Polar Defense Project Deletes The Tough Questions

Anthony,
“So next year, if this project goes asking for donations again, perhaps a few people or companies whom otherwise might throw their money away sponsoring such silly stunts will think twice before opening their pocketbooks.”
I doubt it. it has been my experience that these folk make those types of claims repeatedly. The “unprecedented, for the first time in recorded history, first time in human history,” etc and nobody seems to care if they are shown to be full of it. It seems once the claim is made there is no interest in ‘disproving’ the claim as the claim makes such good press.
For instance in the radio debate between Monkton and the AGW blogger, the claim was made many times that temperatures were higher than at any time in the history of the world, the Arctic was about to melt completely for the first time in human history, etc, etc and his claims were not questioned.

Great article. Next year they should put blades on their hulls.

They got their 1 min of fleeting fame. Natives laughing in the background at the white-eye. Might of got farther with a native guide.
Of course they wouldn’t post your comment , Anthony, it would have been embarrassing to them.

Further proof that facts aren’t necessary when it comes to AGW. In fact, facts are left at the door.

The blog section of Polar Defense has 19 comments; of which I counted 9 that were not congratulatory.
http://polardefenseproject.org/blog/?p=197
As for Mr Pugh kayaking the furthest north? Probably not,as there is a community (Alert, Nunavut) at about 82.5 deg north.

I often wonder about people like them . . . so committed, yet so ignorant. How can there be so many who shun common sense and practical reasoning in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
Then we get those tree sitters in Berkeley — Huck, Air, Mysteryman, and the other guy. They reveled in the news coverage of four helicopters and ten sat trucks in the last days. One would think the tree sitters would have given up a year earlier just to avoid avoid the unnecessary emissions.

If you can learn the date, time and committee to which Mr. Pugh will testify . Mail a copy of your posting and reference to the news article to members of the committee. If there is any objectivity in the committee it will be brought up to rebut any anecdotal ramblings of Mr. Pugh.

Ecoactivists and ecotourists – so fashionably chic and gullible.
Get stuck in the thin arctic ice {everybody knows it to be true that it’s thin because all the right people say it’s so} on a powerful icebreaker for a week.
Try to trek across Greenland to highlight how warm it is and how rapidly it’s melting and end up getting rescued a few days later under life threatening conditions of wind and cold.
So now we have yet another display of the True Believers of The Cause failing miserably on another much ballyhooed mission to save the Arctic and the planet after only a few days on an adventure, the start of which was delayed {too much ice perhaps?}.
Do we see a pattern starting to emerge here?

Maybe Pughesy forgot to add a bit when making his claim of “…further North than anyone has ever kayaked before…”.
Did he forget to add “in this particular kayak that I paddled in”?
Maybe? Perhaps?
As if!

Pugh’s companion on the trip, Sam Branson (son of you-know-who), is much more familiar to the pages of Vogue UK than National Geographic:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/2007-07/070730-the-virgin-icon.aspx
http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/daily/080813-sam-branson-is-down-to-earth-guy.aspx

They listened to Hansen,
But Pugh and Branson
Are no Nansen
and Johansen.

It’s obvious they knew that they would reach ice, where else would they plant the flags that they brought?

Doesn’t matter where these guys would have started from, they never would have got anywhere near the North Pole. Still, at least they could have made the claim of “kayaking further north” than anyone before more believable that way…

I think they did it for the chicks.

Here is a part from an interview with a solo sailor (he sailed around the world many times and sailed many seas, including the northern seas).
In a response to the question if he’s anxious to sail around the North Pole now:
“Well, the situation isn’t as good as it sounds. Why is everybody talking about summer ice? Last year in the Bering Sea the ice was just as far south as it was 30 years ago.
“I checked with friends in Murmansk and Tisksi. They say we have to thank the strong southern winds for the open passage. They are the best icebreakers, but when the wind changes to the usual Northwest it will be closed in no time.
“When I look at the satellite images a lot of ice is gone, but not all. At Spitzbergen there is more ice now then there was in 2001, and on the Canadian site there is more ice now.
“On the Canadian site the islands give you a lot of shelter. If you wait for the right time, you can sail to Cambridge Bay almost EVERY year, and, with a good forecast, continue behind King Williams Island, and then 900km to ice-free water.
“The Russian Northeast Passage is much harder. It’s longer (5500km), so there is more ice variation, and there are no harbors except Tisksi. From experience I know there are more ice fields floating there than the satellites show, and the Russians never let a ship go through without the assistance of a icebreaker.”
I translated this from an interview in a Dutch newspaper. (Anthony, feel free to to correct the syntax, spelling and typo errors)
http://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/wereld/article1845881.ece
[Reply – Happy to copy edit! ~ Evan]

Email to Richard Black, BBC Environment Correspondent.
Dear Mr Black,
Further to my email of 7th September, here is Anthony Watt’s article about his efforts to gain the attention of Mr Pugh’s group who failed in their attempts to paddle to the North Pole.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/polar-defense-project-deletes-the-tough-questions/
I doubt you will have the courtesy to acknowledge my efforts to inform you about the AGW scam, but that’s not a problem, as I am committed to the truth and shall not be discouraged by your marked reluctance to defend your position. Over the next few months, it will be interesting to watch you try and deal with the reality of cooling global temperatures. I think you are on a hiding to nothing, but time will tell. Of course, I shall do the decent thing and unreservedly apologise to you, if AGW turns out to be correct, but really, the science is on my side.
Yours truly,
Perry Debell

Different thread – same result – nothing……
To Richard Black BBC – regarding Black trumpeting the Mann revised ‘Hockey Stick’
Richard,
You really must avoid printing anything to do with Michael Mann as though it were true!
When the Steve McIntyres [Climate Audit] of this world shoot Mann’s claims down using accurate scientific data will you print a retraction?
Somehow with the BBC bias towards AGW I doubt it.
Brian J

tty (23:29:22) says:
A few very minor points…
Thanks for the clarification about Nansen’s expedition. I hadn’t expected that post to get cited in a main story or I would have tried to be a bit less ambiguous. You are right they were returning from their attempt on the pole in 1895. On p244 they give their position as 82deg 19′ while preparing the kayaks. Then p250:
So then we set off across the blue waves on our first long voyage
Then on p256 they again give their position as 82deg 4.3′.
Cheers.

PS Sorry about the typos!

This episode reminds me of what my dear old grand Dad used to call Flem-flam artist. I think also it might be called bait and switch. They advertised one thing knowing that the outcome would be entirely different from what was indicated in the advertisement.
One day these shenanigans will come back to haunt these AGW folks. Credibility is hard won but easily lost.
Bill Derryberry

An adventure that is sufficiently audacious will always attract the ladies. They will never know how lame the attempt was.

Unfortunately here in Australia the Channel 7 news reported that they had reached the North Pole and planted their flags there (nice picture – but no facts). I just about broke my nice young LCD TV! It was only a 30 second filler – and I couldn’t get any hard copy of the broadcast so that I could protest about it.

This thread (and my parallel enthralment at just successful shots at the LHC at Cern) has given me an idea – I don’t get many but please don’t feel happy for me 😉
I wonder, when the taxes kick in and the knock on effect has, well knocked on, where the income break will be between those who can afford, for example, holidays abroad, a swimming pool, etc and those who cannot, where will the average journalist fall.
I know from personal experience that attempted education of a hack is hard, bordering on difficult, but maybe, just maybe, some of them would wake up if they realise that they are the very “middle class” that is targeted and most likely to hurt from all this.
Mr Black from the BBC?

Anthony,
In related ‘nonresponse’ areas, did you ever receive any response to your queries about the ‘delayed sunspot’ from NASA?
REPLY: I wrote to SIDC, twice, sinc ethey were the ones that made the decision. Non response.

Got these quotes from the Polar Defense Project and various media websites.
Day 1 – To get here, “We took three small one and a half hour flights. We are taking this voyage on an old fishing boat called the HV Havsel. Conditions on board are luxurious… There’s a hot shower and there’s a cook from one of the restaurants in Longyearbyen. In the evening he serves us duck in a red wine sauce, which tastes rather good. The glacier around us sends the occasional crack of thunder as large chunks of her break off, reminding us of the main purpose of this mission, to tell the world of the ice loss which is happening here on such a large scale.”
Day 2 – “the team set off about two hours ago. We are all in good spirits…”
Day 3 – “It is great to see the guys paddle out into the open ocean with its huge expanse filling the horizon.”
Day 4 – “The waters today are much rougher and the wind is coming from the northeast. The ship is noticeably colder… I can only imagine what it is like for Lewis and Robbie holding on to a cold paddle with waves crashing over them. The first thing Lewis said when he got back in was ‘I can’t feel my backside!’ Whilst paddling, they are having to avoid many small and some large chunks of ice scattered on the waters surface.” I can see a faint ice wall on the horizon ahead.”
Day 5 – “The temperature has dropped dramatically…We are starting to see larger chunks of ice, which instead of weaving through, they have to paddle around.” Turning in, we were warned by the captain that if the wind shifted over the night that we would have to move as we could be trapped in the ice.”
Day 6 – “We were abruptly woken at 5.45am this morning by Lewis. He had come in to tell us that the wind had shifted to the south and the ice had jammed us in. As the engine strained, it grinded its noises into our small bunks. After breakfast we headed northeast to find a way through the ice to arrive at the same latitude that we had left. We have been trying to find a clear route ever since (it is now 4.40pm) and the ship is constantly being shoved from side to side as thunderous shudders pass through her as she hits the ice.”
Day 7 – “I have slept poorly. We wake up to find we’re trapped. Overnight we’ve been drifting amongst the ice floes and the wind has blown them together, tight around the MV Havsel. The captain grinds the engine backwards and forwards in an attempt to free us. Finally the Havsel breaks free. What’s clear is that there cannot be any paddling from where we are, so we steam around looking for a path that’s navigable by kayak. So far, to no avail – we are right up against the edge of the ice wall.”
Day 8 – “We have now left the realms of the ice and are heading south back to Spitsbergen.”
The expedition reached 80.52397 degrees N latitude, about 651 miles from the North Pole. Here is a link to a bulletin from the US National Weather Service about a Norwegian Department of Commerce oceanographic ship, which sailed from Spitzbergen to in ice-free waters to 81.48333 degrees N latitude (66 miles further north than our intrepid kayakers got) – in the summer of 1922. http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
A degree of latitude is defined as 60 nautical miles, or 69.04 statute miles. Conceptually, degrees of latitude are the same distance apart no matter where you go on earth. However, in reality it varies from 68.70 statute miles per degree at the poles to 69.41 statute miles per degree at the equator, due to the earth bulging slightly near the equator due to centrifugal force from its rotational spin.
The ship the Polar Defense Project hired was a Norwegian seal-hunting boat, owned and captained by Bjørne Kvernmo, 52, an experienced seal hunter with a long record of defending Norway’s seal hunts. (Not sure how seal hunting is done – harpooning or clubbing baby seals to death?)
One of the dangers for our explorers in their kayaks was their documented encounters with wildlife, including whales, walruses and polar bears.
This “expedition” was a great example of environmentalists drinking to much “global warming Kool-Aid”, and then literally bumping into REALITY. After jetting to the Arctic, renting a seal-hunting ship with a large diesel engine and dining on roast duck, they discovered that the edge of the Artic sea ice is further south than it was in 1922, and that there are polar bears up there.
But, these jet-setting kayakers made out better than Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, who started off to hike to the North Pole in the spring of 2007, planning to make online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031200997.html
They had to be evacuated from Ward Hunt Island, Canada when the extreme cold caused Arnesen to suffer three frostbitten toes and froze their cameras. According to Ann Atwood, one of the trips organizers, “One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times.” “They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming,”

Here are some people that infact been to the North Pole just a couple years ago with kayaks.
http://www.mounteverest.net/news.php?id=17551

Geo (23:27:53) says:
I think they did it for the chicks.

Safe for work. There’s another one too. More of the same.

I don’t fault anyone for wanting to do something they believe in, either.
However, when you’re knitting a global warming rug depicting a polar bear stranded on a drifting piece of ice (I kid you not), I kinda wonder if you have too much time on your hands….
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/3532/global-warming-rug-by-nel-collective-for-nanimarquina.html

Pugh says he was “delighted” at how far north they got?
Shouldn’t he have become more and more “discouraged” the further north they got given that their mission was to determine to what extent the arctic has been “destroyed”?
Unless, of course, their “mission” all along was the pursuit of glory and not science.

Pieter Folkens (18:54:35) :
I often wonder about people like them . . . so committed, yet so ignorant. How can there be so many who shun common sense and practical reasoning in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
They’re rich kids. They’ve been told their entire lives that they are smart enough to do anything they wish. No teacher or parent ever tells them what they want to do is unrealistic, in fact, the opposite – no one wants to discourage them from attempting anything. A relatively easy life can leave one feeling rather spiritually empty, however, so there’s the need to do something ‘important’ or meaningful. Unfortunately for types like that, optimism can quickly turn into sheer hubris.
(or perhaps there’s some sort of special climate-alarmist psychology where there’s no such thing as negative feed-backs :))

RE: Johnnyb (21:05:55) :
They will only do this in the West. Then, the industrial civilizations of the East, will own the world after a short struggle (which unfortunately will be quite fatal for most Westerners, rich, or, poor). Game over. Say hello to the 10K year Dark Age.

M. White:
The Top Gear folks opted for the North Magnetic Pole, which despite their total misunderstanding (they have things reversed on their website), is well south of the geographic North Pole. In fact, it is (or was IIRC when I was there) on Cornwallis Island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago so the goals of the two ‘expeditions’ were different. I’ve flown over the North Magnetic Pole from the north, so the north needle on the compass pointed south… I won’t go into dip angles and 40 degree directional oscillations.
Among the dumber things attempted by the kayakers was using modern composite kayaks and modern wearing apparel. If I was foolish enough to kayak in the High Arctic (and as I’ve been there, I’m not that dumb), it would be wearing furs and in a sealskin boat. Pugh et al’s frozen bums were the result of not using native knowledge and relying on Temperate Zone technology.

thanks Charles for snipping… got carried away laughing

This may or may not be OT but…has anybody else attempted to digitize Cryosphere Today’s graphs for each individual Arctic sea?
I just did and the results are not exactly identical to the values reported for the whole Northern Hemisphere. Am I missing a sea or what?

RE: omnologos (15:15:35) :
It’s book cooking, you have busted them. I know you have, because I have also busted them in the past. Once a serious effort is undertaken to audit so called “Arctic Sea Ice Extent” and “Arctic Sea Ice Area” plots and graphics, I believe many irregularities will be uncovered. Steve M has a thread going about a horse race between last year and this year, but it’s not a proper audit. A proper audit is badly needed, because, where there’s smoke, there is sure to be fire.

“‘I didn’t know that “chicks” dug failing self-indulgent ego maniacs. ‘
You didn’t? Really?”
Unfortunately, being a lying self-deceiving, hypocritical sanctimonious a**hole is a valid reproductive strategy and has been for thousands of years. Which is why there are so many people like Pugh floating around.
If I wanted to bang a steady stream of hot white chicks, and was willing to say anything to do so, then of course I would constantly toe the green party line. And I would get laid every week in the back of my Prius.

Sea ice extent… We had a positive day. Arctic sea ice increased today. There might still be setbacks but today was a plus… If it’s not adjusted to negative in the morning. I hope Jeez sees this.

Dear Lucy Skywalker (14:31:36) ,

I’m taking apart BBC Richard Black’s “Skeptics Top Ten”

Would you please be so kind as to share your results when you complete your task? I would really appreciate the extra material as I am engaged in a rather long and fierce battle with my father over the AGW theory. The surprising thing to me is, my father is a very well respected engineer (retired) with graduate honors from MIT (very smart), however, he has obviously been drinking Al Gore’s kool-aid by the bucket load. This really distresses me as I don’t believe he has engaged any sort of common sense in the matter. My ultimate goal is to truly convince him, through real science and empirical data, that AGW is a crock. But he is one tough cookie.
At the moment I am engaged in showing him just how misinformation spreads across Wikipedia (he has also been sipping on that kool-aid too). Which by the way, the topic of this thread is of great assistance in that goal. Check out Lewis Gordon Pugh in sections “Geographic North Pole” and “Kayak” and then reading more about the “real” story from ExWeb editorial: Tina about Pugh, media and global warming, even the meager attempt at acknowledgment that his claims may be disputed (written in the “Kayak” section) hardly vindicates the overall conjecture of the Wikipedia entry itself, leaving the average reader to believe that he has accomplished these things that he touts. Just another disgusting example of both AGW fear mongering and Wikipedia propaganda.
Anyway, Thanks!
And thanks to all who post here and participate so vigorously in debating these subjects. It certainly provides me with a glimmer of hope! You are all great people!