Guest post by Steven Goddard
Hell Hath No Fury….
Catlin team member Ann Daniels had another very difficult day.
Today has been a difficult day of highs and lows, particularly for Ann, whose morning got off to a particularly bad start. In order to power the different technical components of the kit, the team use large batteries, which need to be heated to a certain temperature in order to extract the maximum amount of power. The process of heating batteries involves Ann, sitting by her stoves for several hours, using a specially insulated piece of equipment to capture the steam from boiling water, in order to get the batteries to the correct temperature.
Ann reached her lowest point of the expedition so far, when after tending the boiling pans of water for several hours, she realised she had pre-heated the wrong battery and had accidently picked up the dead battery from the previous day. It was a painful and frustrating realisation at the end of a cold morning.
On the plus side, at the end of the day, Ann felt warm enough to take off her sledging jacket when getting into her sleeping bag for the night. This is the first time in the 41 days of the expedition so far that she has felt warm enough for this luxury. She adds that she was still wearing 3 pairs of trousers, 2 thermal top layers, 2 hats and 4 pairs of gloves, but still, quite a landmark in the expedition so far!
Consider the following scenario. All goes well and the team arrives home safely some time in the next six weeks. Now, suppose that the Arctic continues to show recovery this summer, and the realization sinks in that the very premise of the expedition may have been flawed.
Such a surface Survey has never before been attempted, and the need for the information has never been greater. Current estimates for the disappearance of the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover vary from 100 years away down to just 4 years from now. Whatever happens, the consequences of its meltdown will be of global significance in terms of sea level rise(due to thermal expansion of the oceans), the geo-politics of energy resources, rainfall patterns and the availability of water supplies and, of course, the impact on biodiversity, including polar bear.
How would she feel? One can only speculate. But as the Catlin team suffers on the ground, the satellites are watching the ice recover.
Since 2007, the global sea ice area anomaly has increased by more than 3,000,000 km2 and is now more than 600,000 km2 above the 1979-2000 mean. You could fit England, Spain, France and Mexico inside the recovered ice area.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Arctic sea ice extent is rapidly approaching an eight year high for the date:
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http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Arctic ice extent is converging on the 1979-2000 mean:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
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Had this been a political interview Stephen Sakkur would have had the required knowledge to probe deeper, but he was clearly out of his depth in this interview.
That’s the problem. The BBC means well (IMO) but is staffed by Arts graduates whose technical knowledge is abysmal. Science graduates go on to do science in some form, of course, while those without practical qualifications often end up in the ‘meeja’ where they learn all about presentation and nothing about content.
Leon Brozyna (20:53:16) :
“Sadly, it won’t be for naught. If nothing else, the proponents of this belief system are skilled propagandists. They will point to the ’success’ of this effort and show how thin the ice is, even if the extent increases.
Expect the effort to be cut short because of the amount of ice that opens up; proof of how fast the ice is melting. I bet it was planned this way.
No science, just a great propaganda coup.”
Which is most likely the real battle here. AGWs now pushed to face the precipice of hard science – are increasing the level of hysteria. The reply is a steady drumbeat of level-headed truth. The hand wringing and teeth gnashing will increase, but the drum that beats the steady rhythm of scientific method – overpowers hysteria.
Or, we’ll make the startling discovery of just why the adventurer’s warm breath does not steam the frigid air.
Ron de Haan (12:29:40) :
Thanks for the illuminating discussion of CD.
James P et. al. you are correct
Stephen Sakkur: He was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire and studied at Cambridge University and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government
Bios from Wiki and BBC do not say if he graduated nor in what subjects. I think this is a general problem with the MSM.
Something puzzeling on the Catlin “latest from the ice site”:
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/latestfromtheice
It shows a temperature of -25C and states “sunny” “showers” . How can it rain at -25? Maybe they are in England after all.
“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.”
Adolfo Giurfa (06:38:59) :
Something pertinent from a few years ago. From the comments section, not a news or opinion article
The Chasm Between Grand and Great
By Shawn Macomber
[quote LA Times]
I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time on my recent honeymoon. I didn’t feel particularly small, or smaller than usual anyway. I had no sudden epiphanies. There was no reinterpreting my life’s joys and sorrows as mere specks of dust in a vast universe. I also failed to come face to face with God, a feat many of my fellow travelers on the discount bus tour assured me they had easily accomplished. I suppose I must have wandered to the wrong viewing station, which is just my luck. A few weeks ago I spent five solid days at the Democratic convention and never once caught sight of Ben Affleck.
Is the Grand Canyon impressive? Well, yeah. Biggest hole I ever saw. But let’s be reasonable here: It’s nature’s job to be impressive, isn’t it? The Colorado River (conspiring with wind, rain and gravity) has been working on that hole for more than 5 million years. It’s all hypothetical, of course, but give me 5 million years and a garden trough and I’ll carve you a Grand Canyon in New England. I’ll make Vermont an island with relief sculptures of Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders looking out into the world and a drawbridge that goes up when those evil fast-food company execs come knocking.
Later, listening to the endless New Age meditations and ecstatic gushing of the bus driver and other tourists as we hurtled through hours of desert wasteland, I couldn’t help but see myself as a bit of a killjoy. “When we’re dead and gone, that canyon will still be there,” one woman across the aisle said reverentially. I resisted the urge to add, “Yeah, and so will your Gatorade bottle, but I’m not going to start worshiping that.” My disconnect from the others was as complete as if I had just shown up at the Indy 500 in a Prince T-shirt.
My mental self-mortification over my confessed bad attitude began to dissipate, however, as we pulled up to Hoover Dam for a quick “photo op,” a stop that lasted a total of five minutes. Most people stayed on the bus, presumably to continue watching the Sandra Bullock witch flick, “Practical Magic,” on the overhead television.
So I stood looking out at this massive feat of human ingenuity and wondered exactly how our priorities got so screwed up. I was facing more than 6 million tons of concrete restraining the Colorado River (something the Grand Canyon clearly cannot do) Score humans, eh? and creating Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. The Hoover Dam project was one of the only projects undertaken by the federal government to ever come in under budget and ahead of schedule. In addition to supplying water to cities up to 300 miles away, 17 4-million-pound generators in the dam capture 2.8 million kilowatts of electricity and send it along 2,700 miles of transmission lines to Los Angeles and other distant locales. The Hoover Dam project was a truly American effort: Every state provided supplies to the project. Ninety-six of the more than 15,000 workers involved lost their lives during the construction.
Yet all it takes is Sandra Bullock casting a computer animated spell to reduce the attention to zero.
Perhaps in 5 million years, when whatever life forms destined to follow us are studying the ruins of our culture, they will find value in Hoover Dam that many of us fail to ascribe to it today. When it comes down to it, the construction in the 1930s of a dam that continues to benefit millions of people to this day is without a doubt more impressive than a river wearing a channel in rock over millions of years. Hoover Dam makes a measurable, positive impact on the people in the Southwest. The Grand Canyon sells T-shirts and postcards and gives mules something to climb in and out of. I’m sure the mules would like to see us get our priorities straight as well.
Look, God isn’t in the Grand Canyon — a river is. If people are searching for God or for an escape from their problems, I’d wager it’s more likely to be found in the complexities and possibilities of the human mind than inside a geological structure. Now if the Grand Canyon had been a public works project, that might be another story.[/quote]
Thanks, but no thanks. Over thirty years operating battery-powered portable radios (starting with a 60’s vintage Moto HT200 through the HT220 series and onto various Yaesu, Icom and other late-model Motorolas with a variety of battery chemistrys and current-draw profiles (esp. transmit) has given me a first-hand view and an edge on the Johny-come-latelys with their laptop PCs and battery heat production.
Besides, the Lenovo/IBM T60p thinkpad I have doesn’t ‘warm the battery’ due to dischrge as much as it does by being in contact with the chassis … and this model is equipped with a fan! Running MS Office suite plus LabVIEW development suite and our co’s security software I can assure you the little beast breathes fire out the air/fan exhaust port.
If you dig deeper into the exploding battery problem, you find a couple things: Cheap battery knock-offs problematic ‘supervision’ circuitry in that ‘battery’ with a few bonafide quality problems from legitimate manufacturers.
In the cases where I’ve drained the battery making long QSOs (talking) on one of those portable radios, it wasn’t the cell-pack that got hot, it was the area where the RF PA (Radio Frequency Power Amplifier) was mounted!
Reference section:
o Knock-off batts cited by laptop vendors as issue: http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/3267
o List of CPU power dissipation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation
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You’re talking discharge of a high-capacity, high-energy density power source in only 10 to 15 minutes of flying; I’ve had plastic battery holders with NiCad (low capacity) cells melted/destoyed when the ‘pack’ terminals came across the same radio’s antenna in my briefcase; ruined both the pack holder and the antenna due to the heat produced in that short-circuit condition!
Every morning I haul my T60p from our hour-long morning meeting conference room back to desk or lab; no unusual warmth is felt from the rather large protusion that is the battery pack on the back of that T60p laptop …
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Aron (02:11:02) :
The plastic water bottle epitomises everything about this throwaway, disposable society,” said de Rothschild
He should tell that to the billions of people over the last century who have finally had regular clean drinking water, juice and pasteurised milk added to their daily diet because of plastic bottles. Most of our ancestors had neither – a fact that escapes environmentalists.
from the link:
“The plastic water bottle epitomises everything about this throwaway, disposable society,” said de Rothschild, who trained to be a showjumper in England and who has trekked to both the north and south poles. However, he added that he was not aiming to demonise plastic, but was trying to highlight its alternative uses, as well as focusing global attention on the dangers posed to the ecology in regions such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
I would agree with this. AND it is not about CO2 :).
Recycling is what people did while I was growing up, nothing was thrown away that might be used again somehow.
We do not live a million years to see the plastic evaporate.
Though I agree that plastic is immensely useful, I also do not enjoy swimming in plastic sand, which is what happens when all these start breaking down into smaller parts. A line is left of colorful little bits at the tide line, and is picked up again to float with you if the sea is calm. Yack.
I spend half my week by the seaside, and on the walks I take I pick up plastic litter ( metal and paper I ignore) and throw it into the bins provided every 500 meters or so. This litter come sin from the open sea from plastics that have been thrown all over the place, from stream beds to boats cruising.
Sometimes I feel like a bag lady, but my part of the beach, about 2 kilometers, stays tidy, and hopefully without this ubiquitous plastic sand.
Whcih points to the problem : people should be educated about the disposal of plastic. That is a worthy goal, and the recycling business does a bit of that.
Jim – I was simply querying the expedition’s need to warm batteries that would, at least to some extent, generate their own heat, that could be retained with insulation. All batteries have internal resistance, ergo they produce heat as a by-product of charge or discharge. This isn’t always noticeable in everyday use, but it is nonetheless impossible to avoid. Some chargers even use temperature as part of the feedback process! (I wonder if that was what gave AGW’ers the idea?)
I used the laptop analogy as what I hoped would be a recognisable illustration. You may ascribe the heat in your Thinkpad’s battery pack to the rest of it, but some will be self-generated, I assure you – the reason is sticks out the back is to help this dissipate, which appears to work.
Well said, Anna v (22:10:25)!
The plastic in the oceans is causing real environmental problems right now. How many resources are being diverted from actual problems like this by the anti-CO2 movement?
I too pick up plastic off the beach, but sometimes there’s just too much!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7998501.stm
“Arctic team gives up on ice radar”
I too pick up plastic off the beach, but sometimes there’s just too much!
I’m no fan of plastic in the wrong place either, but I think the problem is one of attitude to disposability rather than the material itself. We are constantly exhorted not to put our shopping in thin plastic bags, yet the amount of plastic involved is vastly less than the packaging used to contain the items we have just bought! As a method of transporting stuff, they are very efficient, and if they end up in the oceans, that is unlikely to be the fault of most users. Education, a better attitude towards disposal (of all rubbish) and some effort to simplify over-packaging would largely solve the problem, IMHO. I realise, of course, that that’s easier said than done…
Mike, you’re confusing things here. Just like the rescue crew are the people who will be hurt (or perhaps killed) in the attempt to rescue the Caitlin suicide mission, so you put the life of your granddaughter at risk with a home birth — for what?
Sweet Grace could easily have been brain damaged, all it takes is a small complication and some bad luck — this happens to thousands of children every year, and it’s a terrible waste that can be avoided if there is the equipment ready to deal with the emergency. Your neighbor did the right thing to try and prevent your daughter from harming her baby, and you’re a fool to hate him for it.
The Caitlin team, just like your daughter, are entitled to kill themselves if they want to, but when they put others deliberately at risk with their carelessness, they should be stopped.
Your neighbor did the right thing to try and prevent your daughter from harming her baby
That’s an astonishing thing to say! Are you really saying that the neighbour’s (and your) opinions carry more weight in the matter than the mother’s?
It’s one thing to offer advice, entirely another to obstruct people exercising their own freedom of choice! Thank God we don’t (yet) live in a society that forces people to have children in hospital, or anywhere they feel happier. The risk of infection in hospitals is often greater than at home where, if you recall, the midwife was happy to perform. As so often in medicine, the risk/benefit analysis is far from clear.
Much as I am enjoying the general schadenfreude over the Catlin expedition, I admire their fortitude and, however misguided, their spirit of endeavour. Do we really want to discourage that?
“or anywhere they feel happier” = “anywhere they don’t feel happier”. Sorry!
I think that the survey is for Naught. According to the update 4/14, they failed one of their primary objectives which was to start the survey on muli-year ice.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/assets/downloads/Ice_Report_14_4_09.pdf
“The Catlin Arctic Survey’s route was specifically designed so that the team would begin the expedition on multi‐year ice, transit briefly through a region primarily covered with first‐year ice, then enter a region in which second‐year ice now prevails………
…….The fact that initial ice thickness results indicate that they have been travelling over first year ice, almost right from the start, indicates that the extent of the multi‐year ice is much reduced and is now confined to a narrow swath east of 130W along the northwest Canadian Arctic Archipelago / Greenland coasts.”
Should’nt they have known this before hand? Can’t they see the same satelite imagery that I can? How much worse could their planning have been.