meeja” on board are restrained from hyperventilated reporting by political correctness … oh, by golly and gee 🙂
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If the government doesn’t denounce the global warming fraud for what it is then of course they are just as much to blame. If they continue to kowtow to the global warming fraternity then it gives a green light for more stupid actions. The government has to make a policy statement that global warming alarminism is a fraud. Otherwise, their silence is simple an act of aiding and abetting the fraud. Ignorance or silence is no defense.
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Peter
The sad fact is not enough people have died yet for most sensible governments to act against the man made CAGW myth. Australia has started, but still has a long way to go.
Unfortunately, global warming is still a trendy concept for many politicians, supposedly justifying drastic action to ‘save the planet’.
‘Save the planet’ policies are generally viewed as being ‘good’ in politics, regardless of whether or not there is any logic behind them. In addition, you have the media bias of organisations such as the ABC and BBC – few politicians want to tackle these purveyors of left wing viewpoints head on.
The Western World’s increasing obsession with expensive and unreliable wind power is going to start killing people during periods of extreme heat or cold in the not too distant future, because both of these types of weather are usually associated with high pressure systems which are not known for being windy.
What saddens me is these clowns stuck in the Antarctic ice are guaranteed to try and somehow morph themselves into ‘climate champions’ (a Gorebot expression), so be prepared for nauseous documentaries on the antics of these heroes and their just cause.
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I am surprised at all of you! Finally we have convincing evidence that Australia’s carbon (sic) tax is already working! It is wonderful to hear that all the resulting cooling around Australia has resulted in expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet.
Bravo Australia … you deserve a pat on the back >.>
466
Hmmm 3 people irony impared…
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Finally someone in Australia is prepared to speak out about how climate policies have contributed to the demise of Australian competitiveness. Shame on the majority of Australian industry leaders and politicans that they were not prepared to speak out like this when these policies were being implemented, including John Howard’s Renewable Energy Target (supported by former banker and Liberal minister Malcolm Turnbull). From The Australian, December 31:
The article leads with: “The unprecedented cost of energy driven by the renewable energy target and the carbon tax had destroyed the nation’s competitiveness, Tony Abbott’s chief business adviser has declared. Maurice Newman also says climate change policies driven by “scientific delusion” have been a major factor in the collapse of Australia’s manufacturing sector.”
Mr Newman said Australia had become “hostage to climate-change madness”. “And for all the propaganda about ‘green employment’, Australia seems to be living the European experience, where, for every ‘green’ job created, two to three jobs are lost in the real economy,” he said.
“The scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling. Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years. Now, credible German scientists claim that ‘the global temperature will drop until 2100 to a value corresponding to the little ice age of 1870’.”
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I don’t think PeterS deserved quite so many red thumbs. There is the matter of taxpayer funding going toward delirious research into self-serving stupid.
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Thanks Sean.
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If this had been an expedition funded by the government for “antarctic exploration” rather than global warming, would people then find it humorous? Exploration of any type for any reason has its risks. The fact that global warming crew is stuck in ice has an irony to it, of course. Yet if it were for penquin study, I don’t think anyone would be saying the government was at fault for studying penguins.
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“Exploration” with paying tourists?
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And I’m sure I saw a pic with a kid in it – a minor 12 or 14 years old.
Anyone remember such?
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ABC Lateline had a two part episode screened on 25th and 26th November promoting the expedition. Professor Chris Turney apparently took his wife and children along. The son looked about 11 and the daughter a few years older. I hope they are the first to be evacuated!
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There is such a thing as “tourists” tagging along on exploration expeditions. You usually find them paddling up the Amazon, or in underwater caving. They are a danger to themselves and everybody else in the team.
There were even tourists at the Battle of Copenhagen during the Napoleonic Wars. It seems to be a consequence of too much money, and not enough intellect.
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For a small sum of US$6500 you can take a 13 day boat cruise from the bottom of South America to Antarctic.
I was talking to a pair of Swedish travelers i was with on the Salar De Uyuni trek a couple of weeks ago,who had done it just recently. It was amazing apparently, but fortunately for them mother nature wasn’t out to give them a lesson in irony.
Thou I would debate with you that any sensible traveler is a danger to anyone, or themselves, outside of any normal danger that would be associated with those areas.
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Yep – R&D is risky, both of capital and intended results. In fact, the only guarantee of R&D is that you will not get the answer you may wish for
That this episode was really a publicity stunt, full of symbolic meeja heroism (sarc), is the point to my John Cleese analogy. Cleese excels mightily at exposing hypocrisy to cutting laughter – as these people have done to themselves 🙂
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Sheri, if it were a penguin study, it would probably be about the effects of climate change on penguins. When wasting time and money in such areas, you need to have ‘climate change’ in the ‘research’ to recive the funding, the friendly media reports and the ‘pal’ reviews.
In any case, any government funding going toward any such delusion-driven ‘research’ would be criticised outside the MSM. It’s because some people are instinctively biased against stupid.
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Penguins??? I wonder if they packed a cricket bat…nothing like a good penguin clubbing to pass the time.
I use a cricket bat with a 200mm bridge spike driven through the sweet spot. Most effective and the blood makes a change to the endless boring white ice.
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I wonder how many penguins were killed by the ships trying to break through the ice.
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I doubt that one penguin was killed by the ice breakers.
Soon as they hear the motors they scarper. To kill a penguin you must stalk them, get real close and point and say, “Look over there, it’s Happy Feet” then WHACK!
Works a treat.
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You don’t say?
My interest in, “Look over there, it’s Happy Feet [2]” was somewhat tangential and off-topic. It’s when, in the movie, the ship’s crew member came out playing my first electric guitar, an Australian Maton Fyrbyrd from the 60’s. They are now rare, expensive and sought after. I still kick myself.
Happy Feet 2 clip.
10
And therein lies the rub, Sheri.
“REAL” scientists doing “REAL” science have to fight for years competing for scant funding for their experiments. Then they may have to wait years more to secure the opportunity to be part of an Antarctic Summer Group.
Just such a group of “REAL” scientists had just arrived at the Casey base on board the Aurora Australis, already three weeks late because the Australis got stuck in ice on its return trip from its first supply run this summer season. I don’t know if those “REAL” scientists are still on board Australis, or were off-loaded at Casey, but most of their equipment is still on board. So the “REAL” scientists are not doing any “REAL” science, studying penguins, or anything else.
Why not?
Because the Australis with all their equipment is off saving a bunch of eco-Fascist eco-loons who only had to whisper the magic words “climate change” in order for the University of NSW to write them out a cheque for $1.5 million taxpayer’s dollars so they could charter their own boat and head off on this ill-advised mis-adventure.
There is a very good reason why no one else in a hundred years has attempted to recreate Mawson’s expedition 1911 to 1913. That is because quite by chance Mawson initially landed at the most treacherous, inhospitable place on the whole treacherous, inhospitable continent of Antarctica. Both the BoM and the CSIRO warned both the UNSW and Turney (the expedition leader) against this little jaunt, but what the hell – in “climate science” experts are only experts when they are saying what you want to hear, right?
And make no mistake, there are no “innocent” bystanders involved in this. The group alternately referred to by the ABC and MSM as “tourists” and “passengers” are, in fact, all fellow eco-loons who each paid over $15,000.00 for the opportunity of being unpaid “research assistants” on this little “climate change” soiree. They were drawn from a pool of applicants made up of uni professors, PhD students, and secondary high school science teachers who applied for the privilege via the expedition’s website. How many of them paid their own $15,000.00, and how many of them are there courtesy of the Australian taxpayer, do you reckon?
Meanwhile, the “REAL” scientists who were going to be doing “REAL” science have all been told their projects have now been cancelled, because by the time the Australis rescues all these climate clowns, and ferries them back to Hobart, resupplies and returns to Camp Casey, it will be the end of January and time to start ferrying everybody back out, ready for the next Polar Winter. Pretty much an entire season of REAL Antarctic research, worth untold millions in now wasted funding and planning, all scrapped, because of this political statement gone wrong.
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No, the current government cannot be held responsible for this disaster. It was all planned long before their time. But it can be held responsible for what happens now as a result. Given the millions already wasted, both on the original exercise and the rescue so far, plus the millions more down the drain in ruined research, plus the millions that will yet have to spent before these clowns are safely back on terra firma, virtually ALL of it taxpayer’s money, nothing less than a Royal Commission is called for.
Given the deafening silence from the several Cabinet Ministers whose departments are involved, over the last six days of this fiasco, it would appear the current government is prepared to sit on its hands and do nothing, to the extent that, from reading international reports, the Russian authorities have now stepped in and appear to be running the show.
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MV,
I think you are right, a Royal Commission would be the appropriate forum for researching and assessing the waste of tax payers money. Whether it happens, or not, is yet to be seen.
But it would be a very brave Minister (meaning a very stupid Minister, in the best “Yes Minister” tradition) who mentioned it, while this band of assorted idiots and morons were still in some danger.
Ice moves, and thick ice moves with some force. Ships, even those designed for use in Arctic and Antarctic conditions, have been known to be crushed by significant ice movement in bad weather – exactly the sort of conditions that can ground (and hanger) all aircraft.
Once they are known to be safe, but before they have a chance to file any form of story or filmed footage, would be to optimum time, politically, to call for a Royal Commission. If one is not called for, then find a friendly opposition member, and persuade them to starting asking questions in the house, as in, “Is the Minister prepared to …, and if not, why not?”
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…….but they weren’t studying penguins, were they?
50
I hope the deluded buggers all get a touch of frost bite ! Might keep their greedy fingers out of the taxpayers pockets for a while .
40
It’s the fault of the government for funding it, without which it wouldn’t be happening, that’s the whole point. (And let’s not keep forgetting the inconvenient fact that they get the money by threatening to imprison members of the productive class who actually work producing things that, unlike government, people voluntarily pay for. That’s the part everyone keeps being too polite to mention, isn’t it?)
It’s the fault of the government for funding the statist propaganda units on the boat. And it’s the fault of the government propaganda unit for their dishonest and deceptive behaviour in not reporting the facts and reasons that disprove their own irrational belief system.
Well they should be. It’s precisely the unthinking attitude that it’s objectively and unquestionably good of government to be funding “science” that has caused this whole epidemic of anti-human religious hysteria in the first place.
The entire case of the warmists is nothing but assertions about the significance of greater or lesser statistical correlations of temperature with other variables, as if statistical correlations were capable of proving their assertions in favour of policy action – a complete non sequitur several times over.
But what about the one hundred percent correlation, staring everyone in the face, that all of this activity is funded by government? Now that has explaining power, hasn’t it?
Let’s be scientific about this. When a theory lacks explaining power, it should be rejected, and a more parsimonious theory preferred. Now. Which theory explains the facts better? That the government is some kind of benevolent institution that knows what’s better for people, than people, and that’s why there’s a hugely expensive ship on a mission to try to drum up hysteria about global warming, stuck in the ice, with its own propaganda units not reporting that the facts disprove their belief system?
Or the theory that government claims a legal monopoly of the initiation of force and threats, and exempts itself from the law against misleading and deceptive conduct, and is thus able to openly carry on the most brazen fraud and high crimes even under the very noses of the people it is ripping off to do it? Whether you like it or not, you’ve got to admit it’s got far more explaining power!
Please don’t let’s hear this assumption about how government funding of science confers net benefits on society. That is the irrational belief system at the root of the whole problem. It is mere Santa Claus thinking. To be rational, the costs must be taken into account, otherwise anything will seem beneficial!
The entire political issue around global warming could be solved by the people in favour of any given action funding it themselves. But that’s precisely what they don’t want, isn’t it? The one thing that unites them is their determination to initiate force or threats – “policy” – as the basis of any action; and that is the root of the great fraud and crime being carried out in the name of saving the planet from catastrophic global warming.
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Not Theodore Kaczynski’s Ship of Fools – but an actual Ship of Fools
Quite ‘poetic’ almost
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Jo says: With three ice-breaker rescue ships trying to reach them, the latest news is that the scientists and media entourage may have to abandon […] a poll is needed
‘may have to abandon’: a/ ship, b/ reason, c/ science, d/ common sense, e/ vegetarian diet, f/hope, g/ luggage, h/ press conference, i/ tour, j/ alcoholic beverages, k/ all of the above …
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Tom,
There’s one obscure poll at SodaHead Opinions.
“Global Warming “scientists???” trapped in Arctic ice. Should we rescue them?”
1. I’m for leaving them there until there is “GLOBAL WARMING”
2. Undecided
3. We should send in rescue ships to save them from themselves
120
From the ABC:
Sounds like they are having a lark. Maybe their rescuers need to lighten up.
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They found the ‘tipping point’: right under their noses …
80
PeterS, are you actually going to try to claim that this entire expedition was conceived and organised in the 11 weeks between when the Liberals formed government and the 6 December when the Fairfax journos announced their departure? How will you prove the cabinet or Liberal policy wonks even knew this event was going to happen and that they micromanage the departments of government to that degree?
Next you will have to explain how the original purpose and planning of the expedition is the Abbot/Liberal government’s fault when the internet domain name for the expedition’s web site was first registered in January 2012 (by using a British-based domain privacy service which smells like BBC/Guardian involvement from inception).
Nah, let these warmbots freeze their sneezes. They are in no mortal danger. It’s not 1911 any more. Their eventual safe return is assured. The spectacle will be purely educational. Perhaps the journos might get second thoughts in future about parroting warmist memes uncritically.
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No I’m not but the silence of the current government makes them as guilty as the previous government. As I said, silence or ignorance is no excuse. Imagine this. What if the current government does nothing to expose the global warming scam and fraud? Time will tell if they take the lead and rubbish it but for now they are still making statements that agree with the ALP as to why we should reduce our CO2 emissions, albeit in a different (but ultimately no less stupid) way. If Abbott does step up to the plate and denounce the global warming myth and changes policy to match it, then and only then do finally have a true statesman and PM who deserves the utmost respect with regards to the global warming saga. Until that happens, I hold him just as responsible as the leaders of the previous government for the prorogation of the scam. I do hope he does change soon but I won’t hold my breath. Perhaps he will ultimately change to bend with public opinion but unfortunately that would be a sign of weakness like a typical politician, not of a statesman who is beyond politics and makes the right decision before it’s popular.
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You need to back off a bit I think. “silence of the current government makes them as guilty as the previous government”?
So the many things you are silent about means what exactly?
Give them time. These ‘research funds’ are part of a gravy train that keeps academics in the manner to which they are accustomed. The allocations were determined long before Abbott took over and they cover many more useless areas than ‘climate change’.
If you wanted a government that could ‘change everything’ overnight then you should have voted Rudd back in. Look how that worked out last time.
The tide has turned, the great ‘climate change’ myth is collapsing, but the aftermath will last for a few years yet.
160
Part of the response I received from the current government via Greg Hunt when I questioned the Liberal policy of CO2 abatement:
Then the BOM refer to the CSIRO and the CSIRO refer to the IPCC and the IPCC refer to the BOM (data sets) and so it goes around.
90
Yep agree totally, Abbott and his band of minions at the moment appear not as bright as I had hoped , if they remain silent on this they will be no better than the previous scum , at this moment it appears they are gutless !!! .
Abbott and co should be loudly supporting Maurice Newman , as well as disiplining the university of NSW .
As each day goes by I begin to worry more and more about Abbott .
30
In Norway “green(grønnsak)” means, from before environmentalists addapted that Word, that one is as smart as a vegetable.
The light is on but nobody is home.
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Greenhorn was an American slang for Newbie. Uncommon in Australia was to called them Green, but meant the same thing. Similar to Norway apparently.
Sadly the word Green was coopted to mean righteous. Now thanks to the CAGW debarcle over the last 20 years, green now is beginning to mean clueless.
270
Hence the old expression that was a favourite of my mother- “I am not so green as I am cabbage looking”. By the way, the ice breaker Aurora Australis was itself stuck in the ice and unable to leave Antarctica for two weeks earlier in December, so I am not at all surprised that her captain abandoned the rescue attempt. I do wonder if the captain of the Russian ship will ever have a command again after this fiasco, so that is another innocent life ruined by greenblindness
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Ian the Captain of a vessel always has the ultimate responsibility. In the area of big ships where formal seagoing qualification as a Master is essential that responsibility is forefront in any training/assessment programme.
We don’t know what information he was getting prior to entering the ice pack but if he knowingly put his vessel and its crew [including the green whackos] into danger then he, and he alone, carries the can.
If he was aware of the risk and still went ahead with the planned course or weak enough to comply with the whackos plans then he does not deserve to hold command.
90
I am hoping that Saint Darwin takes every last one of them…
20
Peter – not being a citizen of Oz, I will refrain from the political side of your comment. But I will endorse the rest whole heartedly. The insanity of the religion of AGW is starting to cost lives directly.
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What do you mean “starting”. The monumental amount of money mis-spent on AGW could and should have been used to improve the water quality, sanitation and food supply. Not having done so has already cost countless lives.
20
Don’t worry, heads will roll alright. Serious money is being lost here.
Russian ship, US ice breaker, loss of expedition, interference with other people’s expeditions causing failure to complete their work as this rescue attempt deprives them of contracted resources. Delays caused by the rescue may well make it necessary to retain the US ice breaker for the rest of the season to get other people out.
Heads will roll, alright, and Prof Turney will head the list. Right now the ship’s captain and crew are probably contemplating boiling him in oil.
There certainly is a danger that lives may be lost. The ice has the power to crush that ship.
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“Don’t worry, heads will roll alright.” Dream on Farmer Ted. It will all be glossed over and obfuscated by the MSM. Our only hope it to repeatedly ridicule such taxpayer funded jaunts through blogs such as this (though that is largely talking to the like minded) AND repeatedly writing to your local MPs as most are so blissfully I’ll informed they are unaware a second viewpoint even exists. You won’t change nought by chatting up Jo.
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Peter
You don’t have to wait for someone to blame it on global warming
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20131219_is
“Chris Turney: Yeah, well, it’s a fascinating thing, isn’t it, really. Ultimately, global warming covers a vast array of different responses by our planet…” Blah blah
510
He claimed they reached Mawson’s hut???
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No, it’s not at all lost on them – it is the reason it is deliberately under-reported, especially by the ABC. Leftoid intellectuals can’t be laughed at, you know
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Ian,
These idiots need to be mocked and derided, mercilessly and at every opportunity. Fortunately for sceptics, this sort of shambolic miscalculation happens with monotonous regularity from warmists, confirming that “experts” like Profs. Turney and England really know very little of what they are talking about.
I am afraid, Peter, that I can summon up absolutely no sympathy for their collective discomfiture, and while I hope no significant harm comes to any of them, I also fervently hope that they experience the full brunt of the coldest conditions that Antarctica has to offer, after all I would hate them to miss out on the full “Mawson experience”.
That they have wasted millions of taxpayers dollars on vainly searching for fairies at the bottom of the garden, and then fallen victim to their lack of understanding of the environment they profess to be studying, is nothing short of scandalous and provides an unprecedented opportunity for some quite public “hauling over the coals” by the current government through a thorough public inquiry, once of course their safe return has been assured. Anyone expecting a firm response from the Liberals before they have even been rescued is being naive in the extreme, given that this would be political suicide should they come to some misadventure during their rescue. As such criticism of the current government’s muted response is clearly unwarranted, at least as yet.
731
Russia has just announced the clowns are to be rescued by a Chinese helicopter.
So what is happening to the ship, if an airlift is considered necessary?
Australian taxpayers must be so proud to have the opportunity to pay for the Chinese to rescue their climate warriors!
330
Someone please calculate the carbon footprint of a helicopter rescue.
210
Footprint calculated?
You will need to buy ‘offsets’.
April 8, 2011: THE carbon credit market in Australia is rapidly growing into a multibillion-dollar industry but relies on voluntary standards, where anyone can offer carbon credits for sale.
April 8, 2011: A SYDNEY carbon credits company thought to have been running some of the world’s biggest offsets deals appears to be a fake, shifting paper certificates instead of saving forests and cutting greenhouse emissions.
MAY 19, 2011: JULIA Gillard has guaranteed carbon trading in Australia will be “shyster” proof, amid warnings the carbon offsets system could be rorted by organised crime gangs.
– Price also has Macquarie Group, the former NSW premier Bob Carr, and the US-listed IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) among his team in the ”clean and green” markets being assembled.
90
Did someone mention carbon(sic) credits?
Who remembers the Henbury Farm Fiasco?
3 Jul 2013: The property was purchased by R.M. Williams Agricultural Holdings two years ago, with $9 million of Federal funding, to destock the station for conservation purposes and farm carbon instead.
Last week, R.M. Williams Agricultural Holdings went into receivership, leaving the carbon project in limbo.
Qantas announced it would buy carbon credits from R.M. Williams Agricultural Holdings from Henbury Station in July last year
The Northern Territory Government says the owners of Henbury Station never received approval to run the pastoral property as a carbon farming operation.
Cowley’s cunning: How he got $9m out of Canberra
It’s hard to believe.
A company owned by News Ltd gets a big grant from the government and plans the biggest carbon farm in the world.
Dec 2013: Qantas announces profit downgrade – we will fight to save jobs
July 2013: Future of Henbury Station
70
I was wondering about the ship as well. Considering current ice trends in Antarctica, it could very well be there forever, a permanent monument to global warming true believers, sailing their ship into pack ice that their theories told them wasn’t there. I can just hear them – “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”
100
I believe their Dear Leader has already tweeted that the heavy multi-year ice had been released by GW and blown into place, not actually new freeze-up. They’ll morph the facts until they are crushed by icy inconvenient events.
10
The scale of the disaster in terms of rescue effort and cost is enough justification for a Royal Commission into this fraudulent activity of the crew that’s wasting taxpayers money right under our noses. In any other area of business or research such an activity would have been tagged as illegal from the start. Why oh why is it so easy for global warming alarmists to obtain and waste so much of our money using illegitimately gained science?
951
The main purpose of Australia’s immense research effort in Antarctica is to shore up our territorial claims to most of the continent, which most of the world doesn’t accept anyway. They must be getting pretty desperate though, to describe “following in Mawson’s footsteps” (or whatever) as research.
Ah Hubris. The rest of the world now looks on Australia’s “research” and questions its value. We haven’t heard the last on this.
Leave them there for a while, and when they run low on food, resupply them with a helicopter-load of whalemeat!
220
This was pure AGW hyperbole in its intent. And yes, it does reflect badly on the credibility of science in Australia.
100
That is science since December 1986, when the Hawke government put their own brand of “political scientists” in charge of the real scientists at the CSIRO.
Prior to that time Australian science was up with the world’s best.
50
Excellent summary Jo.
I think it is time I wrote a letter to Christopher Pyne. I won’t bother with…ermm…. whatsisname… because he will probably be taking over from Shorten pretty soon.
171
I agree – great article and read !
Thanks Jo :o)
51
I’m looking forward to reading how they explain that all the ice they’re stuck in is caused by man-made global warming and warrants heaps more tax-payers money to investigate it further (probably not in situ next time….).
341
What I heard was that global warming was melting the ice to the point that the water the ship was sailing in was “almost drinkable”. Since fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than normal sea water, the ship is now stuck in fresh water ice made possible by global warming accelerating the melting of Antarctica. I’m not trying to support the logic, but you asked.
112
We can all joke about CAGW but the reality is that it is costing us poor citizens of Planet Earth many US$trillions. CAGW is a myth as is abundantly obvious wrt this current Antarctic fiasco involving “S.S. Junket” and its band of so called scientists, explorers & tourists frozen solid in a mass of sea ice which is totally incongruous with a CAGW scenario. It is time that all global tax payer funded ventures like this cease immediately. Enough is enough. CAGW alarmists are totally deluded and need to seek therapy.
643
Great to see the Liberals being outed on this. To borrow a couple of expressions from Yes Minister, we had 11 years of ‘creative inertia’ under the Howard government as they not only failed to roll back the Left’s agenda but helped perpetuate it, through such measures as the Greenhouse Office and the renewable energy targets. We cannot allow the Abbott government to repeat this folly, simply because they are afraid to make ‘courageous’ decisions.
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Barry, I wonder do you realise how right you are on the Howard government’s failure to roll back the Marxist agenda.
All major parties have long subscribed to what I call the current conventional wisdom in economics. “Free Market Theory”, (which cannot become Free Market Practice), Economic Rationalism, User Pays, (which is really first user pays), and National Competition Policy. All policies which you might say you have to have when governments are not competent to govern. Policies which, of themselves, can never arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.
In rural Australia, the Howard government, by maintaining the Hake/Keating legacy, did more to advance the cause of Marxism than did Hawke and Keating themselves.
It was the Howard government which, citing the Law of Supply and Demand, and demonstrating that they had not the slightest comprehension of either supply or demand, bankrupted the entire world trade in wool, almost wiping out what had been until recently Australia’s best money earner.
It was the Howard government which allowed Rudd and the Marxists in the media to destroy AWB Ltd over trumped up charges in Iraq. There was never any secret that inland trucking fees were being paid by the UN through AWB Ltd. Those fees were justified on the basis that sanctions had denied Iraq the resources to transport that wheat from the ea ports to their inland population centres, and approved by botht the Australian government and the UN. Even the freight rates were far lower than fpr comparable work in Australia. There were no bribes to Saddam Hussein. But when Rudd raised a storm Howard did a Pontious Pilate, refusing to get his hands dirty to defend Australia’s farmers against the shysters in the world wheat trade.
I would expect to find that such happenings were commonplace across Australia’s industry spectrum.
20
The spin is fun to watch.
240
The spin might be fun to watch and look like a step in the right direction but below your linked story dimby,is another report with the headline[it wont be long before the victims of climate change make the west pay] dated dec 30
30
Lyrics to Deeper, by Alice Cooper.
We must complete the trip, try not to lose your grip
No sight of solid ground and never look straight down
Deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper
Your claustrophobic brain sucking you down the drain
The walls are closing in, the air is getting thin
The elevator broke, it went right through the floor
It left a burning hole, down and down and down we go
We’re in a deadly spin, hating this spin we’re in
We’re helpless, panic grows, down and down and down we go
50
Oh the delicious irony, the fact that they went there to see the Climate Change/Global Warming which they would then lay at the feet of fossil fuel, and now it’s fossil fuel powered Icebreakers and helicopters which will inevitably used to rescue them.
Unlike Ernest Shackelton’s wooden sailing ship which was just crushed by the ice, what looks to be happening here is that the stuck fast icebreaker looks to be being pushed up, and is beginning to lean to starboard. If so, then once pushed up, it will just fall over, long since abandoned.
The UNSW’s Professor
Turkeysorry, Turney said the following:WTF.
Tony.
Post Script. Incidentally, I watched the re-creation of Shackelton’s stirring rescue mission in a multi part series on SBS, late Saturday nights, and now finished. Positively amazing that he did this in 1915. Now that is a heroic story of epic proportions, virtually unreported, as the World was now at War. Took him five months to finally rescue the crew left at Elephant Island. All done in a 20 foot open lifeboat, and then a trek across mountains covered in ice. Absolutely incredible….. nothing like this modern saga which is closer to a joke than anything else, but you can bet the ABC will beat it up out of all proportion.
883
Alfred Lansing’s book “Endurance” about Shackleton’s rescue mission is well worth a read. One of the most interesting aspects was the personalities of the crew. Shackleton was forced to take a dropkick called Vincent with him on the lifeboat trip to South Georgia Island in order to preserve the sanity of those left on Elephant Island, as best as possible at least.
I hope all the paying passengers on the stranded icebreaker were required to take out evacuation insurance, otherwise they could be out of pocket a couple of hundred thousand dollars each.
330
“a dropkick called Vincent” HaHa sorry I can’t stop laughing at this, thanks.
I do wonder if Vincent went on to spawn any relatives that are aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy?, the ultimate irony.
150
Ian
Yes, a great book. Made all the better by the photographs (glass plate) that survived the expedition. What a story – and the only casualty was a frostbite victim! Amazing. And a stark contrast to the weasils on the present boat stuck in the Antactic.
Do yourself a favour grab a copy off Abebooks or similar.
Cheers,
Speedy
110
Yes Speedy, I have two copies of the book. The second copy was illustrated with, as you said, the photos taken by expedition photographer Frank Hurley, who was able to “protect his negatives and photographs from destruction”. After seeing that it was a “must-have” even though I had already bought the smaller version first.
Of more interest, one of the expedition members was a stowaway who was later made a steward.
70
The frostbite victim was Perce Blackboro (who was actually a stowaway). He had several toes amputated, the operation performed by penguin blubber lamp light under the upturned boat that was their only shelter on Elephant Island.
There was at least one other casualty – one man suffered a heart attack on first landing on the island after 3 harrowing days and nights afloat after leaving the ice as it cracked up beneath them.
But, yes, all Shackleton’s expedition members survived.
60
Hi Tony! Dead right about the heroic seamanship and leadership of Shackleton. I thoroughly recommend his book, SOUTH. It is testament to the kind of men he led that, not having lost a man on the ice, when they were rescued and returned to GB many volunteered for active service in the hell of WW1. FIVE were killed in action.
Turney and his mob should hang their heads in shame as they are not fit to follow in the footsteps of such great men!
231
Ah. I see I didn’t take into consideration that Turney and his mates on the Russian ‘ice floe’ (for surely, that is what their ship has become) have access to the internet: that must be why a eulogy to Shackleton, should have got a thumbs down. I guess it was one of them.
Well, I’ve got a response to them. Not one of them even comes close to the bravery of Mr Chippy.
200
That is: Mrs Chippy
20
Tony and other Shackleton fans may be slightly interested in some old photographic negatives that were only recently discovered in Captain Scott’s hut and have been restored by an expert in New Zealand. They are taken during one of Shackleton’s voyages a few years after Mawson, around 1914-1917. Interesting is the number photos showing a clear uninterrupted path between the ship and the land in McMurdo Sound on their way to Ross Island, no great sea ice blockages in sight. (Hmmmm. The camera doesn’t lie!)
Add in the fact Mawson could get his boat to the continent in 1912 and it starts to look like the modern day Ship of Fools have either timed their cruise far too early in summer or have underestimated 90 years of Antarctic cooling.
190
Professor Turney, like many fellow climatologists, see a major strength of the CAGW hypothesis that any new climate or weather phenomena can be accommodated within that theory. I follow the line of Sir Karl Popper, and proclaim that this is its greatest weakness. A theory that cannot be wrong says nothing about the world. It is a theory that makes predictions, which despite seeming to be improbable and crazy nevertheless turn out to be true, that we should hold in the highest esteem.
180
So where is Tony “absolute crap” Abbott? Tony, tell the academia that all funding for these junkets and research is now finished and transferred to medical research, where there are real scientists trying to do good for mankind. Leave the climate model idiots in the south seas to freeze in their warming summer rain.
652
John, what makes you think that academic medical research is any more scientific than AGW climate change “science”? In my experience as a health researcher the pharmaceutical mega industry drives the research through the same peer review and research design games currently played by AGW.
280
You aren’t expected to wait 100 years to see whether a pharmaceutical product works or not.
40
Rn is correct JOC.
Every field of human activity has the problem of all the frailties that are to be human.
http://junkscience.com/ has quite a lot of medical (and related) failings as it’s by a medico.
60
Funny how these blokes come squealing for a diesal powered rescue craft when it all goes wrong. No doubt those trapped on the “S.S. Junket” are great supporters of wind power. Perhaps they should be seeking a wind powered solution to their problem.
461
You know the immediate reply to your statement would be “We did say ALL fossil fuels were bad”, right?
40
“We didn’t say”–I must be slower to hit the “post” button in the future. My apologies.
81
I’m surprised there isn’t a windmill on the ship.
Well at least the sun is up. Their solar voltaic cells will be charging.
90
No, one of those unstoppable nuclear-powered icebreakers. Scrapped, you say? Uh-oh …
10
XUE LONG HELICOPTER OVERFLIGHT INDICATES SLIGHT ANOMALY FROM LEVEL ON PORT/STARBOARD; DUE POSSIBLY TO ICE PUSHING THE SHIP OVER. NO INDICATION IF THIS IS AN ONGOING PROCESS OR STATIC
AKADEMIK SHOKALSKIY: PORT/STARBOARD INTEGRITY EQUATION
70
They have reached a tipping point, in their own words.
30
I’ll bet Gergis, Karoly et al are glad that their
‘…. no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.”
paper was forced to be withdrawn.
180
Hell of a shame that Gergis and Karoly are not on the cruise as well!!
70
You’d think the Left would learn their lesson. Remember the guy who was going to paddle a canoe from the US to the Arctic to highlight ‘climate change’, but had to turn back because of sea ice.
Remember the record low temperatures in Cancun as all the taxpayer funded usual suspects gathered for their drinks outing. And, of course, let’s not forget the DiHydrogen Monoxide prank.
Also, I have a vague recollection of a failed expedition being mounted to show that ‘climate change’ would result in the opening up of the NorthWest Passage, allowing navigation between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but I am unable to find any references.
240
Barry,
For your entertainment.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/13/crew-filming-reality-tv-show-forced-to-cancel-trek-through-northwest-passage-on-jet-skis-after-costly-rescue/
80
Agreed, Barry. For the disciples, data and observation are the servants of belief.
In the pagan tradition of alarmism,they’ve been supplicant to the Weather God (Haiyan, Sandy, Katrina etc), and the Climate God is angry.
70
You might very well think that, Barry. But in the Leftist-liberal mindset, there is no such thing as a “lesson.”
110
“….. which now lies about two thirds of the way down…..” Nice little double entendre there, MV . Taking the Antarctic for granted has cost a lot of folk much hardship and not a few lives thoughout the history of it’s exploration. Hopefully, all the suffering over this folly will be to reputations and The Cause. That’ll make a Warmist pratfall at each Pole this year. You’d need a heart of stone not to chuckle. Off shopping to lay in more popcorn.
462
I appreciate green ticks, but I really cherish the red ones.
193
We hope the 74 people on board stay safe, and wish them some global warming.
No wedon’t. [SNIP. No. No. No. – Jo]
These idiots have chosen not to look, listen and learn and they should pay the consequences, if not the bill for 3 icebreakers, umpteen rescuers risking their lives and 32 helicopter trips plus the fare back to their slimy holes.
383
I don’t care for their safety either. Do you reckon that they give a stuff if we live or die? The warmists are humanity haters!
I’ve read sites that alluded to the people at this site should be terminated…this is war and take no prisoners. I wish the least for their safety!
170
I wonder if the “happy idiots” onboard the stuck vessel Frozen-In still believe “saving the Earth by burning less fossil fuel” trumps “individual use of fossil fuels to keep warm and survive cold conditions?” Using the logic of the CAGW crowd, a case could me made for telling the passengers on the good ship Frozen-In to suck it up and make due with wind and solar energy–at least until global warming comes to their rescue and frees them from the real but un-modeled ice.
70
make do
dueMass death from starvation, hypothermia, hyperthermia, whatever, is a “feature, not a bug” for these misanthropists. A little poetic justice wouldn’t go amiss.
00
Let’s not descend to their low standards.
21
Their twitter feeds are worrying sign of mental disconnects. The Prof told us they are trapped because old sea ice broke up and the wind compacted it exactly where the ship was.
We should also believe all this ice is causing havoc with the ecosystem as the seawater underneath is now almost drinkable.
Whither climate change science and its predictions for 2100 when they can’t get right next-day’s ice in front of their ship?
390
I saw in at least one news report that the ecotards were spinning their unplanned stop as a chance to get in a bit more science.
So taking a few salinity measurements beneath the tour ship in between gin and tonics at the bar constitutes ‘additional research’, while the proper research planned for Casey station during 2014 is put in jeopardy because the MV Aurora Australis has had to abandon it’s mission to resupply the base and set out on a 4 day journey at full power to rescue these ecotards from their publicity stunt gone wrong.
By the time the rescue is complete, Aurora Australis will have to return to port in Hobart since she’ll have turned a great volume of her fuel into the gullible warming gas that these pompous morons would have us believe are causing the sky to fall. Or somehow causing Antarctic sea ice to increase.
I wonder if the Australian Antarctic Division has considered sending a bill to UNSW?
560
I wonder how the bar supplies are holding up? Still, as someone pointed out the other day, they won’t be short of ice for the G&T.
120
True enough, but apparently one lad is missing his very favourite banana and peanut-butter milkshakes so I expect he’s going to have to do without until the Chinese helicopter comes to lift him out.
It’s apparently not quite turning out to be the adventure he signed up for, they’re a bit tired after holding up the bar for a week, got a sore back because the mattress isn’t right and even jammed his leg in the door while they were digging some ice.
…And this lot of girl’s blouses have the gall to suggest they are retracing the steps or evoking the spirit of Sir Douglas Mawson’s exploration in 1911-13.
Sounds like a few disciples of the cause need a bit of a slap with some soggy lettuce to bring them around to reality, we can call it contact counselling.
160
gwgas – luv it.
10
I was in discussion about this very topic today with a devout warmest.
He was unable to counter each and every argument I presented, and so was reduced to the alarmists favorite counter, ” So you think global warming is a conspiracy,”
Warmists would love you to respond with ” Yes” , then they could trot out the Moon Landing, JFK, 9/11 and any other lunatic conspiracy to show that you susceptible to fringe politics.
I replied that I never confuse conspiracy with incompetence, stupidity and avarice.
He said ” What do you mean?”.
With some glee, I said there are incompetent people making predictions, there are stupid people who believe them, and there are greedy people making millions of dollars.
He said, ” So you think I am stupid”.
Looked at him and said, ” Yep ” .
941
Great line Earl. Mind if I use it? I know a few people who deserve this.
100
Me too – that’s a fantastic line.
“incompetence, stupidity, and avarice”
That’s a keeper.
90
Given such a great straight line, I prefer to just nod my head silently.
50
It’s uncertain at what stage the “greedy” get involved. It may not be as post facto as you suggest. When such interests are shared, the temptation is to collude. And they are, by definition of “greedy”, very bad at resisting temptation.
00
July 2014 – after 196 days locked in ice, the sole survivor of the Great Antartic Global Warming expedition sent the BBC the following faint signal on a short wave transmitter powered by rendered penguin fat –
it … will …… return……… the warming ……. will …….return ……………………………… …. bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
550
Climate science is an exercise in the obvious. They take a normal earth process and elevate it to some mystical level. “the sun is shining…I can see for miles….it’s not dark!” (this is evidence for “daytime”! Therefore, daytime happens, and it’s real!).
120
was that meant to be ‘oblivious’ ?
10
Fairfax are at it as well! From the SMH web site “Tourist boat Akademik Shokalskiy remains stranded in Antarctica as Aurora Australis turns back”. TOURIST BOAT!!!
BTW,[ SNIP. Fair question. Those comments are moderated and will not be published – Jo]
60
The media coverage contortions of this are amazing. But they seem to parallel the early “coverage” of the pause. That aside, the coverage seems to be frozen (pun intended) in (recycled) time! [See Geoff Chambers’ recent posts]
I certainly wish no harm to those on board. A harm that – should it occur – perhaps they could have avoided had they paid any attention to the wisdom of skeptics … rather than depending on the pronouncements of the <shameless plug alert> brigade of “climate policy choreographers“.
220
ABC pre stranding reporting:
“Expedition leader Professor Chris Turney from the University of New South Wales says Mawson and his team collected hundreds of thousands of measurements on the frozen continent that have become critical to charting signs of global warming.
“They’d have been blown away to know their science has become more important than ever,” he said.
Professor Turney and his UNSW colleague Professor Chris Fogwill are leading a team of 60 scientists, including meteorologists, marine ecologists, oceanographers, ice-core and tree-ring specialists.
The research stakes are high because the Antarctic is one of the great engines of the world’s oceans, winds and weather, especially in Australia.
Already scientists believe there is evidence of climate change.
“The southern hemisphere westerly winds encircle Antarctica and over the last 20 or 30 years or so they’ve been pushing further south,” Professor Turney said.
“It’s almost like Antarctica is withdrawing itself from the rest of the world.””
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-25/mawson-data-more-important-than-ever-to-new-expedition/5115748
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2013/12/cold-comfort-antarctic-warmists/
40
Record high ice extent is “withdrawing itself from the world”? O’Reilly. Do tell. On second thought, …
00
There seems to be some interesting dynamics between the leading Warmers, and the Captain. The Captain writing in social media that all is well, and it’s best they all just ‘wait it out.’ But it appears there was a decision by someone to trigger a distress call, even though they seem to be able to connect to the internet quite easily. One would think the Captain would make the decision to make that distress call.
200
Sea Captains know how the World works, but Alarmists will have already modelled the outcome, based on their prediliction for linear thinking, tipping points and worst case scenarios.
Has the Captain already been set adrift in a liferaft?
20
As an ex-science teacher, I just hope that the current global warming luvies have the balls to inform their students of the errors that they have taught our current students. I taught my students to seek the truth. Unfortunately, some have fallen victim to the myth of Global warming…. such is the power of the “enlightened press”
360
Fair enough; I hope you apologized for teaching that plate tectonics was bunkum (before it wasn’t any more).
00
WOTD: subreption=lying by omission (h/t Numberwatch)
——
Noted Roy. Thank you! – Jo
50
Lalochezia: = The use of vulgar or foul language to relieve stress or pain.
@#$%^&*!
Of all the stupidity associated with AGW over the years, this takes the cake.
In a real world with consequences Turney would be out of a job, unlike Carter and Salby.
60
Ohhhh, the Irony…. Mwah ha ha ha.
Seriously, I would suggest they just get themselves off the boat and let nature demonstrate her extreme awesomeness.
They can then conclude the following:
1) The antarctic has gotten colder in the last 100 years
2) Both the extent and that thickness of the sea ice in antarctica is on the increase, despite increased C02 emissions
3) The Climate “scientists” are a bunch of lame arse ideological wussies compared to Mawson and the real explorers
4) Nature is awesome and doesn’t give a crap about what their propaganda machine wants.
341
What disturbs me the most is the sneaky re-spinning of the story by the MSM.
They have adapted faster than the Borg!
And no, we should not be celebrating. That would be wrong. Unconscionable behavior. We should at least wait… [nope. snip Jo]
50
Everytime Chris Turney, Alok Jha or any of the on-site sources start to speak, they utters something or the other about global warming and weave it into their sentences.
This is their specialty. This is what got them their gigs in the first place.
In twitter, there are numerous advocates pushing for people to got to #spiritofmawson or @ProfChrisTurney for the news. These streams in turn are full of sugary messages like “Hope you make it out of the ice soon Ta. Ta.”
Sample of Jha’s output:
“It will come as no surprise to anyone that, this year, Christmas in Antarctica was white. ” (Christmas is always white in Antarctica!)
“Our expedition was forced into a temporary pause…” (You don’t say it’s temporary and a pause until after you’re out of it)
” Oceanographers have used the hiatus to drop temperature …” (Such crafty sentence construction)
120
[…] Also read how media is hiding the folly: joannenova.com.au/-media-spin/ […]
00
Start walking boys…
190
Evening all.
The ABC News is still calling this a “tourist” boat, despite an interview with the “EXPEDITION LEADER”. No mention of what they were investigating…
Cheers,
Speedy
180
PS: Don’t worry. The ABC Fact Checking Unit will put it all right – won’t they?
180
Speedy,you got it wrong.Its’FAECES CHUCKING UNIT’and they are never wrong.Just ask them.
90
Wrong. “Faeces Polishing Unit”. Followed by the “Faeces Gilding Unit”. Then it’s saleable.
00
I was on the RV Tangaroa’s tan1302 Jan/Feb voyage to the Mertz Polynya.The ship is ice strengthened. It was too risky to traverse the flow-ice barrier around the open water of the polynya were we were to recover/deploy scientific moorings. Several attempts were made by following the open water between the ice flows but the Captain decided to turn back as the open water was starting to form ‘pancake-ice” which is the first sign of freezing. The remainder time was spent just-outside the ice barrier hoping for a change in wind direction to blow the ice away. This didn’t happen. Unable to do the primary scientific objectives we concentrated our efforts on sampling the canyons running off the Antarctic shelf. A team from France was onboard as some of the moorings were from theirs.
Some salient facts of ice-strengthened ships.
Speed traversing through loose ice: 1 to 2 knots, slower in the dark. 8 hours of daylight sailing barely gets you over the horizon. We had an ice pilot onboard for when in/near ice flows. Navigation is a combination of radar and visual. Satellite imagery was also employed however it was not real-time & depended on cloud cover.
The ship slowly cools down, we spent about 4 weeks in Antarctic waters – during this time one of our fresh water tanks froze solid: 15 tonnes. Water usage was rationed for a few days untill the ship was in open-ocean.
Eventually the sewage system treatment plant fills and needs to be emptied. This is done in open waters whilst under-way.
The ability to make fresh water is reduced when sailing through the ice. Evap systems use the waste heat from the engines ideally when steaming 10 knots or so. RO systems are not as efficient. When the inlet salt water is at -1.9C.
Interesting that I couldn’t find a link to this voyage on NIWA’s website.
Pete
tan1302
350
⚡
Another website you would think would be all over this is the Conversation, a university funded website featuring many, many posts from Australian univeristy professors specialising in climate science. Indeed, Australia’s top climate scientists and specialists post UN-IPCC/BoM/CSIRO settled climate science articles there.
So far, not a word on the expedition or the well-being of their comrades stuck on the summer sea ice that shouldn’t be there.
There is a couple of posts pre-expedition that are delicious in the irony:
“This matters to Australians because, if Antarctica sneezes, we get a cold.”
https://theconversation.com/australian-antarctic-science-is-being-frozen-out-by-budget-cuts-15758
.
In the 100 years since geologist (Sir) Douglas Mawson’s 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), Australia’s Antarctic science has earned a reputation for excellence in discovery, innovation and delivery on national and international goals.
Data collected during this expedition is still used by scientists today for reference and comparison.
https://theconversation.com/institutions/australian-antarctic-division
.
I await the comparison. Silence so far.
120
I found a short video of the research crew. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPDeC7hyzRY
30
Graeme,I really like the way they got into the spirit of it all and dressed in the right costume to blend in.Nice dialogue too”well this sucks”.Can you forward it to the ABC.
80
Ha ha.. Great link
20
Gah! I swear I had not seen Jo’s new article here when I wrote a similar comment at 6pm, (which I had spent an hour researching, including a visit to SkS, oh god the things I do for you people).
Anyhow, as I detailed earlier, the way the warmists’ own theory destroys any relevancy of the Antarctic to the Climate Change issue is comical and will surely be noticed by ABC shareholders soon.
100
It’s a good comment Andrew (so I copied it here). Thanks. You are so right about the contradictions.
—————————
240
Jo, a ripping good story – all the kind of honest journalism so conspicuously absent from the BBC’s frankly dishonest coverage. Thanks for keeping an eye on this one – I know WUWT is also enjoying the very public embarrassment this unexpected Christmas present to climate sceptics keeps on giving, lol. Funny how truth always finds a way to stamp all over wilful misdirection.
270
Please excuse the gramma above. I don’t have my reading-glasses with me.
30
Don’t mention the warm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0
40
Big deal. They appear to be just inside the Antarctic Circle, not even at 70S latitude. When I was on an icebreaker at Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Ocean in July 2008 it was raining and I noted “it seemed the coldest day of the entire trip but the thermometer showed 2C”. That was latitude 80N.
Now if they could get that icebreaker (over 23000 tons) to Antarctica all would be well. Unfortunately apparently the nuclear powered vessel cannot sail through warm waters as it needs cold water for engine cooling purposes.
50
These researchers and attendant media fellow-travellers have set up a media hub in rearranged deck chairs on this stricken vessel. Already we are getting streams of smarmy spin, including convenient hypotheses. They have had years of practice in spinning research grant applications
However, never have they been in the spotlight of mass public scrutiny as they are now.
Spin won’t cut it this time! An excess of it will take you all down.
The slimy reporting by ABC and other green-left leaning media in now calling this a “TOURIST” vessel is beneath contempt. Earlier ABC reporting embraced the touchy-feely greenness of the research nature of this expedition. The expedition’s website clearly lays out its aims and objectives and has no on-board category of passenger called tourist. It must be archived it before it disappears.
There is no place to hide in this enveloping saga for CAGW elitism.
240
Here is a transparent example of spin and obfuscation replacing honest and objective reporting.
Let’s watch as it develops. We will soon learn that CAGW / Climate Change was to blame in one of its many shadowy manifestations, known only to the learned oracles. The oracles in turn, will use their mysterious powers (and an overpaid army of PR spinners) to manipulate a story to what’s left of an ill-informed and naive public.
As Bob Dylan said: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
140
Right on cue from Prof Turner:
“Ultimately, global warming covers a vast array of different responses by our planet. And one of the fascinating things that we’re seeing is suggestions that large parts of the oceans off East Antarctica are actually getting fresher. And yet you’ve got this expanding sea ice, and one of the ideas we’re testing out here is this idea that when you’re melting the sea ice around the East Antarctic coastal fringes, at depth – not from air temperature but from warmer oceans – what you’re doing is you’re putting that fresh water from the Antarctic ice sheets into the oceans. It’s lighter, it’s less dense than salt water, so it floats to the surface relatively, and then it’s more vulnerable to freezing. And hence you get an expansion of sea ice cover. So that’s one idea that we’re testing at the moment.”
30
Wow! So warm it’s raining?? Above zero!!!!! OMG!!! It’s worse than we thought!
But they’re at 65S, in midsummer. I remember driving through Norway in July. At 65N it was +25C,
people mowing lawns and riding bikes shirtless. Even at Nordkapp it was in the high 20s, the temp only dropped to low teens at midnight. It’s perfectly normal to see positive temps in summer, even into the teens. You’d think a scientist would know that. But it’s nothing to do with science.
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I have been a couple of times in summer once to West Antarctica and once to East. You wouldn’t normally see temperatures in the teens in Antarctica but it does happen on the Peninsula, but not in East Antarctica. But temperatures in summer above zero and up to 5C and rain are not uncommon. Turney is really grasping at straws and must be feeling really stupid!
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No. No. No. He is relying on the media to continue to be scientifically stupid and the citizens to be ill informed.
10
Midday sky news in the uk.
Item on the trapped ‘passenger boat’ in the Antarctic. No mention of ethnicity of the homicide bombers in Russia yet. Detailed news of schumackers brain damage though from his unfortunate accident. Real scientists with informative skill and opinions surround one harmed man. A shipload of ‘scientists’ and ‘journalists’ virtually deny their own existence it looks like they have contacted a serious condition know as cognitive dissonance. The ABC and BBC have caught it thousands of miles away it’s that powerful a condition. In between scientific experiments recommended viewing in the ship cinema ‘The Thing’ starring Kurt Russell. Rename the ship ‘ Denier’ as well.
Peter.
190
I suggest that since those on board are all CAGW supporters, we send a sailing vessel to rescue them rather than a terrible greenhouse gas polluting ship. It may be a few summers before they can be freed, but I am sure their smugness will keep them warm.
230
Not to detract from these modern Polar adventurers, but Scott of The Antarctic was on TV last night. The original with Sir John Mills as Scott. Boy these old boys were tough. Winter came early that year too, in 1912, stranding them in a blizzard after an 1800 mile trek just 11 miles from supplies & safety..
70
I am of the opinion they should abandon ship…
But it can be a difficult decision, knowing just when is the right time. I guess particularly so if there is no clear water into which to launch the life rafts…
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/12/when-is-the-right-time-to-abandon-ship/
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They probably should have begun abandoning operations when this first occurred instead of attempting to recover their (very expensive) ship.
I believe a chopper rescue (weather permitting) would take quite some time and life rafts would be out of the question. My question is ‘why has this been delayed for so long?’
52
Into the liferafts ! Now wouldn’t that be out of the frying pan into the freezer ? You’re just havin’ a larf, aren’t you ?
50
I think I read somewhere the decision has been already taken to evacuate 54 of the 74 passengers as soon as the weather allows…
10
Life rafts? The ship is frozen in ice so where do you put the life rafts to float? Life rafts require liquid type water and where the whackos are the water is frozen.
Someone hasn’t been to sea.
You only abandon a perfectly good, if immobile, vessel when there is no alternative and the ship is about to sink/disintegrate/or one of the many other nasty things which can happen at sea.
10
Methinks she might be referring to the CAGW ship 🙂 If Al Gore is the Captain, let’s hope he does the honorable thing … dang, almost kept a straight face saying that 😀
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These guys can walk on water so what’s the problem with ice?
10
Jo,
Would you like to turn the tables on these jokers?
Ask how much “Environmental Damage” they will cause when they abandon ship.
The ship will eventually be crushed and sink.
I can imagine the cost of the ship and equipment they have to leave behind…
Makes you wonder who insured the ship?
140
UPDATE: Russia says 54 of 74 passengers to be helicoptered off if weather permits. (h/ tPeter Miller)
The Polar Star icebreaker has left from the US to come help. It will take 8 -9 days to arrive. (Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/antarctic-rescue-mission-fails
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Jo,
You have to remember that the planet has tilted back and each day adds more ice and more darkness…
30
Sydney Morning Herald laterst report is by it’s science editor, but… It’s in the TRAVEL SECTION! It’s not news, it’s not science. It’s tourism.
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/aurora-australis-abandons-attempt-to-save-akademik-shokalskiy-in-antarctica-20131230-302na.html
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Its not going to be easy airlifting away in a Kamov Ka-27 heli, but maybe Turney has some cute posts about that as well…
Polar Star represents some serious capabilities as sated below:
“Polar Star has sufficient hull strength to absorb the high-powered ice breaking common to her operations. The shell plating and associated internal support structure are fabricated from steel that has especially good low-temperature strength. The portion of the hull designed to break ice is 1-3/4 inches (45 mm) thick in the bow and stern sections, and 1-1/4 inches (32 mm) thick amidships. The hull strength is produced almost entirely from the massive internal support structure. Polar Star’s hull shape is designed to maximize icebreaking by efficiently combining the forces of the ship’s forward motion, the downward pull of gravity on the bow, and the upward push of the inherent buoyancy of the stern. The curved bow allows Polar Star to ride up on the ice, using the ship’s weight to break the ice.[4]
With such a sturdy hull and high power to back it up, the 13,000-ton (13,200 metric ton) Polar Star is able to break through ice up to 21 feet (6 m) thick and steam continuously through 6 feet (1.8 m) of ice at 3 knots (6 km/h).[4]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Polar_Star_(WAGB-10)
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“The forecast for the next few days, however, looks like there will be more of the same: snow, wind and heavy cloud.”
What happened to the warming rain? But then again Prof. Turney is a Climate “scientist” not a meteorologist.
30
ABC Lateline’s coverage of the expedition back in November and what it hopes to achieve
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Bingo!
janama finds the best link to explain this fiasco thus far.
At 7.20 minutes, they scientifically compare the size of leopard seals, claiming that they are smaller now.
Could it be man made global warming?
Reminds me of this post from the abc:
Elephant seals have helped scientists unravel a 30-year-old mystery around the sources of the ocean’s deepest waters.
In a paper published today in Nature Geoscience, scientists from Australia and Japan reveal a fourth source of Antarctic bottom water lying off Cape Darnley.
Antarctic bottom water – cold, dense water that sits in the abyssal zone between 4000 metres and 6000 metres below the ocean’s surface – plays a plays a key role in global water circulation and the transport of carbon dioxide to the deepest layers of the ocean.
The discovery of a fourth source of deep water is critical to our understanding of Antarctica’s contribution to global ocean circulation, and will improve modelling of its response to climate change, says study co-author Dr Guy Williams, of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Co-operative Research Centre.
Williams says the Cape Darnley deep water contributes about 10 per cent of volume to the Antarctic bottom water.
The discovery of a fourth source is like “finding a new component in the engine,” he says.
Until recently only three sources of the deep waters were known – the Weddell and Ross seas and off the Adelie Coast.
.
And you were told the science is settled.
60
May have something there. Another freezing summer morning in Melbourne today. No doubt straight off the Antarctic….or somewhere.
Our all time December record is the number of days we had to use the home gas fire this December to keep Jack Frost at bay.
50
A freezing summer morning in Melbourne?, llew come to my neck of the woods and I’ll show you freezing, bloody city folk. 🙂
But yes it has cooled somewhat since that warm burst in Spring hasn’t it and reminds me of the late summers we had as a child, maybe there’s some sort of cycle to this climate thingy? 😉
40
You all under estimate the stupidity of the average person. They could take their footage of cracks in ice, penguins, etc. and spin it into a story and imply (but not say) that they were stuck in ice falling off of the continent into the ocean… that’s why there is so much of it! the average person would swallow it, hook, line, and sinker!
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It would appear that this has now happened. Watching one of the early morning American news shows and they were interviewing Turley. He said they had investigated and the ice was old ice up to ten years that had broken off and then the wind has pushed it all into the bay and trapped them. Didn’t I just read they were 60 k’s offshore.??
140
Hi Jo, this is a great story 🙂 If you stand back and take a solar system point of view all the cycles seem to be pointing in the cold direction 🙁
The Ice Man Cometh
50
I give thanks to this ship of fools for hours of entertainment.
However I do wish them a slight harm,they must pay back every dollar spent rescuing them.
They have put 3 or 4 other ships companies at risk, simply to rescue some idiots blinded by ideology.
The resupply of the Australian Antarctic base has been interfered with, other peoples affairs are put aside to save their sorry butts.
And if they run true to form, these activists will not even have the grace to thank their rescuers, let alone apologize for putting their lives at risk.
As for the media, yep they are running true to form, this the comedy story of CAGW 2013, it has been an awful year for the cult, this is just icing.
The longer the media tries to hide this farce the better it gets.
And the more easily one may mock their actions, people may know little about climatology, “the science”, or the authority of the team but they know BS.
Hence the old media lament;”Where have all the viewers gone”.
Or their fake concern that the public can not be “informed” because we are not watching/reading their product anymore.
Frank Zappa was a prophet.. I am the Slime.says it all.
200
So how has Graham Lloyd from the Australian newspaper this morning 31/12/2013 page 4 “explained” the reason for the Russian ship predicament?. Well at least he mentions “A group of climate scientists” but goes on “the stranding……reflects the impact of unpredictable winds blowing sea ice against the now stricken ship from across the bay, not an absence of climate change” (taken no doubt from the Prof T’s own fanciful theory). Perhaps the Australian should find a more competent journalist to note that the sea ice extent is at record levels and has been for some time all around the ice bound continent. One step forward two steps back for the Australian.
170
Having said that I have to commend the Oz for publishing in the same pages the scathing attack by Maurice Newman on the profiteers of the global warming/ person-made climate change hoax.
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“…….. the sea ice extent is at record levels and has been for some time all around the ice bound continent. ” [my italics]
But less than 3 weeks ago, the Beeb’s propaganda proclaimed “Esa’s Cryosat mission detects continued West Antarctic ice loss”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25328508
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Indeed. Like a famous Australian WWII combat pilot once told me “Bullshit baffles Brains”
30
Strikes me that parodying this unending farce of a ship of CAGW cultists, trapped in ocean ice, in the glow of the summer solstice , begging for rescue from carbon dioxide spewing icebreakers & helicopters,whining about the unprecedented melting as the ice tightens its grip on their hull…
Its just too hard (or too easy).
Mother nature has a message for these people, do you think its getting through?.
170
No, I don’t think it’s getting through.
These people need to be removed from positions of authority, for the sake of all of us, and themselves.
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Ms. Nova,
Further down in link you provide in #48 the linked post includes:
“Given the recent reorganisation of the ice around the Mertz glacier, glaciologists aboard the Shokalskiy think the ship might have become inadvertently caught in the formation of a new area of fast ice, which could stay in place for several years.”
If this is the case and the Shokalskiy is trapped for “several years”, I should imagine that the ice and lack of crew/maintenance would eventually do the ship in (decay or ice will crush/sink it).
70
“The Polar Star icebreaker has left from the US to come help. It will take 8 -9 days to arrive. (Guardian)”
As usual the Grauniad can’t do elementary arithmetics. Normally Polar Star is based in Seattle, but let us use the optimum case and let it start from San Diego, the closest US port to East Antarctica. It has in that case just over 7,000 nautical miles to cover. At the maximum speed of 18 knots that will take at least 16 days, and believe me, once it gets down into the roaring forties and points south it won’t be going maximum speed all the time. It should probably be “18-19 days”.
100
Observers should not despair: God willing, the full cast and crew of Russian ship Akademik Lysenko will survive.
…And so will the ship.
90
Vodka tastes better from a freezer. The crew will be just fine.
20
Maybe the Japanese whalers will come to their rescue.
60
Sorry, it’s not rain. It’s a penguin pissing up your leg.
50
Jo, your NSIDC sea ice graph has been removed from this post.
The passengers & crew of the Akademik Shokalskiy cannot afford to have anything else go wrong at this point. Spin aside, they need to get off the ship, & it is entirely weather dependent.
10
To my delight I have discovered the website LOLMyThesis.com, in which PhD or Masters candidates anonymously summarise the years of work they have put into their thesis using only a short sentence.
A couple of climate related ones popped out at me….
The blurbs do not link to the actual research papers so the guilty parties are spared any embarrassment.
50
Oh, the irony….
10
That AGW zealots touting the demise of polar sea ice get their ship stuck in Southern Ocean sea ice during a voyage to establish their beliefs is irony. That they asked to be rescued by fossil fuel burning behemoths is more than irony, it’s carbony.
50
Gaia sees these weasels coming, and launches the ice pods! Back in 1950’s Fred Hoyle wrote a science fiction book “The Black Cloud” about an interstellar cloud that arrived and blocked out the Sun. Earth was doomed until a few scientists figured out that the cloud harboured an intelligence (Soviet scientist: “Is bastard in Cloud!”) and communicated with it so it cleared a lane for sunlight to reach the frozen Earth. As Hoyle said in his introduction: “There is very little here that could not conceivably happen”. The strongest Gaia hypothesis — it’s alive and hungers for fools!
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Aurora Australis abandons attempt to save Akademik Shokalskiy in Antarctica
Date
December 30, 2013 – 7:50PM
Nicky Phillips
Science Editor
Aurora Australis smashes sea ice
RAW VIDEO: watch the Australian icebreaker at work as it tries to rescue the ship Akademik Shokalskiy, stuck in Antarctic sea ice.
Autoplay ONOFFVideo feedbackVideo settings
The Aurora Australis has abandoned its first attempt to cut through the ice surrounding the stranded Akademik Shokalskiy in Antarctica after moving just two nautical miles.
About 6am, the Aurora’s captain, Murray Doyle, began to manoeuvre the icebreaker through thick wedges of consolidated sea ice.
But by 9am [midday Sydney time], the master made the call to turn the ship around and move back into open water.
All white: A view from the stern of the Aurora Australis as it punches its way through sea ice. Photo: Colin Cosier
“The ice became too thick for us to penetrate. Some of the floes are up to two metres of ice with a metre of snow on top and very compact.
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“There was just nowhere for us to go.”
Captain Doyle also feared that the 55-kilometre south-easterly wind running up the ship’s stern would blow ice in and around the back of the vessel.
“It was pushing those same types of floes in behind us,” he said.
“If we got into that compact stuff it would have sealed us in, we would have lost our manoeuvreability and we wouldn’t have been much use to anybody.
“Having been caught in ice before, I know by experience when to get out. I didn’t want to add to the drama, instead of being part of the solution,” he said.
A low-hanging fog also hampered rescue efforts.
“We had no visibility so we couldn’t really see if there was a way through.”
Captain Doyle had informed the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Canberra of the situation.
The passengers on the stranded Shokalskiy would likely be evacuated to the Aurora or Chinese icebreaker the Xue Long, which was also in the area.
“It’s now up to us three ships [the Shokalskiy, the Aurora and the Xue Long] to agree on a [rescue] strategy,” Captain Doyle said.
While the Xue Long had a helicopter onboard, it was too heavy for the Aurora’s helideck.
“We also can’t use the helicopter at the moment because there is no visibility,” he said.
“The helicopter wouldn’t be able to differentiate the horizon from the ice.”
Captain Doyle had informed Shiokalskiy by email and radio of the situation.
“They’re OK at the moment, they’ve got no problems,” he said.
The captain planned to wait until the weather cleared before deciding whether to cut another path through the ice.
The icebreak was designed to cut through ice floes of about 1.35 metres, not the thick ice built up in Watt Bay, some of which has grown over several years.
“It wasn’t all multi-year ice, there was some first-year ice, which can be thick, especially if it’s old first-year ice,” he said.
The Xue Long, which has been waiting near the Mertz Glacier since Boxing Day, was also making its way back to open water.
“They’re trying to make it back into open water so they’re not trapped as well,” Captain Doyle said.
Nicky Phillips and Colin Cosier are travelling on board the Aurora Australis as part of the Australian Antarctic Division’s media program.
50
Could someone confirm that Grant Hose of Macquarie University is on board.
Isn’t that a just a terrific name for a “climate scientist!”
110
I had the misfortune to flick across ABC 24 hours “News” early this morning.
Apparently there is “a Russian ship” with some “passengers” stuck in thick ice near Commonwealth Bay.
And now a there’s a large iceberg (“B-some number”) which may be the culprit, blocking the “clearing of the ice”. You know, a ‘berg broken off due to the unmentionable but oh so strongly hinted.
It’s taken a week for the media team to come up with this one, but now just watch it grow.
Talk about the B-team. The ABC characters even indulged themselves in a laugh.
And yesterday, the Turney character (is he a Cockney?) was joking this would be a trip to tell the grandchildren about and one they would remember a long time hence.
Would these be the same grandchildren who would never see snow after 2010, live in perpetual drought, be swept away by rising seas and then be fried to a crisp?
Many have described this boat as a Ship of Fools. Indeed, it’s a microcosm of the bastardisation of science.
Can the Mawson family sue these tourist fools for associating their “expedition” with the name of Sir Douglas?
200
Grandchildren?
What he intends to procreate?
Surely he should have had that fixed, in the same day he chose to preach the cause.
Why does the tune Oh Susanna, keep playing ?
50
1913.
Day 61: We had to eat some of our sled dogs to survive. My remaining companion has died of Vitamin A poisoning, fever, and exposure, though I still found the strength to give his body a proper burial. The skin on the soles of my feet has separated away leaving nothing but bloody blisters, but a bit of lanolin on the raw flesh and strapping my soles back on top of the mess has allowed me to continue to walk on them. My navigation has been excellent despite my painful snow blindness. I am “utterly overwhelmed by an urge to give in” and now only determination to survive for my fiancée Paquita, and to give an account of my two dead friends, is the spirit that drives me on.
=========================
2013.
Day 24: We’ve travelled 2660km on a comfortable boat to get here and the GPS says we are only 75km from our goal but some of us are “tired & missing banana & peanut butter milkshakes” so we’ve decided to give up and go home.
#spiritofmawsonಠ_ಠ
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I`m just loving the total foolishness of the media in mis-representing the ship`s original purpose and its current plight…..priceless!!! The ABC and Fairfax`s lack of detail and obvious squirming embarrassment over irrefutable evidence that, just MAYBE, the Antarctic summers are now COLDER than before fills me with a ( possibly ) alarmingly warm glow of satisfaction.Keep up the good work, folks.
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Would love to get a comment from All Gore on this matter. Maybe he could donate to the rescue of these clowns with some of the wealth he has created for himself by pushing the climate change barrow.
50
Prof Chris Turney: “To do something positive about climate change, I helped set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.”
The Carbonscape Holdings share registry. There is a total of 29,553,564 shares on record for this company.
Catherine Ann TURNEY, Ian Stewart TURNEY, LATIMER TRUSTEES 2006 LIMITED 4,730,880 shares ~ 16.01%
Christian Stewart Macgregor TURNEY 382,400 shares ~ 1.29%
James TURNEY 290,581 shares ~ 0.98%
Tim FLANNERY 159,733 shares ~ 0.54%
Directors/ Officers
Nicholas Harold GERRITSEN, director, 10 Dec 2006-
Timothy John LANGLEY, director, 22 Jul 2007-
inactive Benjamin Pak-ping CHEN, director, 28 Nov 2011-
inactive Michael Robert ASHBURN, director, 10 May 2012-
inactive Raf MANJI, director, 28 Oct 2012-
Christian Stewart Macgregor TURNEY, director, 28 Oct 2012-
Company Type: NZ Limited Company
Jurisdiction: New Zealand
As far as I can make out, Chris Turney holds NO SHARES in the company he proudly claims his own!!
70
Yoo hoo, 2nd line of your presented shareholders:
Christian Stewart Macgregor TURNEY 382,400 shares ~ 1.29%
40
From his LinkedIn page:
It isn’t any great secret. There’s no problem with people investing in what they believe will be successful, but of course that does imply Prof Turney cannot be considered neutral in his point of view.
30
You can also bet that his tenure at UNSW is dependant on his rabid AGW belief.
Most in that faculty of UNSW HAVE to be outspokenly pro-AGW to maintain their career path… FOR NOW, anyway ;-).
21
ps.. I suspect/HOPE that it will only be a matter of time before they find the situation is reversed, and will deeply regret their current stance.
20
This is way out of line and I know it. But it’s too accurate and too poignant to not publicise it for the benefit of Jo’s considerable U.S. following.
The best description of our disaster I’ve ever seen.
Roy
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G,day Roy,just watched you’re video,puts more meaning to a U.S.friends interpretation of obama(one black ar;e mistake America).If you havent already been there,put in anorexia survivor and have a look around.Definately not govt fans
00
I think the most interesting part of all this – the most instructive part of all this is encapsulated by the “ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” comments.
Are the Liberal Party stalwarts so cowed by political correctness that they cannot bring themselves to even mention this.
Here is a absolute free kick – and we get nothing
The cost of paying for, is it now five ice breakers? (counting the new one from the USA – and where did the Astrolabe go?), is going to be astronomical – all as a political stunt to embarass the Government – and the Government is saying nothing!
The thing with any war, including a culture war, two sides have to turn up – or its just a rout.
70
AC, let’s not forget the illustrious Gregory Hunt, too. Surely he’d be out there calling out these “climate scientists” led by the yappy Turney?
It must be holiday time again; perhaps Malcolm has gone on another car tour around Tasmania with Lucy, and Greg is poring over Vestas catalogues.
You are right, a press conference pointing out the obscene funding of this Warming junket was needed as well highlighting the composition of the passenger list made up of B-grader Warmists and their media cheer squads.
90
Hold your horses! Let this play out over the next day or two, there is no real advantage for the government to say anything in the new year period.
I believe Julie Bishop is the person to contact, will do so on Thursday.
30
When it all comes out in the wash, the captain is responsible for the ship, not the tourists/scientists/expedition contributors. They may have contributed by not getting off an iceberg after called back due to the imminent approach of dangerous ice, but it’s still the captain’s command.
Does there appear to be a heavy weight of irony related to the subject of the “study” and the outcome of the cruise? Absolutely! But the captain and the operator are responsible for the safety of the passengers and the integrity of the ship…not the paying customers.
I would surmise, the finger of blame (read: insurance)is going to be levelled first and foremost at the captain and operator. Should the paying customers have been a contributing factor to any loss or damage through irresponsible actions, then that will be sorted in a court between the operator, the insurance carrier and the customer. I don’t see where the Aussie government really has a horse in the race other than its ties with AMSA. Just surmising…
40
But, but… …the Antarctic is melting. Isn’t it? Well… …isn’t it? Surely it is. It says so right on the Internet and I know that everything on the Internet is true, isn’t it? Isn’t it… … …
91
Yes Roy,every thing is true on the net,don’t worry,put your fairies to bed,take another pill and lay down.Have you had a go at the obamacare web site,looks like that should be a challenge
20
Bones,
Thank God I already have Medicare. In fact once you’re eligible for Medicare you can’t apply for or stay on Obamacare. On the other hand, Obamacurse (oops, …care) stripped over $340 billion from Medicare to help pay for all the illegals and slackers who’ll suddenly qualify for a subsidy, so maybe I’m still in trouble anyway.
But really, isn’t everything on the Internet true? Would Obama allow anyone to put even a small half truth out there for the public to see? Of course not! Absolutely not! Never! He’s God Almighty and no one can lie to the public anymore. 😉
I’m beginning to feel like I’m swimming in molasses, sinking slowly, slowly, ever lower until… …gulp, ugffmmpp… 🙁
Democrats have made that graveyard mistake this time (sorry, talking like a pilot again without intending to). By the November election there won’t be a popular Democrat in the whole country. The only question now is, will there be a popular Republican?
30
His followers did talk about internet and media restrictions but the media is controlled already and they make the best use of the net.
10
You have your finger right on the biggest part of the Conservative problem. We’ve never developed the social media as a means of coordinating, recruiting, convincing and so-on.
The Administration has talked for a long time about pretty literally strangling talk radio which is the last bastion of conservatism outside of the Fox News Channel and the Internet. But so far they’ve not manged to implement the regulations to do it. That may change since Obama has just managed to appoint two more FCC (Federal Communications Commission) commissioners to replace two who left. God only knows what’s next.
The fools in DC may well give in to the UN’s desire to take control of the Internet and then again, God only knows what happens next. But either way, I’m sure the president can now simply dictate rules and get them enforced. It’s a bad situation.
Since Fox News is entirely cable and the FCC has no authority over anything but the RF spectrum (broadcasting) they may be saved yet for a while.
Everyone is running scared now on both sides, nothing is sure at the moment.
20
G’day Roy,I was wondering if the phone hacking in the UK with the Murdock press had anything to do with Glenn Beck moving out of fox news.May have been a display of what can happen no matter how big you think your organization may be.Hope you’re keeping warm in our global heat wave!
10
Just as “Global Warming” has morphed into “Climate Change” it appears that this “Scientific Expedition”, sponsored by the Guardian, has become a “Tourist Trip”. Seems that is about 60km. short of its destination and no hope of getting there unless they get a proper icebreaker, not ice strengthened ships like the Aurora, on site. They will probably get it out in due course, but Commonwealth Bay is off the agenda, I’d say. If they don’t, and there is a report that it is tilting, it has to be the greatest set-back to the AGW scam ever, and perhaps we could look forward to some honest reporting? Hope the pollies are taking note.
——-
Robert, to clarify, I think they got to commonwealth bay and were leaving when they got caught by the ice. They need an icebreaker to get back to civilization. – Jo
60
Channel 7 gets “expert” to explain!
VIDEO: 30 Dec: Channel 7 Sunrise: Dr Karl explains Antarctica mission
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/watch/20533411/dr-karl-explains-antarctica-mission/
11
And a speedy rescue along with large dose of whatever it takes to start thinking instead of following (probably a different potion for each, but I hope they get it).
60
Because the boating adventures has been a fizzer the ABC had to run with the old ‘heatwaves and record temperatures’ story.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-30/heatwave-declared-in-parts-of-queensland/5179018
30
Running out of food? I vote that they cook Janet Rice (Aus Greens MP) first.
30
probably all vegans
Cant even eat the penguins
Maybe eat some photoplankton?
10
GAZ –
Fairfax putting it in the Travel Section is hilarious, and matched here:
no need to listen.
31 Dec: ABC Breakfast:
Cathy van Extil in Frank Kelly’s chair says: program will include travel Tips for the adventurous from Fairfax writer, Ben Groundwater!!
goes to media front pages with Stephen Stockwell: down the list he says Hobart Mercury has rescue of Russian ship abandoned. nothing more in the entire program, even tho the young Cosier, who does work for ABC, is on board.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/summer-travel-with-ben-groundwater/5179374
News Ltd’s Mercury couldn’t make the story more bland or deceptive if they tried, yet no State is closer to the action, or inaction: only describes Turney as Australasian Antarctic Expedition leader. any mention of “climate change”, Greens’ Janet Rice, BBC’s Andrew (out-of) Luck-Baker. etc? nah.
31 Dec: News Ltd. Hobart Mercury: DAVID KILLICK and SALLY GLAETZER: Antarctic weather conditions force Aurora Australis to abort rescue of Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy
PERILOUS weather conditions forced the crew of Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis to abort an attempt to rescue a ship stuck in the Antarctic ice yesterday…
SINGLE COMMENT BY ian plimson of kingston: How embarrassing for all the Greenies, their journo mates and other ‘warmists’ on board. No wonderr they changed ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ years ago. The greatest financial fraud ever visited on humanity.
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/antarctic-weather-conditions-force-aurora-australis-to-abort-rescue-of-russian-ship-akademik-shokalskiy/story-fnj4f7k1-1226792273434
jo, did u see the media listed as the bottom of the AAE Leaders’ page? Radio NZ, BBC, Guardian.
under “science outreach” at the tope of the page u get “doodle for google”.
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/aae-leaders/
check out the Supporters’ page:
AAE Supporters
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/aae-supporters/
20
I think we should rush a pennant for the mast of the Akademik Shokalskiy:
https://flagspot.net/images/c/cn~xnvyp.gif
Thinking Bosch…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Fools_%28painting%29
20
can u believe high priestess of CAGW, Suzanne Goldenberg, made this video with our AAE passenger, former Al-Gore-Current-TV editor, Laurence Topham, just last month!!!!
Polar bears fight for survival as sea ice melts – video
VIDEO: Suzanne Goldenberg and Laurence Topham ,Source: Guardian,Length: 2min 29sec,theguardian.com ,Wednesday 6 November 2013
As winter approaches, polar bears in sub-arctic Canada begin to migrate off the tundra and head out onto the ice for the winter, where they can hunt for seals. However, climate change is delaying freeze-up, keeping the bears out on the tundra for longer – away from their main food source. US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg talks to polar scientists ahead of a live Q&A from Churchill, Manitoba.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2013/nov/05/polar-bears-fight-for-survival-sea-ice-melts-video
Guardian: Laurence Topham: Since joining the Guardian in 2008…blah blah
Prior to this he worked as a freelance director & cameraman – making documentaries for charities in the UK, Sierra Leone and Kenya, while also editing for the BBC. In 2007 he worked for Current TV, where he edited over 50 short-form documentaries for terrestrial broadcast
http://www.theguardian.com/open-weekend/laurence-topham
10
Daniel has a very interesting post about media morphing to mediacracy here:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/rise-of-mediacracy.html
It is not specific about this case but he touches a nerve in the way the media is not informing but scripting the news:
“The media is no longer informative, it is conformative. It is not interested in broadcasting events unless it can also script them.”
I would say, underlines how important are alternate sources of information 🙂
40
Ahh Sultan Knish You have to love it!
I just posted this old bit from Quadrant suggesting that this current example is just another example of the media being complicit in fraud
“And it has been clear from the start that the media have understood exactly how bad Obama has been because they have known with precision exactly what parts of what Obama has done or said that have required their cover. Obama has had to lie over Benghazi and so they have covered for him to the maximum extent they could. Obama tells producers “you didn’t build that” and the media runs dead with the quote so that it never really becomes as significant as it ought to be. They know exactly how dreadful Obama has been, and cannot even manufacture a greater good, that their lies and distortions have protected the community from having to do without, had Obama lost the election in spite of every service they rendered in defence of his reputation and image.” Steve Kates Quadrant 9/11/2012
30
Haven’t heard anything from that global warming conman All Gore. Maybe he could donate some of the fortune he has earned pushing the global warming barrow to assist with the rescue of these clowns.
60
30 Dec: Indybay: The Paradox of Antarctic Sea Ice and Global Warming Denial: Research vessel trapped in ice
by Takver – Climate IMC
But Daniel Greenfield seems to think a ship trapped in Antarctic summer sea ice is a negation of global warming and the science involved in climate change.
His view probably had it’s origins in the climate sceptical website Watts Up with That where Anthony Watts wrote: So much sea ice in Antarctica that a research vessel gets stuck, in summer!.
But Mr Greenfield, or Anthony Watts for that matter, made little attempt to explain the complex science involved with understanding Antarctic sea ice…
According to Skeptic Science article on Why is southern sea ice increasing…
Australian Greens senator elect for Victoria Janet Rice appears in this Guardian Youtube video published 30 December 2013 from on board the Akademik Shokalski. Janet has a scientific background with her honours thesis on where lows around Antarctica were born and died. She will bring to the new Senate a perceptive understanding of climate science and the need for strong climate action.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/12/30/18748547.php
the above writer’s blog. be warned:
Takver’s Soapbox
http://www.takver.com/soapbox/climate/
who on earth are Climate IMC? i can’t get any of their sites to open:
Climate IMC
http://climateimc.org/
31
Thanks for posting that one. It seems counter intuitive to suggest that warming seas can cause more ice.
10
Did Indybay have a write up telling us Al Gore’s trip was bogus too??? If sea ice is unpredictable and complex, then little ole Al was spouting propaganda, too.
20
Too tired to read through and see if anyone has already made this observation, but we could just leave them their with their ship. I mean it isn’t as though they are contributing anything useful to their respective societies. You would think they would volunteer to stay rather than having so much of that nasty CO2 being released by the ships and equipment involved in rescuing them. Though I must admit I have yet to see any of them make any actual sacrifices for their cause, that’s what they expect the rest of us to do.
90
Bah… “their with their ship” should be “there with their ship”. As stated previously, I’m tired.
20
“The extra ice has been caused by the evil Tony Abbott who directed the navy to seed the area with ice crystals. This caused 6 feet of ice to quickly surround and entrap the ship.”
(Coming to an ABC outlet near you.)
60
Lets call it “climate justice!”
Stuck in the ice of irony, it should be easy enough to extract a confession from the climate fraudsters without resorting to water boarding.
40
Why, it was only in January, 2012, that Al Gore, James Hansen, Kevin Trenberth and a boat full of ‘tourists’, on a mission from Gaia, observed the disappearing Antarctic ice first hand!
WUWT- January 22, 2012: Gore, Hansen, Trenberth to make Antarctic PR expedition
31/01/2012: Gore and Branson sail for Antarctica
01/31/2012: From Antarctica to Bangladesh: The Story of Rising Seas
.
Is it any wonder our intrepid UNSW university professors thought there was no ice with an expeditionary team of that calibre sent before them?
40
There is an old line from US comedian Bill Cosby when describing raising kids: “But God has a sense of humor” and things not going quite how you expect them to go.
The obvious corollary is that when it takes place, you don’t want to be in a 3-state (province / territory / nation) radius of where takes place.
This is pure comedy gold. Cheers –
10
Oh dear – 2013 has certainly been a bad year for the AGW Creed. And it looks like going out with a bang.
If the Polar Star can’t get there in time, then 2014 might be commencing with a slow but inexorable squeeze.
[Afaik the ice reinforcement doesn’t extend all the way round.]
40
Revealed – the real reason the eco-ship is stuck in the Antarctic 🙂
http://eric.worrall.name/algore.jpg
70
It’s called “Al Gore Warming” hence the AGW acronym
So Al Gore is the Patron Saint of the expedition
It is rumored that Michael Mann was their meteorologist.
Phil Jones was their Sea Ice conditions adviser. Pity he lost the latest reports and those Excell graphs are damn hard to understand.
Ben Santer is in charge of media press releases
[ You will get this if you know his role in wiping all the skeptical papers at the 1955 Madrid IPCC conference where global warming was formalized.]
Kevin Trenberth assured them about the hot ocean water conditions around Antarctica where the deep ocean waters where al that missing heat has gone to, wells up to the surface from which they naturally assumed all the ice had all melted.
Lewendowsky did the psychological assessment on the mental fitness of the expedition personnel.
The wind turbine companies threw in some cash to splash as they believe that if they stick a pile of windmills on the Antarctic Peninsula they can supply all of Antarctica with power for at least two days out of five
50
a little reminder of just how much damage the CAGW crowd are willing to inflict on others:
30 Dec: UK Daily Mail: John Hall: Wind farms ‘slash up to a THIRD off value of nearby homes … while developers pocket millions’
Geoffrey Cox MP says constituents are told homes worth ‘significantly less’
The Conservative MP says he has seen a minimum 10% reduction in value
Planning Minister Nick Boles plans compensation for those affected
They are the bane of ramblers and birds alike, but now homeowners are being warned that a nearby wind farm could cut the value of their houses by up to a third, an MP has claimed…
‘How can it be right that landowners and developers are making millions of pounds, while the ordinary household is losing the value of what is their pension, or nest egg in old age.’…
In October, campaigners living near Ilkley in Yorkshire, won a campaign to have four giant turbines dismantled – the first ever wind farm to be scrapped in the UK.
Residents and walkers were delighted by the return of unspoilt views across the rolling hills and deep blue waters of Chelker Reservoir.
And to their relief, the 150ft high turbines will not be replaced after the council refused permission for two even bigger machines…
She (Angela Kelly, the chairwoman of the anti-wind farm campaign group Country Guardian)added: ‘Certainly after a wind farm has been erected properties within sight or sound of the turbines can become virtually unsaleable…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531219/Wind-farms-slash-THIRD-value-nearby-homes-developers-pocket-millions.html
20
Can anyone point to a temperature dataset or graph at Dumont D’Urville station, which is 100 nm from where the vessel is? How many weather stations are located in Antarctica?
Thanks.
🙂
10
Gah. Sorry. Any comments on this explanation for the formation of Antarctic Sea Ice? Thanks. https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/12/30/18748547.php
20
Seen this on CCD http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/one-difference-between-climate-change-fears-90-years-ago.html and thought it interesting of the comparison between the poles at almost the same time (10 years).
I would like to know how much sea ice has come and gone since Mawson’s time there, I’ll try a search but I’m stuck for time.
10
got the climateimc.org site to open. nothing at all about the Akademik Shokalskiy,(talk about being in denial???), but a link on the right to:
– West Antarctic ice sheet melting accelerates over last 4 years
1 week 2 days ago –
in the left column, u have:
Climateimc.org is hosted by axxs.org. Axxs is a Not for Profit that survives on donations, so if you can, please donate!
http://climateimc.org/
axxs.org
Axxs.org is a community server funded by the community.
Axxs.org is managed by the techs that contribute to managing the server, from a variety of grass-roots networks.
http://axxs.org/
00
If they are rescued and brought back to the port of Melbourne, I want to be there when they disembark to throw rotten fruit and boo them!
90
the BBC guy on board, being described on BBC as a news producer, or simply BBC’s Andrew Luck-baker. can’t bear to look for the interviews they do with him, cos he always claims he doesn’t want to get out of the situation – it’s so beautfiul & all that:
4 Nov 2012: Nature & Science by Andrew Luck-Baker
Ocean Acidification, Corals and Ken Caldeira
This is a spin-off post from the radio series for the BBC World Service I am currently producing, Discovery: The Age We Made. Presented by science writer Gaia Vince, it consists four programmes looking at the notion that humans have launched a new geological time period on the planet, the Anthropocene.
Further down, I have posted the audio of a great interview we did with leading climatologist Ken Caldeira on the seemingly likely fate of the world’s coral reefs, because of the geologically extraordinary alterations we are making to the Earth’s atmosphere…
http://natureandscience-alb.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/ocean-acifidication-corals-and-ken.html
BBC Discovery 2008
For these two editions of Discovery Andrew Luck-Baker visits the Pacific Islands of Palau – home to one of the greatest coral reef systems on the planet yet the reefs are not immune from pressures such as fishing, pollution and climate change…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/948_discovery_2008/page28.shtml
can’t even find the following on BBC website, & the comments suggest people don’t have a clue what this is about, but love how ABL is “there”!
27 Dec: Facebook: BBC World Have Your Say
A Chinese icebreaker is on its way to help a research ship that’s trapped in ice in Antarctica. It has been there for two days now…
The BBC World Service’s science producer, Andrew Luck-Baker is there and will take your questions about the expedition. What would you like to ask him?
https://www.facebook.com/worldhaveyoursay/posts/10151881887269150
10
[…] Jo Nova is astonished by a media cover-up that has changed what was a ship of climate scientists into a ship of mere “tourists”: A month ago the mission of the $1.5m expedition was “to answer questions about climate change”. Now the ABC describes the Australasian expedition as “a Russian ship stuck in sea ice in Antarctica.” … […]
20
But there are tourists and scientists and crew
Be clear about the joke here Mr Bolt says
The real joke is that Mr Bolt can only keep one thought at a time.
The ship had scientists and had tourists but he only wanted to talk about the scientist.
Obviously in Mr Bolt’s small little world only the research is important and the comfort of people is irrelevant.
—————————
Dear Kevin, careful your bias is showing. Who was concerned about comfort? Was it the commentator who wants empirical evidence before action is taken, or was it the organisers of a publicity tour who took children to a dangerous location without having basic wind and ice data available? – Jo
01
kevin,
On my count there are 22 crew and 52 non-crew on board. Of that number 49 are “scientific” research team leaders, “scientific” researchers or PhD assistants to the “scientific” researchers.
That leaves three who presumably are “tourists”. That of course is giving the benefit of the doubt to the use of the term “scientific”. A better term might be “fraudsters”.
And as for Bolt, I think his concern is about the comfort of Australians who were being fleeced by the warmist policies of the Green Labor eco-socialist comrades. Friends of yours, are they?
00
our Senator-elect from Victoria, Janet Rice, who is on board:
Speech by Janet Rice – 27 November 2013
I gave this speech tonight at the Maribyrnong Council Small Worlds recycled art exhibition. I really enjoyed it and it got the best reception I think of any speech I’ve ever given – lots of people coming up to me afterwards and saying it really hit a chord with them. I’d love to know what you think…
Then the real show stopper to me of our rampant over production and consumption of poor quality throw away stuff is the carbon pollution embedded in it.
This is what’s having us looking down the barrel of weather that is becoming supercharged because of global warming. And we ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re on track for continued warming, to be hotter than you’ve ever known it before, with yet more extreme floods, storms, cyclones. Sea level rise will flood cities and farmland all around the world. Hotter and drier conditions will mean millions, if not billions of people won’t be able to grow enough food to survive. Australia’s food production would be slashed. Lack of food, lack of water, ongoing ‘natural’ disasters will kill millions, cause wars, and millions of refugees.
The good news is that we can still turn this around, and will do so…
I know that there will be amazing creative processes unfolding when eventually Australia embraces the fact that we need to commit to 100% renewable energy and zero waste and low resource use production and the transformation of our economy to meet these goals.
You are at the vanguard of this. Together we can get there.
http://www.janetrice.com.au/?e=82
Janet Rice: Thursday December 26. Day 19
The wind, at around 50 knots, is rather stronger than the usual summer storm, its true; and the blowing snow not the usual weather conditions if for instance I was at the beach. It’s close to white out conditions outside, visibility around 50 metres. And our ship is still marooned; stuck, iced in, beset; going no-where, at latitude 66˚S, longitude 144˚E.
Waiting for a Snow Dragon. That’s the name of the enormous Chinese ice breaker that is coming to our aid sometime tomorrow evening. The Aurora Australis is also on its way from Casey, and l’Astrolabe from the French base Dumont D’Urville. We don’t really need all three one would think, but apparently this is how these things work!…
***Climate change is a constant thread in all the scientific discussions. Everything which is being studied is being affected. Adelie Penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula are in decline as West Antarctica has warmed considerably over the past decades. There are likely to be more giant icebergs like B09B hanging around in a future warmed climate– that means large variation in the extent and location of sea ice. The benthic ecology team have been looking at the decline in invertebrate biodiversity in areas which have had sea ice over them in recent years where they previously hadn’t for most of the last 100 years.
It’s sobering to think that these are the impacts of climate change being experienced here in remote, wild Antarctic right now. It really underlines that no-where on the planet is pristine, unaffected by humans because of our carbon dioxide pollution. This is the biggest experiment being carried out on Earth ever. And it’s completely out of control…
Everyone has a role in helping to bring this change about. We have to make our democracy work for us, so that Australians, together with people all over the world have global warming utmost in their minds; when they are making decisions at a political level, as well as at a personal and community level. This trip is strengthening my commitment to action – I hope in a small way it can influence yours too.
http://www.janetrice.com.au/?e=100
30
Pat,
Have posted over to Janet Rice’s web site but what I said won’t see the light of day.
All is did was ask exactly when & at what temp they would like to stop climate change and also why they would think that EVERYBODY would agree with their decision.
They censor skeptics/deniers/disbelievers/whatever on all sites like hers so that the true believer/warmists don’t get to see the opinions of “the dark side” 🙂
Also told them to enjoy their vodka on the rocks 🙂 & stay warm.
Cheers,
30
Dear Thumb, [ at #92 & 92.1 ]
Consider that I live east of the Cascades Mtns. in Wash. State at 47 N. Lat. and a friend lives in northern Ohio at 41.5 N. Latitude. This week she got snow and I did not. Sometimes it is the other way around. I can do some research each time and explain why, or I can just say the weather is different. The location where this “research ship” is may be completely free of ice in 2 weeks time. Thus, a “climate” explanation for the current situation would not explain that possible ice free situation. It is just weather.
The GW argument being made for the growing sea ice is that much Antarctic land ice is melting and the water running off is free of salt, or “fresh.” It is less dense and stays at the ocean surface or if it comes out under sea ice it rides there next to the ice and acts as an insulator between the ice and warmer salt-water below. If the run-off melt-water is at the surface, it can freeze at a temperature that will not be low enough to move the ions from the salt out of the way and let the water molecules come together as a solid (ice). So the reasoning is that more melting of land ice makes for easier or faster growth of sea ice. I sense from some of the things being written that this issue is being investigated but not settled. As one can tell from the problems of the Akademik Shokalskiy, this sort of research is costly and hazardous.
Having said that, remember that evidence of warming is not evidence of the cause. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has been on the rise and temperature has not. During the last 100 or so years there have been ups and downs in temperature but CO2 has only gone up. A “hot spot” was predicted. It hasn’t happened. Arctic Ocean sea ice was supposed to have disappeared last summer or the summer before. It hasn’t happened. Oz was going to dry up. Nope. UK was going to be snow-less. Nope. Maldives were going to go under. Nope.
There’s more.
One should have been enough.
CAGW = FAIL!
70
I’m kinda waiting for the Guardian/ABC/BBC headline to pronounce they found the smoking gun of Global Warming by recognising the fact that Polar Bears and the Iniut are missing! If in doubt – make things up – that’s the Climate scientist way of doing things.
40
You forgot Santa Claus.
30
Pt 3 now available:
BBC Discovery: The Return to Mawson’s Antarctica – Part Three
Duration: 29 minutes
First broadcast:Monday 30 December 2013
Alok Jha and Andrew Luck-Baker continue to follow the scientists on the ongoing Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013. They go out on fieldwork trips with the researchers studying how the wildlife that lives in this inhospitable environment is responding to climate change… Ornithologist Kerry-Jayne Wilson discovers that an iconic breeding colony of Adelie penguins at Cape Denison, the rocky area where Douglas Mawson built his expedition hut, has depleted numbers as the fast ice has grown.
Alok Jha and Andrew Luck-Baker continue to follow the scientists on the ongoing Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013. They go out on fieldwork trips with the researchers studying how the wildlife that lives in this inhospitable environment is responding to climate change.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01nh2zw
16 Dec: BBC Programme Info: Discovery: Return To Mawson’s Antarctica
Over four weeks in December and January, BBC World Service’s Discovery will be embedded with a team of Antarctic researchers on board an ice-breaker retracing the route of the first Australasian Expedition to Antarctica
The BBC’s Andrew Luck-Baker and Science journalist Alok Jha join the 26-strong scientific team led by Professor Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales. They study penguins, record the underwater songs of seals and deploy a robot submarine to sample the rich sea life under the ice.
A drone aircraft helps navigate the ship through a gigantic iceberg and visit Mawson’s original hut. Along with continuous recording of sea temperatures, sea ice thicknesses, wind speeds and pollution, the expedition aims to illuminate environmental change in this part of Antarctica, and the frozen continent as a whole.
For one month, Alok and Andrew will report on Antarctic science, history and the dramas of life on the ice in four special programmes on the BBC World Service, recorded as the journey progresses to bring the Antarctic to life for a global audience.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2013/51/ws-antarctic-1.html
research? don’t think so.
20
turned off the tennis for a minute…and caught this sensationalist report, with rioting people setting fire to stuff on the streets, smoke billowing everywhere:
30 Dec: BBC: Buenos Aires power supply disrupted in heatwave
The city has been experiencing power shortages as air conditioning use has soared as residents try to keep cool during a severe heatwave.
Some neighbourhoods have been without power for two weeks, with temperatures rising well over 35 degrees Celsius.
Argentina’s ageing power grid has been struggling to keep up with demand…
On Sunday night, electricity demand reached a record high for a non-working day, as residents turned on fans and air conditioning units in an attempt to cool down homes…
The heatwave is reported to be the worst to hit the city in 40 years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25548150
10
O/T – You won’t believe this – Mandy Nolan (comediene) from Byron Bay explains the 10 reasons she hates Tony Abbott.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeaan1PPOVU
10
Janama,
You could have warned everybody – almost made me PUKE. (BTW – couldn’t make it to the end – stopped after less than a minute in).
Thanks for nothing & cheers,
10
Bloody Moron,
First I knew Abbott Point was 50 meters north of the Whitsunday’s ! Typical.
00
Freedom of speech is wonderful,aint it.Could we change the number of people locked up,coloured or white,to a quota system to keep her happy.obviously its one sided and some people don’t deserve to be there.We could then move some refugees into her spacious yard to ease her conscience.I have the same love for juliar,milne and hanson-young but I dont have a video camera.
00
not too bad for the Chronicle:
30 Dec: San Francisco Chronicle: Debra J. Saunders: Global warming researcher gets stuck in ice
A funny thing happened during Australian climate-change professor Chris Turney’s venture to retrace a 1912 research expedition in Antarctica and gauge how climate change has affected the continent: Two weeks into a five-week excursion, Turney’s good ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy got trapped in ice. It turns out, global warming notwithstanding, that there’s so much ice down under that two ice-breaking vessels sent to rescue the research team cannot reach the Australasian Antarctic Expedition…
Years ago, global warming believers renamed the phenomenon “climate change” – probably because of pesky details like unusually cold weather undercutting the warming argument. Now, just as advocates argue that Earth is approaching a tipping point, there’s so much ice floating in Antarctica during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer that the Australasian Antarctic Expedition posted in a statement: “We’re stuck in our own experiment.”
Does this incident mean that climate change is an illusion or a hoax? Of course not. Even during its summer, Antarctica is subject to extreme weather. “Bad weather is the norm in Antarctica,” climatologist Roy Spencer observed.
But it does show that like the rest of us chickens, scientists have feet of clay. Turney had told journalists that his expedition wanted to collect data that could be used to improve climate models. Too bad the folks who are supposed to predict climate decades into the future are guided by scientists who could not manage to avoid ice floes during a five-week trip…
“We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Turney told Fox News. He believes the ship was stuck in old ice from a 75-mile-long iceberg that broke apart three years ago.
Fair enough. But there’s still the issue of ice volume. Climate changers usually warn about Arctic ice, which has been receding over the last few decades, but rarely address the overall growth of ice in Antarctica…
Turney told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that his goal is to excite the public about science. As for climate change, “in the scientific community, it’s remarkably solid.” And “self-evident.”
He pushes a framework of science being data-driven and free from politics. And yet it’s hard to escape the suspicion that whatever the icebound researchers experience, they will frame it as proof that climate change is unassailable.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/saunders/article/Global-warming-researcher-gets-stuck-in-ice-5102720.php
30
Jo wrote:
Not sure if you’ll get down this far, Jo, but but would it be good to include the reporters on board, to show how this was supposed to be much more than a tourists’ holiday?
Wasn’t there one from the BBC, Fairfax and the Guardian (more?)? That alone would suggest a leftist agenda.
30
Apologies Jo,
You wrote the following:
I have so many sources on this story, I have forgotten what I read where. Upon revisiting your article, looking for the multiple-journalists problem, I went to the paragraph that commenced with, “How touristy is this boat?”.
Apologies again.
10
That 5 embedded presstitutes are unable to keep the world updated, says it all.
Not smart enough to spin this on their own?
I wonder if the truth ever intrudes into their cognition?
Or will that only happen on contact with freezing water?
20
A Happy-freezing-New Year to all on board the Akademik Shokalskiy. I am sure you would welcome a little global warming cheer. I suppose if you run out of vodka you can get the Chinese to drop off some rice wine, if the snow and wind stop.
20
Think they have had the cheer already
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-01/youtube-new-years-video-from-stranded-antarctic-ship/5180674
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from release by AMSA:
WUWT: All scientists and passengers to be taken off ship stuck in Antarctic Ice
Helicopter to rescue passengers from Russian vessel in Antarctica
The helicopter on board the Chinese flagged vessel Xue Long will now be used to rescue the passengers from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy.
This rescue will be a complex operation involving a number of steps and subject to factors such as weather.
The helicopter is unable to fly in the current weather conditions, and will hold off on the rescue until conditions improve. Weather conditions are unlikely to start improving until tomorrow and decisions related to carrying out the rescue may be made at short notice.
In preparation for the rescue, an area for the helicopter to land has been marked on the ice near the MV Akademik Shokalskiy.
RCC Australia has been advised that all 52 passengers will leave the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. All 22 crew members are expected to remain with the vessel…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/30/all-scientists-and-passengers-to-be-taken-off-ship-stuck-in-antarctic-ice/
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Seems cruel that these people are being rescued by evil carbon emitting devices, why don’t they act like true Antarctica explorers & tough it out. I live in energy poverty to make these people feel better, they get a jolly to Antarctica (wish I could)then my taxes that helped them get there will additionally help rescue them. Damn them the hypocrites that they are & I guess they will probably get some sort of heroes welcome home.
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The U.S. Icebreaker Polar Star departed Coast Guard Base Seattle on December 3rd 2013 for Antarctica in support of Operation Deep Freeze for the first time since 2006. It has the task of resupplying The National Science Foundation Scientific Research Station in McMurdo.
I can’t find any indication of its location now but it must be well on the way to the Antarctic after 27 days. Check out MarineLink.com.
00
While way off topic, (hey, this is Tony remember, sometime villain for doing just that) this is really interesting.
I found a copy of of the book Yeager, and also, incidentally, Shackelton’s book, Endurance, and while waiting for them to arrive, I’m in the middle of re-reading Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, almost half way through now.
Now, you know how a part of your subconscious recognises things that you don’t consciously realise as they happen, and then it nags away at you until you do finally take notice. Well, I finally took notice, and got back to it this morning, and my subconscious even told me where to look for it, so I didn’t have to search too far.
It’s the end of WW2, early 1946, and Chuck Yeager, still only 23, and a flying Ace from the latter stages of that War in Germany, was at a loose end, until asked if he would like to do flight test at Muroc, (now Edwards AFB) which, in hos own laconic way, he accepted.
Other than that, he was just going to go back and do what his father did, before the War, and also what his brother was doing now, and let me quote here:
You know, what we refer to as CSG these days.
So, still a little unsure, I chased it down.
They’ve been doing it in the U.S. since the mid 1800’s. In fact, they even started using horizontal hydraulic fracturing to do this in 1947.
They mainly did it like drilling for oil, only in the coal fields, and also in shale as well.
So, here we have shale gas extraction, CSG, and fracking.
Nothing new in all that!
Tony.
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Fraccing safe for over 100 years.
Yeah the oil patch guys have been pointing this out since anti-fracking became fashionable, but it does not fit the agenda.
30
The BBC link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25558276
is very interesting.
The BBC forgot that there is a BBC correspondent on board.
In the middle of a very dramatic rescue.
This must be a first in media history, since ancient Greece.
Remember those “Our correspondent reports…”
Only 5 days ago they were reporting proudly:
Science continues for trapped Australasian Antarctic expedition
By Andrew Luck-Baker
BBC World Service Discovery, East Antarctica
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25519059
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BBC also forgets the continent of their correspondent.
The story is now filed under Asia.
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/antarctic-ice-swallows-boat-media-spin/ […]
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[…] […]
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They knew and that’s why they gave a warning in their pre-expedition schedule:
“Of course our progress will be dominated by weather considerations, but ideally we would moor the vessel against the fast ice edge so that ice and ocean studies can begin and we can send our airborne drone out to view the route towards Cape Dennison and Mawsons Huts. Once a route is determined we believe we will need to use our over-ice vehicles ( Argos) to mark a route then commence transporting scientists and passengers to the coastline as weather and ice conditions allow and the route is safe.”
”
PLEASE NOTE CAREFULLY:
“In mid February 2010 a massive iceberg collided with the floating tongue of the Mertz Glacier, just west of Mawson’s Huts. The collision precipitated the calving of another massive iceberg called C28, measuring 78km long and 35 km wide. C28 is now grounded at the entrance to Commonwealth Bay. It provides both an obstacle to accessing Commonwealth Bay and a great opportunity for scientific study.
“Since 2010 it has not been possible to access Mawsons Huts by sea so there is some chance that we will also be stopped from accessing the huts. However we do have remote controlled drones and over-ice vehicles onboard our vessel to improve our chances of access.
“It is important that you aware that this is not a regular tourist voyage to Mawsons Huts. The heavy ice around these massive stranded icebergs does create a significant obstacle to our access to the huts. There is a real chance that we will not be able to get to the huts. We will not know the outcome until we are in position in Commonwealth Bay. If you need to be sure you will get to the huts then this is probably not the voyage for you. In other words the outcome is highly uncertain, although we are quietly confident of success. It is a true scientific adventure in the best sense of the word and in the spirit of Mawson.”
http://expeditionsonline.com/tour-44/spirit-of-mawson-akademik-shokalskiy
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[…] was fine and that it was warm outside. Moreover, the media was on Turney’s side, and they actively provided a fog to hide the debacle from the […]
00
[…] 1% of what we are spending on global warming. Right now, during the Antarctic summer, we have a bunch of global warming zealots stuck in the ice because they believed their own propaganda about the ice shrinking when it is really growing. Three […]
00
Time ter get rid of the ABC, the BBC, the IPCC and the UN.
Toooooooo cos$$$$$$$tly fer no gain butlots a’ pain to us.
Beth the serf.
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[…] Third icebreaker abandons rescue of climate scientists boat in Antarctica, media fog, obscure, don&#… […]
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Jo, how many Turneys ae on that ship? Chris, Cara, ….Any more?
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Question: How many AGW scientists/activists can you fit on a summer scientific/cruise/tourist/Earth-saving ship destined to become temporarily stuck in un-modeled but real Antarctic sea ice?
Answer: With luck, all of them.
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See my U-tube video on this; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhMWvdwgwZU&feature=c4-overview&list=UUAR0Oi4L0Om4F26uwpANgCg
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Of the MSM, the Daily Mail had the best headline.
“Global warming scientists forced to admit defeat… because of too much ice: Stranded Antarctic ship’s crew will be rescued by helicopter”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531159/Antarctic-crew-build-ice-helipad-help-rescuers.html#ixzz2p6N2f5Rv
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Sun-Climate 101: Solar-Terrestrial Primer
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The latest from The Daily Mail on the Turney Farce.
“A dose of COLD reality: The ironic saga of the eco-campaigners trying to highlight global warming and melting ice caps trapped in the freezing Antarctic
Australian scientists set out on Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy
The £900,000 expedition began full of high hopes early last month
But ship was hit on Christmas Eve by a 50-knot blizzard and became in ice
By James Delingpole”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2532013/A-dose-COLD-reality-The-ironic-saga-eco-campaigners-trying-highlight-global-warming-melting-ice-caps-trapped-freezing-Antarctic.html#ixzz2p75I17TX
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As the Abbott government was only voted in some 3 months ago I doubt they had much to do with this propaganda expedition. Am sure this would have been planned many months ago when Australia had its incompetent lets make the people pay carbon tax government. Gillard and co would have been wanting data, any data to justify their broken promise of no carbon tax.
Am loving this, the longer the ship is stuck in thick ice the harder it will be to keep the real truth from getting out.
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Apparently, not one of the scientists on board has the skills and knowledge to put together a wind forecast. Anthony Watts and the Weatherbell organisation have been approached to do a wind forecast. Leaving aside the utter farce of the situation, It is noteworthy that two sceptic organisations can put the lives of the trapped passengers and crew before philosophical differences and political squabbles. What would happen if the boot was on the other foot? One wonders why the BoM is unable to provide such a vital service in an emergency. The Antarctic is, after all, Australia’s back yard. Apparently, the on-shore wind packing the ice should change in about 8 days time. Better ration the gin, boys and girls.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/31/wuwt-and-weatherbell-help-kusi-tv-with-a-weather-forecasting-request-from-ice-trapped-ship-in-antarctica-akademik-shokalskiy/
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I watched the channel 7 news tonight. The people awaiting evacuation were described as ‘tourists’ – just as I expected. Channel 7 is just as filthy as the ABC. The only difference is that they aren’t funded by the taxpayer. I still think they should be challenged on their deliberately dishonest reporting.
The Abbott government should not only slash funding to the ABC; it should also hit the leftist-journalist infested commercial stations with big costs.
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The Abbott government should not only slash funding to the ABC
The ABC could and would be just as biased with less funding. They might even be more so.
The ABC should be abolished immediately. There is simply no reason why the left wing of the left wing of the Labor Party and the Greens should have their own pet flagrantly biased unremitting propaganda broadcasting service on multiple channels of multiple media, paid for under compulsion by everyone else, who disagree with them and who can rationally demonstrate that their beliefs are logically and ethically false. Why should the government be running a broadcasting service in the first place? It’s nothing but a relic of the age of fascism. Time to get rid of it. It is not a proper or legitimate function of government. It is laughable to suggest that the ABC is necessary for “balance” even if that concept were not based on collectivist fallacies, which it is.
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Didn’t Putin play a master stroke in finally releasing the Greenpeace ‘hooligans’ just before news of this debacle began unfolding. (Beats me how you can be ‘pardoned ‘ for a crime you haven’t yet been tried & convicted off).
Now no one cares about Greenpeace or is having any sympathy for them, while this bunch of ecoloon opportunists is just looking sillier & sillier.
Do you think any of these various countries ice breakers and helicopters being sent actually wants to rescue them, happy as they seem stuck in their warming ice ?
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So did they get their boat back?
20
From The Spirit of Mawson website:
This is very scientific. Apparently the westerly wind is able somehow to draw up warm salty water from the ocean depths and then somehow melt the Antarctic ice sheet. Must be all of that powerful CO2?
So, these scientists have gone there to observe and measure this warm salty water rising up, travelling over land without freezing in extreme sub zero temperatures to melt the ice on the Antarctic continent? Just gotta see their evidence for this!
Or do they mean that this warm water is melting sea ice? Perhaps then they can explain how that could possibly raise sea levels?
Where is Michael the Idealist when I need him to answer such perplexing questions?
Why are the consequences “unknown”? If they can measure ice melting its a very simple matter to calculate how much it will raise sea levels….
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This is a private expedition where a lot of the people on it paid for the privilege. It seems the time and conditions were right to follow in the footsteps of a previous expedition and replicate the measurements to see how they have changed. Apparently the science is continuing and they have found out a few things. The colonies of Adelie penguins in commonwealth bay have the smallest number of breeding pairs ever recorded. Also of more importance is that they have measured the water beneath the sea ice as being less salty. This is very critical as Commonwealth Bay is a heat engine of the global system and this could have wide ranging consequences for global oean current. Ocean current drives weather. So maybe the risk was worth it? Can anyone spell climate change?
Antarctica is melting from beneath and as to the extent, it is barely outside natural variation and the top is way to cold for it to melt anytime soon, even with warming. Indications are that precipitation has shifted south from australia and this will increase surface snow also changes in wind patterns spread the extent. Can anyone spell climate change again? Check IPCC reports, they never expected Antarctica to melt until well into the middle of this century and in fact West Antarctica is heating faster than exected. The Arctic is relevent as when it melts it is very important to albedo, has melted way outside natural variation and globally ice volume loss is widespread.
That Antarctica is a dangerous place that is prone to wild shifts in conditions and is very dangerous is true no matter what the truth is on climate change. They took a risk for science, this is what real scientists do, you know the ones that actually go out and measure and investigate and further human understanding of the world. Not the ones writing opinion blogs from the comfort of their armchairs trying to influence public opinion for personal gain and not actually bother conducting any real peer revieewed science.
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First on the list of “things they have found out” is: Ice is cold. Beyond that, I’m not sure they are capable of “finding anything”, including their own rear ends.
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Michael,
Where in God’s name did you dredge up that load of crap ??
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Let’s say the Adelie penguins in Commonwealth Bay had a meeting and decided to shift camp, because of the long walk to the edge of the ice to get their tucker. 100 years ago there was no ice in Commonwealth Bay, now the poor little buggers have to walk 60 miles to fish.
Any smart penguin would say, up this, pull the anchor up and shift !
Maybe if all these smart scientists looked around the corner in the next ice free bay, they may just find all those happy feet !
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remember.. he has his little propaganda CD that he got at his little 10 week course. !
01
This is a party barge. The “endangered” explorers are laughing and sitting in a room/tent with NO coats, nothing. Compare that to the actual explorer, Mawson, who was stranded for a heck of a lot longer than these guys, whose partner died, they ate their sled dogs. Stop insulting REAL scientists and real dangers by calling this a dangerous risk for science. (By the way, Prince Harry skiied to the middle of the Antarctic–at least that took actual WORK. Even royals can outdo these clowns.)
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I agree Sheri. I think that calling it “The Spirit of Mawson” is an absolute insult to a true hero.
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This is patently false Michael. They went there with a premise to find a way to show show that Antarctic ice is melting. They did not go there to try and realise why the heck Antarctic ice is at record high levels.
Their website states:
Can you not see what is wrong with that Michael?? Let me start with one point which is completely at odss with your own statement:
You say its less salty. They say its more salty. Which is it??
Now, I’ll let you see if you can find at least two more blaring inconsistencies in the statement.
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[…] JoNova has a comprehensive discussion, as does WUWT Rescue efforts . A summary of the recent rescue efforts: . An Antarctic blizzard has halted an Australian icebreaker’s attempt to reach a Russian ship trapped for a week with 74 people onboard, rescuers said on Monday. A first rescue attempt by a Chinese icebreaker, the Snow Dragon, had to be halted because the ice was so thick. […]
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From the Australian:
The difference between boat people from the north and ones from the south, is that the latter destroy their papers after we have seen them.
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Superb. +1.
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🙂
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[…] we go again! Those wacky climate scammers err… scientists – not the ones stuck in the Antarctic Ice – claim that global warming has gotten worse. They claim that 2013 was the hottest on […]
10
[…] about faith-based science! Jo Nova is covering the media machine’s cover-up, which consists in this case, of changing the subject: A month ago the mission of the $1.5m […]
00
And now we have to call the US Coast Guard POLAR STAR to rescue all of the ships.
COST: Seven days out from Sydney, seven days back plus six days breaking ice @ $100,000+ a day; round it up to $2-million. Small price to pay for such useful information.
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[…] že počasí je pěkné, a že venku je teplo. Navíc na Turneyho straně byla média, a ta aktivně mlžila, aby tento debakl zakryla před […]
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This really is a science free zone isn’t it.
Absolutely no mention of sheet/glacial/land ice loss in the Antarctic. Millions of tons per year,
and the rate of melting increasing.
And no mention of the increase in fresh water entering the ocean due to ice sheets melting,
enhancing sea ice creation due to different freezing temperature, i.e. fresher water freezes easier.
Just a bunch of nasty trolls all patting each-other on the back, whilst intoning moronic notions.
03
It is a “science free” site if you don’t read it. 😉 See http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/antarctica-gaining-ice-mass-and-is-not-extraordinary-compared-to-800-years-of-data/
The Antarctic total ice balance is going up by some calculations and down by others, but we know that the Antarctic surface has cooled in the last 30 years, and we know the sea-ice has increased at the same time. So it’s cooler on the continent and cooler on the water around the continent and you pop in with an evidence free comment and call everyone a moron?
Obviously millions of tons of ice are lost every year. Millions of tons are gained as well. This is normal.
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Steady on Alice, a bit harsh… Perhaps you could better exert yourself explaining why global temperatures have been static for the last 16 years (even the IPCC admits that), while CO2 levels have risen monotonically? Failing to provide a satisfactory answer to that question, perhaps you could remind us why it is essential we restructure our industrial civilisation?
And I’d be very careful not to call the regulars here moronic!
Cheers,
Speedy
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You were almost right, you just got your words jumbled with the excitement of commenting.
But no matter, we all realised that you meant this was a free science zone.
And the Science is certainly free. Unless you wants to make a donation, that is.
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Joanne Nova, why is it that ocean temperatures in the Antarctic are melting ice shelves (calving) at an unprecedented rate? Why is it that the temperature rise of the ocean surrounding the Antarctic, is greater than the rise seen in other oceans? (Except possibly the Arctic). You omit talking aboutocean temperatures, their impact on ice shelves, and also on the rate at which glaciers move towards the sea. The Pine Island Glacier is one currently being observed. Sure there’s some science in this blog, but obsessing about a boat stuck in ice does not constitute current climate science, or the rate of change currently occurring in the Antarctic. Sea ice is not the only story.
02
Dear Alice,
1. Antarctica is cooling.
2. Sea ice is near a record high.
3. Surface Ice mass balance is not unprecedented, and is increasing.
4. It was warmer in west Antarctica in medieval times. World survived.
5. Even if ice shelves are calving faster (forgive me for being skeptical) any cause of global warming would cause ice to melt. Perhaps the higher surface falls have to go somewhere…?
6. Perhaps you could provide some references?
7. Sorry you don’t get the joke about the climate scientists stuck in sea ice ;- ) You missed something very funny.
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Er Speedy, Global temperatures have not been “static”. Combined Ocean temperatures ( what much of the planet consists of) and atmosphere, and temperature has not been static.
In the west antarctic temperatures have risen by 2.4 celsius. And there has been a similar rise in the ocean.
My comments are in relation to the comments of other posters who do not seem able to discuss anything other than sneering at climate scientists stuck in some sea ice, due to calved ice bergs. Another question, Joanne by ice lost and gained are you talking about sheet ice or sea ice. Sea ice although interesting is not the ice which raises sea levels. Sheet ice however is most concerning because if it keeps shedding into the ocean, the rate at which it melts will speed up. And Antarctica has lost 1,350,000,000,000 tonnes of the stuff overall between 1992 and 2011. And yes this site could include some relevant science.
02
The site does include some relevant science. Perhaps you could read it?
BTW the oceans haven’t quite warmed by 2.4C but possibly by 0.02C in the last decade. Not that we can measure it that accurately.
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Talk is cheap, links are so much more effective.
I can claim that oceans have cooled by 5 degrees Celsius. And my claim is as impotent as yours. But when I claim (as our host did) that temperatures have not changed by any amount measurable (since we cannot measure the temperatures by hundredths of a degree, and then present a link SUPPORTING my contention (see: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/), then that is potent!
And it also backs up what Joanne said, and disproves what you said.
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Joanne, Prove those statements,1-5, because there is no credible science you can back those statements up with. I’m back to NASA, the Australian Antarctic Division, NOAA, etc, where the information is readily available. And yes, YOU DO YOUR READERS A DISSERVICE.
[Alice, Nothing “proved” in science, only disproved or supported. 1. Recent antarctic cooling trend may not be statistically significant. Happy to be specific: “Antarctic not warming in last 30 years”. see UAH. Long run cooler law dome. West Antarctic. 2. NSDIC . 3. Given in link. 4. Given in link. 5. Self Evident. I asked you for references and you provide no paper, no link? – Jo]
02
Alice, start here – http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/southern-hemisphere-getting-colder/
Sourcing? Try this http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_daily.php?plot=ssa&inv=0&t=cur&expanddiv=hide_bar
I could post more, but you can get all the sourcing at the article and there is a limit on links before it hits moderation.
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The baltic dry index drop is analagous to a sharp drop in CO2 emissions, or indicates the use of the fossil fuel (Coal) is decreasing which causes the weather to cool down and the polar vortex and global cooling according to the adherents of CO2 climate science.
Had any one of them checked the batlic dry index before departing, they could have anticipated the increasing Antarctic sea ice and thus avoided the embarasment. 🙂 Since Australia is a top location for the manufacture of climate scientists, it is hoped that in the future, the Baltic Dry Index is consulted more diligently so that the production levels of climate scientists are maintained.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-30/baltic-dry-index-collapses-50-december-highs-drops-5-month-lows#comment-4383652
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