UPDATE: kayakers already “stuck” in ice at 80.52397 degrees N
I had this post up for all of an hour before this news rolled in from PolarDefense. Hat tips to Tom Nelson, who’s report is presented below, and to Brian Koochel in comments. – Anthony
“We’re stuck”
I have slept poorly. The floating ice, while thin, is so prevalent that, throughout the night, it grinds noisily against the side of the boat in a slightly alarming fashion – imagine someone scraping their nails across an old-fashioned blackboard.The then begins earlier than normal and, unusually, I am not woken by Robbie bounding into my room. Instead the ship’s engine roars to life earlier than normal – at around 5.30 – and the MV ‘Havsel’ begins to judder ominously. I clamber out of bed and scramble up to the bridge – all the ship’s crew are there, and they look serious. I look outside and I can see why. The sea is almost entirely congested with ice floes – I would estimate 80% plus of the sea is covered by them. There is a real risk that we could get stuck up here. We have drifted in the night into a much icier area than where we stopped last night. I wake up the team, and everyone groggily makes their way to the bridge. There’s a mixed reaction in the team to the prospect of getting stuck up here.
See the location on Google Maps, 80.52397, 12.21224
After awaking to find their vessel frozen in ice the team are steaming around looking for a path that’s navigable by kayak.
No paddling today.
At about 69 miles per degree of latitude, it would seem that they’re still 600+ miles from the North Pole.
My original post follows:
Place your bets now folks. If only Robert Peary could have had CNN tag along. – Anthony
Entries from Sam Branson’s Arctic diary – In the mirror.co.uk
My split feelings about this news remind me of another paradox of my expedition up here – the fact that I am spending my days paddling in ice-cold water, with a frozen, painful backside, trying to bring to the attention of the world and its leaders the necessity of stopping the world heating up.
[Sept 1:] Travel this morning was tough. The temperature has dropped dramatically and each time the guys get in the water in is a notch harder. We are starting to see larger chunks of ice, which instead of weaving through, they have to paddle around. The occasional chunk hits the bow of the ship sending small pieces out to the side into the route of travel for our paddlers. One nearly knocked Lewis of his kayak. The water is now below zero and a spill could be quite painful. The moving water by the feet of the guys has started to freeze and this could take a toll on their much needed warmth. I know that Robbie has been struggling with his toes.
…
[Aug 31:] The ship is noticeably colder and we are all wearing an extra layer. I have been on deck loading the kayaks and boats back onto the ship. The water soaked ropes seep moisture into your gloves and it saps the heat from my hands fast. 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!’
…
[Aug 28:] Some may know this place from the book ‘The northern lights’ by Phillip Pullman, where he calls it, ‘The land of the ice bears’. From what I’ve heard, this name could not be closer to the truth. The boat we are on has just returned from a trip in the ice and along the way they encountered eighty eight bears.
Gosh, that’s a lot of bears.
Just in case you might be thinking the two kayakers are doing this all alone, on a shoe-string budget, with only strength and determination….
Here is the support vessel: 300-ton fossil-fueled MV Havsel
Polar Defense writes: The support boat we loaded our kit onto is not the QE2. She is an old fishing boat called MV ‘Havsel’ – this means ‘ocean seal’ in Norwegian. She is a tough, grubby, working boat with a strengthened hull and a big engine for a boat of her size – she will perform very well up in the pack ice.
Thanks to Tom Nelson for references in this story
RE: Alison Wright
Seems you are correct. From Pugh’s Blog today:
“This will be one of the last team member portraits for this expedition. I wanted to save the Captain till around this point, as he is a special man. The Captain is called Bjorne Kvernmo, and the MV ‘Havsel’ belongs to him.”
From your aftenposten link:
“The vessel, called Havsel…Bjørne Kvernmo, who was making his first voyage as the vessel’s new captain …Kvernmo, 52, is an experienced seal hunter with a long record of defending Norway’s controversial seal hunts.”
Seems to be one and the same Havsel and Bjorne Kvernmo. Not off topic at all in my humble opinion. Maybe you should post the aftenposten link to Pugh’s Blog…
Sorry to repeat you Mike. We were both moderated at same time and I didn’t see your post.
I wonder if we should send this “new” information about Pugh’s choice of vessel and captain off to PETA…
Bruce Foutch (09:30:14) :
Do it – the moderator let me ask a science question.
Or, perhaps you can add it at
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&ie=UTF8&t=h&msa=19&msid=105384431693060155128.0004559ae4a5303345bd7
The map viewing has only come from four sites:
721 from http://www.itv.com/News/newsspecia…
301 from http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
285 from http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.co…
164 from http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2008/…
123 from http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/
Dear Diary…
Day 6
“One has to not be mistaken that the ice here means that the ice is so thick that we can’t move. It is all very superficial ice; surface level ice. It is not the thick pack ice that is normal for the Arctic Ocean. This year, the ice here is thinner than ever before.”
Day 8
“We have now left the realms of the ice and are heading south to Spitsbergen.”
Funny stuff.
No, Rob, ITV have not given up, they were on again tonight, paddling away up and down in open water, going apparently nowhere. ITV news really is the pits. It is noticeable that ITV never give their position in their broadcast but tell us to go to the website knowing that most of their viewers won’t bother.
RE: Ric Werme
I tried to post Alison’s aftenposten link to Pugh’s Blog. It did not get accepted. Can’t imagine why…
RE: Ric
I did post a comment and included the aftenposten link to the maps.google.co.uk link you posted in your comment. Lets see how long it takes before someone flags it as “inappropriate” !
They quit. 5/9/2008
If you go to the ITN website and type “Lewis Pugh” or even Lewis Gordon Pugh” into the search box, you get “No stories found for Lewis Pugh”. In fact, all reference to it has disappeared off their site!
I’ve been trying to add my comments to Lewis’s Polar Defense Project site but they don’t get posted. I had an email back from them saying, “When many of the comments descended from scientific debate to outright vitriol and epithets, like “I hope you #$% get your heads bitten off by polar bears” we made an editorial decision to focus on those contributors who were supporting our mission. Partially because, for Lewis and team, who are in the midst of an extremely challenging, the comments and messages serve as inspiration to keep going. Put forth a well-reasoned and respectful argument and we will post it.”
That’s simply not true, I’m afraid, they won’t post it!
They haven’t removed the link to “We’re Stuck”…simply, the posts’ numbers are not in simple progression, so #153 looks like posted earlier than #150
Alison Wright (08:29:09) :
Slightly off-topic, but I wondered if Mr. Pugh’s support boat is the very same Havsel, “Norwegian seal-hunting vessel”, which sprang a leak after being pierced by an ice floe between Jan Mayen and Greenland in 2004? (see http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article786116.ece) If so, it doesn’t quite square with his stance of “integrity…total honesty and fidelity to the truth” on ecological matters, does it?
Well the journalist behind that article from 2004 is Ole Magnus Rapp, the very same journalist who covered the story about Lewis Gordon Pugh in Aftenposten 28. July this year: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2563654.ece (norwegian language). He can be contacted at ole.magnus.rapp@aftenposten.no
He should be able to answer that question maybe.
[…] they paddled up by themselves, I surely would have. But all it has turned into was a very expensive way to move people up to 81N with a great boat to comfortably live in and no destination […]
I tried to post the message below to http://polardefenseproject.org/blog/?p=197
Hi Lewis,
MS Havsel is a seal hunting boat. Interesting to see you joined forces to protect the arctic!
But not too surprisingly, it did not survive moderation. You will have to read it here, Lewis!
Gee, I don’t know where you guys got the idea he was trying to kayak to the North Pole. It’s clear that his only point was to to “kayak farther north than anyone ever has before”.
It’s on CNN, it must be true.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/09/05/smith.artic.kayak.itn
Carsten Arnholm, Norway (16:39:17) :
Sorry, zero points for subtlety, zero points for ambiguity. Dreamin’s “I expect that the symbolism of your venture won’t be forgotten soon” is almost too good. Heck, someone even posted a “me-too” followup.
However, I bet it shocked the moderator, you get points for that.
All in all, it seems like a pretty decent trip to nowhere. Beats shuffleboard in the Carribbean. The bears go hungry tonight.
“It’s on CNN, it must be true” Wow guys I just can’t understand how this kind of emotionalized garbage get’s any attention. How this pathetic story has even gotten
this far, is a sad reflection of the times we live in. I want to thank all the posters here who taken the time to shine a light on this stunt, and that’s all it is a stunt.
I think this guy is just trying to set himself up like his hero Al Gore, and make
millions while being a hypocrite.
From CNN
“Lewis Gordon has paddled further north than anyone has paddled before” …
How hard/easy would it be to find contrary evidence on this? I’m sure you guys must have some good links. It certainly looks to me as if he didn’t get very far at all.
“Wow guys I just can’t understand how this kind of emotionalized garbage get’s any attention. How this pathetic story has even gotten
this far, is a sad reflection of the times we live in. I want to thank all the posters here who taken the time to shine a light on this stunt, and that’s all it is a stunt. ”
I agree 100%. But here’s a question: Who is more likely to get rock-star treatment? Lewis Pugh or Anthony Watts? The fact is that being a Pugh-like shameless self promoter, engaged in a hypocritical and dishonest pursuit of empty symbolism really can pay off.
There are probably 1000 girls willing to have Pugh’s baby now.
Here’s another comment from his blog, from “Michelle”
“The simple fact – Lewis and his team are passionately and physically communicating that they care and are doing all they can to reach world leaders. Isn’t that enough!? Most of us sit on our bottoms and do nothing. Listen to him at congress and you will change your mind. Did you know he is trying to legally protect the arctic, for all of us?”
See, it doesn’t matter how wrong-headed Pugh’s ideas are. He just needs to make a big show of altruism/caring and his status is raised substantially.
Lewis is now back in Port chatting to Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister
He then anticipates peddling his ideas to the US congress
This guy is a Media Genius.
He is showing us how to turn total failure into success!
Look at the compare images from Cryosphere for Sept. 5, 1979 versus Sept. 5 2008.
The expedition could have travelled at least 300 miles farther north 29 years ago.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=05&fy=1979&sm=09&sd=05&sy=2008
Here is Email I just sent to the Select Committee about Pugh’s visit:
To: The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
Note – Your comment posting software and my editor may make this difficult to
read, a Web version of this is at http://wermenh.com/climate/index.html
I understand that you will soon hear from a British explorer, Lewis Gordon
Pugh, in a self-appointed role as ambassador for the Arctic. Apparently he
has been invited due to his recent attempt at paddling a kayak from
Spitzbergen to the North Pole. He was forced to abandon the attempt 1000 Km
from the North Pole
The impetus for the attempt was a forecast from Canadian and US researchers of
a 50-50 chance that ice would melt at the Pole, a forecast that failed
miserably – Pugh completed only 10% of the trip he originally planned.
Our accurate record of Arctic ice cover only dates back to the development of
satellites that record images of the planet, approximately 1979. That was
also about the time a circulation pattern called the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation flipped from a cool phase to a warm phase, it has only recently
flipped back to a cool phase. In other warm periods people have reported that
the Arctic Ice Cap was melting. In 1969 the New York Times quoted Col. Bernt
Bachen claiming “the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the
North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two.” Only a few years
later the frigid winters of the late 1970s brought concerns about a coming
Ice Age.
The cool PDO will bring us a golden opportunity to determine just what effect
CO2 has on climate. Solar activity has also declined and we are in a broad
solar minimum that some people thought would end in 2006. This will be a
wonderful time for real science, and we will learn more in the next decade
than we have in the last five.
In Pugh’s writings, I’ve found him to be so convinced that the Arctic is
melting and will soon be open that I don’t think he realizes there is a good
possibility that it won’t happen. The ice cover this summer tracked well
ahead of last year’s for most of the summer and may well not exceed it. Some
scientists expected that the thin, new ice that formed last year would melt
quickly and that melting would be much greater this year.
Is this a sign that we are entering a cool period or is it just an example of
weather’s wide variability that makes teasing out climate signals so
difficult. I suspect the former and I hope that the committee listen to Pugh
with interest, but remember that the science is nowhere near settled and if
anything is becoming less settled.
Full text of “Farthest North”, Nansen’s account of his 1893 attempt to reach the pole, is available online. See around p244 of volume 2 for kayaking N. of 82 degrees. Quite a story.
Another story about Pugh and his stunt in another Norwegian newspaper today
– Nordpolisen har smeltet to tredeler på ett år
(“- North Pole ice has melted to thirds in a year”)
http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/09/07/546022.html
– I fjor på denne breddegraden så jeg tre meter tjukk is. Nå kan jeg bare se en meter tjukk is.
(“- Last year at this latitude I saw 3 meter thick ice. Now I can only see 1 meter thick ice”)
The coverage of this story is very untruthful and irresponsible, IMHO.
It is quite depressing, really
Same story also in Aftenposten today
Mot Nordpolen i Kajakk
(“Towards the North Pole in kayak”)
http://www.aftenposten.no/klima/article2639305.ece
– I fjor på denne breddegraden så jeg tre meter tykk is. Nå kan jeg bare se en meter tykk is. I 2007 spådde jeg at Arktis ville være mer eller mindre uten is på sjøen om sommeren innen ti år. Alt jeg har sett på ekspedisjonen min, bekrefter den spådommen, sa han fredag.
(“- Last year at this latitude I saw 3 meter thick ice. Now I can only see 1 meter thick ice. In 2007 I predicted that the Arctic would be more or less without ice at sea during the summer within ten years. Everything I have seen on this ekspedition of mine, confirms that prediction, he sais Friday”)
There is just no limit to how this stunt is exploited, completely disregarding all facts.
What I don’t get is why they started from Iceland. That’s where the highest concentration appears to be.
ice concentration