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
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Alan the Brit said
Just want to point out that It’s not possible to keep a satellite stationary* over the poles. In fact satellites can only be stationary* 36,000km over the equator. Obviously being 36,000km over the equator is not a good place to take measurements of ice thickness from.
But yes, this stuff should be done from satellites with professionals taking accurate readings for calibration.
* Of course all the satellites are actually moving. It’s just that the geo-stationary ones take exactly one (sidereal) day to go around the earth so they appear to hover over one place.
Mike the Used to be a Brit
PS Webmaster : Any chance of adding a preview function for comments?
Keith,
you’re right … the plan was along 140°W … the first report says along 130°W … it seems the first line was just a planned route, and the end decision was different … they are at +/-129°W now …
it can also be that they are just plain stupid …
The post confirms that now the spin masters will try to salvage this fiasco through the same usual alarmist rhetorics… “Thin ice where they were not thinking they should find it but where the maps show they should indeed find it”. Should any of these people hold a press conference live, clearly there should be some hard questions asked.
ColdPlay,
You missed #6 as mentioned above.
6) Consulted experts on route planning and use GPS. Claim they expected to be on multi-year ice and are surprised to find primarily first year ice. This in spite of the fact that their route overlayed on reliable 3rd pary data shows it is on known first year ice!!!
I can think of a lot of excuses for the rest of the dialogue. This is obvious fabrication. I would suggest AGW syndrome, but, I don’t believe it is a recognized mental illness yet!!
that is not +/-129°W, but +/-128°W
sorry …
I believe the original con was set up to coincide with an Obama event on global warming, where the explorers were going to call in a report and talk to Obama about the myth of the melting ice. When it all went bad, the call was never placed.
Another hoax stunt gone bad.
Just “roses, roses” , as everybody expected. This is not and it has not been science ever. Again, it is about business, about carbon shares, carbon credits, stupid hardware like windmills and daylight time solar cells, all mixed up with last century’s ideology. Let us forget them, please! we are making the fools by freely promoting other people’s business.
I keep seeing parallels between this stunt and OctoMom’s.
Alex, actually, I think they did start on the 140W meridian, but thanks to the ice drift from the Beaufort Gyre, they have been rotated South and East. If you check the back date data from the only page on their website that lists locations, http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/from_the_ice.aspx , you see that there is a month of missing data between February 26 (two days before they were transported to the start point) and March 31 (the first date with any location data for Arctic locations). They mention several times on the site that they were losing ground from the Pole due to the Ice Drift.
I think the original plan was that they would land, and be able to travel far enough in the first week or so to get off the rotating ice from the Gyre. But temperatures were lower than expected, and they did not travel far, and even had to spend four days in one ice floe area waiting for resupplies. The whole time, the Gyre was moving their ice pack East and South.
So now, they are traveling roughly along the 130W meridian, several hundred miles away from their planned course. I guess this does demonstrate how the ice in the Arctic is disappearing. It is flowing South and East, which eventually pushes it out into the Atlantic Ocean where it melts in the warmer water.
I’ve noticed over the past several days that the stated temperature on the Catlin website has remained at a constant -25C. How likely is it that there is no temperature variation, no matter the time of day, or day to day?
@ur momisugly Wally (05:13:38) :
The Catlin expedition watches Ice Road Truckers!
@ur momisugly Dave (07:57:50) :
Imperial or U.S. gallons?
@ur momisugly Phil. (06:49:01) :
With all due respect, I would submit that is an unfair question and comment. If they are indeed using the SeaCat system, why did they post a video showing ice depth measurement using a tape measure? If nothing else, the video creates doubt about how the ice depth measurements were, in fact, taken. Far from jumping to conclusions, it is fair to keep the burden of showing how their “scientific measurements” were made on the Catlin expedition. After all, thanks to WUWT, they have already had to grudgingly admit that the telemetry wasn’t live and that the radar was not operational and had not been for a long time. I don’t doubt your or Greg’s comments regarding the Catlin expedition’s intent to use the SeaCat system, but aren’t you jumping to conclusions in assuming that they are actually using it, instead of the silly tape measure? Maybe it, also, has broken down. Inquiring minds want to know.
Respectfully, one of the many other Phils
Reply: Ok for people jumping in the middle of the story. The expedition planned to use SeaCat radar and the systems broke down. They did not post the video of the tape measure for public consumption, but I found it poking around on the website developer’s site and it likely was shot during training and at night. They are using tape measures now and this has been reported since the SeaCat radar broke down. ~ charles the moderator
I would be interested to see the data from the continuous measurements from the sled compared to the bore hole data they obtained. Granted they would be most likely taking the sled over the thinnest areas, but it would be interesting to see what the sled reported for the area approaching and leaving the locations of the boreholes.
Too bad the sled broke down and now they can cherry pick the locations to drill without any evidence of the surrounding area.
Alan the Brit
What should happen is that somebody at NASA should invent a rocket machine that can
Ok. There is a misconception here. The drilling and measurement video was not posted for public consumption. I found it poking around the web developer’s site.
It is likely just background footage shot for a documentary or later editing. I do not believe it is being portrayed as them in the field. It was likely shot during training.
While I believe this expedition is a ridiculous PR stunt with no scientific value, let’s not make up things where they don’t exist.
I found the Imperial measurements funny and pointed it out to Anthony. That is all.
jeez aka charles the moderator.
Here is a website that is useful. It has conversions for everything into everything,
http://www.onlineconversion.com/length_common.htm
Alan the Brit
“What should happen is that somebody at NASA should invent a rocket machine that can …”
Or failing that, somebody (say, a military supplier) should invent a freezing machine that can freeze things colder than at the north pole. Then, when you build an ice radar sled, you could test whether your electronics will work at the pole, and redesign them (with parts that meet or beat their published -40’C limits) if they won’t, BEFORE you trek out there. Oh wait, they make those, and people routinely use them to freeze-test their designs. In fact, I just used one yesterday to miracoulously test a circuit I designed at -55’C, without leaving the sunny southeastern US.
Is it a ll possible that the Catlin “Survey” has taught the AGW crowd a single, inconvenient lesson? That even with the support of massive funding, media and political monopoly – there are forces greater than themselves. Those forces are little impressed by politics or propaganda or the infantile meddling of people. They are the forces of Nature – and they fear no one.
To answer the question as to why the Catlin crew is using a flexible tape to measure a blind hole:
During the post processing of the data, the error introduced by the catenary of the tape can be removed to give the true thickness of the ice.
This will allow the Catlin folks to adjust the ice to acceptable levels. Should the ice prove to be embarrassingly thick, just take out a little more catenary until the collected data matches the computer models.
The bottom line is that we are seeing a classic example of the type of “science” that lies behind the AGW movement. So many posters above continue to entertain the idea that maybe they are doing what they say they are but I suppose they are mostly tongue-in-cheek.
It should be clear by now that the whole explication of this carnival show is a fraud. I think its entire history should be treasureed and stored to bring out at any future time how absurd they and their supporters at BBC et al whenever the AGW issure is discussed.
Dave
you have to have petrol in gallons, yet you drive a 1.6 litre car quite comfortably… why is that? Always wondered… 🙂
Keith, hmm …
1. at 80°N, distance between 140°W and 130°W is something like 190 km … in a month, that would be a drift of 6km per day … I have no idea what might be possible, but that seems an awful lot to me …
2. I don’t seem to be able to find any daily positions on the link that you gave … can you direct me more specifically to it … ?
3. I don’t follow your reasoning that the ice is disappearing … yes, it seems to be pushed towards the Atlantic, but if it is replaced by other ice, there is no net change … temperatures the Team have been enduring do not point towards excessive melting …
4. to guess their primary goals and ideas is off course a futile exercise … I must say that thinking about what might have been the original ideas, I have come to different conclusions than you … what I do agree is, is that the temperature that they encountered and are encountering is a “few” degrees lower than expected … Pen has experience there … he has been lifted from the ice before, and that was “very dangourous” because of late April … we are now practically late April, and what I think is that he expected about the same as a few years ago … “the Team could not reach the Pole because there was so much warming, and therefore so little ice, that they had to be lifted from the ice for their safety” in big headlines all over the world … unfortunately, progress has been much slower than planned, and they will have to carry on much longer than anticipated … it would be a real disappointment if they would have to reach the Pole, because that would mean that there is still plenty of ice on the North Pole in June or July, and an icefree Pole is not yet here, dispite all the “warming” of recent …
5. the scientific value of the whole thing, given the resources that have been put into it, is close to zero … in the end, they will have 300something drillholes in an area the surface of Europe … I have no idea what conclusions they will come up from that, but I can hardly wait to hear them …
I must admit that we are probably wasting to much of our limited time on these beclowned nimrods, but they do almost perfectly encapsulate the primary difficulty I have with all the AGW crowd. The basic premise implicit in all their blathering is that their scientific knowledge and expertise is so superior to that of all of us regular mortals, that to challenge their pronouncements is to commit crimes against humanity by placing the continuing existence of all life in peril. Yet when any of them venture an attempt to commit actual science it’s always “The Three Stooges at Harvard” time. The fumbling efforts of these polar pinheads are just an extravagant elaboration on the fundamental ignorance of, or intentional willingness to ignore, basic rules and procedures of scientific inquiry exhibited by most of the leading lights of AGW, Hansen, Mann, Stieg et al, etc. If you are going to promote your agenda based on superior science, it seems to me, you should be able to exhibit an ability to do science, somewhat beyond the median level of a middle school science fair.
Keith
They did not drift, they started where they did at around 128/129
The current image of where they are and where they are drilling.
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/data/satellite/hrpt_dfo_ir_100.jpg
The first concentric ring away from the pole is 85 degrees. Look for the 130 degree marker and you will see they are in an area of significant flow from west to south.
This is the most recent ice description of the Western arctic.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS56SD/20090413180000_WIS56SD_0004322386.gif
It doesn’t show anything about the current location as it only goes up to 80 degrees, but 47 days ago it was clear that starting at 140 was going to put them on multi-year ice, and 128-130 was going to put them in an extensive fissure between 2 older pieces of ice (in the image, the green between the brown).
This is the most recent Land surface image. Still between -18 and -28 Celsius. No open water to be seen yet.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009107/lst2.A2009107122000-2009107122500.2km.jpg
Isn’t their Seacat broken as well?
Maybe they drill until they break through the ice and then measure the length of the auger that was in the hole. No tape measure needed in the hole. Not extremely accurate but probably good enough.