Guest post by Steve Goddard
Reading through the recent blog posts of the Catlin expedition, it has become apparent that they have made errors in judgment. Team member Martin Hartley is suffering from frostbite, and hasn’t been able to sleep for nearly a week.
The current temperature is -42C (-44F.) The sensible course of action would be to evacuate Martin to someplace warm where he can receive proper medical attention. Cold and lack of sleep make healing impossible and threaten his health. I have camped in tents in -30C weather, and it is all about survival – nothing else has any meaning when you are that cold.
The wet sleeping bags are apparently the result of a poor decision.
Indeed, the scientific merit of the expedition is questionable.
I made 48 snow measurements after we’d stopped walking today – the best yet.
What is the point of taking a lot of measurements at one location on the same day? Arctic ice continuously shifts and melts or freezes, and the ice they are standing on will have moved hundreds or thousands of miles by next year. The temperature is -42C. No doubt the ice is getting thicker at that temperature.
Meanwhile, the expedition sponsor (HRH The Prince of Wales) has been jetting around South America enjoying the life of entitlement currently reserved for global warming patrons. The formula is simple – as long as a celebrity keeps talking about global warming, their carbon footprint and lifestyle excesses are above reproach. Perhaps if AIG had of named their bonuses “carbon offsets,” they could be partying in South America too.
As of today, global sea ice area is again above normal.
If these three people die on the ice than we can at least say that “Global warming really kills people”. They are out there to measure the thickness of the artic sea ice, but i can’t measure the depth of this
researchidiocy.The results of the Catlin expedition, which is supported by WWF and Prince Charles, will be fed to scientists and used to inform an international deal on climate change at the end of this year.
The data from walking in a straight line over ever-changing and always moving ice will be used to form policy this year. The data will not be compared to future data sets covering the same period of the year along the same route because there are no plans to repeat this trek yearly or this method of measuring the ice. It’s a publicity stunt adventure trying to pass for science.
I tip my hat for their courage.
But I also think a lot of scientists in this field have to be shaking their heads at the sheer amateurism of this venture, or publicity stunt. Reminds me of the CNN crew attempt to climb Kilamanjaro last year.
Very foolish and naive.
As I said, nature has an uncanny way of eliminating stupid genes.
Text of my email to their HQ.
“Hello,
This performance on the ice is pointless. One set of ice thickness measurements and no other data to compare them with. What’s the value of that? You admit the ice moves and presumably also thins and thickens, so the values measured at each grid reference point are wrong within minutes. Get them off the ice now or they’ll so lose more than their reputations. You must accept that the planet is moving into its regular cooling cycle and that setting out with the stated objective of confirming thinning ice is a PC programme to confirm your feelings. Proper science is about setting out to take the measurements and then evaluate the results, not just decide to try and confirm your religious beliefs. You are as silly as that fool in his kayak last year.”
Steven Goddard (00:34:43) :
“The Telegraph reports that the ice is thinning at minus 40 degrees, and that the explorers had to start the expedition in the winter – before all the ice melts due to global warming.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5061498/Lacy-underwear-secret-tool-of-polar-expedition.html
Something about the mention of global warming causes some people to completely discard with any remaining common sense. If it was minus 40 in London, they would probably expect the Thames to freeze. Not so in the Arctic.”
According to the above link the expedition has only made 62 miles as of March 29… Good grief, at the rate they’re moving, it’ll be next Christmas before they get to the North Pole!
“I wonder whether we’re looking at a staged and scripted ‘happening’. Will there be a miraculous series of ‘escapes’ as out brave trio battle against overwhelming odds, risking their very lives to save the planet, blah, blah…”
Like the crap of the Apollo landings being filmed on Earth?
Hmm, so the accusation is that there aren’t three people out there on the ice and this is all being staged somewhere a lot more convenient as an insurance multi-national marketing exercise…
Probably unfair, but sure to get a lot of cultist feathers ruffled 😀 😀
has anyone ever seen any activity on either the biotelemetry monitors or the ice thickness data display? I’ve been to the site dozens of times, and I’ve never seen anything but “Standby mode enabled” on all that stuff?
Is it a bunch of stuff that’s not working, or is it clever website design meant to add to the techie appeal?
JimB
I was stationed by the Army for eighteen months in and around Fairbanks, AK During my first winter in the Tanana valley, all ‘chechakos’, i.e. rookies in the ‘Yuke’ had to camp out for two nights when the temperature hit -40. The first night was spent in a home-made lean-to. Even fully dressed, including parka, and tucked into a double sleeping bag with a scarf over nose and mouth, which had to be moved every few minutes so that frozen breath would not adhere to flesh, it was cold beyond belief. At one point, I went to the company campfire to fill my thermos with hot coffee just shy of the boiling point; a minute later, it was frozen solid.
However misguided this Catlin expedition is, I feel for these guys. Frostbite and hypothermia are not included in my celbratory attitude toward cold weather.
I would like to thank Steve Goddard for allowing the cold heart and ignorance of some of the posters here.
Some wishing their deaths, some hoping for their deaths, most expecting them to fail and die in their endeavours.
Their sponsers have paid for this trip. One would imagine they desire a few photos with their names prominently displated. Is this so bad?
Ignorance:
A fixed buoy measures the thickness of its surrounding ice in its current location (moving)
I understand they are making a reasonably continuous record of their track to the pole. Their results will not just be a few fixed points in the ice but a random slice of thicknesses ove the length of their track. You will also note that the fixed buoys are clustered around the coast.
The average daily distance is just that. It cannot be used to estimate the time to the pole. They are currently making better time owing to easier conditions. These conditions may become better or worse with corresponding changes to the total walk time.
The ice thickness changes according to its position in the sheet (always changing) at the edges it will not be -40C and the difference that GW or GC make will show it here, first.
Bill
Did anyone ever suspect that this Catlin romp could be just another shell game? It could all be pulled off so easily in cyberspace and no-on would be the wiser. Hell! even greenpeace can stoop to this a lot of the time, as shown by their footage of seal clubbings (staged by them). There was also the reporter’s story on the opening day of the seal hunt some years ago, as dutifully posted in several major newspapers. It described the blood bath on the first day of the hunt written by a reporter with first hand front row seating. Snag is, she had never got there, and she was a day or two premature, with her story invention, as the seal hunt had been delayed, but she hand’t known that. Big expose. Lots of egg on face.
The planned satellite transmission of the measurements has not worked. They have to store it in memory and then will download when they are done with their trip. My hunch is that even if the re-supply craft is taking the data back to the lab, the standard conditions under which the measurements were taken will make it very difficult to determine much of anything other than “ice packs shift”. Most of us here know that just by looking at the 30 day animation on cryosphere. It is sad that these people are compelled to live under very harsh and dangerous conditions to bring back something we already know.
Sandy
Nah, no suggestion that this is taking place on a back lot in Hollywood (chuckle). Hadn’t thought about that interpretation.
No, rather that since ice-thickness data is conrtinuously monitored by a series of buoys deployed by the US Army (I think it’s the Army), there is, has been and will continue to be better overall data available than these dudes’ one-off reality TV show.
It’s fun to imagine this was the TexacoArcticSurvey with Texaco calling all the shots, the conclusion already having been reached that the ice is thickening and the brave Texaco-funded explorers confirming daily the brutal cold etc. Lordy can you imagine the apoplexy from the warmers … “Oil company risks lives of hired publicists in the cruel and heartless pursuit of headlines and profit” and so on.
This jaunt amounts to the equivalent of an editorial instruction to ‘go out these and get me a story that proves gang violence is running out of control’. That’s different from ‘go out there and find out what’s happening with gang violence’.
Interesting that Catlin is an insurance outfit. I mean, we know how popular some of them are these days. What a delicious irony had it been AIG!
The timing is interesting, of course. Every year the Arctic ice thaws from hereon in for the next six months. Look at this link. Then it refreezes. The whole hemisphere does the same, I think it’s called ‘summer’ or something like that.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Shouldn’t be hard to report, er, melting ice between now and the end of September. Given the Gore effect, I wonder whether the summer melt will be less than normal this year… (chuckle again)
The sponsors could at least fly in new sleeping gear and possibly replace UK type winter wear with Canadian stuff. We kids in Winnipeg in the 40s and into the 50s walked to school every day as far away as a mile or two in January’s 30 -35 below – there were no school busses then and in Wpg you couldn’t shut down schools because it was cold outside. Moreover, we also played for hours outside. But our mothers outfitted us for the trek better than HRH did for these three. No friends of mine lost fingers or toes and a six year old doesn’t have the body mass to handle the cold like an adult.
bill,
You display the standard irrational thought process of the AGW community.
If anything happens to the explorers, it will be the fault of the people involved with the expedition – not those of us here suggesting that they be evacuated to receive proper warmth and medical attention.
Roger (09:03:14) :
The monarchy is the lesser of two evils and has saved us from the possibility of such heads of state as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, The Peoples Princess, Elton John or Jade Goody. Charles’s mentors do him and us a great disservice in not advising at least a modicum of reservation in his perceived espousal of the AGW cause and are indeed allowing him to expose himself to possible future ridicule as the Prince with no clothes.
Unfortunately, he chooses his own advisers and, as we know from 60 years of watching him, he listens to nobody else. He believes he is NEVER wromg!
bill (07:43:51) :
I would like to thank Steve Goddard for allowing the cold heart and ignorance of some of the posters here.
Some wishing their deaths, some hoping for their deaths, most expecting them to fail and die in their endeavours.
Their sponsers have paid for this trip. One would imagine they desire a few photos with their names prominently displated. Is this so bad?
I don’t see anyone here “wishing” for the deaths of these people. In fact very much the reverse; let’s see them withdrawn before a death occurs. What they are doing is not worth the risk to these people just to achieve publicity for the “sponsors.”
Unlike some more cynical posters, I am very reassured to learn that Catlin is an insurance company.
Their risk assessment computer models are among the most sophisticated pieces of wizardry in the modern world. When fed with high quality speculative data and the best probable underlying principles the outputs are almost infallible and would certainly enable our intrepid trio to avoid all hazards.
Furthermore, in the unlikely event that some accident of nature, like extreme cold or some such, should overtake the expedition, I have no doubt that pay-out would be prompt and generous.
JimB (03:56:30) :
Both Biotelemetry and Ice thickness telemetry are not just in “Standby Enabled” mode – they simply do not work. The team has yet to uplink any data and instead is storing it on flash cards. Hmm. One reason for “Standby” biometrics is to avoid the world seeing how poorly their health may be. The minus 40C temps will continue to freeze Martin’s frostbitten flesh and likely result in permanent disability or amputation.
To lose an appendage in the name of a falsified theory seems a rather unnecessary sacrifice. It is up to the sponsors at this point to pull the plug – get these poor souls off the ice and perhaps save three lives in the process.
Oliver Ramsay (09:43:46) :
“Unlike some more cynical posters, I am very reassured to learn that Catlin is an insurance company.
Their risk assessment computer models are among the most sophisticated pieces of wizardry in the modern world. When fed with high quality speculative data and the best probable underlying principles the outputs are almost infallible and would certainly enable our intrepid trio to avoid all hazards.”
Are these like the sophisticate programs at AIG, Lehman Bros., etc. that were “almost infallible”.
I cant see that the team has communicated for around 36 hours. Anyone got any current information?
tonyb
If it’s too cold for GPS to work, how do they know where they are measuring? How do they know how far they have traveled?
Steven Goddard (09:01:45) :
You display the standard irrational thought process of the AGW community.
If anything happens to the explorers, it will be the fault of the people involved with the expedition – not those of us here suggesting that they be evacuated to receive proper warmth and medical attention.
I have displayed no thought processes – I would not ask, do not expect, and will not endorse dangerous exploits – everest, k2, matterhorn, either pole – If someone wants to attempt expeditions to such places I am sure they know the dangers, and hope they have been educated into health in such places. If rescues are required, then again I am sure that the rescuers have taken this profession of their own free will.
Some of the comments here must be very hurtful to their families and friends.
Fascinating read. I’m changing my mind about this trek as I read. Any one remember “The Day After Tomorrow”? Starting to look familiar?
We assume honesty and integrity in matters scientific, forgetting the role ‘science’ has played in the not so distant past. Seal hunt simulations? I never heard about them, but I believe you. Science supported the destruction of the Irish during the potato famine, the slaughter of Jews in WWII, the same science of Eugenics justified everything from slavery to abortion, to genocides taking place worldwide. It will, no doubt, play a role in global warming as government is forced to decide who should live and who should die. Obviously those who tend to over-populate are not helping mankind mitigate our common carbon footprint.
WE have taught our children to believe the lie. My wife just read a WSU student blog that “sustainability” could not be accomplished until we eradicate “Individualism” and embrace “Communal Societies”. One day, sooner that I wish, such expressions will reach the “tipping point” as we hand over the future to the generation we allowed to be fed this garbage.
I suspect these may not be fools at all; and the suffering they endure is little more than 8 hours each day in “make-up”. Kudos to the special effects team.”
if what their blog says is true, then it made no sense for them to take 48 samples in a small area. Well, the whole thing makes no sense. They could just look up the ice data on the internet.
But If it’s true they are in over their heads. Who will pull them out?
Then again, maybe they are exaggerating for effect and $.
all the information is being stored on flash cards and no one ever alters those do they?.
i have a feeling they are doomed.. from their lack of equipment, to the lack of intelligence.
REPLY: The low temperatures make me wonder if the data will come back intact. Even they purchased an industrial hardened flash drive, they aren’t even in the ballpark for low operating temperature. For example, this one
http://www.pcuniverse.com/Transcend-Industrial-Flash-memory-card-1-GB-CompactFlash/TS1GCF45I-D/pd/p4265031
from a leading company (Transcend) is only good down to -40F which is also -40C coincidentally. Will it fail at lower temperatures? Who knows? I hope they made paper backup. – Anthony