UPDATE: see the latest excuse below.
The satellite tracking map has been like this for two days. Follow the yellow brick road for an about face and head to land.
WUWT reader “strawbale” reports in Tips and Notes that:
Listen to the Row to the Pole latest news on their website, they have spent today iced in and unable to move. Apparently the climbed up a hill to see how far the ice stretched and its goes to the horizon.
…spent today “licking their wounds” is how their audio report put it…
Hopefully when cloud cover conditions improve we’ll see just how far that ice extends on the NASA MODIS page: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/
UPDATE: The latest RTTP post from their website:
As the current path is blocked by more ice sheets, the crew use the downtime to put in some drill practice, moving the Old Pulteney up onto the ice.
UPDATE2: Well here’s the problem, they are still thinking like it is 2005! Too much listening to Dr. Mark “death spiral” Serreze of NSIDC, not enough time looking at observational data. From the RTTP Facebook page:
UPDATE3: they are on the move again, along the coast, trying to find an opening
I bet they can call for a sponsored Twin Otter to pick them up when that time comes.
And we will hear no more about it in the MSM.
If however they should discover some open water area, it will be all over the news.
And that Twin Otter is still using some good old Jet A1 fuel !
I should have known it. The BBC has a man on board
“Mark Beaumont’s the BBC Cameraman on the expedition. He’s checking the uplink system installed on The Old Pulteney to make sure the vital communications link works to get message out and to send video and photos from the vessel”
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=244295965592059&set=pu.111695618852095&type=1&theater
The end result doesn’t matter. All that matters is that people, some people, only heard the name of the expedition, not the result. I know people right now who think it’s possible to row to the pole, right now, because they “heard” that someone did it this year.
Publicity stunts, nothing more. Sadly, they work.
Don’t ever mess with the arctic. It will chew you up and spit you out faster than you can scream “catastrophic warming”. The planet simply does not care about us mere humans. Warming is a FAR more desireable condition than cooling.
I don’t see what the problem is. As can clearly be seen in the picture, they have trained extensively for this possibility: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/follow-polar-rowing-expedition-with-online-map-2328789.html
sarc/off
From the photo of their boat, it doesn’t look like even a swimming polar bear would have much trouble climbing aboard in search of lunch:
http://www.rowtothepole.com/the-crew/
There are supposed to be 6 men in the crew, if you count the BBC camera man, but only 4 show in the photo of the boat. Where do the other 2 go? Are they ordinarily sleeping in compartments below deck?
The GPS map shows them making progress 24/7. Do they row all night in shifts? Are the times GMT or local? I guess at their latitude this time of year the days are very long in any event. Do they shut down after sunset, or is there enough twilight with the sun just below the horizon to keep going? Or is there still midnight sun in August?
Perhaps they have Al Gore syndrome. Wherever they go, it gets colder. Even if they don’t make it, they still have an adventure. What bothers me isn’t that they believe in “climate change”, its that they clearly didn’t think this through. Why did they pick the 1996 location? If you’re gonna row to the pole, it doesn’t make sense to row to where it used to be. If they want to show “climate change” they should pick a time when what they want to show can be shown. They help the skeptics with what they’re currently doing.
I suppose we shouldn’t turn any help down. 🙂
As for being idiots, I don’t know if I’d call them that. These people may actually learn something running into reality like they are. I also don’t know if their iced in condition will last or not. Even if they are less than normally gifted with intelligence, I have a bit of respect for people who take Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy seriously:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Thanks Anthony, The Row to the Pole team, Commentors and Heide de Klein.
Best laugh I have had in ages.
Make it stop – first “Heide de Klein” and now “ice-breaking canoes” :-))
Thanks for cheering up the dreariest of UK Summers
Gareth Phillips says:
August 12, 2011 at 2:03 am
“Good Lord, visibility must be bad. They appear to have rowed over a peninsular.”
You owe me a new keyboard.
That was good. 😀
Even failures are good teaching tools. Without RTTP, we’d all be believing the claptrap of a melting Arctic. Thanks guys.
I’ve looked at some of the imagery of the area, and they’re in deeper water (metaphorically) than they think. The storms are pushing the ice down on them, and it’s pretty solid from where they are all the way to Siberia. It also appears that the Northwest Passage is icing up behind them. Time to pull out while they can.
It’s currently 69F in Colorado Springs – the third morning this week we’ve had below-70 temps after 9:30AM.
Heide de Klein says:
“Their “satellite” map shows lots of nice blue water – why don’t they just row? Or, is the blue colour another fake?”
It looks like a very poor photoshop job, smearing blue over all the ice in the original photo.
BTW, that’s a wonderful name, Heide de Klein!
It’s most interesting to compare their proposed route: http://www.rowtothepole.com/the-expedition/the-route/ with their actual progress: http://www.rowtothepole.com/satellite-tracking/
While the proposed route shows a series of straight lines to waypoints, boldly rowing north in open water, leading directly to their destination, their actual route shows that they are hugging the coastline. Yesterday they attempted their first long run into “open water” to reach a nearby small island, only to be beaten back by the drifting pack ice and rough sea (before noon) to dry land with some substantial amount of damage and/or disorder to their boat, or at least their housekeeping. We all know what “The boat’s become a pretty stinky place” means don’t we?
The open-water run they attempted yesterday was just a minor warmup for what they will have to accomplish several times if they are to reach their destination, even doing their coast-hugging, island-hopping thing. Would you want to bet on going out on a multi-day row into shifting pack ice (like rowing a Mini-Cooper through a sea of floating lorries and slabs of asphalt) even if the weather was beautiful the day you set out? Didn’t think so.
Finally, the existential question of why they ignored thousands of years of “settled science” that has proven conclusively that sails are better than oars for getting anyplace over substantial bodies of water. If a couple of their number were to be knocked out of action in the midst of a difficult spell of rough weather, they would be entirely helpless. In addition, as any sailor of the seas knows, when things get really bad, without sails, or some form of motive power, you are helpless to maneuver the boat and keep it headed up into the wind and waves. Deep do-do, literally and figuratively. I suspect that this was part of their problem yesterday.
Shall we make a pool as to how far they will actually make it?
Didn’t these people read about Nansen, Amundsen and Perry before they planned this trip? I know they are only trying to get to magnetic north, but their lack of knowlege of the environment they are in is astounding. Amundsen’s Northwest Passage trip should have given them one heck of a clue!
Temperature up there looks cold, and will remain so.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation.
A high IQ does not make up for lack of common sense.
Well, well, the Darwin award applicants are having problems. What a surprise.
EternalOptimist – concise, pithy and very funny!
cue the pole dancing bears, please. a perfect ending is achievable.
Only 3 years untill the North Pole is completely ice-free.
According to Climate Change Specialists.
Yeah….
I love their Facebook update today. Posted an article from 2007 (but on thing says 2005) about how sea ice models under estimate ice loss. Posted while stuck in ice way off from their proposed route of smooth rowing through open water.
Might be a good time to practice Mann overboard drills. And possibly bears on board drills given they are probably the only protein within an area equal to a thermometer’d Arctic grid. I hope they’re armed with more that cell phones and dull wit – polar bears are immune to even well-aimed imprecations and the sharpest tongues.
I fault the skeptic community for not seizing the opportunity to encourage more warmenists to row to an ironic doom.
Do they need a Hair drier to melt the Ice ??
Apparently this was sponsored by a whiskey distillery – and now I understand the mental state of the logistical geniuses in charge of planning the expedition.