The farcical account of the Catlin Crew continues. You don’t even have to dig deep anymore to find as many holes in their stories as they say they are drilling. In addition to what Steve points out, our own “Charles the moderator” provided the video framegrab below, notice anything interesting? You can watch the Quicktime video showing how they do “drilling and measurement” on the Catlin website developer, Indigopapa.tv, is here .
In case you don’t see it, the answer for the clip above is at the end of the article. – Anthony
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Wednesday, 15 Apr 2009 12:39
The Catlin Arctic Survey has now released its first set of ice and snow thickness measurements, showing the floating sea ice cover it has travelled over in the early stage is predominantly new ice, with an average thickness of 1.77m. The findings were obtained by manual drilling and are currently being analysed by science partners.
Finding ‘First Year Ice’ in this part of the Ocean was not what the Ice Team had expected at this stage of a route chosen, in conjunction with science advisors, to begin in an area where there would be multi-year ice. It suggests that the older, thicker ice has either moved to a different part of the ocean or has melted. This First Year Ice will only have formed since September 2008 and, being thinner, is less likely to survive the annual summer thaw. It points to an ever-smaller summer ice covering around the North Geographic Pole this year.
We’ve noticed that the ice is older and thicker than before
The Catlin Arctic Survey has now released its first set of ice and snow thickness measurements, showing the floating sea ice cover it has travelled over in the early stage is predominantly new ice, with an average thickness of 1.77m.
At the other end of the measurement spectrum, NASA’s IceSat has made more than 1.9 billion ice measurements already this spring – with no hypothermia or frostbite.
ANSWER: The tape measure shows a red 7F marker. That’s 7 feet for our Euro and UK visitors. Now why would they measure in feet then convert to meters?:
“…with an average thickness of 1.77m” source: April 15 Catlin blog
when you can easily buy metric tape measures with calibration certificates in Great Britain?
I could be wrong, but I watched the video several times to see if I could see evidence of perhaps printing in English units one side and Metric on the other, I did not see any and I did several frame grabs. It looks to me as if one side is blank and the other printed only in Feet and Inches. It appears to me that the tape is translucent white, perhaps a cloth or vinyl tape which would be lighter than a steel one since they have gear carrying considerations to make.
Readers feel free to double check my observation and report in comments. – Anthony
Despite the flaws at NSIDC (trying to spin the data towards a politically correct interpretation), the Colorado folk at least appear honest in gathering the data.
Catlin’s whole outlook, on the other hand, appears so tainted as to defy belief. It looks to me that they knew exactly what they were doing and are faking surprise in finding that they were on first year ice. They can now posture that there is more new ice than they expected {surprise!} to find; they can then say that this makes the Arctic sea ice situation worse than they expected. This is the message that will remain and will be carefully crafted to override any news this September that the peak melt turns out to be even less than in 2008. The fact that the Arctic may be well on its way to recovering from the 30 year positive PDO will never make the news.
If an accountant did his job the way these folks are pretending to do theirs, he’d be brought up on charges and might even end up facing jail time.
This appears less about science and more about dogma validation.
Universities have announced a new web based department in climate studies:
Equivocal Climatology
Earn an EBS, EMS, or your EPhD in Equivocal Climatology. Without ever leaving your equivocally warm bed.
I didnlt watch the video. Is there an easy and repeatable to push the fiber tape measure down through 5 feet of rapidly refreezing water and to “feel” or grab the bottom of the ice in order to get an accurate measurement. Perhaps in the tape the procedure is elucidated.
Dave Wendt (19:45:51) :
“…the website was littered with pics of them dragging their sledges over ice structures that all appeared to be 10′-20′+ high.”
I wonder if they drilled into any of those structures? I recall that in a few cases they claimed to travel parallel with the ridges until they could find a low spot to drag the equipment through. A properly chosen sampling design ought to have resulted in an occasional climb to the top of a ridge and then drilling through. That couldn’t be pleasant in -40C temps. My other thoughts are that maybe they didn’t realize their radar wasn’t working – could it give readings out to the side (not just straight down)? And then, maybe they were too befuddled by the cold to know what a mess they were making of sampling design decisions. If and when some numbers are provided, should we not expect to see a few ice thicknesses of 20-25 feet (Let’s see, in meters that would be #@ur momisugly*#@ur momisugly . This science stuff is hard!)
If the still shot is supposed to be the time of measurement, I question their measurement. I took the still, and made a scale to match their tape and numbered mine in inches. If the water surface is the ‘top’ of the ice, then the ice is 1.88 meters/74″. It just occured to me that if 10% of the ice is above water level, then it can’t be over 2 feet thick. WTF? I threw in a 40 degree angle for reference too.
http://i42.tinypic.com/15qrvih.jpg
David Ball (21:18:51) Sounds like we are of the same ilk WRT AWG, my wife shut off AIT after 10 minutes because she couldn’t take my yelling at Gore to stop with the lies.
[snip – please no suggestions like this]
This video is on a sub page of the idigopapa website http://dev.indigopapa.tv/clients/catlin/
As far as I can see it is not available from the customer facing pages
It is in MOV format – not very popular
it is 370MB not a good size for downloading – bandwidth costs
There are 3 other videos one is over 1GB in size!
The video is made up with several clips
Mr. Goddard does not mention this
Nor does he say that there are 2 tapes in the video – yellow and white
Nor has he corected the lighting angle comment – The yellow tape portion is in darkness illuminated by head torches The white tape portion may be the same.
At one point there are 3 people in the clip (3 head torches) and obviously someone taking the photo.
The yellow tape looks to be in cms
The white tape has markings both sides.
If this is on the catlin cutomer facing page as a expedition photo then it would be wrong. But as I said I cannot find it so its date / personnel /equipment are in doubt!
Please keep it real
It’s hard enough to use measuring tape to measure a room let alone stick it in a hole full of ice slush and expect to get an accurate measurement.
I’ve seen better “science” at a middle school science fair.
At this date and their latitude at high noon, the length of shadows on a horizontal surface should be about 3.2 times the height of the vertical source. At all other times, they would of course be longer.
According to their equiptment list, they are using a SeaCat to take the depth and temperature measurements. There is no tape mentioned.
Quoted:-The SeaCat system has been supplied by one of our Science Advisors, Professor Tim Stanton at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. It consists of an ultra light weight winch system and a high resolution Conductivity Temperature Depth sensor package (CTD) made by Sea Bird Electronics.
Maybe they could have saved on weight on their sled if they’d taken a skinnier auger and a much shorter tape. They could have just measured from the top of the water to the brim of the hole and then extrapolated from the relative densities of the water and the floating ice.
I see Steve K beat me to the patent office on that one!
Perhaps they only carried the cloth tape and hand auger in case the radar unit failed ? In any case, the data collection is inadequate for a 6th Form science experiment and more than duplicated by satellite and Buoy measurements. From the evidence so far, it is clear that this was a PR setup from the word go. No sign of professional Arctic science experience.
What a farce this has been. One cannot discredit the mission of trekking to the north pole, however, the motive in which this mission has been undertaken calls into question the integrity of the data being collected.
We already have numerous quotes from Pen Hadow stating that what he hopes one of the outcomes of this mission is to secure a climate accord in Copenhagen.
So, in reality, this is a propagandist mission backed by politically motivated environmental ideologues. Akin to Mr.Hansen being put in charge of reporting global temperatures while calling for civil disobedience. Yes, we can all trust the information coming from those sources to be objective.
For example, this piece was written by Mike Hansen, president of Catlin Canada.
Ah, yes, WWF international, a good independent science organization…
But this goes even further as one peers into the juicy details. Obviously, judging by his comments, Pen Hadow has a vested interest in finding and submitting data suitable for passing the Copenhagen Accord, the realm of public discourse. But there’s another angle to this, the private sector…
As some of you may not know, Catlin is a insurer/reinsurer. I’m sure plans are in the works to use this mission to base insurance rates paid by those in areas that may be vulnerable to climate change. So not only is this propaganda, it’s also a ploy.
Continued from Mike Hansen:
Is this not a conflict of interest? Sending environmental activists to gather climatic data for an insurance company trying to asses rates due to impact from climate change? Ask anyone living in Florida or along the US Atlantic Coast how their insurance policies have adjusted their rates due to the ‘threat of more hurricanes due to climate change’.
A tape measure to measure a bottomless hole???
A scientific method indeed.
Their means of measurement beggars belief.
Try this experiment. Get a flat piece of wood 5-7 foot long. Lay it on a flat surface. Get tape measure. Standing at one end of the wood extend tape measure so that it hooks over the other end of the wood. Measure length of wood. Not easy to do at normal temperatures in normal daytime clothing. Now bundle yourself in thick clothing and gloves. Try again.
I had always assumed that they had an extendable pole with a short,right angled bit at the end that they slipped down the hole until it was through the ice and then pulled it back to grab the bottom of the ice; marked, on the pole, where the ice surface was then pulled it out to measure. Boy was I naive. A TAPE MEASURE?????? PUSHED DOWN THE HOLE??????
Enjoy.
When I think of all the British school kids following this,
it makes sick. Manipulating kids is the lowest, slimiest
form of exploitation there is. It is insidiously evil! All
the people doing this around the world should be
crushed like the bugs they are! (no offence to bugs)
“They could have just measured from the top of the water to the brim of the hole and then extrapolated from the relative densities of the water and the floating ice”
That would be very approximate since the density of both the snow, the ice and the ocean water varies (the snow weighs down the ice, of course). They would be lucky to get less than 10% error. Not that their present “high tech” approach is likely to be much better.
DHMO (20:05:47) :
Err 7ft is over 2 metres why is no one saying that? You can not have 7ft on one side and 1.77 metres on the other! If the tape is actually metric then the measure is 2.1 metres. If the measure was in fact 5 feet 9.7 inches
I think you mean 67 and 57/64″:-)
I would also be on the lookout for any funding rackets as is common with other endeavors such as political campaigns. It sort of goes like this:
The expedition itself is set up as its own financial entity. One or more of the expedition members lends the expedition entity a “wad-o-cash” for expenses at a rather high interest rate … say 10% or more. Then they have “fundraisers” to pay the expenses, most of which is interest that is paid back to the expedition members who “lent” the money. Depending on how quickly the principal is paid down, the lenders can make a fortune from carrying this debt for a long time.
Politicians in the US do that all the time, it is how they become rich by using their campaign as a bank that pays better interest than they can get from any other investment. They lend their campaign a few million dollars at 15% interest and have fundraisers in perpetuity in order to pay the interest in the debt … which goes in their own pocket and maybe some of the principal … which also goes in their pocket.
Converting from feet and inches to metric is straightforward, it’s nothing to make a fuss about, especially when there are plenty of other ‘odd’ things about this expedition.
Any seamstress can tell you that cloth, even plastic-reinforced cloth, tape measures stretch. I have to replace mine regularly, and I treat them with TLC, not with freezing water and weights. If they’re using a heat source to dry the tape so it doesn’t turn into an ice sculpture between measurements…
I’m going to read a different WUWT post now so I don’t wake the family by losing it and yelling at the laptop!
Oh dear. I mean…. what? Who’s funding this little trip, just out of interest. If it’s a public body, I shall write to my MP to complain. Not that he will take the slightest bit of notice.
Scientific credibility is being damaged by stunts like this. One could argue that the people involved with this kind of thing are scientific terrorists, they’re bombing the very foundations of science – honesty, objectivity and integrity.