Sharp eyed WUWT reader Rick K spotted this advertisement on Yahoo News:
I double checked what Rick K reported, and yes, they are running this ad. Either they just don’t care that they are running ads for “results” prior to any hard data being published or this is some sort of advertising scheduling slipup. Given how sloppy this laughable facade of a scientific expedition has been so far, publishing “live” biometric readings that were actually 30 days old, I’m guessing the latter.
Readers, feel free to witness this yourself, double check the experience. Here is the URL:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090422/sc_space/darkgulpingcouldexplainblackholes
You may have to refresh a few times since ads in the spot rotate. Here is the full sized advertisement:
The link simply goes to their main website, I’m betting though that there is some sort of “results” page that it was supposed to be linked to. And what sort of advice could some Arctic ice trekkers possibly give me about my business related to “global warming” anyway? The absurdity of such advertised advice is mind boggling.
This is what happens when you mix the following ingredients:
1) An insurance company (Catlin)
2) Environmental zealots willing to stage an expedition in exchange for money on the premise that “science will be done”(Pen Hadow et al)
3) Gullible celebrity sponsors (Charles, Prince of Wales)
4) Gullible real scientists, like Ron Kwok of NASA Jet Propulsion Lab who was lured into making statements like this one, proudly displayed on their web site:
Tell me, Dr. Kwok, just how will Catlin Arctic Survey tell me how soon “global warming will affect my business’?
A better question might be, “how soon will your association with these people ruin your career”? Do you already have the results of the data analysis ready to go with the advertising campaign?
Perhaps we should let Mr. Kwok know what is going on, because the sooner he distances himself from these people, the less chance that JPL will be tarnished further. As a US taxpayer I am concerned that our publicly funded science programs have anything to do with the Catlin farce. Fortunately, our scientists are required to keep their contact info in the public domain
The results of a Google Search tell us how to warn Mr. Kwok of this Catlin farce, perhaps he is unaware:
R. Kwok, is with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, 91109-. 8099, USA telephone: 818-354-5614, e-mail: ronald.kwok@jpl.nasa.gov
Perhaps their media relations people and director would be interested to know what Mr. Kwok has gotten himself and JPL connected with also.
I respect the work of the fine men and women at JPL, there is still time to step away before real damage is done. In the meantime, I weep for science.
[snip – thread is about Catlin Arctic survey, not ozone, , not Antarctica, feel free to repost on a relevant thread]
Give Pen Hadow his due, he’s a serious polar explorer. I daresay Donald Trump turning up at Resolute with a fur coat asking to see polar bears would get a positive response if he offered to pay 🙂
Capitalist exploitation of our environment!
Sombody call Ralph Nader!
I like that: ‘Project its declining trend’. He knows it’s declining? Heh, I know it isn’t. And I’m with the Pet Protection Lab.
=========================================
I am intrigued by the possible scenarios that Catlin have dreamed up for the time when the ‘intrepid arctic explorers’ are dramatically rescued from the last remaining piece of ice close [well, within about 350/400Kms, OK 450Kms] to the Geographic North Pole? Are their rescuers going to be landing on floats or skis? How many ‘explorers’ will have been eaten by polar bears? What a joke and how embarrassing for the Prince of Wails?
40 years ago NASA put a man on the moon and now they spent their money on a song about global warming.
“AIM = Adapt Innovate Mitigate. What happens at Earth’s poles will rock your world. From POLAR-PALOOZA, a multimedia initiative with NSF & NASA support.”
http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090415-TakeAIM
Its like an inconvient truth the musical.
What? You think they can do all this ‘science’ for free?
Every time I go on their website I get a little more embarrassed for them. I like how their homepage has pretty much rid itself of telemetry data and replaced it with a statement saying “The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first-year ice. Satellite imagery of the area, especially passive microwave imagery (e.g. AMSR and QuikScat data), indicates the area is indeed covered primarily with first-year ice and a scattering of multi-year ice floes.” Yeah, as mentioned before on here, you can do that at home.
Well this goes to show you that just like the science the conclusions were drawn and now they were looking for data to back it up. I wonder if this NASA scientist really wrote that quote. Email the guy and get his response. You never know.
“40 years ago NASA put a man on the moon and now they spent their money on a song about global warming.
“AIM = Adapt Innovate Mitigate. What happens at Earth’s poles will rock your world. From POLAR-PALOOZA, a multimedia initiative with NSF & NASA support.”
http://www.space.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090415-TakeAIM
Its like an inconvenient truth the musical.”
I would be very interested to know how much federal funding goes into this program. It greatly offends me that in this time of economic hardship, my government chooses to use our tax dollars to sponsor climate change music videos!
On the other hand, I take great delight knowing that these clowns are doing their part to damage to the credibility of climate “science” in the public arena…
[snip – thread is about Catlin Arctic survey, not ozone, , not Antarctica, feel free to repost on a relevant thread]
As for insurance companies and climate change, try this one
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/inexpert-elicitation-by-rms-on-hurricanes-5148
[snip – off topic, this thread is about Catlin, not CO2, feel free to repost on a relevant thread]
I know how this works. The insurance company has ready made “in the can” reports put together by an ace team of advertising developers. These are already in the hands of their targeted consumers. The consumer (in this case the JPL) feels the need to be the “you heard it here first” group.
But lets go back a few years. I can imagine the insurance company coming together a couple of years ago in a brainstorming session to develop a new line of insurance products against disasters caused by global warming. Instead of “Act of God” insurance policies, it is now “Act of Human” insurance policies. The ice team is simply part of the plan put together by the company. It will be a money maker because hysteria has already been planted in the consumer’s mind who is now ready to buy said policy. The company, to be SURE, has figured out the odds of “Act of Human” disasters actually happening and knows this is easy money waiting to fall into their hands.
Intro to Business 101, Fall class 1973, OSU. It’s called “Skimming the Cream”.
[snip – thread is about Catlin Arctic survey, not ozone, , not Antarctica, feel free to repost on a relevant thread]
Do you mean to say that this is nothing more than an
“Expedition to Nowhere”?
I doubt that this is a slipup. Paid advertisers on Yahoo and Google have the ability to turn their ads on or off although both Yahoo and Google control the times they show.
Catlin Survey asks,
“How soon will Global Warming affect your business?”
Answer… Never, unless you mean the Catastrophic AGW Hypothesis that has affected every business worldwide. If you want to be on the winning team send money to Catlin NOW!!!
Please, we don’t accept noisy coins, send only nice quiet folding money…
Brian Johnson talks of an embarrassed Prince of Wales –
When one drops ones pants in front of a crowd, one expects a reaction – embarrassment would be if the crowd turned away rather than laughed.
Humm, looking at my post did I just make a bad punny???
Mike
What did you expect? Catlin expects a return on its investment. They can be seen as being environmentally concerned while increasing their business.
In the meantime, all those folk who are vested in the AGW belief system keep holding onto the 2007 melt – the clock stopped for them – while they wait with bated breath for what they hope are results this September which will confirm their bias. And every downtick on the IARC-JAXA graph will be jumped on (such as yesterday’s 100,000 km² drop in ice extent) to tout the doom we face. While the extent is still at a seven year high for the date, it can easily drop and mix it up with previous years over the course of the next few months. I expect this September’s levels to be well above those set last year, leaving the AGW fantasy crowd hanging onto 2007 as a fading memory of the good times.
hmmm……, the question from Catlin is relevant for the Ice Cream Man, and the answer to “how soon will warming affect your business?” is about two months, at least in the NH. Ice Cream Man ring your bell, it’s summertime…. :-), sorry I could not resist the temptation
Shawn,
if basic physics tell us that is how IT SHOULD BE, what is going to tell us WHAT IS???
I would point you to the irrefutable fact that CO2 has continued its smooth rise while the temps have gone south.
There is nothing wrong with the physics. There is a LOT wrong with interpretations of it that ignore reality and empirical measurements. There is a LOT wrong with continuing to adjust the measurements to try and fit them to the PRECONCEPTIONS of the models instead of working to improve the measurements.
This period in history will go down with all the others where the Scientific Orthodoxy (AGW) was used to beat down those who simply were trying to ADVANCE SCIENCE!!! It will also be another warning against allowing Gubmint to interfere in Science and Education!!!
Please STOP this soap opera. No more Catlin promotion.
It seems to me that even the AGW believers must be able to see the light with this kind of thing. This is like announcing the results of the football game during the opening kickoff. Even if the expedition was doing “real science”, there are no results yet, let alone any actually analyzed results.
I, too, weep for science.
The irony of charades like this? The warmists keep whining that “we” are not “looking at the science”… that one always makes me laugh!
How soon will Global Warming affect your business? Soon if your name is Catlin because Catlin offers highly speculative securities in disaster insurance swaps. Scare people and they buy insurance.
http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=200609270700355217J
The Catlin crew is all over the place as they try to spin cold, warming, ice, wind and water into their propaganda web.
It starts to get a little awkward:
They celebrate that it’s warmed to -20′. BUT, that will cause:
1. ” . . .increased likelihood of coming across open water. . .” (huh? doesn’t water still freeze at -20′ ?)
Two sentences later:
2. ” . . . the team were expecting to have to cross a fairly wide lead, of approximately 1km, but they reported ‘NO’ leads today.”
Next sentence:
3. “With the winds, the ice opens and closes in a matter of hours and it would have been quite likely that this is what would have happened here.”
Talk about conjecture, spin and just plain winging it. If all that planning and fancy telemetry has them ‘best guessing’ about what’s goin’ down up there . . . well, I’m sure not prepared to trust one scintilla of data they coming dragging back on those sledges.
Well, maybe a verified picture of a frostbitten toe or two.
On March 19 on my own blog when I was “following the money” I quoted the Catlin blurb on the sponsor’s page:
“Catlin Group Limited, a leading global specialty insurer and reinsurer writing more than 30 classes of business. We provide creative risk management solutions and excellent financial security to clients worldwide. ”
…and added the following parenthetical observation:
(Any bets about their “Climate Change Mitigation” lines of insurance?)
Now how did I see this coming?
[snip – off topic, sorry, windmills not relevant to this thread]
Excellent job of documenting this farce, Anthony. To quote my son: “They’re busted.”
Perhaps now Dr. Meier would like to take a stronger position than “I don’t anticipate using the Catlin data”?
It’s clearly time for outright condemnation of this masquerade by those whose field will be further tainted by those seeking to cash in with pre-determined outcomes.
“The melting of the sea ice will accelerate climate change, sea level rise and habitat loss on a global scale. Its loss is also a powerful indicator of the effects of human activity on our planet’s natural systems and processes. The Survey’s scientific findings will be taken to the national negotiating teams working to replace the Kyoto Protocol agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.” (italics mine) — Catlin Arctic Survey
Apparently the conclusion of the study was prepared before any data was collected. In the “normal” scientific process (whatever that is anymore), this is the second to last step, but they moved it to number 1.
OK at the risk of getting the snip: The next thing Catlin will offer is anti-Pirate insurance. Pen Hadow will be the skipper of an oil tanker that will steam near Somalia while surveying small boats filled with Pirates. Catlin has underwritten the survey Catlin Gulf of Aden Survey. Mr Hadow made famous from his Arctic Expeditions has recently changed his career due to lack of ice in the Northern Regions. He was quoted recently as saying “Lack of Arctic Ice Surprises Explorers”.
Just trying to add a little humor here.
Wouldn’t this be a form of insurance fraud? Generating false data to drive up the demand for business?
Low frequency sound and health problems:
In moderate infrasonic exposures, the physiological effects observed in
experimental studies often seem to reflect a general slowdown of the
physiological and psychological state. The reduction in wakefulness and the
correlated physiological responses are not isolated phenomena and the
physiological changes are considered to be secondary reactions to a primary
effect on the CNS. The effects of moderate infrasound exposure are thought to
arise from a correlation between hearing perception and a following stimulation
of the CNS. The participation of the reticular activating system (RAS) and the
hypothalamus is thought to be of great importance. Taking this into account,
changes in the physiological reactions are not just a question of whether the
sound waves are above the hearing threshold. Furthermore reactions within
the CNS, including RAS, hypothalamus, limbic system, and cortical regions are
probably highly influenced by the quality of the sound. Some frequencies and
characters of the noise are probably more effective than others for producing
weariness.
A high degree of caution is necessary before ascribing the origin of
physiological changes in working situations to infrasonic exposure because of
their association. When analysing the factors promoting fatigue e.g. driving,
many aspects have to be considered. The environment is usually a
combination of many factors such as seat comfort, visibility, instrumentation,
Link: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/noise/research/lowfrequency/pdf/lowfreqnoise.pdf
Nasty Sea Ice Returns East of Newfoundland
Unbeknownst to most folks (except perhaps to those who have seen The Shipping News, that spacey Kevin movie), there is significant oil & gas off the eastern coast of Newfoundland. This is roughly the area where Titanic went down in 1912, a bad year for ice, and about the time of the last significant drop in sunspots.
Curiously, drilling operations on the White Rose Field east of St. John’s were suspended last week due to heavy ice conditions. See http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article176494.ece
Nice report with map from Husky Energy:
http://www.huskyenergy.com/downloads/AboutHusky/Publications/FactSheets/2009/FS_EastCoast.pdf
Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
Note that you won’t hear about this in the MSM, unless and until they decide to change bandwagons to the Global Cooling one; in which case the entire herd (well, whatever’s left) will send reporters to “report live from St. John’s”.
NB contrary to the wackie, greenie tone of “The Shipping News”, there hasn’t EVER been a spill from drilling or production operations in the Maritimes, AND (since the cod got decimated) oil & gas provides the only truly lucrative employment in the region.
[Not that it isn’t terribly dangerous; a few weeks back the main rotor shaft on a Super Puma broke on the way to the Hibernia platform, killing all 18 aboard, almost all Newfoundlanders.]
Oh, and BTW, contrary to the Monroe Doctrine, there IS still a european colony in the New World: the islands of St. Pierre and Michelon, just south of Argentia Bay. They are an “overseas department” of France (like Tahiti). I have been to both; more godforsaken places do not exist. Like New Orleans, folks must be buried in above ground crypts; not because of a high water table, but because there’s not enough SOIL to actually bury a body. Unlike New Orleans, many f the crypts have glass portholes so you can see inside; a nice jaunty nautical touch if you ask me.
For those of you who have never done scientific experiments, you invariably encounter unforeseen problems that prevent you taking the measurements you want. If you are in your lab you can redesign the experiment, order different equipment, or move on to a different experiment.
On an expedition you don’t have those luxurys, and have to persevere with whatever experiments you planned to do with whatever you brought with you.
On expensive expeditions like this, requiring months of planning, they are under considerable pressure to produce results (ie measurements).
Nobody wants a reputation for spending a lot of money and not producing anything worthwhile. So they must ‘measure and persevere’ irrespective of the quality of their measurements.
I’m not accusing them of scientific fraud, but I’m sure their quality control leaves a lot to be desired. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, uses their data.
I’m sure countless business owners are waiting with bated breath for Catlin to deliver their helpful report.
Yeah, you bet.
I can’t imagine what information they would be collecting to help any business at all. Unless it’s the mental health care industry.
Or the cold weather gear/clothing-expedition industry?
Oh I got it! The comedy business, Leno, Colbert, Stewart, will beneift.
Here’s more of their ignorance:
“The snow reduces the suns strength meaning Ann must resort to only using the winds direction as a navigation tool. They are still close enough to the Magnetic North Pole for it to play havoc with compasses, and as batteries are at a premium, the GPS is only switched intermittently during the day”
A wrist mounted Garmin Foretrex costs $99 on Ebay and will run 15 hours on two AAA batteries . For this trip, I’d splurge and get lithium batteries which work at -40 (C or F), and last twice as long. They are about half the weight of regular batteries, which weigh in at one ounce per pair. Our intrepid scientists are hauling several hundred pounds and cant bring a few ounces in batteries???
Well, give the Catlin folks credit-maybe they know that the bloom’s off the AGW rose and they are trying to make a few bucks before the AGW insurance maket crashes.
Of Course there’s always the AGC market (Anthropomorphic Global Cooling-returns)
to exploit when things literally go south…
Get the team out NOW…
“creative risk management”
That explains it…
Dr. Ron Kwok JPL NASA
Dear Sir,
I know you must be very excited to present
the results of the Catlin Arctic icehole data;
but could you please wait until our team of
intrepid arctic explores returns, so as not to
have the appearance that we reached our
conclusions before we reviewed the data.
Thank You,
Prince Chuck
On Monday morning ( my time which is 20 hours ahead of the expedition’s time ) the Catlin site (http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/latestfromtheice)
reported the following
” Weather Snow
-25°C?
Present location 84°46’16.4″N
127° 36’ 55” W
Estimated distance to North Pole 548.93 km ”
Today which is Friday morning (my time)they are reporting
“Weather Cloudy
-20°C℃
Present location 84°52’55″N
125° 54’ 42” W
Estimated distance to North Pole 568.93 km ”
Note the that in 4 days they estimate they are now 20 km further from the pole than on Monday.
This does not match up with the lat and lon which does have the getting closer to the pole.
Also, is it a coincidence that both estimates end in .93 ???
Errors like this make me have very little confidence in any results they publish.
Looking again at Monday’s
“Estimated distance to North Pole 548.93 km ”
I think it should have read “584.93 km”
This also raises the question, why do they “estimate” to two decimal places?
OT
I do not remember this being predicted AT ALL. I’m in richmond, VA, and our high today is supposed to be 71. It’s sunny outside so I’m sure we should reach it….well, maybe.
I just got a shock. I just checked and our current temperature is…
29!!!!!!!!!!
Windchill is 17!!!!!!!!!
It is now noon here.
I check on this stuff every day, it’s not as if I’ve been in a closet the last few days.
Q: How soon will global warming affect your business?
A: Soon after Cap & Trade goes into effect…Then I won’t be able to afford to drive to work. Even if I take the bus, I won’t be able to afford to turn the lights on when I get there.
Krueger, I’m literally apathetic with surprise. But will the environmental and science story editing cretins in the main-stream media realise?
[snip – off topic]
Oh quit it. Everyone knows the coordinates are for demonstration purposes only.
Soon there will be a disclaimer just like the bio data: demonstration only, not realtime.
This is really turning into a Kwok of (snip). Someone had to say it,….
With our current president delivering on his promises to address global warming, he has proposed hundreds of billions of dollars to ‘solve’ this problem. Catlin is like many companies that are lining up at the trough for a good feed. They will get theirs for now but how will we live with the consequences.
John in NZ (08:56:56) :
Looking again at Monday’s
“Estimated distance to North Pole 548.93 km ”
I think it should have read “584.93 km”
This also raises the question, why do they “estimate” to two decimal places?
You were correct the first time. On Monday (Day 50) the distance to the pole was estimated at 548.93 km. On Wednesday (Day 52) the estimated distance was first shown as 551.16 km; they later (finally) corrected the distance to the pole on Day 52 as 583.38 km. They seem to have had a problem with estimating distance to the pole for some time now (as with everything else they’ve been doing).
On Day 53, the distance traveled (355.58) + estimated distance to pole (568.93) = total distance of 924.51, close to the original distance projected from their start point of 928.5 km.
For awhile their total distance they’ve been showing had been around 892 km, just a tad off.
National Geographic is reporting on the expedition and the single-year ice.
Apr. 22 article.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090422-arctic-ice-survey-video-ap.html
If someone is dumb enough to believe in scientific consensus, they will be gullible enough to invest their money with Catlin. This is Al Gore’s whole premise. Just another sideshow charlatan.
Sure looks like the sales folks gearing up to flog a little bit of insurance.
Whats with all the snippy?. Is it the same person trying to get attention by changing name?
REPLY: I’m growing tired of people just posting anything that comes to mind and is not at all related to the thread. To many threads turn it free-for-alls unrelated to the original subject. – Anthony
You can’t get the revenue coming in unless the ads are out there!
But something occurred to me. An insurance company makes money by selling “protection”. They are making a bet that the revenue stream that comes in from premiums will be greater than the revenue paid out.
So what if the whole world “believes” in Global Warming which will cause something like, say, sea level rise. Now lets say there is an insurance company willing to sell a policy to mitigate against the impact of “Global Warming”:. Lets pick “sea level rise” as one of the things they will insure you against. But lets also say that they know the globe is really cooling and they won’t ever actually have to pay a claim that could be linked to “Global Warming”. It would be in the interest for such a hypothetical firm to foster the “Global Warming” hype while they sell insurance against it knowing they will never actually have to pay off. The hype becomes a cash cow for them.
I don’t know if anyone is actually DOING this or not, but it would be a rather brilliant thing to do. I call it “boogieman insurance”.
Oops, just noticed in the comments that Pamela Gray’s mind sort of went down the same path as mine when I made my last comment. Hmm. GMTA I suppose.
I am sitting here in Scotland and wondering how NASA can get involved with this Catlin expedition considering the negative exposure it has received on this Web site. Having looked through the thread here I do not see a single US citizen having declared they have contacted R. Kwock or his supervisors as suggested.
I do hope that a good number have seen fit to express their misgivings about this unwarranted involvement. Unfortunately I cannot make contact from here not being a US citizen. I have tried several times to get a AGW sceptic letter published in the local broadsheet but they appear to be closed to anything other than the usual AGW alarmist propaganda. I have started to contact MPs in the hope that eventually some of them will see sense.
Make sure you click on the ad so they have to pay for advertising.
The Catlin website says: “Catlin is the title sponsor of the Catlin Arctic Survey, a scientific expedition to measure the thickness of the sea ice in the Arctic. This data will help determine when this ice may disappear.”
So… the intrepid “scientists” on the survey are actually in the pocket of “Big Insurance.”
Tsk, tsk.
This is cute – if you go to Catlin’s home site at http://www.catlin.co.uk/ they have a section on the left about the survey which says:
The “Find out more” link is <a href=”www.catlinarcticsurvey.com” target=”_blank”>Find out more</a> which has a typo, it should have at least a leading ‘/’ – as written it goes to http://www.catlin.co.uk/www.catlinarcticsurvey.com which would be an internal page.
You’d think someone at Catlin would be interested enough in the survey to find and report the busted link. Of course, “conducting scientific experiments” is also wrong – they’re just collecting data. Well, maybe experimenting with the effects of cold on human bodies and electronics.
For the benefit of the Catlin team, here is a handy formula for estimating your distance d in km to the pole from your latitude L expressed as a decimal:
d = (90-L)*1000/9
I suspect that Catlins involvement with this organisation makes their sponsorshgip of Pen Hadows expedition a good selling point for their services. It would be interesting to see if anyone from Catlin was on WG3 of the last IPCC assessment.
http://www.climate-insurance.org/upload/pdf/20081127_ClimateWise_News_Release.pdf
Tonyb
John in NZ presented us with this;
Monday’s location
Present location 84°46′16.4″N
127° 36’ 55” W
Friday’s location
Present location 84°52′55″N
125° 54’ 42” W
If true, the location change of 1 degree 42 minutes W in this short time indicates what? That the ice is moving East?
In relation to this topic and others I can’t state how extensive the whoppers have become over at RC.
The parade of comical comments in their latest thread breaks all records.
It is stunning.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/yet-more-aerosols-comment-on-shindell-and-faluvegi/
All of which generates from the belief that none of you or the science discussed here exists.
Ron Kwok is a crock of ……. you fill in the blank….
I recycled the page 53 times for the advertisement appeared. Yes, it’s there. No doubt, Catlin’s Arctic Ice Survey is pure propaganda.
I posted this on 4/16 and thought that it was relevant to this thread.
——-
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’.
Adolfo Giurfa (08:12:15) :
Low frequency sound and health problems:
So this is what is affecting the Catlin marketing department. The sound from all those computer fans….. I would suggest a long vacation in the Arctic on a rowboat.
It is, however, gratifying that a survey of one year ice is producing one year thickness results. Can you say “biased”? All together now…
If the media doesn’t start exposing the deceptive, used car salesman tactics like those employed by Catlin, et al soon then I’m afraid that stunts like this are only goin to continue to grow in number. The cap&trade and/or cabon tax are only side bars IMHO. These are strategies to entrench global economies into the fallacy. Their agenda is much more grandiose (see ‘The Green Agenda’ website) it seems.
Next they’ll be teling us that the increased ice at Antartica is due to the ozone…oh, wait they already used that. Or that the rivers are drying…nope, used that one too. Well, you get the idea. This ‘make it up as you go’ science is sickening.
As more observational evidence stacks up against them the more they will have to stoke their propaganda engine, which must be so large now as to belch out more Co2 than all the oceans combined.
My prediction is that we will see more stunts like the Catlin survey unless the media picks up the ball and runs with it. This needs a firm slap-down on a global scale. Albeit, it would still only be one more nail in a coffin that now contains a preponderance of nails, how many is it going to take?
The catlin ad is unforgiveable, as is the comment by Kwok. Generally speaking this would be great if we could only get it the media to expose it!
“How soon will global warming affect your business?”
I don’t know about your business, but I moved all my manufacturing to China several years ago. The Religion of Global Warming’s first commandment is:
1) Persecute the productive for they create wealth.
The Chinese ‘communists’ see things a little differently:
1) Celebrate the productive for they create wealth.
what worries me is the automatic predisposition to a declining trend (Dr. Kwok) he states that with the new data set we can project its declining trend. These people already have the outcome figured out and will mold any data they get to make it to that outcome. there is no convincing them.
John H (10:00:22) :
Realclimate lives in their own little inbred world: click. They are insignificant and unimportant.
To get to the truth in science requires debate from both sides of the question. Realclimate censors those who do not agree with Gavin Schmidt. That makes RC a propaganda site — which is the reason they failed so miserably in the “Best Science” site awards. Thinking people don’t want to be preached to. They want honest debate.
I noted one thing on the arctic ice today. If you check the region west of the island Novaja Zemlja that is north of russia mainland there is an intersting change in ice are there.
Check the ice in that area for 22nd April the years 2006-2008.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=22&fy=2006&sm=04&sd=22&sy=2007
It looks like warm currents has penetrated the arctic ice keeping it ice free for 3 years. This has happened in the past 30 years also, but mostly only for a single year. By looking on the ice area near Novaja Zemlja this year it looks that the current is weakening or collapsing this year again causing the ice cover to grow in that region.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=22&fy=2006&sm=04&sd=22&sy=2009
Hmm ohh btw by looking on this link it looks like an ice free north pole allready came true =).
You can just check the main page also for the ice coverage.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Novaja Zemlja is completley surronded with ice next winter again just as it has been most of the time in the past 30 years.
There is also this possible scenario:
An insurance company is hit by huge claims because of a major tropical storm in a very built-up area. In order to recover money they paid out, the use “Global Warming” as a means to sue a government or industry for CO2 emissions so they can recover the funds they paid out. And since “everyone knows it’s true”, they get the money.
I just really don’t like the idea of an insurance company fooling around in this area as there is too much opportunity for mischief.
kent (10:00:14) :
John in NZ presented us with this;
Monday’s location
Present location 84°46′16.4″N
127° 36’ 55” W
Friday’s location
Present location 84°52′55″N
125° 54’ 42” W
If true, the location change of 1 degree 42 minutes W in this short time indicates what? That the ice is moving East?
Yes as it has been for most of this year, that’s how the multiyear ice exits via the Fram Strait.
Here’s a typical example:
http://s302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/?action=view¤t=Drift.png
This other group on the ice mentions how it’s pushing them away from the pole, very clear on their progress map.
http://thethreepoles.com/blog/
Any bets that Insurance company’s will use the threat of “Manmade” Global Warming to raise rates (ie it’s your fault rates are going up), but will argue “Act of Nature” when it comes time for someone to make a claim.
snip off topic
Saved you the trouble
The ad is still there on Yahoo. Recycled maybe 15-20 times before it appeared.
One can only imagine the level of one-sided Catlin Arctic Survey media propaganda we would all be exposed to in a pre-World Wide Web society. There would be little opportunity to take a skeptical look at their selectively released details and data, let alone make any type of widespread rebuttal available to balance any debate.
I would assert that the worst thing that ever happened to the AGW industry was the popularization of the Web beginning in 1994-95. While the Web has certainly and immensely helped with the spread of biased AGW dogma, the ability of those not easily swayed by a “near consensus” of scientific opinion (“The science is settled”) to correspond and refute the former near-monopoly of information has left the those not accustomed to widespread challenge scrambling and ever more desperate in their discrediting of their intellectual opponents.
Unfortunately, there will be a lot of pressure for the ‘data’ to show something relevant. Therefore I won’t be surprised to hear this expedition has discovered its existing conclusion…. well, except it will surely be “worse than expected”.
According to RC commenters Acrtic sea ice is vanishing faster than ever.
Smokey (10:30:23) :
I agree about RC, but I was surprised Gavin left my pretty hefty critiquing up. Two rather lengthy ones.
The responses are just rich. More than the usual and I triggered a nearly complete sampling of their most extreme notions.
It’s something to see. Their take on who we are, who’s “behind” our skepticism and what we have is reaching new levels of bizarre.
It’s as if they have never witnessed ANY discussions that happen here or CA.
And mixed with more claims that AGW has already caused extinctions and that Arctic sea ice is more rapidly vanishing there appears to be no limits to their imaginations and pandemonium.
That is one strange phenomenon.
Too strange to ignore.
While we proceed here I think it is and will be instructive to occasionaly watch that strange behavior as well.
Jack Green (07:51:45) :
How soon will Global Warming affect your business? Soon if your name is Catlin because Catlin offers highly speculative securities in disaster insurance swaps. Scare people and they buy insurance.
http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=200609270700355217J
…………….
That’s a very interesting link.
Surely, though, their deal with Bay Haven is hedging against their main position, which is that there won’t be many catastrophes. Maybe they’re starting to get nervous now that the latest Catlin expedition data has been fed into their risk assessment models.
Will I be able to buy a swap on your house getting washed away?
I’ve told you I ‘ve smelled a rat!
Rich (09:26:33) :
“National Geographic is reporting on the expedition and the single-year ice.
Apr. 22 article.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090422-arctic-ice-survey-video-ap.html”
Rich, thanks for the link, I have send them an e-mail:
I would like to know which ice melt the Catlin Expedition has encountered during their expedition?
In the mean time I would like to thank your National Geographic Team for their contribution pushing the the AGW/Climate Change doctrine.
Thanks to these contributions we now know which scientists have sold out on their scientific integrity, only to serve a political scam.
The latest Rasmussen Pole has revealed that after twenty years of Global Warming Scare only 34% of public believes it is true.
The number is sinking.
And now even our sun has developed into a climate denier, maybe the time has arrived for NG to return to the honest science and fact finding in her programs and publications we were used to.
I am very confident that you will gain a bigger audience if you do.
With kind regards,
Ron de Haan
P.s. a link to your site and reports and comments on the Catlin Expedition have been published at http://wattsupwiththat.com
It’s surprising the kind of relaxed job NASA people have, they are everywhere except where expected to do their job? Can some explain how is it possible?
the insurance industry produces massive profits from the scare mongering through increased rates.
plenty of consequences-of-climate-change-jobs have been created and these people just have to compute and preach disaster, because otherwise, they would make themselves unnecessary.
Why not let the readers decide if something is off topic or not? (SNIP!)
Reply: See blog policy ~ charles the moderator
Alright then: Did the Catlin insurance ads appear shortly before, or shortly after the recent Rasmussen poll results … showing that public acceptance of the anthropogenic global warming message is in freefall?
And, this rush to put the Catlin Survey on the ice … have they also perhaps been following the sequence of poll-results, showing … not melting ice, but a progressive meltdown of public credence in their premises?
The insurance company & the survey company may be dashing to get in under the wire, before the whole human-caused climate-warming performance folds up the tent, eh?
Bravo Paul M for your excellent reminder that the meter was based on the distance from the equator to the pole. I guess the scientists missed that little lesson. Remind me not to ever fly with these guys. For the benefit of the metric “deniers” that still use nautical miles and knots, the distance to the pole in nautical miles is even simpler, 60x(90-L in degrees) – L minutes -L seconds/60.
Why don’t we have an intergovernmental organization to ban those pesky minutes and seconds from coordinates? Better yet, why don’t we decimalize the whole thing and pass a law to move the tropic and arctic circles.
Given the Keystone Cops-like aspects of the Catlin Expedition, I would see it as another unintended slip up – remember folks, the only conspiracy we have hard data on was Watergate, and it blew up with a few months because humans are just not that good a keeping quiet.
It’s just what happens to a belief system that isn’t based on solid scientific fact. It’s a consensus thing, and when consensus is grounded in fiction, all sorts of unpredictable things happen.
Having written that, it’s none the less sad and another page to the book of human follies.
And what sort of advice could some Arctic ice trekkers possibly give me about my business related to “global warming” anyway? The absurdity of such advertised advice is mind boggling.
Particularly since your business is weather measurement devices and software! (If it’s no use to you, how could it be of any use to anybody?)
[snip – thread is about Catlin Arctic survey, not ozone, , not Antarctica, feel free to repost on a relevant thread]
Well, one might argue that the entire Catlin expedition is out in the ozone . . .
As a result of the Catlin sponsorship of this scientific abomination, anyone who has any connections whatsoever with Catlin, should cancel all coverage with them. Hit them where it hurts, and then tell them why.
I know how Global Warming will affect your business… it is going to cause your taxes to go up on energy and commodities and put a limit on the amount of production and growth that you can have with a downward sliding target.
End result your business will be smaller, less profitable or non-existent.
I did not even have to freeze my a__ off to figure that one out.
The only insurance you need is your vote and your voice, use both to mitigate the damage to your business.
Catlin Arctic Ice Survey Puts Their Lives on the line for their beliefs in Global Warming, watch out for thin ice along with thin science.
Hey you guys, leave Catlin alone! I bought a very good Y2K insurance policy from them in 1999.
How fitting that the advertisement for disappearing ice which is not happening
appears on a Web page about black holes that don’t exist. Just as the Earth’s
climate is driven to a great extent by the electrical currents between the Sun
and the Earth, so are the large-scale structures in the universe (galaxies,
galaxy clusters, etc.) created through plasma phenomena. This theory,
well developed by Hannes Alfvén and others, has no need for singularities in
space (black holes) or time (Big Bang). The universe is 99.9% plasma and
is largely driven by electromagnetic phenomena.
The beautiful irony is that the Catlin ad came up with a real science story. Note this quote from astrophysicist Kinwah Wu in the article:
“[‘Dark gulping’ is] a viable, possible scenario,” Wu told SPACE.com. “The model works, but it doesn’t mean that nature behaves like that. We need more observational proof or disproof of this.”
Isn’t this the basic drum that most of us have been beating in the AGW debate?
Does anybody else think it is somewhat irrelevent for them to report their longitude. We can tell their distance from the pole knowing only their Latitude; and that in fact is true anywwhere on earth.
Of course they appear to be not heading for the pole, but seem bound and determined to circumnavigate it instead.
Actually, I’m not against any group of individuals trying to doa dash to the pole; it’s just another version of an Iron Man Triathlon. Adn if you are going to stress yourself like that, why not try and do something useful. Apparently their organisers didn’t think of anything useful for them to do.
Some places up there are only 30 metres deep to the bottom, so I would want to try ice fishing in those holes to see what species I could catch in those waters.
Does anybody else think that it is a little weird to call it complete ice coverage, if only 15% of an area was actually covered in ice. 85% coverage, I could buy, but 15% sounds like being in the middle of a school of portuguese man of war Jellyfish, blowing around on the surface of the ocean.
This expedition reminds me of an article I read many years ago in an electronic magazine. Someone had donated an hour of computer time (IBM 1103) to the authors, so they decided to do a Monte Carlo analysis of a two transistor amplifier, which was supposed to have been worst case designed to have a voltage gain of 10, with a range of 9-11. Their analysis said that one particular resistor was the critical element in determining the gain, and the gain wasn’t centrered on 10 at all so the computer suggested they change that resistor value to another value. The Monte Carlo even claimed to get gains outside the range of the worst case design limits.
Well the point was that it was a lousy amplifier design anyway, and any technician could have told them which resistor value was critical, and told them to change that value to center the gain at 10.
But they could have rearranged the same number of components into a better feedback amplifier configuration and made the gain dependent on only two resistors, and pretty much independent of the transistors.
The computer resource was wasted on what was fundamentally a lousy design.
The Catlin money is being wasted on what was a lousy expediction design; right from the start.
OT [snip but thank you]
A rather fine actor called Kwok played the character Cato (sometimes Kato) alongside Peter Sellers’ bumbling and incompetent Inspector Clouseau in a number of the Pink Panther films. How very appropriate.
“It’s surprising the kind of relaxed job NASA people have, they are everywhere except where expected to do their job? Can some explain how is it possible?”
How many people work at NASA ??
About half.
[yes OT snip, but thank you]
[OT but thanks]
oh it did work, fancy that
The whole concept of this expedition as “science” was a nonsense from start to finish. To say that a small team of people could walk in roughly a straight line to the North Pole, measuring the thickness of the ice on the way with a soil auger and to say that their figures were representative of the whole, (approximately 5 million sq miles), is quite ludicrous.
I also find it quite puzzling that so much debate is expended on the validity of the data when the initial concept is so invalid. It could never work, especially since the ice moves so much and varies in thickness so much. This was why the famous submarine data was shown to be so badly wrong, because the ice had blown elsewhere.
If they wanted to know the thickness they could have asked the CIA:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xq.html
Terrain:
“central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that, on average, is about 3 meters thick, although pressure ridges may be three times that thickness; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight-line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the icepack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses.”
Area:
total: 14.056 million sq km.
Herein lies a confusion which seriously I hope someone can clarify.
The BBC website says: “The Arctic sea-ice reached its maximum extent this year on 28 February, slightly earlier than usual, and remained roughly constant through March. Averaged over March, the sea-ice covered 15.16 million sq km (5.85 million sq miles). The data comes principally from two Nasa satellites.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7987354.stm
They have a graphic which shows the ice area in 1979 at just less than 16.5 million sq km. Even the record low for March in 2006 is still just under 14.5 million sq km.
But the CIA World Fact Book (2009), shows a total Arctic Ocean area of 14.056 million sq km.
Probably I am being really dense here, and I realise the CIA have been wrong in the not too distant past, but how can there be more ice than there is ocean for it to float on?
i wonder if the insurance industry will eventually have to pay dearly for their role in the AGW scam just like the tobacco industry did.
with all their experts they should know better.
While they are out there maybe they can pick up the Catlin Enviro Ice Holers:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/overview_deploymentplans.html
“Chris D. (08:01:07) : Perhaps now Dr. Meier would like to take a stronger position than “I don’t anticipate using the Catlin data”?”
Please give Walt Meier a break. Give him the benefit of the doubt. There are real antagonists in this play. Walt isn’t one of them.
“Leon Brozyna (09:24:40) : On Day 53, the distance traveled (355.58) + estimated distance to pole (568.93) = total distance of 924.51, close to the original distance projected from their start point of 928.5 km.”
So they intended to stay this distance from the pole? It was planned? They aren’t incomopetent and drifting and as has been suggested? But rather are doing exactly what they intended? They didn’t want to measure the thickness of new multiyear ice?
“John Peter (09:42:51) : I am sitting here in Scotland and wondering how NASA can get involved with this Catlin expedition… Unfortunately I cannot make contact from here not being a US citizen.”
John,
I don’t think there would be a problem with contacting NASA from there. The world has an opinion of NASA too. Maybe NASA might not like that the some in the world may be thinking less of NASA because of the public connection of some of it’s employees to global warming. But who knows….
There have been several posts about the north pole distance data at CAS so I am reposting my entry on the article on ice survey reports at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/19/catlin-arctic-ice-survey-first-report/
wherein I reported about the North Pole distance problems at the CAS website. Also see my earlier posts on the same subject.
Also, if one looks at the team’s progress via the Google Earth kml file at
http://www.solaradata.com/Solara.kml one notes that they are heading slightly East of North due to their primitive navigation by using the wind direction and the sun as noted on the CAS website. They cannot use their GPS because it is too cold for the batteries. Although the solara GPS data is almost continuous, it is probably transmitted by a satellite phone.
Here is my earlier post:
Catlin Arctic Survey Corrects Distance to Pole
Finally on April 22, the Catlin Arctic Survey web page has the correct distance to the North Pole. On April 21, the distance was given as 551.16 km. Today, with the same lat-lon, the distance is 583.38 km which agrees with my estimate of 582.8 km using the Great Circle Distance equation. Note that the Great Circle Distance Equation does not correct for the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid.
As noted in my earlier post, on April 18, the CAS web site suddenly had the team about 34 km closer to the pole than the actual distance.
I like to think that the CAS headquarters folks found their error by reading WUWT. But it begs the question to what extent the 34 km error affected their planning.
It appears that the team will not make it to the pole as Steve Goddard had guessed earlier. Since March 20 when they finally got going again, they have traveled about 323 km in 32 days or just over 10 km/day. Since the (now corrected) distance to the pole is 583 km, it would take them about 58 days to reach the pole, but they only have 48 days left on their 100 day trip. Plus they are encountering areas of open water and thin ice which will likely slow them down.
Folks,
Is it possible that this ad is simply automatically generated, similar to how it works with google? For example, the story mentions “arctic sea ice,” “warming,” etc, leading to the ad automatically being placed due to these specific keywords.
Just a possibility.
REPLY: No, it is flash animated ad, requiring production. Not the original Catlin Arctic Survey logo placement as well as the cold weather glove wiping on the button. Google has no capability like this. This is human generated. – Anthony
“REPLY: I’m growing tired of people just posting anything that comes to mind and is not at all related to the thread. To many threads turn it free-for-alls unrelated to the original subject. – Anthony”
I think it’s just fine what you’re doing. It’s a reminder to everyone, a good reminder.
IMO the only off topic that should be is when someone is informing of a column or study they came across that may be off topic for the post at hand but still is in the ball park of global warming or important science. At least with that it brings in new blood.
Insurance Companies exploiting Fear – …I’m shocked… whatever will happen next???
Thanks… just ruling that out. It would appear this is just another episode of the ridiculousness of this expedition.
Their methods and procedures must be ridiculed mercilessly upon their return (if they indeed return with their health).
REPLY: No, it is flash animated ad, requiring production. Not the original Catlin Arctic Survey logo placement as well as the cold weather glove wiping on the button. Google has no capability like this. This is human generated. – Anthony
Which should make everyone suspicious.
The wind is absolutely useless as a navigation aid. It doesn’t stay fixed in one direction.
When navigating over long distances (more than a few hundred meters), a single degree of error magnifies itself as one travels even if they were able to stay locked on only their one degree of error.
With proper charts and a sextant, they could get pretty good location accuracy, but eyeballing it as it seems they are implying is nuts (to put it in “G-rated” terms). If they were using charts and sextant, it would also slow them down.
Given the fact that the ice moves up there, any error would be compounded if they were truly just “eyeballing” it.
Which leaves one with the idea that this is more embellishment and drama, like the hypothermia and frostbite concerns a few weeks ago.
It’s odd that other teams out there on the ice right now are able to maintain course via GPS. Maxime Chaya and his team have only deviated from their planned route by a degree or two as they close in on the North Pole (they started a couple days behind the Catlin bunch. Chaya and his guys also seem far better prepared for what they have encountered and get their resupply via dog teams rather than relying on air transport.
The credibility of the Catlin crew is absolute trash.
I have never heard of the Catlin thing except on this blog, Im not sure why its such a big deal but your doing a great job publishing it
publicizing
Mad Props to Catlin for trying to do something positive!!!
Don’t be a hater the world is full of them, honestly we really have enough as it is.
There are far to many people sitting on their butt saying, “somebody should do something about it”, “what they need to do is find a solution”.
Here you have a company that is actually trying to accomplish something and to get it done they have invested quite a bit of money to make it happen.
Where they tricky with the advertising? I don’t believe so, the advertisement clearly seems to be trying to get people to take a bit of time to check out what they are doing. It makes no promises, they are simply trying to get some attention to something positive they are doing. What’s the harm in that. Not like they made up facts.
It is vital that people across the world, especially young people, learn about the impacts of climate change. Arctic Survey Education aims to help people understand how they are all able to help mitigate those changes that risk affecting our environment so dramatically.
FINAL THOUGHT:
Instead of being a Negative Nancy, use your energy and time to help better the world.
Kenny:
You haven’t been following this, have you? They did make up facts.
And when you find out someone is lying, the proper response is to dismiss everything they say unless there is independent corroboration.
They have an agenda, and it is not science.
No Catlin updates on their website for a few days. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Perhaps paying lip service to the Catlin travesty is the price the people at JPL have to pay to keep the funds rolling in? Gone are the glory days of Voyager and Hubble and those amazing images from the outer planets and deep space. These days they are reduced to defending their increasingly indefensible fellow NASAists.
There’s no excuse for Prince Charles. He should limit himself to chatting with his pansies until Mater pops her clogs and leave the grown up scientific stuff to people who actually understand WHY the world isn’t going to end in less than 100 months.
Catlin Team headed Northeast, not North
The CAS website has not been updated, but the solara kml file is continuously updated. Using the last published position of
84°52’55″N, 125° 54’ 42” W on April 22 and the current position of 85.0363,-123.9213 in decimal deg, we find that the current heading for the team is about 48 deg or Northeast. They have trekked a total of 25 km but are only 17 km closer to the North Pole in the past two days.
The CAS web site mentions that they had some trouble with keeping their heading due North since it was overcast so they could not view the sun and they were using the wind to help navigate. They only use GPS intermittently to save the battery. They also reported high winds which could be throwing them off.
To be fair, they do have a supply flight coming up so they could just be heading to the location selected for the landing site. Or perhaps they just cannot maintain a true North bearing. It is tough out there.
they were using the wind to help navigate
Sticking fingers in the air, eh? No wonder they’ve got frostbite…
You couldn’t make this stuff up!
use your energy and time to help better the world
Kenny, I think that opposing people who are trying to wreck it counts as the same thing!
It might look negative to you, but the effects will be a lot worse if legislators follow a wholly false line of reasoning to curb everyone’s (including your) consumption of energy and to ban harmless projects and activities through political dogma.
How do you suggest we spend our energy and time?
I wonder who this guy was insured with?
http://www.chroniclejournal.com/stories_local.php?id=178951
I’m stating the ad clearly states.
“Learn more”
You can go to the site and learn more.
How can it effect your business. Hmmm, educate yourself about what’s going on and see how it effects your business. What’s the disconnect.
Why all the negative hype?
Or are you one of these conspiracy theory people that think that people are “out to get you”.
I mean stuff like this ‘2) Environmental zealots willing to stage an expedition in exchange for money on the premise that “science will be done”’
Stage an expedition? What the hell is that? It is an expedition, how could you make it any more of an expedition???? There are real scientist going out and collecting real data. What else do you need? Is it running smoothly, maybe not but they are trying to do something for the greater good and get some publicity at the same time. What smart company wouldn’t do that.
James, what ever you call it global warming or pollution, addressing how we live, pollute the world and use up limited natural resources, it needs to be addressed.
@ Kenny
So, 2 lost old souls in the Arctic will tell me how their frostbites are going to effect my business?
Anyone in need of a powerful emetic need look no further than http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/5213497/Explorer-Pen-Hadow-speaks-to-Prince-Charles-about-climate-change.html
Mr Hadow is travelling to the North Pole on foot to examine the impact of climate change. He will deliver a bleak warning about the damage in a video message to a conference hosted by the Prince of Wales.
In his message, the explorer, the first to trek solo to the Pole, will warn that the sea ice at the North Pole is even thinner than was feared. He is leading the four-man Catlin Arctic Survey on a 620-mile expedition to the Pole over 100 days to calibrate the satellite observations of the shrinking ice cap with evidence from the ground.
The survey is taking place as Nasa gives warning that sea ice cover over the Arctic this year reached its lowest volume since records began, with the possibility of an ice-free summer as early as 2013.
The video message from Mr Hadow will be one of the highlights of the conference hosted by the Prince of Wales with 150 captains of industry in the City of London next Friday. The Prince, in a statement, said: “For the sake of our children and grandchildren, I pray that we will heed the results of the Catlin Arctic Survey and I can only commend this remarkably important project.”
The proceedings at the London conference will be broadcast to 1,500 senior-level business figures at nine simultaneously-linked events across the UK. The Prince’s summit will reconvene the May Day Network, the UK’s largest group of businesses and organisations including Unilever, Marks & Spencer and British Telecom who have made a commitment to tackle climate change. Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, will also address the conference.
Mick J,
Thank you for providing that precious example of Princely globaloney.
Prince Charles is an advocate of “grey goo.”
Maybe we should jettison all scientific reason, and listen to P/Charles. It won’t be any different than listening to Al Gore, or to the UN/IPCC.
Catlin’s marketing people are sorely mistaken. First they have not adopted the rebranded “Climate Change” name for AGW – punishable by fine and blacklisting. Second, they should be doing damage control as their mission is on the verge of collapse. Third, they would get international headlines and huge viral buzz if they announced their mission has found that natural variation is the likely reason for climate.
Kenny (13:42:58) :
“Or are you one of these conspiracy theory people that think that people are “out to get you”.
I’m sorry, but this is from the very dated “Debunker’s Handbook,” and a dead giveaway that “kenny” is a troll.
Mick J. – second the thanks. Interesting the UK names their energy chief Secretary of State for Energy and “Climate Change” – having that moniker in your title will prove to be an anvil around the neck.
JLKrueger (00:57:17) :
It’s odd that other teams out there on the ice right now are able to maintain course via GPS. Maxime Chaya and his team have only deviated from their planned route by a degree or two as they close in on the North Pole (they started a couple days behind the Catlin bunch.
Actually if you read their blog you’d find that they had been pushed off course by the ice drift!
Chaya and his guys also seem far better prepared for what they have encountered and get their resupply via dog teams rather than relying on air transport.
Wrong again they were resupplied by Twin Otter.
More fraud from the Catlin Expedition?
http://jer-skepticscorner.blogspot.com/2009/04/catlin-arctic-fraud.html
Anthony, I don’t know how to contact you directly so I’ll post this here.
Latest update from our Catlin friends:
“Today, the Prince’s May Day Summit on climate change, organized by Business in the Community (BITC) was held at ten separate locations across the UK. The Summit is the UK’s largest gathering of businesses committed to taking action to tackle the issue and pledging further support.
The live ‘hub’ event took place in Billingsgate Market in London and was broadcast live online. Pen Hadow provided a live interview directly from the ice, where he spoke with Stephen Howard at the conference and addressed HRH The Prince of Wales, also present, as well as a number of CEOs from an eclectic mix of UK businesses.
Other speakers included HRH The Prince of Wales, the Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and Sir Stuart Rose, Executive Chairman Marks and Spencer and Chairman, BITC. For more information on the day’s highlights please visit http://www.bitc.org.uk/environment/the_princes_may_day_network_on_climate_change/the_princes_may_day_summit/take_part_online/index.html”
Just wanted to give you a heads up (as if you don’t already know!).
I noticed that one of the speakers at the Prince’s May Day Summit was “The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.”
What, you weren’t invited?
Keep on ’em!
ROFL!! Dr. Kwok is Dr. Crock now. Is that his real name means the real PROJECTION of who he would turn out to be in life.