Guest post by Steve Goddard
As reported here two weeks ago, April 30 is the last safe date to recover explorers from the Arctic. The people who rescued Pen Hadow from the Arctic in May, 2003 said this :
“People are at risk – the ice breaks and it shouldn’t really happen. No one should expect to be picked up from there later than 30 April … Going to the Pole this time of the year is a bit stupid and you put a lot of people’s lives at risk.”
In today’s Catlin update they say:
“The ice team are positioned in the path of a huge storm. Pen reported this morning that winds are picking up, and the Ops team can see that over the next 36 hours the team will experience blizzard conditions with winds of up to 40 knots and a strong possibility of heavy snowfall.”
By the time the storm is over, they will have reached what has been described by the experts as the last safe date for recovery, both for them and for the rescuers. They are still 542 km from the pole, which is 82 days away at their average rate of travel so far.
What is the sensible thing for them to do when the delayed Twin Otter plane (hopefully) arrives later in the week?
Dear P Folkens,
the following copy of the article about the thick ice still exists:
http://www-origin.radiobremen.de/wissen/nachrichten/wissenawipolararktis100.html
Please, someone, make a copy for yourself. 😉 Best wishes, Lubos
At Richard De Sousa
Hi Richard,
R U the same Richard De Sousa that wrote a humorous article on gossip with a quote from Patricia Meyer Spanks (initials pms), somehow connected with the University of Toronto?
I have used that article in a couple of sermons and then saw your name in the list of comments today.
Grant Hodges
I also find it funny that they have kept changing the goal posts on this trip.
Initial starting point was supposed to be 80N, 140W, which would have put them right in the middle of the Beaufort Gyre (home of those playful, cuddly polar bears from the AIT video), in the midst of what has historically been an area dominated by first year ice.
Then they actually started close to 130W, so as to be “traversing through an area with more multi-year ice” even though this is still part of the Gyre, and the satellite images projected this area to still be predominantly first year ice.
They have now drift East more than 7 degrees, meaning they have traveled further East than North in this trip. Basically, they ignored the known ice drift pattern of the currents in the Gyre.
The Gyre’s currents rotate in a clockwise circle, taking the ice pack above it to the East and South, pushing the floes against the Northern Canadian coastline and breaking up the pack in the process. If they would just sit still, they would end up in Alert in a couple of months
Gary Pearse,
here is the flight route for the ice thickness measurements:
http://www.awi.de/fileadmin/user_upload/News/Press_Releases/2009/1._Quartal/PAM_ARCMIP_route_w.jpg
P Folkens. Add .html in the end.
I think all this ICE focus from the alarmists is grotesk. And i think we sceptics should be better to point out the obvious problem:
I asked a guy in a debate:
“What does best say something about the global temperatures?
a) The Ice area?
b) The global temperatures?
The guy didnt answer. But its so obvious, that in times with falling global temperatures we are all hypnotised to focus on the ice instead. Very convenient. Until of course even the ice dont reflect any potential sign of global warming. I think its briliant the way that Goddard and Anthony and everyone disproves the lies about ice extend, but it would be nice repeatedly to also remember all, that this is about global temperatures and nothing else. And global temperatures HAVE stagnated for 10 years, and appears to have falling tendensy.
The global tempartures speak a clear language never mind what on earth happends to the ice. As long as people has ice for their Martinis, ice itself is not that important.
Another question to the alarmist:
Which ice area is then important?
a) Antarctic winter ice?
b) Antarctic summer ice?
c) Arctic winter ice?
d) Arctic summer ice?
Of course, only d) really showed something that significantly could be interpreted as global warming, and then only d) seemed to have his interest.
And then, what happends when even d) is not usefull for the alarmists anymore?? What will they then try to focus on?
Lubos: “They were sent to bring the prophecy from the AGW God, that may help the global carbon junta to regulate the world in Copenhagen, or to be sacrificed.”
As A Dane im so ashamed of this Copenhagen meeting dec 2009. Many Danes thinks it brings a good light on Denmark, but in all ways its a disaster im sad my town Copenhagen will be linked to this scandal in many years ahead.
(By the way Lubos, a guy called Roman i work with -SAP- seems to know you?)
I don’t think they ever planned on being sensible in the first place. Their website says they planned on trekking across the ice for “around 100 days”. They didn’t leave until Feb 28. That means they didn’t plan on being picked up until the first week of JUNE.
Could a large helicopter make it to their position and back?
“Das Dokument existiert nicht (mehr). (trans: The article does not exist.)” Correction: The document no longer exists.
I can not wait for the Catlin crew to return.
I expect them to post a video on their website depicting them hurriedly drilling ‘one last sample hole’ before departing.
Later some industrious hacker will examine the video file and determine that it was actually taken BEFORE they left for their adventure on the Arctic ice.
I have no more sympathy for these fools than I had for Siegried & Roy after the lion attacked. Play with fire…
Their death might save trillions of dollars and millions of lives.
Martyrs for what they perceived as a good cause. Let Al Gore and his ilk say hossanahs in their memory.
I expected that guy who was going to Kayak the ice free arctitc ocean to be on his way by now, afterall, all I see on NBC, CNN, CBS and ABC is the arctic is melting at an alarming rate.
To answer Frank Lansner (10:49:20),
“What will they then try to focus on?”
The answer is ‘Ocean Acidification due to increased atmospheric CO2.’ This train is already running down the tracks.
What is so cute about acidification is that CO2 emissions are directly linked to industrial production. Since the objective of the AGW people is not to limit global warming, but rather to limit economic expansion, this gives them further tools to attack consumerism.
The translation of the four-meter-ice German article is here:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/04/north-pole-ice-100-thicker-than.html
I hope that Google Translate combined with my German were sufficient. 😉
The money shot was going to be our heroes swimming the gap to save their lives as the plane waits on the other side. Alas, the hard won data left behind. What a loss to humanity! And just at the close, Ann, with tears says in a close up, “We always had hope. Imagine what a drowning polar bear goes through.”
If they freeze to death on the ice due to global cooling, it will take a bunch of spin to get the story right. I’ll start working on it. Thinking “Climate Change” not “Global Warming” is probably key.
It could be worse. I mean if one of them got eaten by a bear. How do you spin that?
They should get out before ice extent goes above the 1979-2000 mean.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Dear Frank, I can only guess which Roman – but do you work with Roman Staněk? I hope you enjoy it! 😉 I also know Roman Beránek and a few other Romans.
OT Astronomers find distant and odscure nestle where HE was incubated!!!
Many eons ago before this alien and horrendous being (The One who does not exhale CO2), would have decided to invade our earth :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/spaceexplosionisfarthestthingeverseen
I hope the remainder of the ice doesn’t evaporate (as according to Waxman) before the resupply plane arrives. I’d hate to see them eaten by the tundra.
OK, So temperatures aren’t rising and the Arctic isn’t melting – but we can still try to find something to blame on CO2!
There’s a photo today of Pen Hadow with a 12 foot ice drill in hand. Apparently the “unexpected lack of multi-year ice” has come to an end. And I found this quote from the Catlin site interesting:
“There’s no question that the Catlin Arctic Survey’s manual measuring techniques have the capacity to provide the first large scale direct measurements of ice thickness in the High Arctic,” says Seymour Laxon, from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London. “Drilling holes might be the most basic method, but it’s also the most fundamental.”
Obviously Mr. Laxon has never heard of the Polar 5 Expedition that has just returned data questioning the Catlin claims. And not to harp on semantics, but how does a “basic” hole differ from a “fundamental” hole?
With articles like this one, I am starting to wonder what is gong on…..are people really this stupid?
Planet On the Brink
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1888728_1888736,00.html
Though scientists have directly assessed the viability of fewer than 3% of the world’s described species, the sample polling of animal populations so far suggests that we may have entered what will be the planet’s sixth great extinction wave. And this time the cause isn’t an errant asteroid or megavolcanoes. It’s us.
Lubos, thanks to you and havel, theres only 11% of the Tjeck republic people who believes in man made global warming, correct?? You derserve a medal.
I have not commented on your site but use it often.
(Your explanation of AMO is splendid :
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/05/nature-amo-will-stop-warming-until-2020.html)
I think Roman is working in “olamaud”.
I’m sorry that this is a little OT but I cannot find where else to put this. This was on Yahoo and the sentiment makes me cross.
“Icebergs break away from Antarctic iceshelf”
“There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has been the most rapid in the Southern Hemisphere,” explained David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090428/tsc-icebergs-break-away-from-antarctic-i-c2ff8aa.html
There is a certainty in this point of view that raises suspicions considering the nature of the ice cracks as shown in the photo. The Antarctic is moving further into Winter and getting colder by the day. What looks convincingly like structural failure is not even considered and does not even appear to have been explored?
So Australia has landed an Airbus on the this ice shelf; http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/175767 and here is a video of a C17 landing on the same ice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exR0-NSsM44&feature=PlayList&p=6B305E6C69C8FEFC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=64
I sometimes wonder whether all the physical effort used to study the poles might be bringing about the very changes that that effort is trying to find.
“They should get out before ice extent goes above the 1979-2000 mean.”
We all know that chart is flawed, there is no ice on the planet now, it’s all melted.
Lol…there would be a certain irony if the idiots were ice cubed, though no doubt their fellow travellers, and other useful idiots, would be putting the blame on AGW.