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.
OT: At solarcycle24.com say that Catania is reporting a sunspot. Are there any psychics at Catania for detecting ghosts spots?
Jet fuel has a lower mass density than the sea water, so depending on the weight of the barrel it will float or sink. If the fuel were to leak out it would certainly float and most likely evaporate or volatise if during summer months as it drifts around.
Jack Mosevich asked at (09:06:22)
Maybe someone here can answer the question as to what exactly must happen to make even the believers question their faith?
And E.M.Smith (11:06:45): responded with a lengthy reply that essentially said that the evidence of the weather will change their minds. Oddly enough, that arch-Alarmist troll FLANAGAN posted on Steve Goddard’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” thread a link to a social science article titled
How Citizens Integrate Information without Ideological Cues:
Local Weather and Americans’ Beliefs about Global Warming
And which is located here:
http://politics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/4819/egan_mullin.pdf
Flanagan, of course, totally misrepresented the conclusions of the article, but the bottom line is that for both alarmists and deniers who are “politically sophisticated” (i.e. either highly educated or firmly committed to a political party) perceptions of weather have little influence on their perceptions of global warming.
The answer to Jack’s question may well be “Nothing”.
Presumably the Catlin Survey has assured the Ministry of Environment, Government of Nunavut that the fuel drums, full and empty will be recovered before the ice melts. Any bets?
Since we are talking about ice thickness…
Here is what Jason Box Said about the Greenland ice sheet in 2003:
…the Greenland
warming of the 1920s demonstrates that a large and rapid temperature increase can occur over Greenland, and perhaps in other regions of the Arctic, due to internal
climate variability such as the NAM/NAO, without a significant anthropogenic
influence.
and:
The Greenland surface air temperature trends over the past 50 years do not show
persistent warming, in contrast to global average surface air temperatures. The
Greenland coastal stations temperature trends over the second half of the past
century generally exhibit a cooling tendency with superimposed decadal scale oscillations
related to the NAO. At the Greenland ice sheet summit, the temperature
record shows a decrease in the summer average temperature at the rate of about
2.2 ◦C/decade, suggesting that the Greenland ice sheet at high elevations does not
follow the global warming trend either. (Chylek, box & Lesins, 2003)
Here’s What Professor Box Says today:
“We now know that the climate doesn’t have to warm any more for Greenland to continue losing ice,” Box said. “It has probably passed the point where it could maintain the mass of ice that we remember.
“Greenland is deglaciating and actually has been doing so for most of the past half-century.”
Well, what is it, Professor Box, Warming or cooling? Oh, That’s right, depends on who’s paying you.
Science Daily News [snip]
In their paper “Is the climate warming or cooling?” David R. Easterling of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center and Michael Wehner of the Computational Research Division at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory note that a number of publications, websites and blogs often cite decade-long climate trends, such as that from 1998-2008, in which the earth’s average temperature actually dropped slightly, as evidence that the global climate is actually cooling.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090504141047.htm
Troo
Sorry, the previous post didn’t format quite right. And the link for Dr. Box’s warmist statement is: http://www.physorg.com/news148563893.html
SJones (11:10:36) : 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.
It is very ominous and you don’t need to know that stink is one of the early signs if gangrene. From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangrene
Gangrene is a complication of necrosis (i.e., cell death) characterized by the decay of body tissues, which become black (and/or green) and malodorous. It is caused by infection or ischemia, such as from thrombosis (blocked blood vessel).
If he had any frostbite and now has malodorous toes, he’s losing the toes and the foot to follow. The longer they wait, the more he will lose. Long enough and you lose the life…
He needs to be off the ice and in surgery now (British use where surgery means equipped doctors office, not U.S. use where it means operating theatre). He needs antibiotic therapy at a minimum and he needs supportive tissue treatments (debridement, antiseptic wash, circulation reestablishment and /or assessment, potentially surgical amputation…) At a bare minimum he needs a competent remote diagnosis and a good foot bath in warm soapy water with debridement and assessment.
Don’t they have a doctor on their support team? Again I ask: Where is the adult supervision for this farce or an ‘expedition’?
Oh, and in thinking about the “Arctic Diesel” vs Jet fuel… I suspect what they run is Jet-B that is basically Jet-A with some gasoline ends in it. Available in arctic Canada and much like the #1 Diesel with some gasoline added that becomes Arctic Diesel… The major difference will be in the additives for corrosion and icing prevention and maybe the microns of filtration.
I haven’t read all the comments, so I apologize if this was mentioned.
I daresay it would have cost less fuel for a couple flyovers that it would have for all the plane trips involved in the Catlin fiasco.
Okay folks, stop using the Internet. According to the Grauniad “news”paper:
“Web providers must limit internet’s carbon footprint, say experts
Soaring online demand stretching companies’ ability to deliver content as net uses more power and raises costs”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/03/internet-carbon-footprint
Bring on the dark ages….
enduser (13:00:08) :
“Since we are talking about ice thickness…
Here is what Jason Box Said about the Greenland ice sheet in 2003: ……”
This is a terrible reversal of facts on Greenland’s ice sheet over the past 50 years by Jason Box. Does anyone send these guys emails, like the Dr. Keenan did re U of Albany fraudster? This is fraudulent too. I would like to see all cases of this sort of thing directly challenged with copies to media that print this stuff.
Adolfo Giurfa (12:32:23) :
OT: At solarcycle24.com say that Catania is reporting a sunspot. Are there any psychics at Catania for detecting ghosts spots?
L
Sorry, hit the wrong button…
Adolfo Giurfa (12:32:23) :
Indeed it looks like they are seeing ghost spots. Even in their CCD images the spots are not visible http://www.ct.astro.it/sun/solef.jpg
http://www.ct.astro.it/sun/
To superDBA (08:00:15), I too get quite the grand chuckle when picking my daughter up from school. All the SUV’s lined up (running while waiting) with save the earth bumper stickers firmly affixed. I park my Honda civic and meet my daughter at the door. Yet because I insist that science be adhered to, I am the one at fault….lmao.
Lubos Motl (09:42:11) :
Some comrades are more equal than others (so to speak h/t G. Orwell).
Elitists believe in sacrifice, just not their own.
The amount of trash in the “pristine” corners of the earth keeps growing. Antarctica has it’s dumps as well as Everest. There is a term for elitist celebs, Eurotrash. Maybe we should start calling people like those on this boondoggle, Ecotrash.
rephelan (12:49:17) : but the bottom line is that for both alarmists and deniers who are “politically sophisticated” (i.e. either highly educated or firmly committed to a political party) perceptions of weather have little influence on their perceptions of global warming.
I do not disagree! (Talk about a weasel word phrasing 😉
Notice that my thesis was that the Regular Folks would be shifted by their experience. Not the “politically sophisticated”. Once the middle moves, you will see it followed by “distancing” where the AGW thesis just gets less and less support from the Average Joe & Jane, then the marginal supporters will clam up and ‘distance’ themselves to a “decline to state middle”. The end effect is that the True Believers are left out in the cold (if you’ll pardon the pun 😉 ever more marginalized.
Then the thinning begins. A few at a time the True Believers move away. Eventually you have the hard core that will die before changing their mind. They take a lifetime to change (literally…) as the recruits drop off and the old hands die off. But long before that the society as a whole as ‘moved on’.
It’s not the single digit percentage at the 6 sigma point that matters, it’s the 50% of the population that are more or less disinterested in the central 1 sigma range… THEY will trust what they see, feel, and pay for…
Those are the farmers, football fans, Moms buying groceries and Dads cutting wood or ordering heater oil, ski bums and snowmobile salesmen of the world… That is where the change will come; and it can happen very very fast.
Social change is not lead by the leaders, it is lead from the middle. The leaders just run out in front of the parade once the herd picks a direction. At best they can turn it a few degrees one way or the other, but not 90 degrees and certainly not 180… The list of failures is so great: Great Society, War on Drugs, Abstinence Movement, and in many ways the whole Green Movement (look how much trash is still created and buried in land fills…). Leaders make headlines, but the people make the future.
Obama will learn this, as will the AGW movement.
In many ways it’s just Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” at work. You can put a 10% sales tax on new cars to try to raise revenue, but you can’t make me buy a new car (California is learning this today… $8 Billion shortfall in tax revenues against a $14 Billion deficit. Raise rates to cover the $14B deficit, get $8B less than expected in the door. Now projecting a $40B deficit in the future. Golly!) You can tax cigarettes to reduce consumption and get more folks growing their own tobacco or smuggling cigarettes. Eventually the center of the crowd wins.
So just watch Joe & Jane Sixpack. When they are cold and hungry (not being particularly ‘sophisticated’ or ‘political’) they will call AGW “bunk”. When they are skiing a month early and late, they will call AGW “bunk”. And when they are planting wheat a month late in Kansas or Canada, they will call AGW “bunk”. And that is all it will take.
When the center of mass moves, the gadfly leaders will orbit in a new sphere. That is their nature.
Walking human beings pulling heavy sleds of equipment emit more C02 than human beings sitting at a computer screen controlling a satellite. Seems that they are heavy carbon emitters just by all that exercise!!!
It’s just a good thing that plants like C02 as do many humans who like a warm planet rather than another ice age.
Now to go out for a walk and yoga to work off the belly that I got sitting at a computer. 😉
Oh, they are “global warmists” who are so belief stricken with their quest to stop C02, a primary nutrient for plants, that they just forgot all REAL environmental concerns like dumping fuel oil drums in a fragile arctic environment!
How do we get charges for polluting and a possible oil spill brought against them? Anybody have any contacts within Environment Canada?
Catlin from the ice has been updated. They are on 90gm food per day and expecting a resuply. The aricraft is being fitted with extra tanks. Looks like they are admitting being in trouble.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/latestfromtheice
Update: It looks like a 200′ airdrop of food and fuel
I believe the phrase is “pack out your trash” when leaving a camp site.
Montreal Gazette, Thursday, August 28 2008
Standing near the edge of the Northwest Passage, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a pair of measures yesterday to boost Canada’s ability to prevent pollution and monitor shipping in its Arctic waters.
The Harper government plans to introduce legislation that will extend the enforcement zone of the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, which prohibits … dumping waste.
The Catlin crew should be responsible for a follow-up as to their environmental conscientiouness — “take only pictures (and measurements); leave only footprints (but not the foot)”. Fuel drums are particularly toxic, empty or full.
OT — Anthony, congratulations for your article: “Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable” posted at the Heartland Institute. Excellent (and detailed) explication of egregious irresponsibilities on the part of our government. Those responsible — all the way to the President — should be horribly shamed (and prosecuted) over their callous disregard for truth in the historical record and for the science of temperature measurement.
If they’d driven a vehicle that only got 10 miles per gallon, they could make the trip on ~62 gallons of fuel. Little over a barrel.
Heck take two barrels and drive all the way to Europe.
OT: NMS CPC has updated their Historical ONI page. FMA was -0.5.