You may be familiar with the much ballyhooed “Polar Defense Project” which aimed to get two kayakers into the arctic sea as far north as possible. While it’s difficult to find a succinct mission statement on their web page, this is about as close as one can get:
Lewis Gordon Pugh will kayak from the Island of Spitsbergen (in northern Europe) across the Arctic Ocean, into the Arctic ice pack, and as close to the North Pole as possible. The journey, across some of the most dangerous seas in the world, is scheduled to depart on the 30th of August. The expedition will highlight how thin the sea ice has become in recent years.
We are calling for world leaders to take a stand against the destruction of the Arctic.
Let me say that being the leader of my own volunteer project on climate (www.sufacestations.org) I understand the drive to want to do something you believe in. I don’t fault anyone for that, and have respect for anyone who puts out the effort. At the same time, this project doesn’t seem to have clearly defined goals other than “The expedition will highlight how thin the sea ice has become in recent years.”.
OK fair enough, but the expedition lasted just a few short days, and the kayakers had to give up the trek because they became “stuck” in sea ice. See my report from last week “Adventures in Arctic Kayaking: we’re stuck“. Basically they gave up, planted their 192 world flags, and went home. It seemed anticlimactic in view of what the leader, Lewis Gordon Pugh said to the London Times in a July 16th, 2008 interview:
“I’m going to try and get all the way to the North Pole to show the world what is happening,” the 38-year-old said after launching his Polar Defense Project expedition on the River Thames in London. (Link to story is still available in the India Times here )
So I was surprised then to read about this “success” in their follow up post:
“On this trip I am delighted with many things – the fact that we got as far north as we did, further north than anyone has ever kayaked before…”
It reminded me of a previous post I made about reported conditions in the arctic back in 1922. So last Friday, September 5th I posted this comment on their expedition blog:
“…the fact that we got as far north as we did, further north than anyone has ever kayaked before…”
Just wondering if that claim can be validated anywhere or if you are just making it up?
It stands to reason that Eskimos and other native people of the north may have made it further north in the past. For example in August 1922. See this report from the Norwegian Consul in the Monthly Weather Review:
Do you know for certain that natives of the area did not kayak further north then or in the past few hundred years?….in August 1922 the expedition made it to 81° 29′ north.
Your last position where you reported that you got “stuck” was 80.52397, 12.21224 which is 80° 31′ 26″, 12° 12′ 44″
Not that far from 1922…so given that it was possible to get about the same distance north then, it would stand to reason that:
1) Ice melt was similar back then in 1922
2) kayaking by native people may have matched or exceeded your feat in the past when conditions were similar
3) Since previous records show similar reports to what you’ve experienced today, melts today are not unique nor catastrophic events.
Here is a screencap image of that posting:
Yet as of today, 4 days later, still no answer. The comment has been skipped over and many other comments have been posted since then. I’ll have to assume it has been ignored and/or deleted.
Thus, it would seem that the Polar Defense Project won’t answer the tough questions, or even allow comments about them. The lack of basic planning and the inflated claims on this project are stunning, the lack of tolerance for anything that questions the project is also telling.
Sadly it appears that the expedition was nothing more than a poorly executed publicity stunt.
The goal set by Mr. Pugh in July’s Times interview was of course impossible, but apparently this fact was unknown to him, or he wouldn’t have allowed such a statement to be published worldwide. Surely with links to NSIDC and Cryosphere Today on his website, he must have been aware at some point, or maybe he was just going on the buzz of an “Ice Free North Pole” from earlier this year? With their splash screen for their website saying “The North Pole is Melting”, it seems plausible. Rumor has it that some folks “in the know” told him not to try this trip, but he went anyway.
But it seems that even the premise of this expedition was not well researched, as Bill Illis points out in comments on this blog:
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
And another commenter, “dipole” adds this:
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.
Nansen and Johansen in two kayaks turned into a catamaran.
Source: The Polarship FRAM
So much for Mr. Pugh’s claim of “…the fact that we got as far north as we did, further north than anyone has ever kayaked before…”.
Yes it seems that the Polar Defense Project didn’t do much research at all, and I suspect they operated mostly on emotion and adrenaline. Because if anyone had bothered to read some of the history, Pugh certainly wouldn’t have made the grand claim of “I’m going to try and get all the way to the North Pole to show the world what is happening,”
I suppose though this may be partly due to whom he rubs shoulders with, from his own web page: http://www.lewispugh.com/
AL GORE – 29 November 2007
Tomorrow I am the warm up act for Al Gore. He will be addressing a group of property financiers in London. I will give a personal account of the climate change I have witnessed in the Arctic.
Gore has a penchant for exaggeration when it comes to arctic sea ice and polar bears, so perhaps this has rubbed off on Mr. Pugh.
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.
Meanwhile, the Arctic will go into 24 hours of darkness on September 21st and it will get very cold there just like it has every year since the earth’s axis was tilted 4.45 billion years ago.
The average annual temperature at the North Pole is -24.5C. There will always be ice there (for at least 11 months of the year anyway.)
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?
It looks like there was a lot more ice cover 29 years ago, I don’t see how they could have gotten 300 miles further north at any point.
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.
Hi Anthony,
Great article! I, like several other posters here, have not had some of my less-than-congratulatory comments posted (although the comment I made regarding my previous comments on the Polar Defense blog WAS posted, asking where my previous comments were…).
Maybe, like the IPCC, these guys think “the debate is over” and that global warming is responsible for cooling (?) temperatures and the recovery of sea ice…I may not be a scientist, and might have less education than some, but my military training prepared me for understanding the principles of heat dissipation, measuring of frequencies/vibrations, pressure (high and low), etc., and, well, no matter how hard I try to wrack my brain, search through my notes and old manuals…I cannot come up with any reasonable explanation as to WHY supposedly rising temperatures will create COLDER conditions to produce ice…
…must be part of the new math…
Ciao,
Michael in sunny-ish Florida
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,”
There is a great write-up on this subject here.
http://www.climate-resistance.org/
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
Have you seen this chart:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
are you claiming that the data is completely false and the summer 1922 measurement should be in fact 5 million km^2 lower?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
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 had also sent an email to the BBC news and to the Daily Telegraph with a copy of a picture of 3 US submarines at an ice free north pole in 1986. No response and not printed or commented on later bulletins.
Perhaps I should complain to the BBC Governors?
I accused them of sloppy, unresearched journalism.
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
___________________
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.
__________________________
Interesting that dxlc still has not updated their website to reflect the ‘new’ sunspot
http://www.dxlc.com/solar/
on their activity chart, but they do reflect the .5 sunspot activity in their solar cycle sunspot activity for August.
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.
Rick Werme,
I read your letter to the committee on energy, and appreciated your expression of scepticism of the Pugh “gesture” in a balanced comment. It was well-written and informative. I wondered, however, about a statement comparing last and this year’s sea ice. Would you clarify for a non-scientist:
“The ice cover this summer tracked well ahead of last year’s for most of the summer and may well not exceed it.”
Also, you point out that “accurate” records of sea ice have been available since we have had satellite images of the earth. Can satellites give an impression of ice density? If not, perhaps this should read, “Accurate records of sea ice extent…” (?)
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 :))
dipole:
I did not count Nansen and Johansens first short kayak trips across open leads, only the long voyage from Evas Island to Jacksons Island 7-26 August 1895. There is no latitude mentioned in the text for the start of this, but at least in Vol. 2 of “Med Frem over Polarhavet” there is a detailed map that shows that they started at about 81 deg 45 min.
Bill P (08:52:40) :
Let’s just call that wrong. I was thinking of the ice melt this year not execeeding last year’s melt. However, the sentence’s context was ice cover. The relevant pretty picture is http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png where you can see that only for a little time in June has this year’s Ice _Extent_ been less than last year’s.
Yeah, I should have said extent, but given my target audience, I figured they aren’t interested in the details. They’re probably not even interested in Email from people who are unimpressed by Pugh’s accomplishment.
Maybe I’ll clean up the text and add some links like this page and send it as an update a few days before the hearing. Whenever that will be. They’ll probably want it soon before the ice starts growing. Last year’s freeze started a bit late, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re only a few days from the minimum extent.
If you cannot get to the North Pole in a kayak why not drive there in a 4×4. Two TV presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May in a Toyota pick-up truck raced a third presenter Richard Hammond who was doing the journey using a team of ten Inuit dogs and a wooden sled.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/show/production_notes/polar_special.shtml
“Jeremy and James were attempting to become the first men ever to drive a car to the Pole, using a heavily modified Toyota pick-up truck, while Richard was going the full-Amundsen by using a sled pulled by a tried-and-tested team of dogs.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/show/episodes/series9episode7.shtml
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.
RE: DennisA (05:22:36) :
Gjoa’s ultimate destinate was San Francisco. After being at the docks for a while, for the inevitable publicity and tours, she was towed back out the gate, then purposely beached at Ocean Beach. She was then pulled ashore and awarded to the City of SF as a monument to sit in perpetuity in Golden Gate Park. There she sat for years. However, during the 60s, hippies, drug addicts and bums started to live in her hull. Much defacement and incipient structural damage happened. Several small fires occurred. At that point, the Norwegian Embassy intervened and had her taken out of Golden Gate Park, partially restored, then shipped via freighter to Oslo for complete restoration. Where she now sits at the Norse Maritime Museum. Just a bit of local color I thought I’d share.
I didn’t know that “chicks” dug failing self-indulgent ego maniacs.
You didn’t? Really?
There’s a difference? 😉
Ric,
Thanks for your reply and further links. From Congressman Markey’s intro to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, “a website for people who want to save the planet…” I take it Gordon Pugh will feel right at home.
hahaha and groan… crazy thinking happens reading this stuff… how about the new ABC…. people are [snip] to do this sort of thing, they spout [doublesnip] because the science they draw on is [triplesnip]
Reply: No implied profanity please ~ charles the moderator.