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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I’ll take mine with ice. ‘A toast to schanenfreude!’
And throw another snag on the barbie.
My bad,we Ozies can’t spell,”Schadenfreude.”
No Nation is better at efficiently killing their enemies, than Canada. Just ask the Germans, Koreans, Boer, Iraq, Afghanistani, Cypriot, Japanese and even Americans (1812). They are fierce, peace loving warriors, who open holes in battlefield fronts, whenever they appear. Do not mistake their peacekeeping tendencies for military weakness. When aroused, they are not a sleeping bear but a terrible dragon. I am so happy, most nations regard them as friend, including the good ol US of A. Let’s not harass them with their only territorial claim on this planet. GK
Bowen the Troll says:
September 7, 2011 at 2:08 pm
“In the past, Germans had the sense of humor socially engineered out of them . . . . as I learned in the history of the Reich’s . . . because laughing or even smiling was considered a sign of disrespect and insubordination . . .”
Hitler’s limo runs over a pig, killing it. Hitler’s chauffeur goes to the farmer’s house to explain. He comes back a long time later, heavily drunk and laden with bacon and sausages. Hitler quips: “What happened?” The chauffeur answers: “I said: Heil Hitler, the pig is dead. They started celebrating and invited me.”
Loved the Swedish cook on the Moppets. Bjorken da stewing.
Heil Humor!
mkelly: Swedish Chef – Meatballs
DirkH says:
September 8, 2011 at 9:37 am Dirk! What so dam funny about that?!!! /sarc???!!???
Willis says “You forget, as the world seems to have forgotten, choice (c): put tariffs on the imports.”
Willis : thanks, but I hadn’t forgotten that, in chronological order, (a) it is generally accepted that the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (as here) had a negative economic effect during the great depression; (b) during the decline of the British shipbuilding industry Britain also had many negotiated tariff treaties (principally Commonwealth preference, succeeded by the EU treaties); (c) what’s already done of course can’t now be undone and, most importantly, (d) China is now the world’s no 2 economy and (as a command economy with an almost unlimited potential labour supply) anyone who takes on the PRC in a tariff war will likely come off worst!
I will indeed look forward to debating this in another thread, another time.
TimC says:
September 8, 2011 at 11:09 am
Thanks, Tim. Remember that my comment was in response to your statement, viz:
I fail to see what the Great Depression has to do with what you are putting out as a universal rule. You are admitting there is a third choice, while claiming it is a bad choice … so since we agree there is a third choice, indeed we are making progress.
I would dispute that it is a bad choice, and would be happy to discuss it on another thread. Before doing so, however, in the meantime I strongly suggest that you read “How the rich countries got rich (and why poor countries stay that way)” by Erik Reinert. It is the most readable economic text I know of. The short answer to the question in the title is that the rich countries got rich by protecting their nascent industries with tariffs … and now that they are rich, of course, they want an end to tariffs to keep the poor countries poor. Most of the industrialized world (for obvious reasons) has fallen in line with this “keep the poor in their place” theory, so as you point out there is a “consensus” that tariffs are a bad idea … but as with climate science, that consensus is built on dollars and means nothing.
From the book’s description:
Give it a read, it changed my mind, might do the same for yours. As you point out, China is the #2 economy … but how do you think they got there? Tariffs and protectionism, my friend, tariffs and protectionism. Free trade had nothing to do with it (except for the “free trade” of the allowing the Chinese products into the US while the Chinese were keeping US products out of China).
w.
highflight56433 says:(September 7, 2011 at 11:09 am)
“Legal possession often boils down to the guy with the biggest hammer … ?”
So, all this belongs to Thor, then, with or without his H. 🙂
All-father Wotan must have been distracted when he gave the lad that hammer, possibly wondering why, even after using all those names, the mightiest of Norse gods still only rates 3989 in the charts.
And I see that so far no-one’s mentioned the Odinist Fellowship, so I will.
This is based on observation, not modelling:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/AreaRecordSet.png
Can anyone explain to me how we can get a new record minimum ice area in the Arctic in this cooling world?
Alan the Brit says:
“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!”
Actually lithodid crabs have long been known to occur in antarctic waters:
http://epic.awi.de/Publications/BerPolarforsch2004483.pdf
Perry says:
“Ah, the voiceless dental fricative strikes again. Is it Thor or Tor? In Norse mythology, Thor (from Old Norse Þórr)”
Both the voiced and the voiceless ddental fricatives are long extinct in both Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. It only survives in Icelandic. So it’s Tor and pronounced that way even if sometimes spelled Thor.
oh, boy…
stifled trade was the hallmark of guild socialism – which stagnated the western world for a thousand years.
revisionist history that credits statist control of trade with prosperity is patently false.
classical economists express the opposite view – that taxation of any kind is not productive nor conducive to productivity, but damaging to it.
let it be known that monetarism is fairly recent and a creature of the state for the purpose of justifying the state.
don’t hesitate to hesitate with gratuitous expertise on things you really aren’t expert at.
avoid ‘guru syndrome’ and you’ll have a happier life with much less pretense.
No, China is not productive because of import tariffs and protectionism. that’s crazy.
Willis: thanks again but I think we are getting rather wide of the mark here. If you analyse this a little more (at least in outline), I hope we agree that tariffs are (principally) intended to protect more costly domestic production against less expensive imports available on world markets, but at cost of domestic consumers paying more than world market prices.
What has this actually got to do with the (failing) British shipbuilding industry, where we started off this line of conversation? If it costs the domestic British industry, say, £80m to produce a ship whereas the same ship only costs £60m from a foreign shipyard (at lower labour costs) – and, crucially, the ship isn’t intended for the (now rather pitiful) British domestic market but is built to order for sale for profit on the world market to maintain a viable shipbuilding industry – how do tariffs help at all? As before, they just mean that the British shipyard pays over world market price for components or services it has to source abroad – so the finished ship is yet more costly to the British shipyard (unless HMG refunds the excise duty to the shipyard of course but this is then just artificially churning the duty – unless it is perhaps treated in the same way as VAT on re-exported items).
Isn’t the most advantageous position for domestic suppliers, selling for profit on the world market, a nil UK tariff – so choice (c) (import tariffs levied in the country of manufacture) is actually nugatory. The concern for domestic manufacturers will be more that the buyer suffers a tariff in its own country – but that is not something that HMG has direct control over, short of entering into a tariff war (when everyone suffers).
So it’s really not about free trade versus tariffs, at all.
http://www.cbe.uidaho.edu/bus100/modules/economics/economics01_famous.htm
quick overview of economists in the last couple centuries.
do note which among them have been validated by experience.
“Willis Eschenbach says:
September 8, 2011 at 12:07 pm”
What a bizarre opinion. The so called Third World is getting out of poverty due to free trade.
@tty
“Both the voiced and the voiceless ddental fricatives are long extinct in both Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. It only survives in Icelandic.”
Faroese retains the letter ð but does terrible things with it. It isn’t pronounced like Icelandic.
“No one can pronounce Swedish. Even Swedes get permanently clogged sinuses attempting it.”
Odd that you should say that. The Swedes say that Danish is a thoat disease, not a language.
Is it just a coincidence that the one’s with the worst track record are the ones that favor central planning?
And yet it was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which turned the recession of 1929 into the world-wide Great Depression. And the Keynesian New Deal not only did not solve the problem but continued to make it worse.
The free market and free trade are both ideals and like most ideals, are rarely realized. They are among the worst economic models, except for all the others, of course.
“Political Correctness is a doctrine… which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
Meanwhile, the only two USCG icebreakers designed for antarctic operations have been allowed to languish (I intentionally did not count the Healy). The USCGC Polar Star has been in caretaker status since 2006 and her sistership, the Polar Sea will be decommissioned this year. Why? Because the NSF won’t fund them.