This will be a top “sticky” post for awhile since interest is high – new stories will appear below this one – Anthony
UPDATE: Josh channels the boat people
UPDATE2: Another irony is discovered, this one doubly deep. See update 2 below.
UPDATE4: AMSA: Helicopter rescue of Akademik Shokalskiy likely to commence shortly
(It’s off again, then now its on again, with report the helicopter has landed)
UPDATE5: All the passengers (tourists and scientists) are off the ship
UPDATE6: Tough questions need to be asked
UPDATE7: Trouble on the rescue ship – reaching open water not so easy
As we reported previously on WUWT here and here, the saga of the “climate scientists/tourists trapped in ice” continues to fascinate many. Now a second ship has given up on rescue, after the Chinese ship “Snow Dragon” gave up two days ago. The Aurora Australis has abandoned rescue of the trapped Russian “research”vessel in Antarctica and a helicopter evacuation in now being ordered. This episode has taken on a heightened comedic fiasco-like quality.
Now, with such a fantastic failure in full world view, questions are going to start being asked. For example, with advanced tools at their disposal (that Mawson never had) such as near real-time satellite imaging of Antarctic sea ice, GPS navigation, on-board Internet, radar, and satellite communications, one wonders how these folks managed to get themselves stuck at all. Was it simple incompetence of ignoring the signs and data at their disposal combined with “full steam ahead” fever? Even the captain of the Aurora Australis had the good sense to turn back knowing he’d reached the limits of the ship on his rescue attempt. Or, was it some sort of publicity stunt to draw attention? If it was the latter, it has backfired mightily.
One might argue that with photos like the one below, this whole “Spirit of Mawson” research expedition, is little more than a media stunt.
Source: [ http://twitter.com/GdnAntarctica/status/412977161323036672 ]
Even after the ship was trapped, these reporters still had a party like atmosphere going on:
Source: [ http://twitter.com/GdnAntarctica/status/416881634273525761/photo/1 ]
Yesterday, Andrew Revkin tweeted something that I agreed with, especially since so many of the people trapped in the ice on the ship seem to have a nonchalant, almost partly-like atmosphere going on.
Scientist on trapped Antarctic ship: "Fantastic-I love it when the ice wins & we don't." http://t.co/UsxA2tiV2i What about rescue risk/cost?
— Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ (@Revkin) December 29, 2013
Yes, the cost and risk is significant. These folks trapped on-board don’t seem to be cognizant of that issue, following the #spiritofmawson Twitter feed, it’s like watching reports (with pictures and video) from a high school class party.
And here’s the kicker. Even the public saw through the charade at the beginning. Trying to get crowd funding from the public for this trip failed miserably as this Indigogo campaign shows:
Source: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-us-return-to-mawson-s-antarctic-hut-the-home-of-the-blizzard
Maybe it had to do with the ridiculous image of Professor Chris Turney in full cold weather gear standing in the midst of a tropical forest.
Right after the ship got stuck and there was a realization that the world was watching, one scientist on-board, Dr. Chris Fogwill, of the University of New South Wales, decided that it would be an opportune time to hit the public for money again:
Source: http://www.spiritofmawson.com/
And again, the public has seen through this, and today, the campaign remains stuck at $1000 with just a few donors. People are realizing that there’s no real science being done on this trip, and that it seems to be little more than a chartered party boat for Antarctic enthusiasts and media.
Now, with the ship to be evacuated via helicopter, will the Akademik Shokalskiy join the list of recent ships that have been sunk in Antarctic waters?
Ships that have sunk in Antarctic waters in recent years (h/t to David Archibald)
The Brazilian yacht “Endless Sea” sank in Maxwell Bay, Ardley Cove on Saturday 7th April, 2012. It was used for “scientific and educational expeditions”.
The sunken remains of the 76-ft Mar Sem Fin, aka “Endless Sea”, which sunk on April 7, 2012, lies at a depth of about 9 meters (30 ft) in Ardley Cove, Antarctica.
In November 2007, the Linblad Explorer hit sea ice and sank.
In April 2013, the Chinese factory fishing ship Kai Xin caught fire and sank near Bransfield Strait at the Antarctic Peninsula.
And there are others, these are just a few recent ones.
With so much concern for the pristine environment of Antarctica, one wonders how much environmental damage these sinkings are doing.
And when the trip is nothing more than a party for your friends and media, disguised as a “scientific expedition”, one wonders if there shouldn’t be some moratorium on such trips.
Richard Tol summed it all up nicely with one sentence:
There has been a strong and statistically significant upward trend in climate-change-related public-relations disasters #spiritofmawson
— Richard Tol (@RichardTol) December 30, 2013
UPDATE:
The #spiritofmawson hashtag is now getting competition from the hashtag #ClitanicDisaster in honor of the trapped climate scientists that the MSM won’t mention as being climate scientists.
========================================================
UPDATE 2:
reader Aphan writes on 2013/12/31 at 7:16 pm
I don’t know if anyone was posted this yet, but the IRONY just gobsmacked me.
The British “explorers” on board the MV Explorer who were “commemorating the Spirit of Shackleton” found themselves repeating HIS adventure when their ship struck a piece of submerged ice and then SANK in the Antarctic in November of 2007! None of the passengers or crew were lost. But HOW AMAZING is it that both the “Spirit of Mawson” trip AND the “Spirit of Shackleton” cruise trips ended in disaster from sea ice?????
http://www.jamescairdsociety.com/shackleton-news-104519.htm
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/news/explorer-sinks-antarctica.html
I mean…come on. What are the odds?
============================================================
Related articles
- Saving the Antarctic scientists, er media, er, activists, er tourists trapped by sea ice (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Antarctic rescue mission fails to reach trapped ship (theguardian.com)
Someone forgot to tell the Antarctic we are in the midst of a global warming :/
http://realcoldout.com/global-warming-party-gatecrashed/
“Apparently a factor in this fiasco, as I have read in other blogs, is land-based ice is melting, running into the sea and freezing contributing to expanding sea ice and sea level rises.”
Yes, and somehow the warmie blogs thinks that indicates AGW. Except that the Antarctic has seasons. EVERY year, sea ice extent halves in summer from 19m sq k to about 9m and so presumably there’s some melt on land too (as temps push towards + double digits). It’s called “summer” not cAGW. Of course, any melting in the Arctic (even if there’s an undersea volcano) is by definition cAGW.
u.k.(us) says:
December 31, 2013 at 11:11 pm
We’ve all had our fun.
Now let’s get everybody out alive.
But not until our valiant tourists have had a cold, harsh slap of reality. Please. They’re in sore need of a clue-by-four. The southern sea ice minimum is around when? March? It would be nice if Mother Nature relents only around then.
http://wikitravel.org/en/File:Antarctica_regions_map.png
Antarctica map showing Commonwealth Bay and McMurdo Station
Katherine says:
December 31, 2013 at 11:52 pm
“But not until our valiant tourists have had a cold, harsh slap of reality. ”
Maybe this will cure them of their denial…
ATheoK says:
“Did that sneaky old ice creep up in the darkness (at Antarctica in the summer!?) and surround them while they snoozed or played shufflegraph or whatever the CAGW faithful do when they’re having a good time. No, it was there and they cruised right into it.”
We know that the ice wasn’t there in too large of quantities when they got to their current location (otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten to said location – or in the very least getting there was much, much, much harder then they are letting on), was all of sudden surrounding them for 2-3 miles after they all went inside to finish their afternoon tea or whatever, and they are currently sitting at minimum 16 miles from open sea surrounded by ice that is up to at least 10 feet thick…
If this massive amount of nothing but old ice (probably 30-50 miles worth of it, at minimum) really was already in the nearby area and just started blowing around the boat at a speed quick enough to sneak up on the crew, then would it not be a bit of a miracle that the ship is still even upright at this point?
Turney’s family is on board – see photo three.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/photos/9566911/Trapped-ship-in-Antarctica
Turney was just interviewed on our ABC 7:30 programme and lamented that they were ;
1.Heading back and just 2nm from open ocean when the ice closed in,
2. the population of Adelie penguins had ‘crashed’ since Mawson’s visit
3. climate change had shifted the Antarctic wind patterns unfavourably.
No cross questioning by the ABC of course.
I fear that they are milking the publicity and sympathy factor for all it is worth.
Oh, I forgot the link about the carbon emission reduction programme.
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/our-legacy/
Am I envisaging this correctly? I’ve never been to Antarctica, but have seen pictures.
To count penguins and follow where Mawson trod they had to get onto the land (or at least ice/snow on the land) thus requiring the ship to sail through lots of loose sea ice. A large party of people are put onto the land and the trudge off as much as 8 miles away aiming to count penguins along the way. While they are away the weather changes and they are recalled. By the time they get back on board the weather is so bad that the captain decides to stop where they are rather than risk ramming the loose ice they sailed through on the way in.
My guess is that a 16 miles round trip would be at least 5 hours, quite possibly considerably longer depending on penguin counting and also the fitness level of the tourists.
Presumably a considerable delay occurred between noting the change in weather and actually getting everyone back on board. In fact, since visibility has dropped so much that sailing is stopped, presumably the last bit of the walk back would have been under atrocious conditions.
How many tourists are allowed onto the continent in a season? And are they allowed to travel away from the ship on an at least 5 hour trek, considerably longer if they were carrying serious emergency gear?
This 1932 article demonstrates that, unlike the modern era, the warming in the 1920/1940 period affected both poles whilst highlighting the continued retreat of the glaciers generally and in Greenland and Alaska specifically;
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23150667?searchTerm=greenland%20%20melting&searchLimits=
“Some great world change is taking place on the Antarctic Continent. Its glaciers are shrinking. L.A. Bernacchi, who visited the South Polar land 30 years ago, says that the Great Ice Barrier which fronts the continent with a wall of ice for 250 miles has receded at least 30 miles since it was first seen and surveyed. Sir James Ross…on the earliest Antarctic expedition of the nineteenth century, and those who followed him, left clear descriptions of this tremendous ice frontage and its position. It was a cliff 150ft. high and 1000ft. thick. But now it appears to be continuing its century-long process of shrinking; and that process may have been going on for centuries. It might imply, unless it is offset by some increase of ice in another less explored part of the Antarctic, that the climate of the South Pole is changing and becoming warmer.
The shrinkage of the Alpine glaciers of Europe is a well-known and carefully measured fact. Professor Buchanan, of. Edinburgh, drew attention to it twenty years ago, and showed from old and accurate drawings of (many) that they were retreating rapidly. This led to the continuous measurement of the Swiss glaciers (and) examination of other glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere, Greenland, Alaska, and elsewhere. Prom these measurements many geologists concluded that the northern part of the globe was still recovering from the last of its Ice Ages, of which the more southerly of its glaciers in Europe were a relic. If all the glaciers of the Southern Hemisphere as well as those of the Northern are shrinking, the geologists would have a new problem to examine. It would be whether, instead of areas of cold and ice having shifted on the earth, the whole globe is growing warmer. Even if that could be shown the change might prove to be temporary.”
Historical note on Louis Bernacchi
“Bernacchi studied astronomy, magnetism, meteorology and physics at Melbourne Observatory and made significant contributions to science during his two Antarctic expeditions.”
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/history/people/louis-bernacchi
tonyb
ATheoK says:
December 31, 2013 at 7:42 pm
“Richard Day says: December 31, 2013 at 3:45 pm
I hope they run out of food and fuel and heavy storms prevents any kind of rescue or food drops. Much hilarity ensues.”
How odd, just when suspiciously troll like comments start to crop up; along comes somebody who truly espouses the warmista methods.
Shame on you for even thinking any real humans share in such distressingly poor jocularity!
————————————————
re: espouses the warmista methods
it’s sad isn’t it. when the official party line, throughout the globe, is to raise energy and therefore all other prices, make people poor and brainwash them to think that a 1 in 20,000 part change in the atmosphere is what should drive official policy in so many areas of our lives.
*****BBC’S ANDREW LUCK-BAKER: BEGINS WITH DEGREE OF UNCERTAINTY – NOT SURE WE’LL BE HELICOPTER EVACUATED TOMORROW OR POSSIBLY AT ALL!!! WE WERE EXPECTING THE CHINESE ICE-BREAKER TO BE ALONGSIDE THE AUSTRALIAN ICE-BREAKING VESSEL & THEN THE HELICOPTER WOULD FLY TO GET US, BUT IT NOW TRANSPIRES THE CHINESE VESSELL HASN’T MOVED FOR A DAY, FAIRLY DEEP IN THE ICE, 10 MILES FROM THE ICE EDGE, & THERE’S CONCERN IT IS STUCK. FOR THE RESCUE TO GO AHEAD, THE TWO ICE-BREAKERS BOTH HAVE TO BE SIDE BY SIDE IN CLEAR WATER, SO THAT IS NOW UNCERTAIN IF THE CHINESE ICE-BREAKER IS STUCK AND THE AUSTRALIAN ICE-BREAKER IS UNABLE TO FREE IT:
1:43: AUDIO: BBC: Uncertainty over Antarctic helicopter rescue plan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25558853
He doesn’t sound happy.
pat says:
January 1, 2014 at 1:35 am
On the audio clip, when Andrew Luck-Baker says “Things are very much up on the air at the moment…” do you think he was he being sarcastic? I think he has a sarcastic-sounding surname. Just saying.
NotSure says: “If this massive amount of nothing but old ice […] then would it not be a bit of a miracle that the ship is still even upright at this point?”
The captain of Aurora Australis’ :
“It wasn’t all multi-year ice, there was some first-year ice, which can be thick, especially if it’s old first-year ice…”
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/aurora-australis-abandons-attempt-to-save-akademik-shokalskiy-in-antarctica-20131230-302na.html
If icy water, formed in low temperatures, blow into their area the scientific conclusion is strange weather pattern due to climate change. 😉 Let’s hope the Russian ship is in good shape when ice breaks up. I guess they’ll need to be rescued if machinery is damaged.
“J. Herbst says:
January 1, 2014 at 12:55 am”
I have a picture of recovered swamp Kauri that is apparently ~4.5 million years old. As well as pictures of Tane Mahuta (The Father of the Forrest) I understand to be the last of the largest Kauri trees still living. My New Zealand citizenship tree, native Totara, is planted north of Wellington and if it lives to adulthood, will be 500 years old (I have to find that picture). But they are very slow growing trees.
Patrick says:
December 31, 2013 at 10:21 pm
Apparently a facor in this fiasco, as I have read in other blogs, is land-based ice is melting, running into the sea and freezing contributing to expanding sea ice and sea level rises.
__________________________
I read on another blog that Global Warming (mankind) is causing the increased sea ice by making the seas warmer. That’s right- warmer water means more ice. This idea has been proclaimed by the warmunist community since a “scientific- peer reviewed paper” (Zhang, 2007) was published. Do you think this might be a factor, too? Warmer water freezes more ice?
66° 38.000′ S 144° 41.000′ E
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
Send the Mann hockey team to rescue them. They can model their way out of the ice.
But watch out for that Divergence Problem.
I tried to post this on Intrepid Science’s Facebook page.
OK … I admit from the start that I am not a scientist so I probably don’t understand the scientific aspects of all this stuff. The only peer reviews I’d get are hardly laudable, let alone publishable … but ‘google’ is my friend.
You say in your facebook post that … “New Year’s day has been very wet and ridiculously warm. We have had temperatures up to 2˚C. But on the plus side it has rounded the edges of the ice and taken some of the pressure off the ship. Still poor visibility.”
I immediately felt for you and your resolute crew. I guess you’d rather be back at work as Professor of Climate Change at the UNSW rather than toughing it out with your fellow travellers.
However a casual ‘google’ search revealed that temperatures of “up to 2˚C” in December and January are pretty normal; in fact it more than doubles that “ridiculously warm” temperature and leaps to 5˚C in those months in the particular area in which you are embarrassingly stuck.
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/antarctica%20environment/climate_graph/climate_weather.htm
The “very wet” rain is hardly a scientific term but again it looks on a casual and uneducated glance at the records that this piece of Antarctica gets between 200mm and 400mm of rain.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/File-Dgv-surfbal-1.gif
You must have struck a particularly average spell of ‘weather’ in Antarctica.
I’m in Adelaide and our annual average is 550mm or so and coincidentally we have today had some very wet rain.
The garden is looking good at the moment.
Keep morale high
Happy New Year everyone!
My brother, who is an amateur Arctic/Antarctic expeditions historian writes to me the following:
I do hope our Guardianista Warmists can restrain themselves from welcoming back their ‘heroes’ when they get airlifted back to civilisation. Any celebration would be an insult to so many worthy explorers who went before – and knew what it was to suffer.
Is the english translation of Akademik Shokalskiy, Academic’s Shonky? Just wondering…!
You’re a hard man Harry.
My goodness, they’ve been out of bananas and peanuts. How much human suffering should they bear?
cn
Aurora bow webcam now showing iced-up ship in distance.
Is it Akademik Shokalskiy or the Chinese icebreaker??
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
It’s a very bad episode for real science in Antarctica:
The Bolt Report (see updates)
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/somethings_cracking_and_its_not_the_ice_around_the_warmists_ship/
point out how folks that are waiting on supplies and science gear may lose another year — it IS summer and the window for shipping is very short.
Maybe some good will come out of this such as banning “climatologists” from waters south of 40 degrees South latitude.