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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Doesn’t any one from the Man made Climate Change crowed ever watch the program ‘Deadliest Catch’? over the last fue years there were lots of ships becoming iced in at port and the experienced crab fishers on numerous episodes have said they have never seen ice this bad in the Bering Sea, the ice is also attributed to the loss of their Traps and pots which costs them financially, and they have to wait until the Ice melts to make an attempt to retrieve them which adds to the problem of ghost fishing unfortunately.
Annual Mean Sea Ice Extent 1979-2009 with rising trend in the Bering sea;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M6mjyQXKBD8/TlKJ4Q9dmHI/AAAAAAAABzI/cjjUn4460LA/s1600/Fullscreen%2Bcapture%2B8222011%2B95134%2BAM.jpg
And yes it is funny and ironic that man made global warming research is hampered by severe freezing conditions.
Who to believe? But I guess ice would melt in the NH summer.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/dramatic-shrinking-of-greenland-glacier-20110908-1jyym.html
And we have Ban Ki Moon here in Australia right now selling his snake oil, “50, 50, 50” campaign. I cannot find a link to an article however, he was on ABC News 24 and I cought the tail end of the newscast. But I think the message is along the lines of “50% reduction of emissions by 2050”, not sure what the 3rd “50” was, could be population as this was mentioned.
Willis your common sense is severely lacking – if there is NO Law of the Sea ruling – there is NO law of the sea ruling, period. Not for or against Canada. Likewise there are NO Russian, NO Americans, NO Chinese, NO Norwegians living in the North West Passage – however there are Canadian Inuit living in the NWP long before white man and long before the UN and long before any Law of the Sea was ever on any books in any world known to man. And YES arctic oil and Gas in the NWP will impact Canada NOT Norway, not Russia, NOT China, and NOT America – Canada. I’ve lived in that region and I know the tides and the wind.
Canada cannot possibly recognize a Law of the Sea ruling in the NWP when there is NONE! You can’t get around that fact, period! And BTW, ask Norway will we defend our Arctic, ask Russia will we defend our Arctic – Russian bomber crews will tell you straight Canada will. As will Norway tell you – the same Norway who complained to the UN when we sent 500 northern and Native troops to Hans Island to stare down Norway when they sent navy frigates into our territory to that region. Regards to China – they’re so heavily invested on the oil sands needing Canadian oil who do you think they will support? And as usual America does NOT support our claim – just as we don’t support America’s claim to areas of the North. Tit for tat is the order of the day up in that region. Personally speaking – that is gonna cause a real rift between Canada and the US which can only grow more emotional in the years to come.
And “fight whoever to the death”? Dude, we’re talking about Canadians here.
I just returned from a motorcycle guard of honor for the 157 Canadians killed in action in Afghanistan – and on their wall was 101,000 Canadian poppies representing all those Canadians who lost their lives in 2 world wars up to present. Yes, we are talking Canadians here – we have done our part and then some. Perhaps it would do you well to recognize there is indeed a world outside the US. And in OUR part of that world we call the Arctic OUR land.
Hah! No one can pronounce Swedish. Even Swedes get permanently clogged sinuses attempting it.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 7, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Figures … if the Swedes spell it one way, the Danes will spell it the other …
w.
Wil says:
September 7, 2011 at 10:58 pm
The Northwest Passage is the long-sought passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the top of North America. Since the Northwest Passage goes along the American coastline for a thousand miles or so, your claim that there are “NO Americans … living in the North West Passage” is, well, wrong. Unless you are only referring to the Canadian part of the NWP, in which case it is a tautology.
Arctic oil and gas extraction in the Northwest Passage (NWP) will impact Canada and the US, and perhaps Denmark (Greenland). Arctic oil and gas extraction in the Northeast Passage (NEP), on the other hand, affects Norway and Russia. In general, spills by any country will affect that country the most.
Reading your words I get the idea you misunderstand the issue regarding the NWP and the UNLOTS Treaty. Under the UNLOTS Treaty, sea lanes that have been used traditionally by mariners from many countries are treated differently (in a legal sense) than say the internal waterways of a country. You might think of it as an “easement” over part of the ocean, in the same way that there can be an easement over land to allow pedestrians to use a walkway across the land. The easement only allows the pedestrians to walk across, they can’t farm the ground or set up a business. The easement has restrictions.
In the ocean case, the easement means that the country can’t prevent legitimate mariners from traveling that route, under the ancient concept of the “freedom of the seas”.
The part I think you misunderstand is that nobody is allowed to just go drill for oil in the area of such an easement. Even if the Northwest Passage is ruled an international waterway under the UNLOTS Treaty, Canada would still retain full and complete control over all mineral extraction, just like in any other part of its waterways. If Canada decides not to do any oil extraction in that area, there won’t be any.
All an international waterway designation does is to allow legitimate mariners to traverse the waters. You can’t fish the waters, you can’t set up shop in the waters, all it gives you is the freedom to travel over the waters. No drilling for oil. No exploration for mineral extraction. Go from point A to point B, that’s all that’s allowed. So no, there’s no hazard of loss or danger to the Inuit from oil or gas exploration in the Canadian part of the NWP, that’s up to you guys in Canada to decide what to do with no matter which way the UNLOTS Treaty folks end up ruling.
I hope this clears up the confusion.
w.
Tallbloke, I presume you mean Saint Margaret in the comment below.
“Tell me about it. I was in Trafalgar Square in 1984 fighting riot cops in an effort to overthrow the mad bitch”
She was certainly a ‘mad bitch’ when she was briefly a supporter of the theory of man made global warming, but it didn’t take her long to smarten up and dismiss it as a load of nonsense.
A lot of people still think she was the original inspiration for creating the AGW cult, as a back door way of trying to influence people to reduce western oil consumption.
Linguistic discussions on WUWT, I like it!
Bowen the troll says:
Actually . . . English is from West German is from Indo-European . . . is from??
1. West GermanIC, not West German. Big difference. Germanic is the family languages such as English, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Yiddish etc belong to, German is but one language in it.
2. The ancestor of Indo European is currently unknown. Relations towards other language families in the world are not proven to exist. Even though it is hypothesized that eventually all languages of the world come from a common origin, their actual relations are not subject to research because the assumed split was too far in the past to leave recognizable traces in modern languages.
If anyone is interested in the etymology of “schadenfreude”, it’s literally damage-joy. The cognate of “Schaden” in English is “scathe”, the cognate of “Freude” is “frolic”. So using cognates it could be translated “scathe frolic”. Frolic is a loan from our common cousin Dutch though. An inherited cognate in Old English is “frough”, but I believe that is extinct and has no modern descendants.
Wil says:
September 7, 2011 at 10:58 pm
Per your request, I asked Norway. They assured me that they had nothing to do with it, and suggested you might have mistaken them for Denmark. They said that it’s hard to tell the two countries apart, particularly during the long northern winters when the light is dim and visibility is bad.
Norway also recommended that I talk to the folks at the Hans Island Liberation Front, and there were indeed some good comments there, including
and my personal favorite,
I would be remiss, however, were I to omit the following comment:
The dispute over Hans Island has moved to the diplomatic field, as would be expected. To date, Canada and Denmark have agreed to disagree over the ownership of the island, and both sides have said they won’t “plant the flag” or put troops on the island. An note in Wikipedia says that upon a satellite survey, the Canadians have agreed that the mathematical boundary splits the island in two …
w.
Wil says:
September 7, 2011 at 10:58 pm
I meant no disrespect to the fighting men and women of Canada, who have no need to demonstrate their acknowledged bravery and myriad sacrifices, it is an unquestioned part of history. I wasn’t discussing them at all.
Here’s the problem. As I said, Canada has signed on to the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. If their ruling goes against you, are you going to attack the UN, and batter down the doors of the Treaty offices?
w.
From the Swedish Maritime Administration website is this bit of trivia. They classify the “Degree of Winter Difficulty” for ice-breaking, providing a rating scale (mild/normal/severe) and a time-series chart of Baltic Sea ice extension (km^2) for the winters of 1900-2010.
Details here … http://www.sjofartsverket.se/en/About-us/Activities/Icebreaking/Degree-of-Winter-Difficulty/
TimC says:
September 7, 2011 at 6:27 pm
“…The whole article is here”
Thanks Tim. A very good article.
Re: halfacow…September 7, 2011 at 12:30 am:
I guess halfacow is a “cow half empty” not a “cow half full” kind of person.
Clearly the once mighty US of A is succombing to the British Disease of thinking that you can rely on “buying in services” from others instead of having the production capacity yourself. If you want to know why the economy is in a rut, look no further. It’s probably what you get when your political class have more money than sense what to do with it.
Is this news or satire? I feel confused, the letter seems a fake, but the news might have some base in reality. Perhaps a sidebar would help.
Ah, the voiceless dental fricative strikes again. Is it Thor or Tor? In Norse mythology, Thor (from Old Norse Þórr)
Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ), is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, and Icelandic alphabets.
Thorn in the form of a Y survives to this day in pseudo-archaic usages, particularly the stock prefix Ye olde. The definite article spelled with Y for thorn is often jocularly or mistakenly pronounced /jiː/ or mistaken for the archaic nominative case of you, namely ye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_%28letter%29
Odin (pronounced /ˈoʊdɨn/ from Old Norse Óðinn) is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard.[1] Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon “Wōden” and the Old High German “Wotan”, the name is descended from Proto-Germanic “*Wodanaz” or “*Wōđanaz”. “Odin” is generally accepted as the modern English form of the name, although, in some cases, older forms may be used or preferred. In the compound Wednesday, the first member is cognate to the genitive Odin’s. His name is related to ōðr, meaning “fury, excitation,” besides “mind,” or “poetry.” His role, like that of many of the Norse gods, is complex. Odin is a principal member of the Æsir (the major group of the Norse pantheon) and is associated with war, battle, victory and death, but also wisdom, magic, poetry, prophecy, and the hunt. Odin has many sons, the most famous of whom is Thor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin
Disclaimer: Wikipedia is not the be all & end all source with regard to climate concerns, but is pretty good for more esoteric enquiry.
Alan Watt says:
September 7, 2011 at 1:49 pm
It is indeed ironic that global warming research requires a significant expenditure of fossil fuel. Perhaps we could make a gesture towards reducing greenhouse emissions by mandating that all climate change research projects be entirely powered by zero-carbon technologies. Didn’t I read somewhere that with the right policies 70% of our energy needs could be met by renewables? Surely dedicated researchers trying to save the planet should jump at the chance to prove that we really don’t need fossil fuels, for example using bicycle pedal generators to power their climate model computers …
*********************************************************************************************
Alan, I think you may have missed the point: Surely all the giving up and going without only applies to you, me and the masses. The “elite” in their ivory (green?) towers are surely all exempt from the effects that they want to impose on the rest of us?
Steve
Louise says:
September 7, 2011 at 3:56 pm
This is arctic rather than antarctic but still relevant to this discussion;
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/09/piomas-august-2011.html
How does this tie in with ‘we’re heading for global cooling’ which I hear here quite a lot?
From the article:-
“Let me stress that these volume numbers aren’t observed data, but are calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003).”
As a model, it can only produce what it’s been programmed to produce; in other words, Garbage In, Garbage Out, so any connection with real life is likely to be tenuous.
Yes, it’s ‘Oden’.:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oden – “Oden (eller Odin; på fornnordiska Óðinn; på tyska Wotan (R. Wagner Nibelungens ring), Wuotan eller Wodan)” – it’s you Southern Anglo-Saxon types (from below 65°N) who get it wrong… He is now needed closer to home to fight the Frost Giants; you know what that means: Ragnarok is coming on (and maybe Fimbulwinter).
Cooling IS the new warming.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 7, 2011 at 10:14 am
Smokey says:
September 7, 2011 at 9:37 am
Willis,
Swedish is spelled just like it’s pronounced.
True, Smokey. American English, on the other hand, is very easy to follow because it is mis-pronounced almost exactly like it is mis-spelled …
w.
Now Willis, “American English”, ah surely that’s just American.
My wife is Irish, and these folk really know how to speak and write English.
I’m Australian so I don’t count, (apparently).
Chrs JJ Always enjoy and appreciate your posts, thanks.
There’s no joking about that, our how even today progressives are infatuated with totalitarian dictatorships, just as they once admired Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.
Ed Zuiderwijk said: “Clearly the once mighty US of A is succombing [sic] to the British Disease of thinking that you can rely on “buying in services” from others”.
It’s more fundamental than that. If your unit costs (principally of labour, also of capital) are greater than those in other economies you have just two options: (a) taxpayer subsidies for the industry (by direct subsidy if such is permitted for example under EU treaties, or by nationalisation) or (b) watch the unprofitable industry decline and eventually mostly go bust – when your only recourse is to buy in the general services from elsewhere.
That’s what happened to the British shipbuilding industry – we could no longer build a full range of ships profitably in competition with other countries, and British taxpayers voted against subsidising the industry – we thankfully saw that having the public sector build cruise ships for sale on the world market made no sense at all.
In reply to Ulrich- If I remember my Norse mythology correctly, Fimbul winter- a winter 3 years long, comes first- then Ragnarok.
MikeA says:
September 8, 2011 at 2:24 am
News. The letter is real.
w.
TimC says:
September 8, 2011 at 6:26 am
You forget, as the world seems to have forgotten, choice (c): put tariffs on the imports.
It’s how the rich countries got rich, and why the poor countries stay poor … but that’s a topic for another thread.
w.