Via Tom Nelson:
Another warmist in the Arctic: GE sponsors 15-year-old on polar trip.
Photo courtesy of GE and Scott Draper
Shortly after twice reporting a temperature of -34 C, he suggests that the ice is “falling apart” around him.
Skiing and trekking to the North Pole: Parker Liautaud blogs to save the earth – Update
Parker Liautaud, 15 years old, is reporting on his progress skiing his way to the North Pole. He has made his goal to become the youngest person to ski to the North Pole, and to use that attempt to bring greater awareness to the urgent environmental issues of the arctic.
…
And more importantly for his purpose of letting the world see the ravages of global warming on the arctic – There was a lot of open water today. It really shows what’s been going on in the Arctic – it’s falling apart. Right now we’re camping on this patch of old ice, but all around us is open water, broken and thin ice. To our north there’s a massive pan of very thin ice. Everything is freshly frozen, if not open.
That’s called “leads” kid, part of the regular landscape well before your trip. Oh but wait…what is the Temperature? Thanks to Twitter reports we know.
Twitter / Parker Liautaud: Temp -34, Windchill -42. W …
Temp -34, Windchill -42. We did about 11 Nm today, it was a really good day. We have about 35 Nm left, and about 5 before we’re half way. 3:00 PM Apr 4th via API [His previous tweet also reported a temperature of -34]
Son of Venture Capitalist Gets Foursquare Badge for Polar Trip – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com
Normally if you’re the teenage child of a multimillionaire, you might expect a nice car or designer clothing as a present, VentureBeat reported.
But if you’re the 15-year-old scion of Bernard Liautaud, who founded and later sold Business Objects to SAP for $6.78 billion and is now a partner at Balderton Capital, you can probably do a lot better.
…
Mr. Liautaud fils rounded up a sponsorship from G.E. for a trip to the North Pole promoting environmental awareness.
Of course, anybody can go to the North Pole, and blog about it, by paying a tour guide like this one that is with the 15 year old right now.
From the San Fransisco Examiner “offbeat places” blog:
Parker’s journey is part of an expedition that is open to the public. For more than 10 years, Doug Stoup has been guiding teams across the frozen Arctic Ocean and Antarctica. From numerous ‘Last Degree‘ treks to his most recent 660-mile epic journey to the South Pole.
Cost: €25,700 but for a quickie (I’ll bet you didn’t know you could do this as a quickie), fly from Longyearbyen to Ice Station Barneo, then take a helicopter to 89.599? North. Spend some quality time on the ice for photos and celebration and then return. Cost: €16,900.
I always like to encourage young minds in science, but this is just a glorified field trip with a guide. What a bunch of suckers GE is for paying for such an expedition.
The ice from Cryosphere Today looks better than 30 years ago.
Paul Inglis
Yes indeed – and have a look at 2008 compared to 2010
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=07&fy=2008&sm=04&sd=07&sy=2010
Measuring 30% + ice cover and with a colour bar on the right hand side which indicates a compression not seen in many previous years, and with an extension to within a whisker of the average predicated by by the AGW scietific community, any rational person would be hard pressed to come up with a conclusion that there is anything amiss in the arctic regional at all.
Unfortunately rationality is spread rather more thinly than ice amongst global political leaders, and on today’s BBC we hear that POTUS Obama will host major world leaders on 17th and 18th April for a Climate Change conference.
The press hounds are muzzled, the huntsmen confined to dragging for truth on the internet, but this fox runs on.
I would never call people like these “Climate Realists”. I doubt they know the definition of the word “real”, aka “truth” or “factual”.
Isn’t is *supposed* to be melting? Since the measurements of ice coverage are usually 15% (or 30%), I would expect to see a bit of ice melt at this time of year (the ‘tipping point’…).
Clive: “I’d not be sad if the little snot lost his life…”
I’m afraid I don’t share your disregard for this kid’s safety… That’s just the kind of quote that some would love to smear us all with. And…
Anthony: I think it should have been snipped (and still should be).
Not too long ago this kind of propaganda reporting was not possible because every newspaper had an office with desks and journalists behind it doing research to check the news on facts.
Unfortunately this species went extinct due to AGW!
Twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain we get our news served according to the standards of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR).
Fortunately we have the power of the web allowing us to compensate for the current Media hog wash.
That GE bought the Enron wind turbine business has absolutely nothing to do with this propaganda, right?
As for the kid and his safety, I hope he remains safe and well. If he has to get bailed out, I hope the whole bill is delivered to his parents who are letting him do this stupidity.
Re Cryosphere Today –it doesn’t just look better than 30 years ago. It looks better right now than for every comparable date in their database over that entire 30 years. Check it yourself.
“Patrick Davis (20:02:26) :
There are always well funded fools who are quickly separated from their money.”
This couldn’t be further from the truth. GE will make millions from this, indirectly. GE is a much quieter version of Al Gore. Note the other references in the comments section to GE’s investments and “influence” on green energy mandates. Joe Dumbass Public always seems to believe that windmill companies are owned/managed/operated by a really swell bunch of ex or current hippies who are out there winning one for the common-sense team. Nothing could be further from the truth.
JimB
Per Jeremy’s post, if GE is in cahoots with MIT to spread this nonsense, and my 13-year old son is interested in science, will someone PLEASE tell me where they have a science program that isn’t infiltrated by activists but teach the true scientific method? I know it isn’t at our local high school where the chemistry class was forced to watch An Inconvenient Truth and asked how many people they were going to tell and exactly who they were going to tell about this important movie! And I am NOT paying $50,000 for my son to be preached to instead of learning the appropriate methods. Is there such a place anymore? Or should I just have him major in pure math? If the 15-year old doesn’t have good teachers, then of course he takes everything he is told as gospel. And if those teachers have lots of letters after their names, well… he may well be lost for good.
“kuhnkat (20:27:10) :
25,900 Euros. Wonder how many children in a thrid world country could get food, medicine, and clothing for that??
Oh, sorry, humans are the cause of the problem and should be killed, er, culled till they can’t damage Gaia.
”
$25 sends a child in Camtrang, Vietnam to elementary school for 1yr…
http://www.childrensinitiative.org/TCIvietnam.html
So I’d have to guess that yeah, it could have a pretty significant impact.
JimB
From Parker’s Blog entry on April 6th:
“… At the moment I’m sitting in my sleeping bag with a bottle of hot water in the lining of my boot … which is in my sleeping bag. Whenever we need to dry something out we stick it in the sleeping bag. I have half my sled in my bag to warm it by body heat.”
WHAT!?!?!?!?! He is using his *BODY* to warm his *SLED*?!?!?! I hope his sled appreciates how Parker is sacrificing his precious body heat to warm an inanimate (SP?) object. Did his guide tell him to do that?
Jeff
DeNihilist (22:24:59) : “Um, this photo is supposed to be on the sea ice? then can someone please explain the tower to the person’s right, and maybe up ahead? I didn’t realize that timber was so able to grow on rotten ice”
Yes, and why are there large hills if he is close to the NP?
The level of corporate buy in to AGW is transparently cynical.
GE sponsored the kid because his daddy is a major financial player.
I admire that the kid has the guts to make a trip like this, guided or not, but I have to think that when he says the ‘ice is really doing this or that’ he is either just giving a context-free description or he is repeating what he has heard.
If I was a zillionaire dad, I am not certain I would let my kid go out on truly dangerous trip like this. Nature does not really care about people who confuse their net worth with their invincibility.
And at 15, one’s sense of invincibility is is quite high.
37 years of teaching 15 year olds was more than enough for me. This silly little clown will at least have his raging hormones controlled by sub zero temperatures.
As far as wind farms go I doubt that GE will want to tender for this disaster.
http://www.palmerston-north.info
Give him a break, he is only a kid, the old saying is you are not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, if your still a socialist at 40 you have no brain. He still has time!
I suppose if Nike can rehab Tiger Wood’s image in time for the Masters, GE can attempt to rehab the shattered image of CAGW theory in time for the next tax-payer funded Bali climate
conferenceparty…No one got more bank bailout money than GE Credit. So they could finance the wind and solar power lunatiks. GE bought the Enron wind business which included manufacturing. They are a socialist tool. With GE/Enron wind came the sox,cox, nox and other schemes.
GE is an arm of the Federallies.
Is it just me, or does the picture heading this article do justice to this frozen safari? As a geologist, I’d say those rises ahead of the sledge-pulling human are statigraphically layered rock formations of some sort. Are those found in the Arctic?
Why don’t they use a location-appropriate photo? Cameras all frozen up?
What a joke this entire expedition has demonstrated itself to be. Yet I’m betting there are students following this daily in class and swallowing every single word.
George Turner,
You funny!
Seriously ROFLOL!!!
M
GE didn’t fund the trip. They pay promo fees and get their logos plastered on his clothing and in as many pics as possible. I am sure GE has input on what he is allowed to report.
This is an example that the plural of anecdote is not data. The kid has a compelling life story but has no scientific study to report unless he wants to channel the IPCC report and use a medium like WWF or Greenpeace to make his little story of travel in the last mile to the pole. This qualifies junior to visit a zoo and write some feature cards for the penguin exhibit.
More reliable this one live….
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
When this 15 year old made the same trip in 1980, he didn’t find any leads or open water. His extensive and thoughtful research on the subject will be included in the next IPCC report.
This stunt illustrates one major problem of having great wealth: you can afford to publicize your foolishness.
Cassandra King good point.And when the ice keep growing the AGW’s will try to hide the increase.
“There was a lot of open water today. It really shows what’s been going on in the Arctic – it’s falling apart.”
You guys realize that this kid is so stupid, he thinks the entire Arctic is supposed to be covered in ice. One big ice sheet. That there is no open water, ever.