Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A number of nations conduct research in Antarctica. To do research in Antarctica, you need to have an icebreaker. As the old saying goes, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few icebergs … or something like that.
For the last few years, said icebreaker has been the Swedish ship Oden, leased to us by the noble Swedes, who (other than being a bit confused about how to spell the name of the god Odin) built a wonderful dual-purpose icebreaker and research vessel. Here’s a photo of the good ship “Oden”:
Given the dependence of the US McMurdo Sound and Amundsen-Scott South Pole bases on the availability of an icebreaker to allow resupply by ship, it must have been an unpleasant surprise for our Secretary of State, Hillary R. C., to receive the following missive from the aforesaid perfidious Swedes …
This is unfortunate for the scientific work in the Antarctic, as it will require extensive reshuffling of existing studies and projects. However, it does have its ironic side.
The first irony is that the main thing that is brought in by ship, the one thing that really can’t be brought in by plane, is fossil fuel. Can’t do global warming research without fossil fuel, particularly in Antarctica, and running a couple of US bases through an Antarctic winter takes a lot of fossil fuel.
The second irony is that research into global warming is being curtailed by, of all things, too much ice. Or as Mr. Bildt described it, “transport delays due to vessels having been blocked by ice.”
I do feel bad and have compassion for the scientists and the scientific studies that will be disturbed, and I know I’m on the primrose path to perdition for saying this, but it’s hard not to enjoy the spectacle of scientists who can’t do global warming research because the Northern Hemisphere is too cold.
w.
PS—As of a few days ago, the US has lined up an icebreaker, the Ignatyuk, to replace the Oden. It is run by a Russian firm, the Murmansk Shipping Company. So that’s good news. Unfortunately it is not set up as a research vessel, just an icebreaker, but it can break the path for the tankers.
It will steam off from Murmansk half way round the world, burning lots and lots of fossil fuel, to clear the ice to allow the tankers to deliver much more fossil fuel to McMurdo Sound and even send fossil fuel to the South Pole to power inter alia the global warming research …
So there’s the final irony—with the laying up of the US Coast Guard “Polar Star” icebreaker, and the decommissioning of the “Polar Sea” icebreaker, the US has only the lightweight “Healy”, not fit for the Antarctic needs. So the US is reduced to renting an icebreaker from a Russian shipping company … and some folks in Alaska are not happy about that state of affairs.
[UPDATE] From some of the comments below, it’s clear that my eco-felony in writing this is admitting to feeling “schadenfreude”, which means taking pleasure in your opponents misfortunes. It’s one of those emotions that everyone has, but nobody is supposed to admit they have. What, you never laughed when irony overtook your opponent? And you gotta admit, global warming research cancelled because of too much ice? That’s funny anywhere.
I’m no different than the rest in relishing life’s ironic turns, except for the fact that I’m willing to admit that I’m not PC (politically correct) in the slightest, and to take the inevitable heat for saying so. Consider it my small protest at the ongoing vanillafication of the planet.
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Can we say ‘ice coming home to roost’?
These top science bureaucrats are believers in ‘no more cold winters and snow because of AGW’ – so why keep ice breakers?
The same happened here in the UK last winter: local councils up and down the country had run out of road gritting before mid December – because a) there would be no more winter; b) the MET Office had said the winter would be mild; c) stocking up on gritting would not be cost effective when winters are a thing of the past …
Well, we all know what happened next.
So will this experience change the minds of the science bureaucrats? One doubts this.
IIRC, a nuclear-powered ice-breaker wouldn’t be permitted in Antarctic waters by “Convention”.
tallbloke said:
Not if you have the wrong snow.
Invest in steam locomotives. They’re the only all-weather trains in the UK. 😉
halfacow should direct his ire to Jack Frost, not Willis. Jack Frost is the real culprit here; Willis is simply the messenger.
(Now how did Jack Frost find the wherewithall to do his develish deed? Or has Al Gore been spending his winters in the Baltic, and the Arctic, and the…)
Look, if the Europeans are seeing colder winters and even their governments acknowledge this by planing for it, as your example outlines, how does the Team continue to play hockey?
I understand that England is planning to have many of their people “enjoy” the dark and cold without power soon to “save” the planet from the trace gas CO2. Can they keep this up?
Oden is the correct modern swedish name, Odin is old style nordic. Don’t tell us how to spell our gods names 😉
And Thor should be spelled Tor, take note marvel comics.
I think “halfacow” needs Geritol — he has irony-poor blood.
[Only persons of a certain age will know the allusion.]
A little O/T but related to ice
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8746165/Arctic-sea-ice-falls-to-record-low.html
Apparently their computer model says it’s thinner now than it’s ever been. Why didn’t they just measure it?
Could extensive use of ice-breakers be the cause of breaking ice and melting?
not sure if i am serious with that comment
Nuclear power is fine in Antarctica, just no nuclear weapons. The U.S. Navy operated a nuclear plant at McMurdo for ten years 1962-1972.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/reality-of-sea-ice-is-starting-to-bite/
Autonomous Mind dug into this story.
”John Marshall says:
September 7, 2011 at 1:57 am
Fossil fuel is available in Antarctica as coal, on the Antarctic peninsula, but international treaties prohibit any mineral of fossil fuel extraction there.”
For now.
Isn’t it rich. The US Coast Guard can’t provide access to research stations in Antartica and NASA can’t provide access to the international Space Station. Meanwhile the government spends billions to produce expensive, unreliable electricity and the most expensive healthcare in the world.
My point was just that everyone should expect that the Swedish vessel’s name is in, eh, Swedish. So of course it’s name is Oden, not Odin or Islandic name Óðinn.
So where is the confusion of spelling caused by Swedes? But, this is a minor point so I leave it here. Cultural and linguistic background is just a blessing.
One of the things that started my questioning of the Global Warming theory was that the SANAE 3 base had to be replaced because it was being crushed by the weight of ice that had accumulated on top of it over the few years of its existence – some 30m seem to recall. Also, the Agulhas icebreaker was fitted with a hot water cannon with which to cut an off-loading ramp into the ice cliffs that develop between its annual visits. Then some years back it was called to rescue a Russian ship trapped by the early onset of winter ice.
tallbloke says:
September 7, 2011 at 12:43 am
“Britain gave up its shipbuilding capacity years ago”
We did not give it up. One of our leaders chose to block funding to upgrade the ship yards on the grounds that ship building was old fashioned, ignoring the fact that 2/3rds of the world’s surface is sea! Now,all the luxury liners and some of the large utility ships that come into ports like Southampton have been built by old economies such as Germany, France, Italy and Norway that did upgrade their yards and where labour costs are not cheap.
September 7, 2011 at 3:38 am
…Bernd, I think no country in the SH has a nuclear icebreaker, and tropical waters are too hot to be cooling the reactor…correct me somebody if I’m wrong…?! Reawakening the “Manhattan project” and make it/them a/some clean steamship/s….that would do the trick…South Africa and China and Australia…???
Just for ‘halfacow’, I have posted an obituary here: http://pindanpost.com/2011/09/07/anthropogenic-climate-change-obituary/
I definitely get a deep sense of Schadenfreude when I read this sort of thing. Most parasites do not intentionally seek to destroy the host (they just want to feed off it), yet in the bizarro world of environmental activism, they not only seek to do so, they revel in it.
Ach, Schadenfreude, mon amour.
As a Swede I like to point out that Oden and a few other icebreakers are paid by the Swedish taxpayers to keep the ship lanes open during the winters.
Good to see that the likelihood of colder winters in the coming years is now acknowledge by the government.
How long it will take until they realize the CAGW is a mirage is anyone’s guess.
Why don’t they just install several hundred thousand acres of solar panels and a couple of batteries? Or a hundred acres of 5-story wind turbines and several hundred thousand batteries to keep them warm enough to operate, the steel in the towers from being too brittle, and the snow and ice from piling up around them?
Excellent post & I get the irony, being British I have like many fellow Countrymen, watched our once proud seafaring nation become poorer & poorer, less & less well equipped, with skills reduced to that of rank amatuers, all because of political ideology & the desire to look to the PDREU for our future, as opposed to your good selves as we used to do!!! You chaps & chapesses in the Virginian Colonies will be next, & you can see it happening before your very eyes, like the train wreck in slow motion, you see it happening, but are powerless to prevent it!
Then there is this little gem whilst we’re in the area:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14803840
No scientific evidence of what caused these little chaps to be where they are, & no evidence that they haven’t always been there, or that it is not a natural occurrence! Just what “experts” didn’t expect to see, & some guess work, rather like those “experts” who claimed tigers couldn’t live above a certain altitude in Bhutan until they filmed them where they shouldn’t be!
The lesson here is that sovereign nations look out for their own best interest first and is it about time the US looked out for the best interest of the US first for a change and for the better?
halfacow says:
September 7, 2011 at 12:30 am
Would it have been better if the ice breakers were under sail?