Guest post by Steve Goddard
It is easy to become cynical about the motivations of some prominent figures in the global warming movement, but there are a few people who feel passionately enough about their beliefs to put their own life on the line. The Catlin explorers Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley are among the most dedicated. They have endured consistent minus 40 degree weather, frostbite, polar bear encounters, frozen sleeping bags, sleepless nights and general misery in their quest to prove that the polar ice caps are warming and melting.
Over the past 24 days they have traveled 84km of their 950km journey to the North Pole, averaging 3.5km per day. Every inch is hard fought across drifting and cracking ice. If their average travel rate were to continue, it would take another 250 days to reach the pole – stretching into the next Arctic winter.
Below are the titles of their most recent blog posts, which hint at the unimaginable difficulties they are facing.
# Mind games
# Like being in a milk bottle
# Frostbite (N.B Graphic Images)
# Spring in our step
# Stabbing pain
# Muscle Immobilisation
# Perran on Power Supplies for the expedition
# The difficulties of filming in such extreme environments
# Chivalry on the ice
# The Quitter
Compare their dedication and grit to Al Gore, who lives in a 20,000 square foot house, has a 150 foot yacht, jet sets around the world, and has made tens of millions of dollars promoting global warming.
No doubt Al is very appreciative of the foot soldiers in his infantry, willing to put their lives on the line for his Nobel cause.
Below is a headline from my personal favorite newspaper the UK Guardian, highlighting the brilliant thought process of AGW entrepreneurs.
Life vests for polar bears on melting ice
To raise awareness for the endangered species, a design company has come up with a life-vest for displaced polar bears.
Read about Polar Bear Life Vests at The Guardian (No, they aren’t made of Gore-tex – Anthony)
So whom do you admire? The entrepreneurs making millions off AGW, or those risking everything to help out the first group (and save the planet.) I know which group I would prefer to belong to.
One more question. If the Arctic really resembled the tropical paradise presented by The Guardian et Al, wouldn’t the explorers have a tough time walking across the (non-existent) ice?
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My religion finds it MANDATory to love them as people with souls, but equally, as an engineer and realist who refuses to fall for their propaganda and their “hatred” of the western world, its civilization and the real science of climate – they are – bluntly – fools.
Let us hope they do not become polar bear bait, or that our money is not wasted recusing them from this folly.
They certainly have moxy, no doubt about that. Have they measured any ice yet?
We can feel empathy for the pain a person who repeatedly bashes themselves in the head must be feeling, but in the end it their suffering is their own fault. But few who endure such pain do so for ideological reasons. Yet that is exactly why these two are trying to reach the pole, is it not? Lenin would have called them useful idiots.
While one may admire the courage of the members of the Catlin Expedition, one’s respect for their intelligence, not so much. The idiocy of proving “Global Warming” at minus 40 (C or F, take your pick) should sink into even the most closed of minds. I have experienced the Arctic up close and personal and it is not a place for amateurs and certainly not with modern fabrics. Witness the video of the intrepid explorer trying to get into his jacket. He should have accepted the non-green solution and adopted a sealskin outfit and fur mukluks. Tents in the Arctic are merely a means of committing suicide slowly, Pathetic really, however noble the intent.
Interesting. I was going to do an off-topic bit on another post but you beat me to it. I admire the bears! I have two comments:
1. The two polar bears picture has “a story.”
Here: http://newswithviews.com/Williams/carole7.htm
Here: http://www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/dispatch2004/dispatch02.html
2. Regarding the Catlin Arctic Survey Is my EXCEL spreadsheet flaky?
> Today is Day 25
Today they report: Total distance traveled as 94.45 km
Yesterday : 84.45 km
difference = 10.0 km <<<
Yesterday’s report: Estimated distance to N.P. 870.05 km
Today : ditto 824.51 km
difference = 45.54 km <<<
I am thinking the two entries marked with “<<<” ought to be equal.
Help me ought here, folks?
Are they still out there? I heard Rush Limbaugh say yesterday, Mar. 25, that they had give up and gotten into the Twin Otter and gone back to civilization.
Anthony asks:
“So whom do you admire? The entrepreneurs making millions off AGW, or those risking everything to help out the first group (and save the planet.) I know which group I would prefer to belong to.”
Crooks who are perfectly willing to foist a destructive lie to enrich themselves or delusional religious fanatics, willing to die, who do their bidding??
Don’t I get another choice??
REPLY: FYI It is a guest post by Steve Goddard. – Anthony
Self-serving, self aggrandizing, publicity stunts by Global Warming idiots? No, I don’t believe it! :]
I feel sorry for them for being gullible enough to put themselves in harm’s way to prove the discredited theories of “Big Al.” I had a gut feeling early on that AGW was baloney.
Amundsen and John Rae (among many others) before him easily travelled around the Arctic in Winter. Rae could easily cover 84 km in a couple days on snowshoes and Amundsen was mauled and nearly killed by a Polar Bear. Of course these fellows knew how to build a snow house and were not so foolish to travel without a gun.
There’s something about martyrs: they will die to be right. Even when they’re wrong. History is filled with similar examples.
I suppose now that they have been thwarted from their goal due to extreme arctic conditions we’ll have to endure endless accounts of their failure in the mainstream media. Or not.
LOL
One for the memory hole!
“I suppose now that they have been thwarted from their goal due to extreme arctic conditions we’ll have to endure endless accounts of their failure in the mainstream media. Or not.”
I haven’t heard about them leaving, when did that happen?
Crooks who are perfectly willing to foist a destructive lie to enrich themselves or delusional religious fanatics, willing to die, who do their bidding??
Don’t I get another choice??
Root for the asteroid?
I just hope they don’t have to shoot a polar bear…..
…. I’m too young to be wearing adult diapers every time I log on.
I am a Canadian. For an example of “unknown hazards” in dealing with this type of cold … when it was -40C one morning a year ago in Northern Alberta and I caught wind that GM Allison Transmissions were self destructing when vehicles were started in that weather … we left my wife’s 3/4 ton truck parked and took my Prius instead (with the hot coolant thermos). The truck sat 3 days until it warmed up to -30 and then she went and got the chip reprogrammed for the transmission. Dealing with temperatures where normal carbon steel cracks like glass is not childs play and being out in the middle of nowhere complicates the issues.
So when dealing with “known hazards” with this kind of cold, I have difficulty having anything but derision for these guys. If they were smart they would admit they didn’t prepare properly and didn’t know what they were doing … and come home and do it next year with better gear. A safe return home for these guys without endangering anyone else will be a challenge from the sounds of it.
If this is the standard for admiration, then we all can wonder with awe at those stubborn Canadian teenagers with no hat or gloves, tight jeans, fall jackets, and sneakers waiting for the school bus at -40C.
John F. Hultquist (19:47:08) :
I believe the 94.45 km distance is the distance covered by foot, crawl, swim, whatever. It is neither a straight line due north nor are they on a stable surface. The ice is moving them back toward their starting point.
I would be content to see all three of them freeze to death or be eaten by ‘endangered’ polar bears. That would teach the world something. I am tired of publicity stunts disguised as science performed to achieve a predetermined result. The only thing they will measure is the depth of their stupidity. They have put their lives at risk, and, much worse, are also risking the lives of those who have to fly supplies and, perhaps, rescue to them.
Looking at his poor, frozen lips, its hard for me to think he really believes things are warming up!!!
Steven nice juxtaposition of the Caitlin explorers to Al Gore.
If a picture was worth a thousand words…then this comparison is worth a million.
I follow you, man. Excellent contrast between the two….and I know which one I would want to be, too.
Well recently, I reserved a website http://www.globalgoring.org.
On an earlier post….Bateman had suggested we do a billboard campaign showing Gore’s sorry ass with the quote about the NH icepack melting within five years…so i said lets do it. And I paid to reserve that domain.
If I ever get some time I want to make something of it because I believe the world has been “gored” and that bastard should pay!
Interestingly….watching about polar bears right now on the Science Channel showing polar bears. How apropos.
Well thanks for that post. Very enlightened.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
The video of them getting dressed in frozen clothes is amazing. I don’t envy them in the least! I’ve been in -10F actual temperature before and it was WAY too cold, and the -30F wind chill was unbearable. I was wearing a lot more clothes than them at the time too!
I really hope they make it off the ice alive.
I have no sympathy or admiration for them. As they planned their message of global doom and gloom caused by evil carbon is being disseminated to millions of undiscriminating people whose sole source of news and current affairs is dominated by news organisations with similar agendas to their own.
It’s all politics, nothing more, nothing less.
As self described ‘experienced polar explorers’ they knew the conditions they’d confront.
Though after reading their biographies I don’t see much evidence of ‘exploration’ in the sense I understand it.
None of the three on this trip appear to have a record of scientific endeavour, but instead have a history of writing lucrative best selling books about their exploits.
It’s more the, ‘I skied across Antarctica with 3 women’, sort of middle class adventure than painstaking scientific expeditions with their measuring, probing, sampling recording and reporting.
Pen Hadow and friends are just taking part in a dangerous stunt. Their equipment purportedly measures the thickness of the ice in a single location (which happens to be moving south or north or east depending on the moment) each time they stop – there is no prior data of the same sort with which their readings can be compared. What possible use is a single haphazard string of unrepeatable measurements?
Hadow and his crew are not scientists but activists seeking column inches. Their website reveals as much. It’s all a ‘twitter’ with urgent ‘news’ and breathless attention seeking commentary.
This so called ‘Arctic Survey’ is a politically motivated stunt by it’s own admission. It has absolutely no scientific merit and is just one of several similar stunts designed to produce propaganda to be used in an attempt to influence this year’s climate change gab fest in Copenhagen.
However at the rate they are travelling they’ll miss the conference all together…
Pity [/sarc].
So keep on playing those mind games together,
Doing the ritual dance in the sun,
Millions of mind guerrillas,
Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel
— John Lennon
I’ll admire the businessman when he safely puts life vests on 50 polar bears without being harmed by ecofreaks. Or bears.
Off topic but, Is this an opportunity to get some skeptic input to the upcoming National Academies meetings which will address climate change. Input and questions by some of our more learned scientists and solar/weather experts might have some impact? I have read some of their reports and what I have read has been very pro AGW.
As I read this, it is at least an opportunity for a number of people to ask some pointed questions.
http://www.americasclimatechoices.org/input.shtml?utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=National%20Academies%20Press&utm_campaign=Community+Builder+3%2f26&utm_content=Downloader&utm_term=