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.
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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.
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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.
Gerard (05:21:50) :
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!
That saying ain’t that old, and I consider it an artifact of our “modern” age here in the “Western” world. At that young age you are surrounded by the loving embrace of caring parents who provide everything for you, or severely questioning why the heck not since all the other kids have them. This is followed by the at-least four year experience of other people mostly caring for you as you continue learning as you’re used to on your way to acquiring the golden piece of sheepskin that will lay the world at your feet ready for you to conquer. It’s such a wonderful time, you wish it could go on forever, and everyone else should have the same!
Look back about 100-150 years, when these young people would instead have already been doing hard farm work for years, or are finishing up apprenticeships, maybe waiting for their second or third baby…
A question for the statisticians: given that snow and ice extent has a very significant albedo effect, should it be possible to discern this effect in the temperature data, or is there too much auto-correlation with the causes of snow and ice extent to separate the albedo effects out?
If warming and cooling were uniform, so that snow and ice extent was a direct function of average temperature, then I’m guessing they would be very difficult to separate. Albedo cooling would only show up as an acceleration in the cooling that caused the increased albedo in the first place. But if cryosphere extent is strongly influenced by weather as opposed to climate, then it would sometimes have an effect opposite in direction to average temperature. Would that make it easier to discern?
I’m guessing that all such effects occur on such short time frames that they cannot possibly be separated out from the dominant effect that ocean oscillations have on short term temperature variation.
As long as this twerp doesn’t drift into Canadian territory and we have to rescue him, let him risk a few fingers and toes. I hear hippie chicks are into to guys like Django Reinhart.
“Shortly after twice reporting a temperature of -34 C, he suggests that the ice is “falling apart” around him.”
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Well, that is what happens when you dilute at more than 50/50 Prestone.
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW): Heheeheee……
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“Narwhal numbers good news for Arctic watchers
A Canadian-led team of scientists has supplied a rare piece of good news about Arctic wildlife after developing a new system for counting narwhals that doubles the estimated population of the spiral-tusked marine mammal in Canada’s northeastern waters.
The revised count is particularly encouraging because the narwhal — inspiration for the ancient unicorn myth — was recently identified in an international study as the animal most vulnerable to the impacts of retreating Arctic sea ice, a phenomenon generally viewed as deadliest for polar bears.
Previous population estimates in the Canadian sounds and inlets at the north end of Baffin Island pegged the number of narwhals at no more than 30,000. The latest inventory — which employed a combination of aerial surveys, tracking of tagged animals and new methods for more accurately estimating the number of unseen, diving whales — raises the total estimate to 60,000.”
http://www.canada.com/technology/Narwhal+numbers+good+news+Arctic+watchers/2778308/story.html
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi
Sean Peake (10:19:42) :
“As long as this twerp doesn’t drift into Canadian territory and we have to rescue him, let him risk a few fingers and toes. I hear hippie chicks are into to guys like Django Reinhart.”
This is the first time I’ve seen a reference to Django on WUWT!
Here is a rare bit of footage of the genius in action.
I sold my GE stock. Now I need a shower.
” AdderW (08:09:14) :
Mike (08:01:28) :
You people really don’t yet.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure3.png
No, we don’t yet. Your point beeing?”
His point is that God created the Earth in the year 1979. Obviously.
That Tweet was from April 4th
The latest:
“We’ve been drifting backwards at a ridiculous pace. At this stage we don’t know if we’re going to be able to get there. ”
about 4 hours ago via API from here
And from the expedition website http://www.iceaxe.tv/expeditions/trek-for-peace/
Trek For Peace – North Pole 2010
On April 11 2010, Doug Stoup, Dennis Garcia and Jack Ashton will begin their expedition to the North Pole as part of a trek for peace.
For Dennis, this adventure will complete his goal to walk to both the North and South Poles, a challenge only accomplished by an exclusive group of less than 100 adventurers on the planet. Jack will be using this year’s expedition as training for a more ambitious expedition he has planned for February 2011; a 600 mile trip from Ward Hunt Island, Canada to the Geographic North Pole. This will be Doug’s 10th expedition to the Geographic North Pole.
The temperatures at the pole this year are warmer than ever recorded. The team will likely face thin ice conditions and open water leads which will add to the challenges already present; large pressure ridges, up to -50°C temperatures, and drifting ice. The team could easily fall victim to the treadmill effect, travelling long days pulling their sleds towards the pole, only to have their efforts undermined by the ice beneath their feet drifting in the opposite direction. An expedition of this kind demands an intense level of physical and mental fitness. Follow their trek and listen to their daily dispatches here.
HaHaHa
From hengav (11:48:01) :
Because, after all, feats like climbing to the top of Mt. Everest are now so dead-common ordinary they’re not even worth doing anymore. The entire planet is now so depressingly normal there’s hardly any challenges left. Guess “less than 100” will have to do.
Now let’s see them do it equipped as the early expeditions were back when the North and South poles really were “unknown territory.”
Has anyone put on a hard diving suit and gone down a mile into the ocean yet? At least a half-mile? That sounds like it should be challenging. Somehow it seems much easier to find people willing to face the incredible dangers of outer space (often as paying “space tourists”) rather than those who wouldn’t mind taking a long dip in some cold sea water…
Harold Ambler (06:57:34) :
Sorry, OT, RockyRoad: you wrote on another thread that Equatorial temps rise by 5 degrees Celsius during Ice Age conditions. Would it be possible to provide links or any more information about that?
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Reply:
Glad you caught my mistake, Harold. I should have said “drop” by 5 degrees Celsius.
And while I’m at it (and from my perspective as one who lives on a desert that only thrives because of irrigation from nearby mountains) it amazes me that those so worried about warming in their climate change scenario would, apparently, rather have cooling instead. And why is that? Well, they obviously believe in “Climate Change” or they wouldn’t have hijacked the term for their movement.
But let’s consider the two options (as if we really have a choice, which I don’t think we do; the status quo is “change”):
Warming: (as in interglacials)
*) More CO2 in the atmosphere so plants do better, and if plants do better, so do animals and humans that feed on them.
*) Summers are longer and winters are shorter. Yes, I ski, but only because there’s little else to do while my favorite trout streams are frozen over and getting down them by canoe is impossible.
*) More arable land: Ice records show much less dust during an interglacial, indicating the land hosted a larger portion of plants that kept the dust in the soil rather than in the air.
*) A wetter climate overall–more water for humans, plants, and especially fish.
Cooling: (as in ice age epochs)
*) Less CO2, even to the point that plants have a hard time surviving.
*) Colder winters and summers are almost nonexistent, and
*) Less arable land, with the problematic survival of much of the earth’s population as crop yield drops precipitously, farmland area shrinks, dust becomes a problem everywhere.
*) Less moisture, and much of what comes down piles up and eventually bulldozes your house and grinds it to sawdust.
So those are the options. No, I don’t think man has the capability, knowledge, or wisdom to control the earth’s thermostat. One of the most telling quotes I’ve run across in the past several years comes from two geologists as quoted by a commenter named Junius:
*****
“You say that there are thousands of scientists that have made up their minds that AGW is a fact. There are also thousands who haven’t.
From reading the literature of those who have, I find that a reasonable number are not convinced that more than a fraction of the detected warming of 0.6 deg C over the 20th century was a product of the man-made contribution. Similarly, a number of the AGW skeptics are not skeptical of the small influence that GHG emissions have on climate.
Much of the debate is on what weight to give to each of the factors influencing climate.
Dr Leonard F Khilyuk and Professor George V Chilingar (Geologists) University of Southern California concluded from their study:
“Any attempts to mitigate undesirable climatic changes using restrictive regulations are condemned to failure, because the global natural forces are at least 4–5 orders of magnitude greater than available human controls.”
******
In other words, nature exceeds man’s puny means and ways by 10,000 to 100,000 times over. That’s a very humbling statement, but true nonetheless.
But let me add this: The prospects of another glacial epoch are so horrendous that this geologist would almost join the hysterical “Climate Change” folks if their projections indicated another ice age were imminent. Almost, because again, man is pretty much a spectator.
Jimmy Haigh: Nice! Thanks. Is there video for Minor Swing?
Where is the children protective services?
Sean Peake (12:54:29) :
Jimmy Haigh: Nice! Thanks.
Yes! I’m a big Django fan (have 6 CDs of his music). He plays better with the two fingers on his left hand (his other two were permanently injured in an accident) than I could ever hope with four (not counting my thumb)…certainly a genius of jazz guitar.
So taking 15 million square km as the normal max ice, and 6 million the normal min ice, that means 9 million square km of ice must melt each summer, so there must be 9 million squ km of new ice each year out of a total of 15.
Or first year ice must always be 1 1/2 times multiyear ice. on average of course.
And looking at that typical arctic sea ice picture with the kid towing his belongings, and trying to dodge the open water leads; he hasn’t even noticed that some of that newly formed sea ice, has actually dug up the bottom with it, and has put some huge rock boulders up on top of the ice.
And I see one of those “Red Right Returning” channel buoys out there for the north west passage ships.
Wonderful experience, being out on the open sea ice like that.
“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.”
OK, so now I am aware. Next!
This stupidity is just piling up.
Yes the kid has been propagandized into thinking that the arctic is just one continuous ice sheet, never mind all the expeditions that went by boat or submarine, or the hazards of doing so.
These kinds of stunts are nauseating in addition to stupefying.
Everybody who thinks about this gets stupider.
It really is the “environmentalist” version of making your kid a suicide bomber or something.
Hey, guys, let’s not pile on the poor kid. Everybody gets to know everything once in his life (for me it was at age 16; I was a late bloomer).
And let’s go easy on GE, too, because…um…well…OK, because I own stock in GE!
Let the kid live in the Arctic area for about 40 years and then he’ll learn something about what’s normal and not normal in the Arctic… ask any of the Inuit peoples up there. Most of them are claiming MSM and research studies are exaggerating the “unprecidented” warming. They claim the melt(s) are far from being unprecidented and nothing out of the ordinary.
They have many ancestral stories passed down through the generations that tell of similar stories… when the hunts were good, when they were bad, and the changes in climate/temperatures/winds directly related to animal migration/procreation.
I remember many of these stories as a child.
I’ll believe the Inuit who have lived there for generations over ‘scientific’ tourist researchers any day, thank you very much.
One Scary Scenario:
All the ice on the North Pole, South Pole and Greenland ice is melted. Scary? Nah..
This is the best false premise in the AGW is that oceans will rise due to ice melt.
First the North Pole, which is floating ice with 3km at the thickest.
Ice cubes are bigger than the water they started from.
Archimedes Principle should tell us something even knowing that Icebergs are 90% submerged
South Pole and Greenland geological configuration under the ice look like two big pools. If all the ice melted, the resulting water would simply stay there much like an atoll.
National Geographic April 2010 mentions that all the water in the planet 97.5% is salty, 2% is frozen and we use less than 1%.
By surface oceans occupy 70%. Do you think 2% in volume would do that much damage even if the South Pole and Greenland wouldn’t hold water at all?
Around here, at least once a year, a body is retrieved off of Mt. Shasta. Just had one last week. If warmists keep up this rant about balmy Arctic conditions, one of these ‘new Arctic Explorers’ is going to eat it. Brazen and Bold meet Hostile and Unforgiving environment.
The Arctic is not a playground.
Geo E. Smith wrote Or first year ice must always be 1 1/2 times multiyear ice. on average of course.
Yes it seems so. No one has addressed this “new ice: old ice:” issue. It IS on one chart somewhere. I had written above your comment: There are all sorts of references to multi-year sea ice and how it is ever lower. Yet every year the max ice goes to ~ 14 million sq km and in summer it drops to about 5 million sq km. (Give or take.) So EVERY year about 2/3s of the sea ice disappears. Ergo every year about 2/3s (+/-) of the winter sea ice is new. So what is the real story on multi-year sea ice? Seems to me there is never more than 1/3 that is multi-year anyway.
One understands that it is not always the same 2/3s that keeps melting, but still, something seems amiss in this “old-new” ice argument.
Comments? Thanks.
Clive
Sean Peake (12:54:29) :
Jimmy Haigh: Nice! Thanks. Is there video for Minor Swing?
Frank K. (14:06:39) :
This is the only video of Django playing I’ve managed to find. There are lots of you tube videos featuring Django’s playing but no other good footage.
Listen to his version of ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’.
Anthony and moderators – sorry for straying off topic…
The kid is FIFTEEN for crying out loud. He’s been wet nursed on junk science.
Plus we all know that “GE brings good things to life” … right?