I think single-handedly, artist, photographer, and intrepid dirt pile explorer Alex Hartley has launched a new WUWT feature. A fine addition to his list of accomplishments I think.
His project: show the world that the arctic is melting by loading up the tiny island onto a barge and hauling it around. From nowhereisland.org:
THE PROJECT
nowhereisland is the winning Artists Taking the Lead project for the South West of England. As part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, nowhereisland will arrive in July 2012.
Artist Alex Hartley will bring an arctic island to the South West of England. He discovered the island in the High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard as part of the 2004 Cape Farewell expedition. The island was revealed from within the melting ice of a retreating glacier and Alex was the first human to ever stand on it. It is about the size of a football pitch, consisting of rubble and moraine around a small amount of bedrock. The Norwegian Polar Institute has recognised the island and it is named and included on all maps and charts subsequent to its discovery.
A portion of the island will be transported to South West England through international waters and whilst en route it will apply for micronation status. The new ‘micronation’, nowhereisland, will navigate the entire 702 miles of coast around the South West region, visiting its ports and harbours, accompanied by a travelling embassy support vehicle. nowhereisland will embark from Poole and arrive in Weymouth and Portland for the duration of the Olympic sailing events, before continuing west and ending its journey in Bristol, the same port from which John Cabot set sail to search for the fabled North West passage.
This artwork seeks to poetically explore issues of climate change, land ownership, national identity and the exploitation of the earth’s remaining natural resources.
Citizens will be sought to participate in all aspects of this virtual new nation.
At the end of the island’s journey around the south west coast, the winning entrant of an international architectural competition to design a small island habitation will be chosen. The small building will be erected on the island for Alex Hartley to live in.
Some time after the end of the Olympic year, nowhereisland will return to the Arctic to be made whole again.
Here’s what to expect when Alex brings it up the Thames:
Uh…just a few things ill considered:
- Do you have absolute proof you are the first human to set foot on it? What about the indigenous people? The Arctic has seen melting before you know.
- No mention of the carbon footprint hauling tons of dirt around might generate. WUWT?
- Is it OK to tear up Gaia to save Gaia?
- Permission from Norway to dig up their island and haul it away?
- Where’s the environmental impact report?
- What happens if you run out of money and can’t get the island back? Burial at sea?
T shirt sales should ensure success:
h/t to Tony B
Hmm.. Portable nations, whatever next. Not entirely convinced all the legal issues regarding a mobile micronation have been thought through, or if they have this could be a novel way to annex an oil field.
For UK folks seeking to escape our government, I keep thinking there may be some mileage (and acreage, publicity and even subsidies) in turning rubbish into land. Worked for the US off NY and other places, could work for us to. Now to find a Wave Erosion for Dummies book 🙂
I knew a very British woman and her Husband.He was a retired Lockheed engineer.
She was quite a fan of British eccentricity.She would’ve loved this. Just hope his little island doesn’t get washed away by a North Sea storm.
Being a Python fan I give Anthony four “dead Parrots” award on this one.
I’ve heard about this discovery before. He actually wrote a letter to the Governor of Svalbard to claim the island for his own as a republic, which of course was politely rejected. The Svalbard Treaty is clear:
“The High Contracting Parties undertake to recognise, subject to the stipulations of the present Treaty, the full and absolute sovereignty of Norway over the Archipelago of Spitsbergen, comprising, with Bear Island or Beeren-Eiland, all the islands situated between 10° and 35° longitude East of Greenwich and between 74° and 81° latitude North”
So any discovery of a new island in this area belongs to Norway.
As for the discovery itself, so what? Svalbard is heavily glaciated, which means that the landscape changes rapidly and maps have to be updated regularly. About half of the glaciers are of the surge kind, which means that they retreat for many decades, then suddenly surge several km in a couple years, and the cycle repeats. The normal state of such glaciers is retreat, so the retreat doesn’t necessarily prove warming. And glaciers tend to respond slowly to climate. A current retreat due to warming might rather be a response to the warm period in the 30’s and 40’s rather than to the exceptionally warm years in the past decade.
The very large amount of money being wasted on this insanity comes from my pocket and the pockets of every other tax payer in this Socialist Paradise formerly known as the United Kingdom.
Art it is not. Sick-making it most definitely is!
He is not as stupid as you might think. There will be 12 projects and the total budget is just under £7,000,000. If the budget is divided equally he is going to get almost £600,000 for this. Even after expenses it will be “a nice little earner”.
Needless to say it is all public money. £6,000,000 from the government and another £950,000 from the Lottery – which was set up to raise funds for supporting good causes and charities, but a lot of the money has been diverted to the Olympics.
‘What happens if you run out of money and can’t get the island back? Burial at sea?’
He won’t run out of money. He has been given £500,000 of public funds for his groundbreaking^Wgroundmoving project. I reckon the winner of Climate Craziness of the Week #2 should be Britain’s Arts Council, which, in the middle of the longest recession since records began, decided that towing a pile of dirt around the Cornish coast was (a) art, (b) a good way to combat climate change and (c) worth more than fourpence of anyone’s money, let alone public subsidy.
I am currently looking into applying for an Arts Council grant to sit at home and drink cider for five years. This extraordinary project will question the meaning of cider in a knowingly unglobalized context that will allow issues of climate change, land ownership, national identity and the exploitation of the earth’s remaining natural resources to bubble to the surface of my addled artist’s noodle. If all goes well, I hope to win Climate Craziness of the Week #52 or thereabouts.
Nowhere Is Land, huh ?
I wonder what the Norwegians think of some dude swiping some of their glacial till.
If he’s applied to the U.N. for nationhood status, the barge will probably have a contingent of blue-helmeted peacekeepers aboard by the time it gets to England. Then he’ll get the bill for back dues from the international body, which he’ll have to pay before he can be considered for economic assistance.
This is all contingent, of course, on his not being hijacked by Somali pirates along the way.
As Vinny Burgoo says, it is the Arts Council-funded by British Tax payers- who are funding this lunacy- of which much more here.
http://press.artscouncil.org.uk/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseID=881&NewsAreaID=2
I suspect it was earmarked for the West country as sailing events will take place here and the Met Office Hadley centre can no doubt help to cheer on the antics from their Exeter HQ
Incidentally the email address of the press officer is at the foot of the link above, so if you want to tell her what you think please do so.
Tonyb
I’ve figured out what got Gore and Hansen going about the weather way back when. They both watched “Our Man Flint” (James Coburn, 1966 ), which featured 3 “scientists” that could control the weather, volcanoes, etc. , and thought it was a documentary. 🙂
Oh, noes — the portion he dug out contained the only summer breeding crevice of the uber-endangered Svalbard Spotted Midge!
The subsequent disappearance of which from the sediments of Norwegian ponds will be used in 2012 as proof of — global *cooling*…
It seems the media person at the Arts Council dealing with this has wisely decided to go away.
Here is the new contact if anyone wants to protest.
“I’m on leave until Monday 2 November.
If you are a journalist requesting information about Alex Hartley’s nowhereisland project or if you have a general media enquiry, please contact one of my colleagues:
Mon toThu contact Rebecca.turner@artscouncil.org.uk 01392 229211.
On Friday contact our national media relations team on 0207 973 6890
For urgent weekend and out of hours media enquiries please call 07989 430881.
For all general enquiries, please call 0845 300 6200.
You can find information for the media at our virtual press office: http://press.artscouncil.org.uk “
This is reminiscent of ‘Warming Island’ of a few years ago.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://warmingisland.org
http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=874613
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/an-island-made-by-global-warming-445966.html
Then Pat Michaels noticed:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/03/31/warming-island-another-global-warming-myth-exposed/
Unfortunately CNN has apparently removed the article from the ‘Planet in Peril’ series which was one of their crown jewel reports.
The ‘Warming Island’ website was removed last year, but still offered cruises to those concerned about helping Shmidt inform the world at a 503c (a little tax joke) price of $5,745 + air
http://www.betchartexpeditions.com/antarctica_warmIs.htm
These days Betchart Expeditions have surrendered their core values and now offer cruises all over the world without mention of climate change, emitting copious amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere in the process. It seems capitalistic greed has got the best of them 🙂
PaulH:
“The fool on the hill” springs into my mind.
“Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he’s just a fool,
And he never gives an answer”
Updated lyrics
He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For everybody.
Stuck on a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Not a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, please listen,
You don’t know what you’re missing,
Nowhere man, the world ain’t at your command.
He’s as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere man can you see me at all?
Stuck on a point of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Not a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, don’t worry,
Take your time, don’t hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else
Lend you a hand.
He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For everybody.
This is a good choice, but my vote still goes with the edible pets story.
I suggest a different format. Nominations made on the weekend and closed by Sunday, reader polls taken during the week with awards and prizes being distributed on Friday. God knows there are many more climate crazies out there deserving of nomination.
BTW, love the Beatles references!
At least this floating island won’t be inundated by rising sea levels!
Send all the far-left, far-right activists and their financial supporters to go live on this nowhereisland. Then get the French to bomb it. The French can get away with things like that.
…. unless they dig that coal mine too deep, through the bottom of the barge.
“I am currently looking into applying for an Arts Council grant to sit at home and drink cider for five years. ”
That’s got the British welfare system. Many leftists, winos, chavs, single mothers of chavs, Islamists and illegal immirants swear by it.
Mike McMillan (12:04:35) : “This is all contingent, of course, on his not being hijacked by Somali pirates along the way.”
That… would be funny. I don’t know why. It just would!
Anyway, I don’t know how many people would know what I’m talking about, but this story reminds me of that part in the movie ‘Brewster’s Millions”, where some guy tries to sell Richard Prior an iceberg.
Swindler: And it’ll only cost [millions]! Well, wuddya think?!
Richard Prior: (staring at the ridiculous, wind-up model iceberg rolling about on his desk)… I don’t know WHAT I think!
Exactly, Rich. I don’t know WHAT to make of this crazy story, except someone call Guiness… There’s a new record for the amount of sheer insanity packed into a single human brain.
That is a wonderfully modern tin foil hat he is wearing.
A case of British Eccentricity?
Or a worshipper at the temple of Onan?
I would love to see this guy try to put a digger onland in Svalbard, or even better to damage part of a highly restricted/proteced nature on Svalbard. Well he could try to perform his environmental? show inside a jailcell, I hear they are not very comfortable in Longyearbyen..
Some here may be missing the gravity of the statement being made here. This is about mourning “The Lost Seed.” Let me explain. Svalbard, the home of the “Doomsday Seed Bank” administered by Norwegian authorities, harbors the “seed” of the world. It is a modern Noah’s ark anticipating doomsday predicted by gloom and doomers. Alex Hartley, knowing the deep psychic scar this may carve in the subconscious of others, is bringing a proxy of The Lost Seed home.
Fortunately Norway has negotiated to preserve the island’s sovereign status and after a respectful period of sturm und drang – will rightly demand its return. Although appearing frivolous, a good scrub of the conscience may do the old Bailey good.
Hey, Carsten, how about some Stones?
“Hey, hey you, get off ‘o my dirtpile”.
He’s stealing your Norweigan landmass and taking it to England.
Now, that’s what I call Real Estate Piracy.
Does he have a Bill of Lading for International Waters?