An interesting question has arisen. Is it OK to pollute the Arctic Sea so long as the quest is “noble”? The Catlin Arctic Ice Survey likes to promote their trek as having a low carbon footprint because they are walking on the ice, rather than doing the more efficient flying ice survey (such has already been done), or driving to the north pole with vehicles.
What we don’t see much of from Catlin is how much fuel it takes to support their walking endeavor. They have to get resupplied by aircraft. And, because they have to get “rescued” at some point, refueling is needed for that too since the planes can’t make the flight on one tank. They have to leave a fuel cache on the sea ice.
So what happens to the empty fuel barrels? Or even worse, what happens to full barrels?
WUWT reader Richard Henry Lee writes:
On 26 April at http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/from_the_ice.aspx, the report was:
Yesterday, the plane took off from Resolute Bay, flew north for 3 hours to the weather station at Eureka. The CAS support team hopped off, the pilots re-fuelled and then flew out onto the Arctic Ocean, in order to cache fuel in advance of tomorrow’s flight out to the Ice Team. Once sufficient fuel had been cached, the pilots then flew back to Eureka where they spent the night.
On 3 May, they report:
From a logistical point of view, the main area of consistently bad weather at the moment is over the mid-way refuelling point, rather than at the team’s location or at Resolute. That being the case, the pilots at KBA and the London-based Ops team are currently looking at the possibility of putting in a new fuel cache, so that the aircraft can take a slightly more circuitous route to the team if necessary, in effect bypassing the original refuelling point. The possibility of an airdrop is also now being considered.
So it appears that the original fuel cache is out there on the ice and they are planning to store a new fuel cache because of the weather.
So, what will happen to the old fuel cache that they cannot get to due to bad weather?
If just left there, it would eventually get into the ocean, I presume.
Yes just what does happen to those fuel drums? That is the inconvenient question.
It seems that if they leave them on the ice, empty or full, Catlin may join the ranks of Arctic polluters.
A minor point, but it is not Avgas or Avtur in those barrels – Twin Otters running in the north generally use Arctic diesel. In fact, they will run on Scotch whiskey if you could afford it. There is a dial setting in the cockpit for the volatility of the fuel available. Mind you, I think the Catlin crowd would like the tanks to be filled with rum toddies about now…
There is a strong strain of consequentialism in the green movement. Such a mind-set allows dishonesty if it serves the greater good (as the greens define the greater good); offers an indulgence to one for polluting while “saving the planet;” promotes the use of discredited data to convince others of your virtues; and ignores the venal inclinations of the useful idiots of the movement.
In 100 years time the Catlin expedition may be in the dictionaries as a permanent definition of both hypocrisy and hubris.
Not quite what they must have intended.
I’d advise them to get out of there as soon as possible but Scott wouldn’t have taken my advice either.
Tragic to be famous but for the wrong reasons.
A couple of things: I note on their latest video they once again film inside the tent. Has anyone actually seen any evidence of an outside video clip?. Also they running this video recorder on batteries and if so how are these charged or discarded?
I diid email the website several weeks back asking about the wet/dry suits that they will apparently ware (I think they have already) when they reach a stretch of open water that can’t be avoided. I have heard back yet.
AdrianS (10:26:57) :
Very Naughty leaving all that AVgas just to fall into the ocean at some satge and rust through. I care about the enviroment, but dont by AGW.
If Shell or BP did it what would happen……….
——————————
You can be assured that they make sure that there is a big “Shell” or “BP” or “Petro Canada” LOGO on each and everyone of those drums, so they can still blame the petrolium companies on littering the Artic.
Bruce,
I think your numbers are a bit off. —
CO2 has a density of 2kg per cubic meter, so using your 157kg/min — they would be moving 73 cubic meters of CO2 per minute –if exhaled breath was 100% CO2.
The total lung capacity of an average adult human is 5 liters, a cubic meter is 1000 liters in volume.
**** If they could completely exhale the complete volume of their lungs with each respiration and they exhaled 100% CO2 — they would need to have a respiration rate of 14600 breaths per minute!!
An average human produces 1kg of Co2 from respiration
***** Per Day ******
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html
even allowing for the 3 people consuming 6000 calories a day — that equals 9 average humans (average human consumes 2000 cals — 3 people burning 3 times that cals = 9)
So, on a daily basis the 3 explorers produce 9kg of CO2 from respiration!
— even if the increased activity resulted in an order of magnitude increase in respiration (impossible to actually take 150 breaths in a minute for any length of time– but for arguments sake …)
— the survey persons would be contributing 90kg/day — or about 9000kg for the whole planned expedition.
DaveCF (10:51:07) :
A minor point, but it is not Avgas or Avtur in those barrels – Twin Otters running in the north generally use Arctic diesel.
Thread drift……
How bizarre that bottled water is more expensive than Avgas/ Avtur/Arctic diesel. What a con bottled water must be…………..
jack mosevich (09:06:22) : Maybe someone here can answer the question as to what exactly must happen to make even the believers question their faith?
Truth.
My money would be on cold and hungry. Right now it’s 60 degrees F and overcast (was drizzle) here in “sunny” California. It ‘ought’ to be 80F+ with BBQ and fresh 45 day wonder (“4th of July”) tomatoes from the garden. It isn’t. My tomatoes are sulking. My green beans are up, but waiting for warm to grow. Etc. And I’m thinking about cutting some wood for a fire in the fireplace (unheard of in my history here in May).
It doesn’t take too much of that for folks to start saying “Global Warming My Posterior!” I’d guess that it will start in the Farm Belt as folks can’t plant until a couple of weeks late due to cold and wet. Then it will pick up in the rural towns. Probably intensifying in areas with a cold drought. This will filter through the ag commodities traders into the food industry as they must be in touch with reality. The “cold less food higher prices” story is one they will pay attention to and that will then filter through to the Moms of the world as they purchase the family food budget…
Secondarily, the rising home heating costs will cause the Dad’s of the world to take notice. Chopping twice as much wood has a way of getting your attention. Almost as much as a higher heating oil or natural gas bill. The Democratic push for higher fuel costs will exacerbate this (so it’s a back door good thing, I guess…) and it will be very very hard for the MSMedia to NOT run a story about high fuel demand in a surprisingly cold winter…
Once you have Mom, Dad, and the food and fuel industries (and the financial guys behind them) focused, then others will follow. The ski bums of the world (and ski resort operators) will also catch clue quickly. Right behind them will be the road salt and snow plough folks. We’ve already had one year of too little road salt bought and emergency buys as they ran out; they won’t want too many repeats…
And then there will be the Alaska Fishermen causing sea food prices to rise as the ice makes it harder to catch… Followed not too far behind by shipping insurance rates going up as weather risks rise. The maritime insurance rates will NOT be set by propaganda. Similarly, the other major insurers will catch on pretty quick to what is really causing losses. Crop insurance rates first, but things like flood and ice damage second.
My point? Pretty simple. It won’t be a scientific evidence thing that does it. It will be a capital markets and reality bites thing.
How many baseball games called due to a cold freezing rain? How many football games due to freezing sleet and 4 foot of snow? I can hear the announcer now saying “The game was called today due to the heavy snow. Haven’t had snow like this since, oh, I think it was ’67 or ’73. Well, they are shoveling the (derisive tone) Globull Warming? off the field now, but I don’t think we’ll be having a game today…)
Already I’ve noticed that the average folks I run into don’t talk about global warming any more. If you mention it, the bulk of them have a skeptical attitude. Make a snide remark about it (“God, I could sure use some global warming today!”) and the reply indicates a belief that AGW is a crock. They are mostly just being quiet from a sense it being PC and not wanting to ask for trouble over it. It doesn’t take long at all for that to turn to public derision of the AGW thesis and supporters.
So as reality continues to confirm the widely held public view that it’s a crock, the stigma of deriding it will fall away. That’s the real tipping point.
One example: A liberal leaning engineer friend was mostly pro AGW in something of a “I don’t really want to think about it so I’m accepting the dogma” kind of way. He initially was almost hostile to my assertions that AGW was less than pure. It’s taken 2 years, but he now is firmly neutral on the subject and does not mind my ‘jabs’ at AGW anymore. He has looked at some of the evidence now and I’m no longer hit with RC talking points in reply. In fact, we’ve moved on a bit to issues of volcanic cycles and the solar slumber… (Something about being right over a year or two with predictions of “it is going to be colder, not warmer” may have helped … )
And that is how AGW will be falsified. One friend, one farmers coffee shop, one ski bum, one football stadium, one Mom & Dad at a time…
“And The Truth Shall Set You Free”.
Slightly o/t but on their latest update pondering how they can pass the time stuck in the tent for the 8th? day, one of the things they discuss is:
“Martin’s toe (largely because of the smell coming from his sleeping bag)”
that sounds ominous to me, though I’m no doctor. Why is nobody in their team trying to persuade them that enough is enough. They will still spin the expedition as a success even if they pull out now – so why take any further risks with their health?
I thought it was illegal to dump fuel/oil/whatever. When the Exxon Valdez dumped 10 million gallons of crude, Exxon paid about $3 bil in cleanup and settlements, with another half bil in damages (found several different numbers for this) That works out to about $350/gal.
So, Catlin and sponsors should be on the hook for no less. How many drums and how full?
Carter (08:20:23) : If we ask nicely, do you think Ed could whip us up an airplane that flies on used cooking oil?
Um, already been done…
The USAF is certifying the whole fleet to run on biofuel and Virgin Atlantic ran a test flight on biofuel. Any jet turbine will do, if you don’t mind a placarding things…
The best way to make the biofuel is to just make a light kerosene like cut by shoving the oil through the hydrotreater at an existing oil refinery. Basically it’s “fat in kerosene / diesel out”. You can cat crack it to any average molecule length you like so you can make a fuel that is Jet-A if you want to.
http://www.allbusiness.com/defense-aerospace/aerospace-industry-aircraft-components/11712875-1.html
A Google of “hydrotreater biofuel” will yield dozens more links.
Right behind that is the older transesterfication process. This makes a heavier fuel that works in the turbines, but it’s got ‘gelling’ issues in the cold. I would not want to run it in the Arctic…
Also, the RTK Rentech company has a process for turning darned near anything (cooking fats & oils, trash, coal) into Jet Fuel (this is what the USAF used for their acceptance tests). While their facility is small, it is running now and they would probably love to sell some to a large visibility PR Stunt.
http://www.rentechinc.com/fuels.php
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS163396+29-Jan-2009+BW20090129
DISCLOSURE: I own a few thousand shares of RTK and SYNM who are both in this business along with a few hundred of some oil companies (PCZ and PBR) that are getting interested in the hydrotreating aspect.
Are the Catlin expedition truly still subsisting on “1000 calories a day” while waiting for resupply? In sub zero temperatures? Surely they’ll be losing significant muscle mass by now which will impact upon their ability to do even moderate physical work.
That’s one heck of a way to diet.
AdrianS (10:26:57) :
No AvGas. Twin Otters have PT6 engines, so they run on jet fuel.
“Is it OK to pollute the Arctic Sea so long as the quest is noble?”
A lot of the commenters here will rant against enviromentalists, but actually the environment suffers from AGW related policy. In the UK plans exist to dam one of the most important estauaries that Europe still has,the estuary of the Severn, to tap tidal energy. The plans have provoked the anger of a lot of environmenatlists. Hydropower is in fact one of the very few *usable* renewable energy sources, a fact that can be deduced from the fact that currently quite a substantial part of electricity production is hydro.
But hydropower almost always means a disaster for the ecosystem it is tapped from.
Perhaps slightly OT.
Ever hear of the “Glacier Girl”? That is the p-38 fighter that was part of the “Lost Squadron” that was forced down in Greenland in 1942.
In 1990, an enterprising group figured that they would just shovel the snow off, fill-er-up and fly out of there. Well, they found the Lost Squadron buried under 268 feet of ice. 268 feet of new ice in 48 years– more than 5 1/2 feet of buildup per year.
Greenland ice sheet melting? I don’t think so. Actually the continental ice sheet in Greenland is still growing, and the interior temperatures have been dropping significantly since measurements started in 1987 (Chylek, Box, & Lesins, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2003).
claim the deposit on the empties
Perhaps it’s time the deposit was made more substantial, especially for drums intended for hard-to-reach areas…
crosspatch (09:34:22) : wrote
Any pollution from avgas would be very short lived unquote
What’s the aircraft they’re using?
JF
Perhaps they could feed the polar bears and thus save all that fuel.
Are those 1st year or 2nd year drums? Because we all know that 1st year drums are less likely to survive the summer.
DaveCF (10:51:07) : A minor point, but it is not Avgas or Avtur in those barrels – Twin Otters running in the north generally use Arctic diesel.
An even more minor point: While there are differences in the spec for Jet-A, JP4, JP8, #2 Diesel, #1 Diesel etc. There is much about JP8, Jet-A, and #1 Diesel that is almost the same.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/jetfuel.html
To say that they are running on arctic Diesel is to say #1 Diesel is to say light kerosene is to say Jet-A is to say … modulo a bit of detail on the quantity of light ends and corrosion inhibitors and sometimes a bit of variation in the cloud points…
It’s more about how wide the distillation cut was than about the center point of the cut; and a bit about the cold treatment afterwards to remove waxes and other cloud formers and particulate fines. Oh, and there are a couple of specs for sulphur and cyclical vs straight chains that are only there to tune the fuel for smog / smoke production.. For actual ability to run, they mostly don’t matter much and you can (especially in an emergency) pretty much substitute one for the other freely. Part of why I own a Diesel car…
In fact, they will run on Scotch whiskey if you could afford it. There is a dial setting in the cockpit for the volatility of the fuel available. Mind you, I think the Catlin crowd would like the tanks to be filled with rum toddies about now…
Neat! I WANT one!
My Diesel has run on 25% gasoline in #2 Diesel, jet fuel, K1 kerosene, K3 Kerosene, #1 and #2 Diesel, various biodiesels, soybean and other vegetable oils (blended at up to 50% with #1 or #2 Diesel) and a few other things… but never whiskey rum toddies. Though the driver might 😉
Oh, and Diesel and Jet fuel both have bactericides added … bugs love to eat the stuff… So if you have a spill, it’s bacteria food. Something the greens don’t like to mention… Think about that for a minute. One of the real problems with jet fuel and Diesel fuel is that bacteria make a home in the fuel tank and eat the fuel if you don’t do something to stop them… So the next time you see a full HazMat team rolled to a 5 gallon Diesel spill, ask yourself “why?” (It’s not the fire danger – Diesel won’t burn if you toss a lit match into a puddle, it needs a wick. It’s not the biological hazard, bugs eat it. Etc.)
substitute 78 cubic meters for 73 in my above post — all the metrics are correct — it seems I had trouble dividing 157 by 2 — I managed to add 75 and 3 and end up with 73 ……
Carbon footprinting is a species of accounting, and as such, is open to abuse, laziness, sloppiness, and downright fraud a la Enron.
The short answer is “The have caused the kind of pollution unfairly said to be caused by the oil companies.
I have no facts at hand, but I’ll be that counting the spills, Alyeska has not polluted as much as this one boondoggle has.
E.M.Smith The “cold less food higher prices” story is one they will pay attention to
THEY will blame CO2 for it, for sure. It’ s THEIR season coming!, so beware, they will attack deniers with all weapons available.
All what they need is a law defining clean air breathing as a human right in the UN, then they will prosecute anyone who promotes, provokes or make others to oppose air cleansing policies, as a human rights’ offender.
Brave New World is coming!!
E.M.Smith: Funny you should say that about people. I often hear people joke about how they could use some global warming (Chicago has been cold and damp until yesterday). I don’t think many take it very seriously, except for a few hysterical types I often spar with. They never examine evidence; they just rave on about consensus amogn scientists who are smarter than me, polar bears, glaciers and now the south pole. They attack me, rather than discuss. I am a holocost denier, flat earther and creationist. Wow. They left off rapist.
But, I think the general public is getting sceptical, not just because of the weather, but because of the rediculous claims by the hysterical-warmer-crowd.