Today, while shopping at lunchtime for some last minute year end supplies, I got one of the strangest cell-phone calls ever. It was from my friend John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel and Chief meteorologist at KUSI-TV in San Diego. He was calling via cell phone from his car, and he was on his way into the TV station early.
He started off by saying, “Anthony, we have a really strange situation here”.
Then to my surprise, he relayed a conversation he had just had; a person on the Akademik Shokalskiy had reached out, because they didn’t have adequate weather data on-board. At first, I thought John was pulling my leg, but then as he gave more details, I realized he was serious.
What had happened was that the US Coast Guard had received a message from the ship, requesting weather and wind information for Antarctica. That got relayed to someone at the Scripps oceanographic Institute in San Diego, and it went to John’s weekend KUSI meteorologist Dave Scott. Dave had worked with a scientist who is now on the US Coast Guard IceBreaker Polar Star, and they had logged the request for weather for forecast data from Akademik Shokalskiy. That’s how all this got started.
The message was that they needed better weather information on the ship than they had, specifically about wind and how it might affect the breakup of sea ice. John asked me to gather everything I had on the area and send it, and also to help him contact Joe D’Aleo of WeatherBell Analytics, because somehow John’s cellphone had gotten stuck into some sort of “private caller” mode and Joe wasn’t answering his phone due to how the incoming call looked.
My first thought was that no matter how much we’ve been criticizing the expedition for its silliness, that if such a request had reached all the way from Antarctica to me, I’d do everything I could to help.
I told John “give me 15 minutes”, which was about the time I’d need to get out of COSTCO and get back to my office and send along some things I knew would help.
I immediately called Joe D’Aleo at WeatherBell, who was as incredulous as I at the request, and asked him to call John Coleman right away. I explained to him that we had to remember that we were dealing with a Russian ship, not a military ship, but a charter vessel and they likely didn’t have all the tools that American meteorologists had and may not even know where to look for better data. I also pointed out that the Australian scientists on-board were climatologists, and not operational weather forecasters, and finding this sort of weather data probably wasn’t in their skill set.
Joe started working from the WeatherBell end, I finished my shopping and headed back to the office. As I drove, I started thinking about the situation with the ship there. They had wind compressing the ice into shore, with the Akademik Shokalskiy in the middle, and the wind wasn’t changing. They needed a wind shift in order to ease the pressure on the ice but they had no idea when that might happen. It was a waiting game, and as we know, the longer a ship remains trapped in sea ice, the greater its chances of having a hull breach due to the pressure.
I knew just what to send, because it was something that had been discussed several times by commenters on WUWT.
When I got back to the office, I no more than pulled up the bookmark and press send on the email with a brief description of the operational weather data model that covered the region and John Coleman was on the phone again. He asked me to talk to Dave Scott and explain what I had just sent over. I called Dave immediately and relayed the email.
I sent a live link that provided this image of Antarctica, and I noted in a Tweet about the same time:
Just had a request for Antarctic wind and FC data come up via Scripps from #spiritofmawson ship. KUSI, WeatherBell, WUWT all happy to help.
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) December 31, 2013
This map shows winds for area ship is trapped in. Waiting for katabatic winds to return which will clear ice. pic.twitter.com/XqCU6NfWWK
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) December 31, 2013
Dave listened intently to my explanation and then thanked me saying “this is exactly what we need”. I then started to do some research into the extensive library of operational forecast products put together by our friend Dr. Ryan Maue of WeatherBell which can be seen at http://models.weatherbell.com/ About that same time I get a new email from Joe D’Aleo, and he had sorted out the maps needed and had sent an email to John, Dave, and I.
In a couple of minutes John Coleman was back on the phone to me, he wanted my assessment of the maps. I had looked at what was happening and saw what I thought might be an opening in 7-8 days based on the forecast graphics from WeatherBell, where the winds would shift to offshore in the area where Akademik Shokalskiy was stuck. Like we discussed in the WUWT post yesterday Polynyas are very important for marine life and cooling the oceans I had hoped that a coastal polyna might open up near the ship. We also discussed the possibility of a low pressure system passing nearby that might help break up the ice. I didn’t express much hope for that.
The problem is that they are in a catch-22 now, they need strong offshore winds to help blow the sea ice out to open water, but at the same time they need calm or light winds for a safe helicopter rescue.
John Coleman and Dave Scott put together a video news story which ran on the KUSI 6PM News tonight. I was interviewed for the story, and you can watch it here:
http://www.kusi.com/video?clipId=9686594&autostart=true
Watching the wind is the key to the way out of the situation the Akademik Shokalskiy is in. This near real-time wind model is worth watching, and it updates every three hours with new observations, click on the image to start it.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=144.30,-66.68,3000
Note the green circle marker, which is the approximate location the Akademik Shokalskiy is at. Winds are running parallel to the coast, and pushing ice up against the edge of the Commonwealth Bay.
Despite the irony and folly of the situation, I’m sure readers will join me in the hope that everyone makes it off the ship safely, whether it is by helicopter or by the ship being freed from the ice.
Related articles
- All scientists and passengers to be taken off ship stuck in Antarctic Ice (wattsupwiththat.com)
If they DON’T get off the ice, we can’t charge the hell out of their asses and recover the cost to the taxpayer.
I am hoping and praying they make it out alive and well. They are in great danger.
Good for you, An-thon-y! They went to the best.
That you have been given the opportunity to come to the aid of your “enemies” (v. a v. truth in science), can only be God’s providence. And, yes, I have been and will pray that God gets them out of there (they are certainly not going to get out without God’s help).
Your admiring fan,
Janice
P.S. Yet another resounding blow for free markets over socialism: During Hurricane (a real one) Katrina, it was privately owned Home Depot who got the supplies and equipment through; when 33 Chilean miners needed rescuing from the bowels of the earth, it was private companies in the U.S., Germany, and other capitalist countries (sorry, forgot all of them) who had the drill bit and cable and who flew in the supplies (U.P.S.); and now, it is you and Joe, two American free market entrepreneurs and genuine scientists’ turn. WAY TO GO!
If this were a soap opera, this would be the point when I would flick the channel. Lazy script writing. Cutting on actors due to budget cut. (I still don’t really get why you.)
REPLY: To be honest, I didn’t either. Sometimes, fate is a weird journey. I certainly didn’t seek any of this out, but I was happy to help in any way I could. I’m sure you’d do the same if you found yourself in that situation rather than “changing the channel”. Watch the KUSI News video, it explains more about how it came about – Anthony
When things get tough, truth is what people need, and propaganda is useless.
Thanks, Anthony, for sending them the facts and the truth.
It is a pity that the political mind-set in Washington does not care so much for truth, thinking propaganda is more important. They too are on a ship, the “Ship of State.”
When a ship of any sort runs into ice, what happened aboard the Titanic occurs. The first thing thrown overboard is political correctness, and people show their true colors. Some utterly freak out and panic and would kill their best friend to cling to life a little longer. Others turn to Truth.
I deem it significant than when someone aboard the Akademik Shokalskiy turned to Truth, he turned to this website.
“My first thought was that no matter how much we’ve been criticizing the expedition for its silliness, that if such a request had reached all the way from Antarctica to me, I’d do everything I could to help.”
————————————–
See all ye warmunists! This is called “ethics”.
Try to get some.
Too awesome. This is the first confirmation I have received that the Polar Star made it’s resupply mission and was in the area. Great to hear they used John Coleman as a resource, but I am sure there will be hell to pay.
Bravo to everyone involved in this.
And Bravo! to you, dear Stan Stendera! May 2014 be yours and Libby’s best year so far!
(and don’t be such a stranger — your enthusiasm, great depth and breadth of knowledge (from your non-formal education), and passionate defense of truth are needed around here!)
Janice
Anthony – you are a person of extreme character and great industry. What an exemplary way to start off the new year, bridging the bitter divide between climate alarmism and skepticism in a time of uncommon and dire need. Hopefully this will lead to some bridge mending.
Let’s hope for karma conditions.
Civilized professionalism at its finest, and a PR coup too.
We are having to follow this story on blogs like yours as the MSM in Australia are not giving the full details.
This is the gift that keeps on giving.
How can they spin their way out of this one?
Getting stuck in ice that models say should be gone, rescue attempts failed so far, ice-breakers from America getting involved, funding of trip queried, company structure queried, large dollars to be settled in costs. MSM now describing it as a tourist ship. Moving the story from science to Asia.
Best of all asking Anthony Watts for help.
I traveled to see you in Australia and have followed your blog since, keep up the brilliant work.
The laws of physics actually work – even in Nature….
‘Catabatic winds’, for those not knowing,
Are caused by heavy, cold air perched on top of
Mountains, glaciers, and ice shelves, like in
Antarctica. The only problem, is that their speeds can get very high.
Well done, again, Anthony.
The people in dire straits down there,
on self-inflicted continuous public view
(In contrast to previous arctic ventures)
Need all the practical help they can get.
Thanks to internet, we now know what it looks like down there.
OMG. This is an astounding development. It seems as if there is no end to the stupid antics of the Antarctic 74, as juxtaposed against the precarious position they have put themselves in by believing in the lie of ‘global warming’ rather than the facts in front of their own noses. I simply cannot look at their childish behaviour, when I know that at least three vessels have been pulled out of normal service, putting crew and passengers at risk, along with the people who depend on these icebreakers to supply them with food and equipment.
I hope the ice’ll get thinner so they can get out safe and well.
The irony, however, gets thicker and thicker.
The speed and professionalism of Anthony and friends was magnificent, indeed the best of humanity itself. Thank you to all involved! God speed to those in peril on the sea this night!
‘ I also pointed out that the Australian scientists on-board were climatologists, and not operational weather forecasters, and finding this sort of weather data probably wasn’t in their skill set.’
This hits the nail right on the head.
Superb stuff. When they get into trouble who can they call? Their own side are as useful as chocolate fireguards, so they had to call someone who knows what he is doing.
Yep the Australian Tax Payer (me included) will be footing the bill for this fiasco. I have already emailed Barnaby Joyce, the new government member for New England, who is a no-nonsense type of politician. In my email I suggest any future funding for this Climate Group of the University of NSW be redirected to medical research, where there are serious researchers willing to help mankind.
I am amazed, Antony, that Turney and his group were not better prepared. I have worked as a seismic supervisor in places, such as the tidal region of the Bay of Bengal and the jungles of East Borneo (for UNOCAL/Union Oil of California), where planning and appreciation of the environment was most paramount for the success of the program and the safety of my personnel and contractors.
Of course everyone wishes a safe return for all those out at sea. I don’t think there should ever be any doubt of that. Yet I’ve just had a discussion about this with my liberal friends and they don’t see the irony at all. In fact, they resent my suggesting it. This won’t change a thing. Those who believe the globe is warming due to human influence won’t let being surrounded by ice deter them.
Anthony wrote:
“I also pointed out that the Australian scientists on-board were climatologists, and not operational weather forecasters, and finding this sort of weather data probably wasn’t in their skill set”.
Pray tell, Anthony, what is their skill set? Dodgy stats analysis? Making up data? Creating mendacious propaganda? Writing meritless grants applications? Silencing opposing views by corrupting the peer review process?
When in doubt, call the professionals. Wonder whether the Cap’n has mentioned this to his tourists … 🙂
Well done. Quite a start to the new year!
The map reminds me. In the 1930s there was a lamppost in Invercargill which had the distinction of being The Most Southerly Lamppost in the British Empire.
Nothing to do with this topic, but I thought you needed to know that.
Yes, it is difficult to feel sorry for the westeners on board the Akademic Sjokowskiy.
Personally, I have stayed 6 weeks on board a similar Russian vessel (the Ivan Kireev), in the Barents Sea, actually celebrating New Year, back in 2007, with free beer and a good meal provided by the captain. We had Russian TV and the annual message from Putin.
I reckon my advice to them is: keep yor spirits up, and think about Shackleton’s journey, and Dawson’s incredible survival, about 100 years ago – unfortunately, he lost some of the men, but lived to tell us the true strength of catabatic winds of the Antarctic. Finally, if you don’t mind alcohol, sample some of the Russian stuff – it’s normally good, basic stuff. – And, don’t forget to use the Sauna on board. I had the pleasure using it once a week on the Ivan Kireev, as it was open for non-Russian ‘guests’ every Sunday. The hour in there was top of the week.
The one guy I really feel sorry for is the Captain. He is facing some really tough decisions ahead…
“Alfred Deakin” has touched on this in his post above and I offer that “Climatologist” are the late 20th early 21st Century’s Phrenologists – with all the imputations that carries.
Interesting who folks turn to when truth is required to save their behinds. Not at all the same as when the world is a stage and “winning the conversation” is what passies for “reality”.
Anthony,
Serendipity makes for strange bed fellows, doesn’t it? May God bless you for doing the right thing. While we can laugh at the self-induced predicament of the ship of fools, we all should pray for their survival… and help, if it is in our power to do so.
MtK
I do hope they know that you were the one to come to their rescue with the much needed data.
That ought to burn their hides until rescued, and that puts a smile on my face
Just for the record, Anthony, can you please explain if a competent forcaster could have warned them of the danger *before* they were trapped. If the signs were there and they ignored them then the leader should be made to answer for his incompetence.
As the danger recedes and the ice thins, watch out for the hatred to get thicker. Hell hath no fury like a belittled climatologist.
The Aurora Australis is currently in a polyna, I commented on this in yesterdays report (30 Dec.) from the ship. The latest report (31 Dec.) states
‘Mark’ continues
From https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/display_sitrep.cfm?bvs_id=19315
Well, well, well. Global Alarmism Ship of fools depends on ‘denier lairs’ and ‘denier central’ for the weather forecasts because the Cause can not fathom out weather patterns nor read Weather maps… Classic, you really REALLY could not make this up.
spread the word guys !!
I am so loving this. We get to mock them for days on the blog of Anthony Watts, who CAGW advocates hate with a passion – and then he helps them with weather info!
It’s like having a cake and eating it too, then getting a full refund for the purchase price.
whatever next?
Here is a bunch of climate scientists doing what they are best at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-25563594
Jimbo in Australia
The skill set of the ‘scientific’ expeditioners is clearly deficient for the task they set themselves. The scientific leader – Climate Change Professor Chris Turvey of the University of New South Wales in Sydney – is actually a paleantologist (coincidently one of the two genuinely academic research areas of Professor Flannery – the other one being mammology). My research on Turvey’s peer reviewed publications reveals no reference to work on Antarctica, sea ice or indeed on any other topic related to the cryosphere. There is no evidence that he has knowledge or experience of climatology or weather forecasting. This is the man who apparently was in charge of the movements of the ‘Akademic Shokolskiy’ as it attempted to retrace the route of the Australian Antarctic explorer Sir Douglas Mawson approx 100 years ago.
My own feeling is that the best bet for these demented green/warmists is that the powerful US icebreaking Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star will shortly arrive and that the weather will improve.
I am drafting in my head as I write this post the letters I will be sending to the relevant Australian Australian politicians pointing out the extent of this folly and pressing strongly for quick and dirty to inquire into the events and recommend the appropriate spreading of costs of rescue to their professors and their universities and not to the Australian taxpayers.
Mertz area sea ice (January 1) https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/display_sitrep.cfm?bvs_id=19315
add this to Google maps Akademic Shokalskiy location https://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&t=h&z=5&q=64+42.000+S,145+0.000+E&ll=-64.700000,145.0000000
Wrong link, try http://www.bom.gov.au/ant/seaice/index.shtml?unit=p29&view=923&band=2&seaSubmit=Update+View for Mertz sea ice area.
BRAVO ZULU to Anthony, John, Dave and Joe.
Headline: “Skeptics Help Save Global Warming Alarmists’ Lives”
Do you think they will ever know? And, if they did, do you think you would ever get a “thank you”?
having trouble posting this on the top thread:
*****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.
——————————————————————————–
From BOM there is an interactive wind speed and direction forecast, but I find this difficult to read;
http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/viewer/index.shtml?type=windbarb&level=10m&tz=UTC&area=SH&model=G&chartSubmit=Refresh+View
For the ships approximate location in Antarctica just triangulate down from Tasmania and New Zealand.
Let’s hope a fair wind blows.
And let’s note that SkS were not the website that is called on when lives are on the line.
The difference between the value of science and propaganda.
Martin Hovland says:
January 1, 2014 at 12:09 am
The laws of physics actually work – even in Nature….
‘Catabatic winds’, for those not knowing,
Are caused by heavy, cold air perched on top of
Mountains, glaciers, and ice shelves, like in
Antarctica. The only problem, is that their speeds can get very high.
On Antarctica these winds are the ones that everyone fears. They arrive almost instantaneously, are difficult to forecast, blow at speeds in excess of 160km/hr and, by there nature, are exremely (dangerously) cold.
As Richard North points out, ships stuck in ice dramas haven’t been rare recently but have mainly been studiously ignored by the media:
http://www.eureferendum.com/results.aspx?keyword=OKhotsk
(scroll down to see the several posts)
This time, having the huge media build-up to the trip and having their own on board has made the situation impossible to ignore for the BBC and The Guardian. (Not impossible to spin however)
This story is one of the most amazing ones that I have read in a long time. I hope that your expert meteorologist knowledge and skills give aid and comfort to the climatologists who have no skills at all when it comes to weather forecasting — short term or long term. I hope many people will come to see that it is meteorologists that we should listen to when it comes to weather and climate and not academic grant-seekers who practice a computer driven version of palm-reading.
Someone said in one of the earlier threads that this episode may become more important than climate-gate in the fight against the mindless propaganda pushed by the socialist-greens and I now agree with that assessment.
The Chinese icebreaker, Xue Long is currently stopped. It has been moving as slowly as 0.3 knots in a direction of about 330 degrees for the last day or so:
http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:144.4372/centery:-66.68268/zoom:8/mmsi:412863000
to all sceptics please send this video to everybody they know i have http://www.kusi.com/video?clipId=9686594&autostart=true
Eh, it’s summer down there. I’m sure all that ice will melt any minute.
🙂
Nice job, Anthony, and what an interesting way to end 2013 and start 2014!
…When a ship of any sort runs into ice, what happened aboard the Titanic occurs. The first thing thrown overboard is political correctness, and people show their true colors…
I’m not sure how that works? There was no panic during the sinking. The evacuation of the Titanic was carried out following the ‘politically correct’ standards of the day – women and children first. The result was that some lifeboats were hardly filled at all because there were not enough women and children at their launch points, and many more men died than was necessary…..
It’s the data provided peer-reviewed? They are kind of prissy in this regard.
Thank you Mr. Watts for your help.
I would suggest that this request originated from the Officers rather than the “scientists”.
But more and more it begins to look as if the Captain does not have as much ice experience, or perhaps southern ice experience, as he needs. I find this strange since the Russians are masters at building and running icebreakers and ice strengthened ships. They probably have more knowledge about this than all the rest of the seafaring nations put together.
I am surprised, though, that this weather information isn’t readily available, from all the scientific bases in Antarctica, for the use of all seafarers in the area, for example British Antarctic Survey. Do they not have Met. men on station giving out the forecast all the time? Unless of course you have to pay a subscription to gain access to it. On the other hand this is a Mayday Distress situation and I would have thought that the locals would have been keeping the ship continuously informed regarding the weather.
But at least they are now getting the “good oil” and with luck (they certainly need lots of that) all will be resolved satisfactorily.
A boatload of tourists taken to Antarctica without a weatherman on board. This is bordering the criminally insane.
Well done to Anthony and WUWT (Along with mods too). Unfortunately, idiocy and propaganda prevails. Here in Australia, although it’s no longer labelled a “sceince expedition” more so a “tourist ecapade”, it is still being held up as an example of the results of AGW. Won’t someone think of the penguins?
From the Antarctic forecasts I have seen for the Mertz area, low pressure systems are moving in a clockwise direction around the area for the next few days, and as the low in SH result in clockwise wind movement and as the 6 o’clock position of the low would coincide with position of the ship, the wind direction at this location would be anticlockwise. The result ? a wind cancellation possibly.
High pressure systems would have to move in for a wind change and the forecasts keep the lows in position for the next week.
I would like to see the URL of the wind model that Anthony supplied.
One would think the Chinese, Australian and French ice breakers would have access to weather forecasts.
Anyone who’s read any historical accounts of Arctic/Antarctic expeditions will be aware of the very great danger ships trapped in the ice can face. If it goes wrong it can go very badly wrong – disastrously so. So I don’t think any of us here wish any harm on anyone aboard the Akademik Shokalskiy; merely that they all get to safety. Having said that, a little less partying from those trapped aboard the ship and a little more gravitas appropriate to their predicament wouldn’t go amiss. There are countless people not aboard the ship working hard to secure a happy outcome for all.
Good to hear Anthony his crew are doing what they can to assist. All other arguments go out of the window when there is a definite risk to human life involved. Nobody should seek to trivialize the potential for an unhappy ending here. Even a series of helicopter rescues, if it comes to that, will be a very dangerous undertaking.
I am among many here who have enjoyed the unexpected gift of the very public own-goal to CAGW alarmists this story has offered over the Christmas and New year break, but I’m well aware there is always the potential for things to take a very serious turn.
If they don’t make it out alive, should we think of it as an example of evolution in action?
omnologos:
A weather forecaster is not a common crew member on any commercial vessel The weather forecast at sea is usually received from a weather forecasting company.
Oldseadog -this is no February cruise in the Caribbean – even Turney knows Antarctic weather can change any minute. And still he went ahead without weather expertise. Same for the Captain.
What’s worrying now is that we don’t know either of them’s leadership skills. They don’t look like Shackletons, but who knows.
“John Gross says:
January 1, 2014 at 12:51 am”
In Australia we have daily weather forecasts (And repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats, and repeats). It is spat out across the airwaves, sometimes, with the question; (The presenters say) What do the models tell us? I go and find some sort of body support garment and have a good giggle!
Let me see if I have got this right:
1. 54 useless tourists charter a Ship for Fools and use my taxes to have a 5-week boondoggle in Antarctica.
2. They have no idea what they are doing today as they are living a century in the future (where they know EXACTLY what is happening to 1/10th of a degree).
3. They get stuck by that inconvenient truth called icepack reality (which they did not foresee 24-hours ahead).
4. They are in a precarious situation and their foolishness is plain for the world to see.
5. A massively expensive rescue operation that has disrupted every other scientific and resupply operation in the Antarctic is mounted, that then traps a second ship and puts it in danger. More lives are now at risk.
6. The less than heroic Topham whines that his bed is uncomfortable, he misses milkshakes and he is beginning to ‘lose it’ (post-traumatic stress disorder claim coming soon?). His back hurts and he banged his leg on a door. Douglas Mawson would weep that this is the sort of person chosen to follow in his footsteps.
7. ‘Professor’ Chris Turney (can anyone find his thesis?) the PR guru needs a distraction, so he reiterates than the ice is melting, its raining not snowing (but fails to use ‘unprecedented’ and ‘its worse than we thought’ (maybe he is saving those for later when he can spin this into ‘its the result of CO2 and mankind’s emissions). Best he wait post-rescue lest those wasting time on this decide to cook the Chris Turkey on his own petard?
8. And the piece de resistance? As people spend time, resources and money striving to rescue the fools, they produce a Party Song & Video showing what a good time they are having. Let’s hope it is played in the Court Case by the prosecution as there is a charge in Australia “negligent behaviour and actions endangering life and property”
I would like to think that this is the last straw, but it will have no effect at all on the cult and its request for more of my/our money.
Whatever we may think of this expedition we all no doubt fervently hope that everyone involved comes out of it safe and well, if a little chastened by their experience.
tonyb
sounds like there are a few unhappy people on board, as reality sets in:
31 Dec: NYT The Lede Blog: Christine Hauser: When Stranded in the Antarctic, Get Ready and Wait
Erik Van Sebille, the oceanographer with the expedition, said on Tuesday in a video diary message that they had all been instructed to be ready for a possible evacuation but that in the meantime he was continuing to work on a joint project with the ornithologist, studying what effect the ocean temperature has on the number of birds they encounter…
But a National Geographic editor, Christine Dell’Amore, wrote that an Australian photographer on board the ship, Andrew Peacock, said in an email to the magazine that “the mood is getting more frustrated by the day.”
“There are so many variables—every briefing is different—and people are getting a little worried now while the weather stays poor. Lack of control and missing loved ones are starting to put some emotion into our conversations!”…
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/when-stranded-in-the-antarctic-get-ready-and-wait/?hpw&rref=science&_r=0
no reality for Turney, or “they”!
31 Dec: AFP: Madeleine Coorey: Winds, rain halt Antarctic ship rescue
He (Turney)said those onboard were keeping busy — either continuing to pack up the scientific equipment on the boat or taking part in seminars ranging from sewing to salsa dancing and reflecting the skills of those trapped on the vessel…
The group said while sea ice was disappearing in many places due to climate change, where they were now stranded ice was building up — a change which they said would impact the deep ocean circulation around the world.
“Underwater, forests of algae are dying as sea ice blocks the light reaching the seabed,” they said, adding that the expanded sea ice had also affected penguin colonies.
“There are many unanswered questions. Who can say what effects the regional circulation changes may have on the ice sheet of the Antarctic plateau?” they said…
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5ZZJ7tiXcGFUHzHFyluxfHZlgqQ?docId=14c16fbc-19ce-4ab3-863d-92f624baa3a5
En passant:
No you haven’t got it right.
The Captain got the ship to where she is at the moment, the “scientists” and passengers simply told the Captain what they would like to do and he tried to accommodate them. The passengers on a ship have no operational authority of any kind.
Truth is truly stranger than fiction. Well done and thank you Mr Watts et al.
omnologos:
Turney’s knowledge of the local ice conditions has no bearing on the situation. He did not “go ahead”. He hired a ship, told the Captain where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do when he got there but it was up to the Captain how to accomplish this.
I agree with your last paragraph, though.
Incidentally, Shackleton was a qualified Master Mariner with great experience of commanding vessels in ice.
You’re a good and decent man Anthony.
Again, Happy New Year to your and yours.
Travelling on any seas is fraught with potentail danger. Preparation and the ability to turn back when conditions become nasty is a prerequistie to survive. It is surprising the Russian captain who are usually very good, and experienced, did not take appropriate action. Perhaps less surprising is the apparent lack of preparation by Turney and his Eco-loon team.
The rescue was always going to be difficult and place the rescurers in significant risk.
Reading the after-action report is going to be almost as interesting as reading about the current situation. So many questions – ranging from what the ship’s master was thinking and what he thought the conditions were going to be and what kind of weather information and from where was the ship receiving.
Mr Watts, et al, you are absolutely an asset to the world community. Thank you for being good neighbors.
Can someone please explain the oft parroted “the Antarctic ice is growing in size due to the melting of the ice on the continent – the fresh water running into the ocean – being less dense than sea water – it floats and of course freezes”, This results in the observed increase in sea ice. I’ve seen this quoted on a pro CAWG site – which attacks Anthony position as well as the rest of us skeptics. OK if this is right (and my skeptical mind has its doubts – but yet to see a counter argument (should say – Scientific theory) then why did they not know this before setting off to recreate Masons great venture?
I look forward to this whole story of un-deniable generosity being reported in depth in the Guardian……
Oldseadog says:
January 1, 2014 at 2:30 am
======================
You speak of the British Antarctic Survey and the possible inclusion of ‘ Met. men’. Tragically the Met. Office is a fully paid up hive of CAGW extremists which would mean that, even if the B. A. S. had many ‘Met. men’ with them, they would simply be repeating the CAGW mantra which would, put simply, not be helpful.
Here’s another useful weather link provided by WUWT reader Rob Ricket in another thread: http://www.yr.no/place/Antarctica/Other/Commonwealth_Bay/
Bob has provided a number of very useful maritime links to help us keep track of such things as the Xue Long’s position, etc.
Tango, thanks for that link – substantiates everything Anthony has recounted here. Love the way the weather guys took the opportunity to point out the irony and bag CAGW promotion by Al Gore.
John Gross says on January 1, 2014 at 12:51 am
Just for the record, Anthony, can you please explain if a competent forcaster could have warned them of the danger *before* they were trapped. If the signs were there and they ignored them then the leader should be made to answer for his incompetence.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’d say they were blissfully oblivious to the simple fact where and when they travel to. In their itinerary there was a mention of seeing Aurora Australis (not the icebreaker) south of Macquarie Island on 13 to 14 December, obviously oblivious to the fact that day and nautical twilight there and then will be 23 hours or more. They really had no clue.
You thought you had seen it all ?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/12/31/helicopter-rescue-needed-for-passengers-on-icebound-ship/
OMG … they are running out of booze !!
…. Some quotes from above Fox news article..
‘”We are preparing for evacuation to a dry ship so a few drinks seems reasonable, but we also have to be ready at a moment’s notice for the helicopter arrival so staying sober is important,”
“he ship has two weeks’ worth of fresh food, but Peacock said drinks are becoming sparse, with “just enough alcohol left” to ring in 2014.”
Things could get messy when the booze finally runs out, they will no doubt be getting that Chinese Helicopter to do trips to the supermarkets at risk of the Pilot’s life and limb.
Perhaps Turkey should have consulted his colleagues at NSW University who seem to know what the “weather” will be like in 2100 so predicting the next few days should be no problem?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earth-will-heat-up-by-4c-by-the-year-2100-scientists-predict-9031810.html
On the other hand, “the 74” could hang on for the next 87 years – a rise of 4 degrees should clear the ice from Discovery Bay shouldn’t it?
P
By the way – thanks for a brilliant website Mr Watts – essential daily reading
Man Bearpig says:
January 1, 2014 at 3:57 am
…. Some quotes from above Fox news article..
‘”We are preparing for evacuation to a dry ship so a few drinks seems reasonable, but we also have to be ready at a moment’s notice for the helicopter arrival so staying sober is important,”
“he ship has two weeks’ worth of fresh food, but Peacock said drinks are becoming sparse, with “just enough alcohol left” to ring in 2014.”
Things could get messy when the booze finally runs out, they will no doubt be getting that Chinese Helicopter to do trips to the supermarkets at risk of the Pilot’s life and limb.
________________________
That should be do- able since the liquor store was closed yesterday, being a holiday and it’s tomorrow down there already, so the store’s open again.
Oz icebreaker Aurora is now showing an iced-up vessel on its bow webcam.
Shokalskiy or Chinese icebreaker?
Can anyone identify??
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
Mr Green Genes:
I didn’t mean men from the British Met Office, I meant meteorologists/forecasters on site making forecasts for the scientists who go out on trips over Antarctica on a daily basis, often supported by aircraft. These guys need accurate forecasts all the time – or as accurate as possible in the circumstances.
I agree with your assessment of the British Met Office.
Foxgoose – not the Russian – wheelhouse at one end, while Russian wheelhouse is midships.
aeroguy48 says:
January 1, 2014 at 2:35 am (Edit)
Or the Russian Captain for that matter. It is an Internet enabled ship. Some of this makes no sense at all. I find it difficult to believe there is this much incompetence surrounding this fiasco. It is very strange, or a really really bad sign for the future.
pat says:
January 1, 2014 at 1:39 am
Well aren’t you lucky. I can’t even load the top thread.
Anthony, you are a good weatherman and so is John Coleman. You were both looking for D’Aleo. Why you? The rest looking for the best! Maue’s maps. This isn’t a soap opera, its a weird super hero story.
Charles:
Got it in one.
It is nothing to do with climate, though, just ordinary weather for the area.
Yo!! Anthony and Joe D. Lets here for the Skeptics. real world data over model projection all the time.. Take note climate researchers
Wonder if you’ll get a thank you from Turney, BBC,Guardian reporters when they find out who has helped them!..might be waiting a long time??
Foxgoose (@Foxgoose) says:
January 1, 2014 at 4:12 am
Oz icebreaker Aurora is now showing an iced-up vessel on its bow webcam.
Shokalskiy or Chinese icebreaker?
Can anyone identify??
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
__________________
I compared lat/long. readings earlier and the other ship is the Xue Long- the Chinese icebreaker. They were less than 1K apart at the time, about an hour ago.
Charles the moderator said;
Or the Russian Captain for that matter. It is an Internet enabled ship. Some of this makes no sense at all. I find it difficult to believe there is this much incompetence surrounding this fiasco. It is very strange, or a really really bad sign for the future.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This what happens when blind faith takes over from common sense,
Think the captain will have some serious questions to answer should this ship get out and even more should it not get out.
The Xue Long is now underway after a prolonged stop.
http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:144.4372/centery:-66.68253/zoom:8/mmsi:412863000
Alan Robertson says:
January 1, 2014 at 4:36 am
Foxgoose (@Foxgoose) says:
January 1, 2014 at 4:12 am
Oz icebreaker Aurora is now showing an iced-up vessel on its bow webcam.
Shokalskiy or Chinese icebreaker?
Can anyone identify??
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
__________________
I compared lat/long. readings earlier and the other ship is the Xue Long- the Chinese icebreaker. They were less than 1K apart at the time, about an hour ago.
_____________________
I need to correct my statement… i compared navigation readings and found that the Aurora Australis and the Xue Long were less tahn 1K apart, but I do not know if the picture shows the Xue Long.
Slacko says:
January 1, 2014 at 4:27 am
pat says:
January 1, 2014 at 1:39 am
having trouble posting this on the top thread:
Well aren’t you lucky. I can’t even load the top thread.
————————–
Neither can I. Just too much for my elderly iPad.
“Despite the irony and folly of the situation, I’m sure readers will join me in the hope that everyone makes it off the ship safely, whether it is by helicopter or by the ship being freed from the ice.”
=================
Sure. But I’d prefer a safe helicopter rescue, because the sight of that vessel being crushed by ‘melting’ ice is going to have a global impact, even if it wont deter the alarmists at all …
Journalist on board Aurora confirms they are closing on Xue Long
https://twitter.com/colincosier/status/418287641621057536/photo/1
Ice looks pretty thick though.
01012014 12:00 UT SitRep: Excitement has been growing this afternoon as we are moving closer to the Xue Long. At time of writing we are 4 nautical miles away. This is a slow process as we zig zag through the pack creeping ever nearer. It is amazing seeing what an icebreaker can do. Good news is that the Akademik Shokalskiy can see us.
At 12:30 Xue Long’s AIS reported 4 knots and course 24 degrees (from marinetraffic.com)
Nigel S says:
January 1, 2014 at 4:50 am
01012014 12:00 UT SitRep: Excitement has been growing this afternoon as we are moving closer to the Xue Long. At time of writing we are 4 nautical miles away. This is a slow process as we zig zag through the pack creeping ever nearer. It is amazing seeing what an icebreaker can do. Good news is that the Akademik Shokalskiy can see us.
_________________________
Those aboard the A.S. might not be so excited as they watch you both sail out of view, into open water.
listening to: The Who– “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Let’s just not forget that if these anti-rational warmists ever got to implement the anti-industrial policies they advocate, they would kill hundreds of millions of people, and the fact that their economic illiteracy fails to comprehend this fact is no excuse.
I can’t say I join Anthony’s sentiment for their wellbeing. I regard them as nasty anti-human fanatics.
Glad to hear the Xue Long is moving — it would seem that it is not trapped. Part of me enjoys the irony of this incident but the situation is much too serious for gloating. I hope everybody gets out of the ice safely.
Polar Star
“I regard them as nasty anti-human fanatics.”
So do I but I don’t wish them dead.
According to German agency world population has reached 7,200,000,000, of which 60 foolish souls and 15 or so Russian (possibly privately operated) ship’s crew (one has to ask if they were paid extra bonus to venture into dangerous waters) found themselves in the centre of our attention.
They should be treated as foolish children who climbed a tree and can’t get down. Everything possible should be done to get them out, but as long as no one is hurt, a bit of healthy ridicule will do them a lot of good.
Happy New Year to all including the above, but a special good wishes for those who are now risking their lives to get these fools out of their predicament.
Coast Guard Icebreaker Polar Star Back in Service
ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. Coast Guard’s polar icebreaking fleet was bolstered Dec. 3 when Polar Star embarked on its first mission since 2006.
The 399-foot cutter departed its homeport in Seattle for Antarctica where it will support Operation Deep Freeze. The service said its purpose will be to resupply the National Science Foundation Scientific Research Station at McMurdo.
http://www.seapowermagazine.org/stories/20131204-polarstar.html
Do self-righteous planetary saviors ever say “thank you”? We’ll see. A meaningful thank-you would include an abject apology for promoting voodoo that has enabled the misallocation of scarce resources, with resulting economic hardship, on a global scale.
Congrats to Anthony, John Coleman, Joe D’Aleo, Ryan Maue and Dave Scott. Job well done, gentlemen.
It’d be interesting to know the balance of the relationship between the Russian crew and the Western passengers aboard this vessel.
It has been revealed on the expedition’s SpiritofMawson blog that the Russian crew speaks virtually no English – beyond the three words “good” and “no problem”. From the outset, the Captain would likely have been told that his voyage was to carry boatload of ‘celebrity’ passengers and – given the publicity-needy self regard of those involved – that the eyes of the world’s media would be following their ‘historical’ adventure.
Given this collection of circumstances, we might wonder if there has been a serious blurring of boundaries regarding where real authority lay on the ship. A group of outspoken, pampered and wealthy westerners – known for an inability to place any value on views other than its own, used to being insulated from reality and believing their ‘authority’ on climate science extended to an authority over any related matters – might simply have disregarded any attempt by the Captain to warn of real dangers ahead and relied on the confusion caused be the inability to communicate to play-deaf to his concerns and insist on the set course.
The immaturity of the messages being set out by these people suggests to me something of this nature has placed this vessel in peril.
When this extreme manifestation of the AlGore Effect has passed, will these liberal (er, “progressive”) nitwits have any appreciation for the number of people who risked their lives and the amount of capital assets that were put at risk in order to rescue them?
Got it. So once again, the heat is somewhere else and the situation is worse than we thought.
Question:
If this was a boat of skeptics stuck in the ice trying prove to the world how much ice was in this area would they even get rescued? And members of the boat made a phone call to Mann or Gore, would those people respond in kind with intelligent offers of help and good data?
Just a asking….. It would seem there is a VERY warm and welcome difference between “our side” vs “their” side.
I agree that their policies would kill millions upon millions of people worldwide and impoverish millions more.
However, one thing to remember is that if anyone on this propaganda boat is seriously hurt or dies then they have a climate martyr to talk about for years. Imagine what the progressive propaganda rag “The Guardian” would do with that story — it will be better to see them saved by powerful ice breakers and information from skeptical meteorologists. But our wishes will do little; their fate is in the hands of Karma. (and Mother Nature)
I do like the comment by Scuzza Man that said it would be nice to see all of them saved by helicopter. Then we all watch as the Russian boat gets crushed by “non-existant” ice. That would be nice to watch from where I sit.
“The Captain got the ship to where she is at the moment, the “scientists” and passengers simply told the Captain what they would like to do and he tried to accommodate them. The passengers on a ship have no operational authority of any kind.”
————-
I had read that the Captain had warned the fools that bad weather was coming and they needed to get back on the ship, it took them so long to get their sh*t sorted out that by that time it was too late.
My weirdness meter just melted. Another task for the new year….
Let’s hope the wave of post-incident lawsuits miss you, but you’re now connected to it! Fortunately, they’ll be looking for deep pockets.
UPDATE: [my bold]
Your attitude and behavior reminds me of this passage.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge: I will repay,” says the Lord.
On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him:
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:17-21
I pray that they all passengers, crew and rescuers are all safe home.
James Bull
Foxgoose (@Foxgoose) says:
January 1, 2014 at 4:12 am
Oz icebreaker Aurora is now showing an iced-up vessel on its bow webcam.
Shokalskiy or Chinese icebreaker?
Can anyone identify??
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
Looks like Xue Long .. That ship is skitting around the edge of the ice and slowly (3-4 knots) being pushed back. Once Australis Borealis gets next to Xue Long then they will be ready for the airlift … once the weather has turned… not over yet and the most dangerous part is to come helicopters + wind do not mix (except in the ‘Day after tomorrow’ where they can fly in AGW hurricanes. But that is the land the fools live in).
If this were a Hollywood script it would be rejected as being too ridiculous. Irony upon irony. Well done Anthony, good show and keep it up.
Mods.
Yet again a comment from me is lost in moderation. I now suspect I am on some spam list for some unknown reason. Please advise what I should do.
One thing I have not seen mentioned, is that, if this incident had taken place on some sovereign territory, then some form of Transport Safety Board would, already, have taken over an enquiry to find out what happened. Such enquiries are already funded and authorized under law. The politicians know that it is essential to find out what went wrong, in order to prevent something similar happening in the future.
Here, they are in international waters, and who knows under what jurisdiction. No national TSB is going to undertake the necessary enquiry; it would cost too much money. So there are going to be an awful lot of questions that are NEVER going to be answered.
I just know that if I were Chris Turney, I would already have hired the most competent lawyer I could afford.
Peter S:
The crew would take orders only from the Captain or his Officers. Indeed if the language problem is as described the crew would not know how to carry out a request from a passenger; and a passenger would not, or at least should not, try to tamper with or operate any navigational equipment without permission from an Officer.
If the “scientists” were on the ice or in boats “experimenting” and refused to return when ordered to do so, then that puts a new complexion on the whole thing.
Well done. I hope they all come safely home; and I hope they have the grace to thank everyone who helped them, not excluding you and your colleagues.
Jim Cripwell,
If the vessel is registered in Russia, then Russian law prevails. If there is the need for an inquiry then the Russian equivalent of the British Marine and Coastguard Agency will conduct it.
Due to the lack of crow in the Antarctic, someone on board of the Akademik Shokalskiy must be eating piles of penguin, actually.
liberator says:
January 1, 2014 at 3:32 am
Antarctic sea ice isn´t growing because continental land ice is melting for the simple reason that the EAI & WAI Sheets are not melting.
Once, let us hope, all passengers & crew are rescued safely, this dangerous situation could provide material for a Josh cartoon, with the heads of Mann, Gavin, et al sticking out of the ice-trapped ship of fools like giraffes in Noah´s Ark cartoons.
The story is cinematic & would IMO make for a good cable TV movie. Not sure who should portray An-th-on-y.
Oldseadog, you write “If the vessel is registered in Russia, then Russian law prevails.”
Thanks. So far as I am aware, not such enquiry has started. Until one does, I remain skeptical.
When I saw the clip of Anthony in the newscast, more irony was thrown into this story, which I did not think possible.
There are even weather synopsis and forecast ‘charts’ available on HF (High Frequency or ‘short wave’ as it is like to be called too) bands via weather fax (facsimile) broadcasts, although I don’t know how many WX FAX broadcast stations are active in the southern hemisphere or whether radio propagation conditions that far south would be favorable for reception at all hours …
Weather fax broadcasts are -old- tech, but today easily doable with just a laptop’s sound card input and the audio output from an HF receiver.
.
(first post of this got snagged in the spam bin .. trying again)
There are even weather synopsis and forecast ‘charts’ available on HF (High Frequency or ‘short wave’ as it is like to be called too) bands via weather fax (facsimile) broadcasts, although I don’t know how many WX FAX broadcast stations are active in the southern hemisphere or whether radio propagation conditions that far south would be favorable for reception at all hours …
Weather fax broadcasts are -old- tech, but today easily doable with just a laptop’s sound card input and the audio output from an HF receiver.
.
Oldseadog – the captain has a good excuse. Having found more ice than usual a landing party decided it was slushy ice then used two ATVs to travel 80mi back and forth to Mawsons huts.
The ship had to await their return no matter what.
Much respect for Mr. Watts and co. for helping out with the weather reports. True gentlemanly behaviour; as someone said above – “ethics”. The age of chivalry is not dead.
Great job from the mods also, moderating this intensely interesting story and discussion, as it unfolds. WUWT is the business, and has maintained the highest standards for the last several years I’ve been visiting.
From the Fox News article linked above:
“All 52 passengers will be evacuated, but the crew on the Akademik Shokalskiy will stay behind with the ship and wait for the ice to break up naturally, expedition spokesman Alvin Stone said.”
I say if it’s good enough for the crew to stay a few weeks they should just air drop some supplies and treat the whole ship’s company equally. Why should the ‘scientists’ and media ‘reporters’ be treated any differently? What the flaming heck is so special about them that they can have all this expense (and opportunity cost, as others have pointed out) lavished upon them?
Or is it that the crew are just menial workers, employed by the same mega-transnational corporations that employ workers in almost slave-like conditions to make IPads and thus are expendable, whereas the others are working hard with the MSM to promote a government funded message and must be saved? OK, I can see an argument for getting the women off. But then again, in this age of gender equality and all that….. Crikey, this whole situation is developing into an ethical and moral dillema!
Seriously though, It is amusing to survey their plight, but you feel you shouldn’t laugh and then you do. I hope nobody gets hurt, but what about the crew – what happens to them? I hope they don’t get hurt. That’s what I mean – why are they getting treated differently?
And as for that spineless dickhead reporter from the Guardian complaining about his six hours sleep on a narrow bed, and missing the milkshakes and his girlfriend……. What a pathetic exhibition of shallowness, self-interest, narcisism, living-on-another-planet and disconnected-from-reality behaviour. Sure wouldn’t want a guy like that watching your back in a tricky situation.
A demonstration (if one were needed at all) that what really matters most in life is ethics and integrity.
You have given a clear example to us all – and let’s keep hoping that everyone on board gets home safe and well.
” . . . and had sent an email to John, Dave, and I.” And “I??”
C’mon Anthony, even in California it should be “and me.”
[Reply: Correct. But don’t blame Anthony: in the 1960’s I was taught in a gov’t school that “and I” was proper. ~ mod.]
Jim Cripwell,
There won’t be an official government inquiry unless someone is injured or killed, or the vessel sinks.
The cost of rescue etc. and who pays for it will be decided in the civil courts where the lawyers will make lots of money.
There must be an aerial-equipped camera on board for those overhead photos to be taken. One might otherwise assume they’ve had a flyover.
Kitefreak;
If i was the Captain I would be delighted to get rid of the passengers and “scientists” and to be left alone to get on with saving my ship by myself.
As for the crew being menial workers, have you not noticed that all Merchant Seamen are the scum of the earth except during war time?
Let’s hope they thank Anthony and Joe (and WUWT and Wetherbell) for their help.
Great work Anthony, John and Joe
reading their blog http://www.abc.net.au/science/photos/2013/11/26/3897110.htm it appears that they did not watch the weather development while visiting Mawson’s Hut when it appeared warm and without much wind. It would be interesting to find out if the captain and his team were already getting nervous when the “scientists” spent the 2 days on land there while the sea ice was already starting to move in.
On NTZ, Pierre has also posted a nice article
http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/31/expedition-on-the-cheap-did-organizers-recklessly-negligently-put-lives-and-property-at-risk/
About the entire expedition – they claim that they have done already tons of research but looking at their route, I have my doubts that the scientific evidence so far collected is of any significance. There are many other Antarctic research groups that have gone back there for years and collected data every year so if you aim to test “long-term” changes, you cannot just take a few readings or samples on a few days and claim that these one-timers mean much (i.e. phytoplankton, penguin tissue, etc). You need some baselines – year round.
However, looking at their “publication record” I would not be surprised if the collected info makes it into Science or Nature for the sake of sensationalism! (in fact, the UNSW guys are brilliant writers – which brings you further than brilliant sience).
It’s a long way to tip a “rary” 🙂
Please read the latest stupidity in Nature: …..Despite the ambiguities, the exercise will make climate-risk analysis substantially more robust, says Johan Rockström, an expert on water resources at the University of Stockholm and director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, who was not involved in the project.
“Impact models will never be able to provide the level of detail that ultimately matters for making a city or coastline climate-proof,” he says. “But they do serve as a first approximation to the severe problems deficient regions and nations are facing.”
Regions most at risk from water scarcity include parts of the southern United States, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. By contrast, India, tropical Africa and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere can expect to receive more water in a warming worldWater risk as world warms, Nature.com 31 dec 2013
The sea Is a dangerous and unpredictable place and ships frequently get in trouble. Hopefully this will turn out well. On the bright side, the Polar Star is a very capable icebreaker and can do 21 feet of ice backing and ramming. So it may take a few more weeks to get someone alongside if the weather doesn’t change.
Here is hoping that the hull plating on the Russian ship survives for 2 more weeks!
v/r,
David Riser
Anthony:
This is truly awesome. Usually one must be content with virtue being its own reward, but occasionally there are bonuses. I was impressed with the length and detail in the KUSI segment — I find with most TV news stories they spend more time hyping the story (“coming up soon …”) than they do presenting the actual story itself.
Shout out to John Coleman, who used to be the TV weatherman in Chicago when I was growing up (I believe WGN-TV, CH 9 from atop the old Prudential Building). He drew cartoons on the weather map and introduced me to the word “Thorm”.
According to latest AIS information (1 hour ago), Polar Star is at S32°59’58”, E155°55’05” and making 7.8 knots on course 257° (heading for Sydney, about 230 NM away). Obviously in no hurry to get to Akademik Shokalskiy. If Polar Star altered course immediately and made full speed (21 knots), she would still take over 4 days to get there.
Extrapolating from this event to the macrocosm, the good ship Science is in peril from the way is has been misdirected by the immature faction that has commandeered it.
Through all the schadenfreude surrounding this event, we have to remember that there are living people on that boat. At the very least their families deserve some consideration. Kudos to everyone helping with the rescue.
Sorry if I am still stuck in a deeply cynical mode/mood. But what it looks like to me is this: These guys have been stuck there for a full week, and it was only when the booze ran out & they started bleating about a “dry ship” that somebody realized: “no one here knows how to read a weather chart – maybe we had better ask someone who does” !?
Lance Hilpert says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:21 am
” . . . and had sent an email to John, Dave, and I.” And “I??”
C’mon Anthony, even in California it should be “and me.”
[Reply: Correct. But don’t blame Anthony: in the 1960’s I was taught in a gov’t school that “and I” was proper. ~ mod.]
—————————————–
And I. Definately. But then the UK and the US are two countries divided by a common language.
The queen says “my husband and I”, she doesn’t say “my husband and me”.
Don’t get me started, I’m a closet grammar nazi. For example, “C’mon” (above) is not a valid conjuntion, but then neither is “won’t”, when you think about it. So I’ll admit it’s confusing, especially on New Year’s day. Probably best not to go down this road….
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/01/antarctica-ship-rescue-plan-foiled-shokalskiy
Looks like they are really starting to take this seriously now. My guess is that they have drunk all the whiskey and beer and are just left with water.
Best way to start a new year; a good action, an gift of science!
http://earth.nullschool.net is great help. I wish Cameron Beccario could do something similar with pressure and temperature.
Christian ethics would dictate compassion for these people, but we should remember that if they had their way, we would all be taxed back into a preindustrial existence.
I think it would be appropriate to make a deck of cards for this epic drama, with a picture and short bio for each participant in order to set the history accurately, or at least a website dedicated to exposing the hubris of upscale warmers.
I like the cool Vincent Van Gohe wind models
more and more it becomes apparent these guys believed their own propaganda, to the point of recklessness and putting other people’s lives at risk. I’m not optimistic this experience will teach them much if anything.
Meanwhile without the weather situation improving, those people should focus on survival rather than partying. Ship with crushed hulls tend to sink in minutes. Do they have enough tents? Is all the survival equipment at a safe distance of the ship? Can they build additional snow/ice shelters?
http://www.usap.gov/travelAndDeployment/documents/FieldManual-Chapt11SnowShelters.pdf
Alan Robertson says: January 1, 2014 at 5:00 am
Cut and paste from ‘Aurora Australis’ website, I’m in wet and windy Blighty. They seem to update at 09:00 UT most days but the last report includes news of a good party the night before so that might explain the later posting. Aurora Australis does not show on marinetraffic.com but AIS on ‘Xue Long’ shows her heading slowly north.
Oldseadog says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:33 am
“As for the crew being menial workers, have you not noticed that all Merchant Seamen are the scum of the earth except during war time?”
————————————
Absolutely I have. I didn’t mean that I think they are menial workers, certainly not, just that their employers do. That was my point really – they are just as vauable as the rest of the people, just as much people deserving of rescue. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Slightly confusing article. At least for me…who spots whom?
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/antarctica-rescue-aurora-australis-spots-stricken-akademik-shokalskiy-20140101-3067g.html
Janice Moore writes:
================================
P.S. Yet another resounding blow for free markets over socialism: During Hurricane (a real one) Katrina, it was privately owned Home Depot who got the supplies and equipment through; when 33 Chilean miners needed rescuing from the bowels of the earth, it was private companies in the U.S., Germany, and other
============================
I went through the great ice storm of 1998 in the vicinity of Ottawa Canada. This was a massive ice storm that was so serious that it destroyed all but one of the major transmission serving Montreal. There were serious plans made to evacuate Montreal ( a city of several million people) if the remaining one failed. During the storm, the supply chains of privately owned companies failed. There were no batteries or generators to be had at any price, as two examples. In Canada, On the other hand, the Canadian army responded with an immediate and effective relief plan.
As anyone who has ever worked in private industry the archetype of the over-paid, entitled and incompetent executive is completely realistic. I remember working fro one who did nothing but sit in his office and design his home. The free market created the DOTCOM bubble, teh fiber optic bubble, the liar mortgage bubble, the sovereign debt bubble. The free market is no panacea.
Man Bearpig says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:50 am
My guess is that they have drunk all the whiskey and beer and are just left with water.
———————————————
I had the pleasure of a fishing cruise onboard a Russian boat on the Volga River. During dinner someone (commenting on the excellent cruise thus far) joked that the biggest problem for the Captain must be running out of booze. The Captain replied that there were 3 supplies of alcohol onboard. The first was for the passengers, the second for the crew and the third for the Captain. He then added “I do not guarantee the first two”.
[snip – comment in poor taste and not appropriate here – Anthony]
omnologos says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:15 am
Oldseadog – the captain has a good excuse. Having found more ice than usual a landing party decided it was slushy ice then used two ATVs to travel 80mi back and forth to Mawsons huts.
The ship had to await their return no matter what.
================================
As I previously stated the Chief Scientist made a decision and the Captain had to follow orders. Had the Captain said no to the expedition and cited the ships safety I am not sure how that would have gone over.. But what we have now is ice under the bridge… Time to clean up the mess while the dutiful MSM ignores the fact that these alarmists were unprepared partisan hacks.
Hopefully they won’t end up as candidate’s for the Darwin awards
It’s a big pity the expedition failed. This is because they went to see how much had changed at Mawson Station over 100 years.
Looks pretty frozen up to me except around the human installations (feet, wheels, warmth etc.)
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/mawson
Commonwealth Bay in Mawson’s time – ice free!
http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23323355
Kitefreak says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:49 am
doesnt it have alot to do with whether the pronoun is an object (me) or a subject (I), the ball hit bob and me…bob and I hit the ball.
just sayin….
Say, who is it that govt ‘taxes’ (literally: “shakes down”) to get so big and powerful? Themselves? Riiiight …. 2nd part: Who was/is Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell? Are using a PC or Mac to post this?
“The message was that they needed better weather information on the ship”
One cannot help but point out that it would have been preferable to have obtained this information in advance. If the expedition’s leader had determined at the planning stage that one of his premises was false because ice at the Antartica has been increasing rather than decreasing, would he have even proceeded with this expedition?
I wonder why they didn’t get their weather report from skeptical science. I am sure they could have provided a consensus evaluation quickly. The guy in the superhero costume could deliver it pronto. I am not sure, what use, the guys in the Nazi getups will be … though. GK
It appears from this tweet that there is still quite an education curve facing the expedition’s leader.
“@wendy_harmer Told Prof Chris Turney on radio this a.m. his trapped ship being touted as evidence of no global warming.Oh how he laughed at the “loonies”!
4:58 PM – 30 Dec 13″
good on you Anthony.
I hope (but doubt) that they will remember your assistance or that science is supposed to be objective.
the warming bullsh!t and obamacare are really the same thing. (while I think it is important to rebuff and shine a light on the malfeasance of the puppetmasters) the goal is neither the climate or healthcare. it is communism pure and simple (the Stalin or Mao kind).
I applaud your work and frequent your blog but at the end of the day the real fight is socialism and not the topics the puppetmasters want us to do battle with.
Something that really struck me with this essay is that without the freedom of the individual that the US constitution provided we would never have the scientific tools to measure the weather, the sun and the fantastic discoveries we all take for granted.
When was the last time anyone saw Russia or China launch a research satellite and allow everyone to benefit from it? yeah …never.
keep up the good work but remember this battle is over freedom even though it looks like a battle over whether the earth is warming or not.
Best regards.
http://www.pbase.com/llukee/image/153925410 doesn’t look like it is warm here either
P. Malaise.
TAG says:
January 1, 2014 at 8:10 am
Janice Moore writes:
================================
P.S. Yet another resounding blow for free markets over socialism: During Hurricane (a real one) Katrina, it was privately owned Home Depot who got the supplies and equipment through; when 33 Chilean miners needed rescuing from the bowels of the earth, it was private companies in the U.S., Germany, and other
============================
I went through the great ice storm of 1998 in the vicinity of Ottawa Canada. This was a massive ice storm that was so serious that it destroyed all but one of the major transmission serving Montreal. […snip…]
As anyone who has ever worked in private industry the archetype of the over-paid, entitled and incompetent executive is completely realistic. I remember working fro one who did nothing but sit in his office and design his home. The free market created the DOTCOM bubble, the fiber optic bubble, the liar mortgage bubble, the sovereign debt bubble. The free market is no panacea.
———————————————————————-
TAG:
Although not as bad as the storm of ’98 we have had two ice storms here near Rockwood in 2013, the first knocking down power lines for 4 days and the second (Dec-23 to Dec-29) for 6 days. The first thing you learn from the public hydro company is that you are responsible for clearing the trees off your private property. The second thing you learn is you can’t start doing this until they come and pull the fuse and ground the power line. We called on Dec-23 and no one ever came to pull the fuse and ground the line. We spent two days cutting trees away from the power lines (we live in the country, have 5 chain saws and have the experience) and hired an experienced tree cutter to top the trees that were touching the line (which we then cleaned up). Most of the crews working in our area were private contractors hired by the town of Milton because they just don’t have the manpower. A few years ago we watched the town of Milton actually planting trees below power lines within the city limits – directly below the power lines. All the work that has been done to trim the trees off the power lines has not addressed the real problem. The trees remain alive below the power lines and will eventually grow in to cause the same problem in the future. The public sector is no panacea.
In the previous ice storm in early 2013 five popular trees came down and broke our line in three sections. I had to call a private tree cutter and a private linesman – both who previously worked for the public hydro company but were let go during cutbacks. The linesman would not go near the wires until the hydro company pulled the fuse and grounded the line. So we waited….
Our hydro company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading the lines for solar and wind turbine installations and yet has never even bothered to keep the trees away from the transmission lines. And the town of Milton (and other municipalities) still plants trees directly below power lines, purely for aesthetic reasons.
The head of public hydro in Ontario in 2001 (Clitheroe) spent several million dollars on her office renovation, had a limousine driver, golf club membership and when they fired her, she sued the the province over her measly $307,000 a year pension. Over-paid, entitled and incompetent executive indeed! Public service too.
How many climate scientists does it take to make a weather prediction? NONE! That’s a weatherman’s job! 🙂
Good work Mr Watts & Co.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftavrida.co.ua%2Fnews%2F16523-passazhirov-s-nis-akademik-shokalskiy-resheno-evakuirovat-vertoletom.html
Per Australian Maritime Safety (AMSA) request, USCGC Polar star bypassed their port call upon Sydney, Australia and are about one week out from the ice margin near Akademik Shokalsky.
My browser (Chrome) always shows an image of the Aurora as of 12/30. F5 doesn’t force a refresh. On the web I found a trick – open a page in incognito mode (CTRL-SHIFT-N).
NIce, it shows Thu 02 Jan 2014 12:00 am.
“My first thought was that no matter how much we’ve been criticizing the expedition for its silliness, that if such a request had reached all the way from Antarctica to me, I’d do everything I could to help.”
BRAVO!
Jimbo says:
January 1, 2014 at 6:20 am
I’ll start the New Year with a bet it will become a Hollywood script about heroic climate researchers facing hostile government agencies under the influence of multinational oil companies struggling to finance their own research expedition from bake sale proceeds. But among the mostly Russian crew are several saboteurs working for the Koch brothers who foul up the engine controls so the ship is caught in a sudden buildup of the “wrong kind” of ice. Meanwhile, the NSA intercepts and alters every outgoing communication from the ship so the world never learns that their plight is a direct result of global warming from fossil fuels.
The saboteurs escape by donning jetpacks they have hidden aboard and zooming off to rendezvous with a waiting submarine, leaving the rest of the crew and scientists stranded in the ice with no engines, no heat, and no hope.
However chief scientist (played by George Clooney) working with his principal assistant (Gywnneth Paltrow, or perhaps need an Aussie here — Cate Blanchett?), who is torn between loyalty/attraction to her new boss and the former relationship she had with his main scientific rival (played by Matt Damon), discovers that blowing small holes in the ice around the ship with improvised explosives allows algae to grow, which they are able to harvest and process into bio-fuel.
Meanwhile the rest of the Russian crew has discovered they can use some of the MRE’s on board to distil vodka, so their morale is improved and they stop being gloomy and work with the scientists to save the ship. The problem of no heat is addressed when perky graduate assistant (played by Miley Cyrus) shows everyone how a certain kind of dancing can raise body temperature, even after consuming lots of vodka and removing lots of clothing.
But even after gathering enough bio-fuel they are still trapped by the ice until they discover that spilling some of the distilled-from-MREs vodka in the water attracts a pod of Orcas, who use their powerful sonar to create micro-fissures in the ice, turning it into a giant sea-slushie which the ship can now power through (in a carbon-neutral way).
On shore a former climate researcher whose career had been ruined by a cabal of climate deniers, (Jane Fonda, cameo apperance) ignores death threats received from anonymous Twitter accounts and manages to bypass the NSA interdiction so the real story finally gets out. Back on board, the Gwynneth Paltrow/Cate Blanchett character resolves her romantic crisis in favor of the George Clooney character, while the Matt Damon character is forced to admit his scientific rival was correct and decides he wants to learn the Macarena from the Miley Cyrus character, so they all end up happy.
But the Russian crew has had to dump all their vodka overboard to keep the orcas working on the ice pack, so they are once again gloomy. They have just enough bio-fuel to make it out of the ice where with the final assistance of the orca pod they manage the capture the submarine, the two saboteurs, and a cache of documents linking the Koch brothers to the whole plot. The Russian crew, now cheerful again because they have also captured some more vodka, discover they can process some of the MREs into bio-beets, which they use to make borscht to go with the vodka. After a hearty meal of borcht and vodka, everyone is inspired to dance and get warm.
The scientists and their now enthusiastic crew take the submarine and sneak into a secret Russian port where a Greenpeace ship is being illegally detained. They board the Greenpeace ship, free the crew and discover another cache of documents detailing a plot to assassinate the saintly elder statesman of the environmental movement (Al Gore, cameo appearance).
Now running from the Russians, the NSA, and a hoard of Koch Brothers mercenaries (Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger & others, cameo appearance), they escape to Bikini Atholl where they tap into the old military communication system left from the nuclear testing days (which the NSA can’t tap because they no longer have anyone who understands how vacuum tubes work) and broadcast Climate Truth to the whole world.
Evil doers are arrested, the US finally signs the Climate treaty and the Russian crew discover how to distil vodka from coconuts using only solar energy.
Should I copyright this now?
That was very good of you to help them. Glad you could.
I was being a bit sarcastic and silly in the main thread when I suggested they depended on their own modeling to operate under. But it sounds like they don’t know how to do real close term forecasting. Something I suspected but it is interesting to see it confirmed.
Looks like climatologists only get real when they sober up.
Which begs the question–Do they run their climate models while inebriated, too?
Whatever–I hope they all make it out alive and humbled. Had they never sobered up, they never would have tasted the humility.
Meanwhile, Watts et al deserve a big round of applause!
“We’re the AAE, who have travelled far,
having fun doing science in Antarctica(r)!”
I have a number of friends who were higher educated in the fine arts at various times over the last decade or so, and one phrase I noticed, popular among them that you rarely hear from non-artists, is “making art”. I always figured you paint a painting or you sculpt a sculpture or whatever, but it turns out those things are too specific and art is very unspecific. For example, making art might include things like video taping yourself take a nap, or possibly the art resides in your conscious aesthetic decision making process not to video tape the nap. “What are you going to do this weekend?” “I don’t know, I’ll probably go see Godspeed You Black Emperor and get drunk and try to make some art.” In other words, “making art” is a phrase you use to indicate that, unlike non-artists, when you dick around and waste time, what you’re doing is *important*. “Doing science” kind of has a similar ring to me these days.
righttimewrongplace says:
January 1, 2014 at 8:09 am
Slightly confusing article. At least for me…who spots whom?
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/antarctica-rescue-aurora-australis-spots-stricken-akademik-shokalskiy-20140101-3067g.html
———————————————————
From your link:
“[Captain Wang] has been sitting there because his helicopter doesn’t have floats, so it can’t fly over water.”
This is a problem. If a helicopter doesn’t have floats then it can’t fly over open water (air safety rules). It also can’t land on sea ice.
The dimensions of the Akademik Shokalskiy (AS) are 71.06 m (length) by 12.82 m (beam). The Xue Long is 167 m long by 22.6 m beam and has a heli-pad. The KA-32 helicopter has a rotor area equivalent diameter of 22.3 m (almost twice the width of the AS). I hope someone asked the pilot of the helicopter if he thinks he can land on the deck of the much smaller AS which is not equipped with a heli-pad. Otherwise it’s harness time. I’m not a sailor but the beam dimension is the widest part of a ship and the front of the AS where the helicopter would land looks much narrower than the beam. I picked a bad time to give up popcorn.
Kitefreak, a word to the wise. If you are going to describe yourself as a “grammar nazi” and don’t want to make an utter fool of yourself, please learn the difference between the subject of a sentence and the object of a preposition.
And to the rest of us dancing around the campfire and celebrating what we imagine is some sort of setback for the image of CAGW, not so fast. While the irony is clear and delicious for us skeptics, nothing much has changed in the popular media and amongst the vested interests.
May the rescuers be safe, and may the rescued first have an uncomfortable wait, long enough for them to gain some new perspectives.
Tom says:
January 1, 2014 at 9:00 am
Latest AIS data (01-01-2014 14:00 UTC) shows the Polar Star is on course 254° at 7.6 knots, still heading for Sydney. Actually the previous link shows the most recent 3 days of itinerary data, usually midday reports; the most recent report here from 24 minutes ago (17:16 UTC) shows position is -33.00694 / 155.3582 , course 256° at 6.7 knots. Still heading to Sydney about 212 nautical miles (393 km) out — about 30 hours at present course and speed.
While I agree regarding the irony so thickly evident in comparison to the ice, I would caution any correlation with liberal beliefs in general. Why? Way too many ready examples of the foolishness often seen in folks who have conservative views. I’ve seen it up close and personal and it is just as bad. So much so that the only people conservatives have to fear are themselves.
Darwin….
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
January 1, 2014 at 9:06 am
“I’ll start the New Year with a bet it will become a Hollywood script about heroic climate researchers facing hostile government agencies under the influence of multinational oil companies struggling to finance their own research expedition from bake sale proceeds. ….”
FANTASTIC screenplay, Alan Watt! I was on the edge of my seat for every sentence! Especially loved the part about harvesting algae for bio-fuel.
As we speak, James Cameron is kicking himself for not having written it first. So you definitely need to copyright it immediately.
I hope they get out OK, yet I can’t help but observe that the gene pool would be better off without them!
Here is a forecasting site for passage making yachts. http://passageweather.com/
Seems more planning went into their bar list, though even that didn’t work out. No reserve.
Congratulations, Anthony, on being able (and capable) to help on such short notice. Best wishes for a safe resolution of the situation for all involved.
—–
BTW, perhaps one of the most amazing things about your experience above is that you were able to make it out of COSTCO and home in 15 minutes! 🙂
I just spliced on this penguin-guano proxy to the ice coverage numbers, & the whole Antarctic becomes ice-free by 2008. You’re welcome, Climate Boat People. I hope you enjoyed your trip.
Steve from Rockwood says:
January 1, 2014 at 9:44 am
Huh? How can a ship carry a helicopter which can’t fly over water? Whose air safety rules? I’m guessing you are referring to CFR 136.11. That applies to helicopters used for “commercial tours”, and also note that requirement only applies if:
I’m back to my original question: how could you possibly put a helicopter which can’t fly over water on a ship?
The helicopter doesn’t need to actually land on ice in the sense of apply its full weight; it only needs to touch down low enough so people can scramble on board. This works every time in the movies. It also works in all the climate models.
I think Captain Wang is being stopped by flying conditions, not safety regulations.
I thought I read that they had a hull breach? Wouldn’t that mean they are looking for a window of calm winds for air operations? Dangerous winds and a hull breach are fairly low on my list of good things at sea.
Gonna be some cranky Coasties having missed Sydney, there will be one hell of a safety inspection if this turns out well.
Doug says:
January 1, 2014 at 9:04 am
My browser (Chrome) always shows an image of the Aurora as of 12/30. F5 doesn’t force a refresh. On the web I found a trick – open a page in incognito mode (CTRL-SHIFT-N).
NIce, it shows Thu 02 Jan 2014 12:00 am.
Thanks Doug I was having the same problem and this worked for me too . ;>)
It appears the helicopter evacuation will take place nearby on the pack ice and not from onboard the ship.
Polar Star still headed to Sidney about 300km out.
I can not top what others have said. Ethics, profesionalis at its finest.
This is the second time WeatherBELL (Joe D’Aleo and friends) has done this BTW: FORBES – Hurricane Sandy: Perfect Storm Sequel? U.S. Braces For Landfall by Joe Bastardi, Ryan Maue and Michael Barak and maybe why the request.
Why not go to the guys with a proven track record? Why not go to a private group that doesn’t have to deal with red tape and permission?
Monique says:
January 1, 2014 at 9:58 am
James Cameron already has an extensive supply of climate clichés; he does not need my help, although I think some of my casting choices are inspired.
And truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. It might not be necessary to feed vodka to orcas as my screenplay suggested; according to this source young porpoises have mastered the art of getting high by taking hits off a puffer fish they pass around. Presumably other members of the porpoise family could learn the same behavior.
Might be handy to know if you run out of vodka. And if I get stoned enough, I might not mind seeing Flipper “twerking”.
Well, there went all my New Year’s resolutions …
Jean Parisot says:
“I thought I read that they had a hull breach? Wouldn’t that mean they are looking for a window of calm winds for air operations? Dangerous winds and a hull breach are fairly low on my list of good things at sea.”
My question too. In the news video Watts links to, John Coleman says the crew was working to repair some hull plating. I have not seen this yet in any news article. Anyone have details?
It appears the authorities have decided to pull out all the stops. Every hour in that ice increases the risk, but not reprovisioning the Polar Star would be unwise. No one has mentioned ‘cabin fever,’ yet, which I suspect is the reason for all the forced jollity aboard the Ak. Shok. A friend of mine spent a long time down there, and he said the confinement gets on people’s nerves and can rapidly escalate into violence. This is shaping up to be a real disaster.
Clay Marley says: “My question too. In the news video Watts links to, John Coleman says the crew was working to repair some hull plating. I have not seen this yet in any news article. Anyone have details?”
IIRC, there’s a breach in the port-side hull about 1.5 meters above the waterline. They were patching it using materials on hand. I suspect it’s not currently a factor, if they had the right welding supplies and an experienced welder. The listing to starboard may have been deliberate, by order of the captain.
Bravo, Anthony
That request must have come in shortly after your interview on Calgary’s NewsTalk770.
You did a phenomenal job on the interview point out the facts on climate change. Unfortunately we rarely hear reasoned and factual talk on the subject. This helping out a stranded group on a propaganda mission just points out that climate change skeptics are humans interested in the best for all humans. We are not throwing away our children’s future. On the contrary we are interested in a prosperous future for them that has not been hijacked by false information tax grabs and wealth distribution skeams that end up benefitting those that play the political game rather than the masses they claim to be protecting. I hope that the ship eventually gets its way out of the ice and does not become an environmental hazard/disaster leaking fuel into the Antarctic ecology. Great job again Anthony.
MrX says: @ January 1, 2014 at 12:23 am
….my liberal friends and they don’t see the irony at all. In fact, they resent my suggesting it. This won’t change a thing. Those who believe the globe is warming due to human influence won’t let being surrounded by ice deter them.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is not those blinded by dogma who have to be convinced but the fence sitters. This has enough drama to engage their attention ESPECIALLY when a skeptic and not just any skeptic by the arch enemy of CAGW himself who is called on for his professional expertise to get them out of the bind their foolishness put them in.
Add in the fact the MSM refuses to cover it accurately and it becomes interesting.
You just couldn’t make this up!
I hope someone not CAGW writes up this story in book form.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
…
Simply brilliant.
Anthony and all:
You are all true Gentlemen and Gentle ladies! Honest people responding with honor and compassion!
Absolutely amazing that when the chips are down and their wastes have hit the propellers; people call scientists they instinctively trust, with their lives.
No calls to RC where supposed weather and climate people hang out.
No calls to sks kindergarten services.
No calls to the world famous Met office.
No calls for climate models supposedly based on weather systems or the modelers supporting them.
No calls to flashy alarmists who insist that meteorologists must bow to CAGW for their jobs.
Yup, we would’ve told them to call the same people!
May their weather turn fair! May all who were or are affected by Turney’s silly shenanigans receive blessings and full benefit for their sufferings.
Anthony, please remind John Coleman to say Antarctic. In his fine report, at times he said Arctic instead.
Congratulations on taking the high road once again Anthony, and offering any assistance to help protect human lives.
I have just sent congratulations to KUSI and John Coleman for their journalistic integrity in reporting on the AGW party cruise getting stuck in the disappearing polar ice. I don’t know who paid for this trip (and I doubt we will every know how much it cost to rescue them) but if there is a fund to send them again next year i’ll gladly contribute a few dollarss! Who says “AGW realists” don’t get Christmas presents!
On a side note may mention that they left from Invercargil in NZ, home of the notorious Bluff Oyster – no doubt that all involved feasted on these before setting sail for the deep south so you can be rest assured they will find an outlet during those long cold antarctic days as they sit and wait to be rescued.
[snip – sorry, we don’t allow content from Internet stalker “Sou” aka Miriam O’Brien, here anymore. She’s entitled to her opinion, and she has her own blog to spew it with. I note nobody contacted her for information. – Anthony]
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
January 1, 2014 at 10:14 am
[1] How can a ship carry a helicopter which can’t fly over water?
[2] The helicopter doesn’t need to actually land on ice in the sense of apply its full weight;
———————————————————————-
[1] – The captain was quoted as saying he could not fly on open water without floats. You comment that this rule is limited to commercial tours but in fact it applies whenever passengers (“non-essential personnel”) are onboard. Having two engines does get around the rule to some extent but the KA-32 is a very special aircraft with counter-rotating blades and not a single main / tail rotor. It may not be able to climb at above the minimum specification required for 2 engine aircraft. I assume the captain of the ship knows this and that explains his comment. Also there are different rules for flying over open water. Essential personnel (yes) versus passengers (no). I do know them – I hope I didn’t give you the impression I did. I’m involved with helicopters but not for search and rescue or ferry service so we only have essential personnel onboard. There are additional rules that include flotation devices. I’m not sure whether life jackets (I assume from the boat) qualify as floatation suits (one piece with zipper) that may be required by the crew and all passengers when flying over more than a few hundred meters of open water.
[2] – I’ve seen these helicopter rescues in the movies too. They usually use small R-44 or Bell 206 helicopters, with trained pilots and stunt men. Having 12 people climb aboard a 5 tonne helicopter while it is hovering at maximum rotation over moving pack ice seems rather dangerous to me. I’d like to watch that movie but I wouldn’t want to star in it. I expect the helicopter will set down on the pack ice, lower rotor speed and then have each person climb on board one after the other with help from the flight crew. Twelve people at 175 lbs each is literally a tonne of people. I hope the ice doesn’t move under the helicopter.
As I understand the captain of the Snow Dragon is waiting at the edge of the ice-field for the Aurora to pull alongside. Assuming the weather cooperates (good visibility and no wind) the helicopter will then set off for the stranded climate scientists who will journey down to the pack ice in groups of 12. If everything works out it should only take a few hours to make all the moves. Then the climate scientists will be transferred from the Snow Dragon to the Aurora and taken to even greater safety.
Oldseadog says: @ January 1, 2014 at 2:49 am
En passant:
No you haven’t got it right.
The Captain got the ship to where she is at the moment, the “scientists” and passengers simply told the Captain what they would like to do and he tried to accommodate them. The passengers on a ship have no operational authority of any kind.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If what another commenter said is correct, people were out on the ice when the Captain relized he should beat feet away from the area. The scientist dragged their feet getting all their equipment back on board.
So the question is who had authority over the people not on the ship and did the Captain have the right to leave without them or to have his crew bodily toss them on board.
Again if this is true it would be why the Captain has not been ‘Interviewed’ live for the BBC and Gruaniad by the reporters on board.
For an alternate view, Voice of Russia has several articles: link and also link
janama says:
January 1, 2014 at 11:12 am
————————————————
Some accounts have the origin of the cruise from Bluff, NZ with the fog grounding the helicopter coming from Watt Bay.
Yet more irony.
I’m sure we all wish those in peril on the sea ice a safe return.
Might we hope for a safe well-chastened return? Such a costly
( to taxpayers) CAGW ‘research’ jaunt should at least offer
some return benefit to the public that pays for it..
Stuart Elliot says at January 1, 2014 at 9:48 am
But it has. This was a stunning defensive win. The propagandists spent a lot of money coming up with a combined Aussie BC, BBC and Guardian followed press junket. It was timed for the Festive period when there isn’t much news. It was a big push for 2014. And it failed.
The media has dropped it form the news. Even though a news story that goes wrong and ends up needing rescue is exciting and newsworthy.. even so they have dropped it.
Someone made that decision. They are embarrassed. And future propaganda projects will be harder to fund now.
If you are under siege you don’t need the besiegers to be routed. You just need to break the siege.
“what is their skill set? Dodgy stats analysis? Making up data? Creating mendacious propaganda? Writing meritless grants applications? Silencing opposing views by corrupting the peer review process?”
Pretty much, Alfred. 🙁
Soberly:
0. These people are adults, not children AFAIK;
1. The ‘organising minds’ of the expedition are heavily involved in promoting falsehoods which are perhaps already costing lives;
2. They play by different rules to you guys;
3. The game they are playing started out as collective-neurotic, ie characterised by self-fueling anxiety about the world;
4. Now they are being successfully challenged and refusing to step down, they are inevitably transitioning to a much more dangerous state for the rest of us, ie delusional psychosis;
5. This means they are truly starting to deny reality, eg seeing things that aren’t there (clear water), and bumping into things that are there (ice);
6. They will get better at doing this, and their strategies will increasingly and nakedly be based around ‘the big lie’;
7. It’s not going to get better, despite areas where sanity appears to be rearing it’s head at last (Australia);
8. A mosaic iron-curtain of news/information/knowledge domains will arise (the BBC is finding less and less that it can actually report on);
9. Maybe skeptics will find themselves labeled first as dissidents, then as lunatics, and marginalised Soviet-style.
10. Maybe none of this will happen, is happening – I think it’s interesting to imagine it, and just to remember that the first casualties of conflicts are often the good, whose goodness is simply used against them.
My wife says using ‘they’s and ‘them’s proves I’m the crazy one.
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says: @ January 1, 2014 at 9:06 am
….Should I copyright this now?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
YES! ROTFLMAO….
“if these anti-rational warmists ever got to implement the anti-industrial policies they advocate, they would kill hundreds of millions of people”
That’s their goal, Hume. >:-(
Here’s a far better theme song for the tourists and crew: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV34CwNMY0
SAB, the crew and passengers on this ship could not have seen the ice and still been caught by it . Not unless they were all delusional form LSD in the water… and the crew are professionals.
They were caught out by the weather because they were unlucky. But the errors they made were these:
1. They went there claiming to be experts when they are clearly not.
2. They claimed to be doing valuable science when they are clearly hindering the real work being done at the Antarctic stations.
3. They claimed to be honouring Mawson when they were merely flippantly playing in a place where he endured great suffering.
It is the Climateers’ reputation for integrity that is destroyed here, not their sanity.
Although, I suppose, they may have deceived themselves into thinking that sea-ice volume was constant or declining so greater extent meant thinner… but would the Captain believe such speculation? Still that potential error is worth researching in their stated plans.
Friends:
Our rightly esteemed host and Joe D’Aleo deserve much credit for their expertise and honourable use of it. Nobody can know to what degree their prompt response to a request for information will have contributed to the saving of lives. Their action has earned them additional respect.
However, some people have provided posts which assume other agencies were not also contacted for information. Some of these assumptions may be correct (e.g. would any sensible person ask SkS for information that may be life critical?). However, it is not known that other agencies were not contacted (e.g. it seems likely that UK Met. Office would have been asked).
Let us congratulate our host and Joe D’Aleo but not make assumptions about who was not contacted. Such assumptions could become embarrassing if shown to be untrue.
Richard
Steve from Rockwood says: January 1, 2014 at 11:31 am
OK, if we define passengers to be anyone not directly involved with the operation of the aircraft then the CFR might apply in this case (are CFRs just US/FAA, or do they apply to other countries operating in international waters?) But I can’t believe those regulations apply to emergency evacuations. When life is threatened you accept a normally forbidden lesser risk to avoid the much more likely greater loss resulting from doing nothing. See “doctrine of competing harms”.
Jean Parisot says: @ January 1, 2014 at 10:17 am
I thought I read that they had a hull breach?…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes they had a hull breach 1.8 meters (~6 feet) above sea line. Not something to make you feel all warm and fuzzy when in rough seas.
bbc world service spoke to Luck-Baker overnight australia time. missed the start, but finished by asking him if – when it’s all over – the Expedition will be seen as a failure or a success. Luck-Baker pauses briefly to feign careful consideration, but says “as a success” because some particular penguin species’ numbers are greatlly depleted. can’t find it online as yet.
bbc documents the Luck-Baker info:
31 Dec: BBC: Rescue for Antarctic ice-bound ship under threat
However, the captain of the Xue Long has told the Shokalskiy that he is keeping his vessel in a “holding position”.
The Aurora Australis, is now understood to be planning to carve through the dense thick pack to assist the Xue Long…
Under the initial plan, the remaining crew members would have stayed on board until another, more powerful US icebreaker arrived in up to 10 days’ time, the BBC’s Andrew Luck-Baker reports from on board the Akademik Shokalskiy
However, it may now be that all of those on board may have to wait for the US icebreaker, the Polar Star, he adds…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25558276
Gail Combs:
If I were the Captain I would refuse to be interviewed by anyone.
Editing can make anything you say mean the opposite of what you meant.
Once bitten twice shy.
should have made it clear Luck-Baker was suggesting the depletion in the numbers of the particular penguin species was discovered by the scientists on board, with the inference CC did it.
RoHa on January 1, 2014 at 12:28 am
” In the 1930s there was a lamppost in Invercargill which had the distinction of being The Most Southerly Lamppost in the British Empire.”
I’m sure the dogs there were mightily relieved by that. Didn’t they have lampposts in Port Stanley then ?
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
January 1, 2014 at 12:07 pm
——————————————————–
Most countries recognize US/FAA regulations. Canada has its own. Some European countries have even stricter regulations. Mexico recognizes both Canada and US regulations. I’m not sure how things work on international waters but I suspect Chinese crews would use their own regulations as American crews would use theirs. Helicopter pilots cannot automatically fly into other countries air jurisdictions. In Mexico, for example, our Canadian pilot could not fly without a Mexican pilot also at the controls (so we required dual control aircraft).
We are not in an emergency situation yet. No lives are eminently at risk. The course of action therefore is to stay put while normal procedures are put in play. Hopping into a helicopter that is not equipped to evacuate people over open water would lead to serious consequences for the crew if anything really bad were to happen. So they stick to procedure.
But what if the hull of the ship was suddenly crushed and the ship began sinking? The climate scientists would drop their martinis and get out onto the pack ice and the Chinese helicopter would fly over at top speed – damn the poor visibility and lack of flotation suits, those are just rules. And while the ship sank beneath the icy waves the head of the expedition would shake his head and say “It really was worse than I thought.”
But unless that happens we will have a drawn out “safe” evacuation. One where the climate scientists slowly run out of booze while the Chinese ice-breaker waits ever patiently on the edge of the ice sheet. As someone once said “Adventure is when you don’t stick to the plan.”
No lives are imminently at risk either 🙂
Great story!
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
January 1, 2014 at 12:07 pm
When life is threatened you accept a normally forbidden lesser risk to avoid the much more likely greater loss resulting from doing nothing.
———————————————————–
Alan, this is the greatest mistake rescuers can make. Not understanding the risk and breaking the rules by rushing in. Ask anyone who is responsible for safety. The key is to stick to the plan. These people are not in short-term danger. They aren’t dangling from a cliff or stuck in a car that is about to explode.
The simple rule here is to keep everyone safe, warm and in good spirits while you wait for the right time to make your move. Everything has to fall into place. They need good weather and they need the Aurora alongside. If it takes eight days it takes eight days.
AW, just be VERY wary of these guys.
They will use you, then throw you to the wolves !!
From a commentary piece by The Australian:
“Had the expedition found the slightest evidence to confirm its expectation of melting ice caps and thin ice, a major new scare about the plight of the planet would have followed. ”
That is correct. But now that it’s clear that the Antarctic ice cap is not melting and the ice (whatever its vintage) is not so thin, will the reverse be trumpeted?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/stuck-on-a-ship-of-cold-fools/story-e6frg71x-1226793309195
The pre-departure footage in the ABC report on the other post showed Prof Turkey wasting fossil fuels by joy-riding round in, as I recall, an 8-man all terrain vehicle that was to be used by the exhibition to venture away from the mother ship.
Why hasn’t that been deployed to help to get people to the rescue vessels? Is the ice too dangerous? Is there some factor that means they get it out of the hold? Or did they decide to devote the space to something more important (like booze or bananas)?
There might be another problem if they have to wait for the Polar Star to arrive in 10 days or so. Note that on the daily sea ice graph there was a slight increase in the trend line about 16 days ago. I had noticed a similar jump in the trend line back in August/September, which made me wonder if there was going to be another boost to the sea ice in early October that would take it to a new high. I made several comments about that and as it turned out my thought was right, which is not to say that I understand the ‘why’ of what was happening. I now see that there may be a similar occurrence which should start by late next week. You can see where there was an upward jump in the sea ice trend around the 12th of December. There should be another one late next week. Also, note that in 2012/2013 the sea ice dramatically deviated from the norm right at the beginning of January, as the trend line moved from average to +2 standard deviation during the month of January last year. It could be ready to do similar again. If it does then there could be an earlier refreeze down there than ever seen before.
” Luck-Baker pauses briefly to feign careful consideration, but says “as a success” because some particular penguin species’ numbers are greatlly depleted.” I’m wondering how he can know this, since the adellie penguins should be nesting on rocky land quite a number of miles from the ships location. Is it impossible that most are where they are supposed to be rather than on ice near the ship?
Alan Watt, Hollywood needs you! That was hilarious (and also scarily believable).
Kudos to Anthony et al for showing a lot more in the way of ethics and grace than we have come to expect from the extreme end of the alarmist cult.
JJ says:
[snip – sorry, we don’t allow content from Internet stalker “Sou” aka Miriam O’Brien, here anymore. She’s entitled to her opinion, and she has her own blog to spew it with. I note nobody contacted her for information. – Anthony]
Huh?
Who is Miriam O’Brien, and why are you confusing me with her?
[ Miriam O’brien is “Sou” where you got that content from -mod]
Babushka! Come keep comrade warm! Play Beatles song Back In The USSR! Nothing else to do here … Tovarisch please repeat? You say Cold War is over? Does this mean Hot War is here? …
Maybe they think they’ve found Noah’s Ark?
Where is the North Coast of Antarctica, as John Coleman refers to in the video ?
the Antarctic is a dangerous place anytime. These guys are lucky there is support readily available. A friend of mine was flying helicopters off a ship in Antarctic years ago. It was a German ship with international crews of researchers. They had 5 helicopters (HU50) and the first day on location the ice sheared the bottom of the ship off. The only flying they did was evacuate the crew to a research station. Luckily the bar bill went to the bottom with the ship.
Rescue operations likely to commence shortly in Antarctic
http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/documents/02012014AkademikShokalskiyUpdate9_Media_Release.pdf
https://twitter.com/AMSA_News
So hubby asked why I thought a song about a dissappointed and broken pirate would make a good theme song for the passengers and crew of this ship. I explained that I view global climate change science as an easy pirating of “American (and other wealthy nations’) gold” gone wrong. Have a listen and tell me if you agree. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV34CwNMY0
As this saga unfolds, the net global polar sea ice has reached a new milestone since 1979 to start the new year. With the southern anomaly at +1.529 and the northern one at -0.497 the net is over the million square kilometre mark at +1.032 million square kilometres of extra ice.
Lance Hilpert says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:21 am
” . . . and had sent an email to John, Dave, and I.” And “I??”
C’mon Anthony, even in California it should be “and me.”
[Reply: Correct. But don’t blame Anthony: in the 1960’s I was taught in a gov’t school that “and I” was proper. ~ mod.]
—————————————–
And I. Definately. But then the UK and the US are two countries divided by a common language.
The queen says “my husband and I”, she doesn’t say “my husband and me”.
Don’t get me started, I’m a closet grammar nazi. For example, “C’mon” (above) is not a valid conjuntion, but then neither is “won’t”, when you think about it. So I’ll admit it’s confusing, especially on New Year’s day. Probably best not to go down this road….”
Uh, no. It’s “me.” John, Dave and ME are objects of the verb “sent”. The easiest way to work it out is to use the names singly and see if it makes sense, i.e. “had sent an email to me.” Nobody would say “had sent an email to I.”
When the Queen says ‘My husband and I” they are subjects of the verb – i.e. “my husband and I went out last night.” She may well say “my husband and me” if the context is “the PM sent a letter to my husband and me.”
The Queen would Never use me or my.
That would rather be “… one and one’s husband received a letter from the PM” , although more commonly she would simply use we, as in the Royal We…, As in eg. We are not amused.
ABC (Australia) news is reporting that a helicopter rescue will be attempted this morning.
Local observation:
Temp 4.2C
Wind ESE at 37km’hr
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7 says:
January 1, 2014 at 9:06 am
Hilarious!
“…at the same time they need calm or light winds for a safe helicopter rescue.”
It’s been many years, but I was actually a Rescue Crew Commander flying a helicopter at one time. Of course, calm or light winds are to be preferred. Depending on the machine and the pilots skill a fair amount of wind could be alright. 25 mph maybe, and steady? Another problem is visibility. Need to see the ice. Might be able to sight on the ship and bring it down safely. Pretty wide open according to the photos. I’d be willing to have a go at it.
Edit…landing on the ship is probably the bigger challenge.
M Courtney says:
January 1, 2014 at 11:38 am
Stuart Elliot says at January 1, 2014 at 9:48 am
While the irony is clear and delicious for us skeptics, nothing much has changed in the popular media and amongst the vested interests.
M. Courtney:
But it has. This was a stunning defensive win. The propagandists spent a lot of money coming up with a combined Aussie BC, BBC and Guardian followed press junket. It was timed for the Festive period when there isn’t much news. It was a big push for 2014. And it failed.
The media has dropped it form the news. Even though a news story that goes wrong and ends up needing rescue is exciting and newsworthy.. even so they have dropped it.
Folks,
Both FOX news and Breitbart news are running stories on The Ship Of Fools today.
FOX video report: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2998361715001/antarctic-expedition-still-trapped-by-ice/?intcmp=HPBucket&playlist_id=922779230001
Breitbart report: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/12/31/Global-Warming-Experts-still-Stuck-in-Ice
USA Today & Drudge Report:
Cold facts: More record lows than highs in USA in 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/12/31/record-cold-temperatures/4264237/
@M Courtney, 12:03
I get your point but I stand by mine.
Perception is (always) constructive; memory is (almost always) re-constructive. We see things, we remember things by placing them within world-views, schemata, narratives (thank you Andy West).
These people and others like them are not demonstrating their lack of integrity – on the contrary, they will increasingly be fighting to maintain the integrity of a system of thought which is unsupported by the evidence (aka ‘delusional’). The reasoning will get more and more tortuous – we’ve already seen the deep dark oceans and the remote unknown unmonitored areas of the earth recruited to harbour heat in order to balance the visible universe. The ice, to them, will be there as a consequence of some larger invisible balancing context which fits it into the previous warming scenario. We’ve seen it in some of the explanations floating off the ship – conjuring mermaids and monsters while becalmed…
@AndyG55, 12:47
Yes – people will be bitten, until the biter’s bit, unfortunately.
Stuart B
I suspect that the request for weather (wind) information is coming from the crew of the ship, not the so-called researchers. The climate alarmists could care less about the ship and just want to get off. The crew of course are concerned about the ship and it hull and they need to know what’s in store for them while they remain behind.
I hope that this turns into a mass extinction event, not of lives but of reputations.
No Really, the ice is there because of warming.
It was all explained 9 months ago, to the day.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21991487
“I told John “give me 15 minutes”, which was about the time I’d need to get out of COSTCO ”
So tomorrows MSM headline:
“Big Business in US impedes Antarctic Rescue”
Aurora Australis is sending weather reports
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=VNAA#at_pco=tcb-1.0&at_tot=10&at_ab=-&at_pos=1
Ironically, Akademik Sholansky is _not_ sending weather reports – though it could – it’s
sending occassional position reports.
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=UBNF
Weather Buoy 73634 is nearby and sending weather reports.
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=73634
“Didn’t they have lampposts in Port Stanley then ?”
Do they have any now?
@ Ben
“please remind John Coleman to say Antarctic. In his fine report, at times he said Arctic instead.”
The announcer at the beginning of the clip says that the ship is in “Annaddika”. Can’t find that place in my Atlas.
I thought she was having a problem with ‘t’s , and Al Gore, for all his faults, definitely said 2030, for the Arctic Ice to be gone, in the short clip of him referred to by John Coleman in the video and not 2013 as heard by John
Just think of the carbon footprint this is causing
They owe you an acknowledgement. Don’t hold your breath.
The incompetence of people who ought know better always astounds me. Mawson must be turning in his grave at these people using his name for their socialist propaganda. The British journalist’s webcam journal entry yesterday (“I miss banana milkshakes and soy lattes, I stubbed my toe, the bed is hard, and I want my mummy and I’m gonna cry…”) shows this mob up for what they really are. Incompetent, lazy, unprepared, hypocritical losers.
SAB says:
January 1, 2014 at 3:11 pm
“These people and others like them are not demonstrating their lack of integrity – on the contrary, they will increasingly be fighting to maintain the integrity of a system of thought which is unsupported by the evidence (aka ‘delusional’). The reasoning will get more and more tortuous”
I think that Turney or Flannery know full well what game they’re playing. They love the easy taxpayer money in the climate-industrial complex. Look how Turney chased his captives around pretending everything’s fine; he’s a prime manipulator. Maybe a psychopath.
Oldseadog says:
January 1, 2014 at 12:21 pm
“If I were the Captain I would refuse to be interviewed by anyone.
Editing can make anything you say mean the opposite of what you meant.
Once bitten twice shy.”
Tell any journalist the opposite of what you mean. This way you exploit his urge to twist everything into its opposite.
SAB says:
January 1, 2014 at 11:50 am
“8. A mosaic iron-curtain of news/information/knowledge domains will arise (the BBC is finding less and less that it can actually report on);”
You are spot on about that; partly because of the inbuilt bias of the BBC, partly because of the increasing censorship in the EU (for instance “hate crime laws”). The EU will drastically increase media censorship as the situation of the EU deteriorates.
@thisisgettingtiresome:
It’s ALL North Coast! (Really… calling bits of it ‘west coast’ or ‘east coast’ is what is confusing. It is all “due north” from the south pole… they really ought to be saying ‘at longitude [foo]’…)
@Anthony and Joe and Bastardi and John and… :
Congratulations on a rapid and useful professional prediction. It will be interesting to see how close the actual weather comes. It’s also interesting to think of folks on various rescue vessels making decisions on what to do based in part on your forecasts. I can see the Captain thinking things like “7 days, eh? Helicopter out the PITA scientists then, and I’ll be free of the ice in a week or two as the wind shifts. Crew vodka enough for 2 weeks, so we’re OK.” 😉
@Grammar police:
Languages are living things. We no longer use ‘thy’ and ‘thine’ nor really ‘whom’ much at all. (I do, as Mum was from England and I grew up on the KJV) Several other antiquated forms leave. Several new forms enter. Regionalisms develop, don’t y’all know? So while some standardization is of value, so is spontaneous evolution and growth. Lighten up a little and enjoy the richness. It’s the cat’s meow… 😉
12.30pm AEDT: 2nd January 2014
Rescue operations delayed by ice conditions:
It is now likely the rescue will not go ahead today. AMSA understands that current sea ice condition s prevent the barge from Aurora Australis from reaching the Chinese vessel Xue Long (Snow Dragon) and a rescue may not be possible today. The Xue Long’s helicopter is unable to land on the Aurora Australis due to load rating restrictions. It is not safe to land the helicopter next to Aurora Australis at this time.
http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/documents/02012014AkademikShokalskiyUpdate10_Media_Release.pdf
In reviewing unconventional ice breaking techniques (mainly thin, flat river ice), including compressed gas canisters, I wonder why high volume low pressure air (about 10psi) pumped under the ice could not serve to break ice around the ship. –AGF
agfosterjr,
I think that would be a good idea… except that as soon as the ice was broken, the pressure would be released.
Yesterday I tried to comment, but there was some problem.
Following the links in the story above, I noticed that the Polar Star has an
amateur radio station on board. Does anybody have DX contact information
for the Polar Star? I would like to get them on the radio and get some first-hand
info.
An-thony: I am SO pleased that this will bring you GREAT and well-deserved press. I am so proud of what you’re doing. You are indeed a beacon of sanity in the world of science and climate.
A boat filled with “expert climatologists” gets stuck in the ice. The world is pretty much at their beck in call to provide answers to questions they need since it’s a great opportunity for positive media attention. However, their best chance at getting climate/weather information is to go to the most known critic of the so called consensus of experts – becase UHM… they know he knows Watts Up with That!!! What delicious IRONY.
I hope this brings you into the limelight…
Mario
Spotted Reptile says:
January 1, 2014 at 2:19 pm
Lance Hilpert says:
January 1, 2014 at 7:21 am
” . . . and had sent an email to John, Dave, and I.” And “I??”
C’mon Anthony, even in California it should be “and me.”
[Reply: Correct. But don’t blame Anthony: in the 1960’s I was taught in a gov’t school that “and I” was proper. ~ mod.]
———————
The correct terminology, if I remember right, would be to use ‘myself’ in place of ‘I’. So you would say ” and had sent an email to John, Dave and myself”.
Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 14m
Helicopter flying over to check out helipad. May be leaving in an hour! #spiritofmawson
https://twitter.com/ProfChrisTurney
Correct form is: “…and had sent an email to John, Dave, and me.”
Demonstrated by removing “John, Dave, and”, which yields:
“…and had sent an email to me.”
What you would actually say in plain English.
The Polar Star is on its way, see
http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/367255000
and click on the live map for updates. Man, we really are in the 21st century…
goldminor, you are making the grammar morass even worse. The misuse of “myself” is a carbuncle on modern English expression.
As someone way above (sorry for non-attribution) said, the rules are pretty straightforward. If the reference is to the subject, “I” is correct. If the reference is to the object, it is “me.” That’s it.
The prevalence of “myself”, a word that could be deleted from the language without a ripple, seems to have something to do with the culture that puts “i in front of anything to make it look hip.
Anyway, back on topic, it seems that the partygoers will have to wait a bit longer. The weather is closing in, and the proposed helicopter rescue has been postponed.
While I sincerely hope that they all get out of there unharmed, I am yet to see even the slightest acknowledgement from any of the bubble-people of the efforts of those who have spent their holiday season trying to rescue them.
A bit of followup on the Polar Star contact. The ship’s page is at
http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcpolarstar/PolarStarNews.asp
It is suggested that it should be possible to contact the ship on the typical
14.300 (20 M) net. Do any of you mariners have common or easy access
to this radio link?
frank, why do you think that members of the public should clog up their communication channels, just because they are curious? Like “Hi, I’m Miley Cyrus, and I would really, really like to know what your favourite colour is? Because, you, know, I’m interested.”
Leave them alone. They have a job to do.
thisisgettingtiresome says:
January 1, 2014 at 3:45 pm
No Really, the ice is there because of warming.
It was all explained 9 months ago, to the day.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21991487
(TiGT omitted the tag, of course.)
The “just-so” story at the link alleges that there is melting from the *bottom* of the ice shelves. The bottom? Where the *bleep* is the heat supposed to come from to melt the bottom of the freaking ice shelves, hundreds of feet down?
Then I read further…
“Climate scientists have been intrigued by observations that Antarctic sea ice shows a small but statistically significant expansion of about 1.9% per decade since 1985, while sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking over past decades….
They tried to reproduce the observed changes in a computer-based climate model.”
Of course they based it on a model, can’t have pesky data getting in the way now, can we?
Oops, the posting software deleted what looked like html markup. I meant to say,
(TiGT omitted the [sarc] tag, of course.)
@ Doug Jones: Have been watching the Polar Star since it made that heading change earlier. It was on course straight toward Sydney, now it appears to be bypassing Garden Island. As of 2150 PST (I’m in Seattle) it was heading 211 deg. at approx. 10 kn. Current heading appears to be straight at Hobart. Anyone have a night source at USCG Pac Area that can elaborate on their immediate destination?
Latest News [~4.30 pm Aust EDST] Helicopter rescue delayed as second ship trapped in ice
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-incidents/helicopter-rescue-delayed-as-second-ship-trapped-in-ice-20140102-306yj.html#ixzz2pDh46a8I
“Plans to rescue 52 passengers trapped on the stricken Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy have been thrown into disarray after the Chinese ice-breaker Xue Long itself became stuck in pack ice, west of the Mertz Glacier.
There were expectations that a helicopter would on Thursday begin ferrying trapped passengers off the Russian ship and onto the Xue Long.
The plan was for them to then be transported by barge to the Australian-flagged Aurora Australis.
But on Thursday morning it became apparent the Xue Long was itself unable to move out of the ice. While the Chinese ice-breaker has not issued a distress call for assistance, the Aurora Australis spent most of Wednesday trying to navigate a path between the two vessels.”
Read more on the SMH site as above.
thisisgettingtiresome says:
January 1, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Where is the North Coast of Antarctica, as John Coleman refers to in the video ?
A hunter walked one kilometer south from his camp. Then he walked one kilometer west. There he shot a bear. Then he walked one kilometer north, and found that he was back at his camp. What color was the bear?
Nice one. So that’s why all the poley bears are dying really.
the gall of these people:http://www.3news.co.nz/Worst-case-climate-scenario-looking-more-likely/tabid/1160/articleID/327000/Default.aspx
Thanks, John (it is AW’s appearance on KUSI TV) – I couldn’t watch the direct link, presumably because I am outside the US.
Rescue by Chinese helicopter is apparently underway – does anyone have any news?
Doug Jones says: January 1, 2014 at 8:45 pm
The Polar Star is on its way, see http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/367255000
and click on the live map for updates. Man, we really are in the 21st century…
She turned to starboard at 10:45 GMT approx. and is heading for the bright lights of Sydney at the moment at 10.5 knots.
Re:-
“The Polar Star is on its way, ……..heading for the bright lights of Sydney …”
That crew must be relieved too.
bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25573096
The BBC website has just announced all tourists are rescued and are on the Australis.
The report also said one purpose was to investigate the disappearing sea ice…
From the you-couldn’t-make-it-up dept.
” The report also said one purpose was to investigate the disappearing sea ice…”
Well I suppose … if there were no ice they wouldn’t be able to watch it disappearing.
Now there is though, are they any longer equipped to watch it ?
The crew must be relieved.
johanna on January 2, 2014 at 2:19 am
says:
” Thanks, John (it is AW’s appearance on KUSI TV) – I couldn’t watch the direct link, presumably because I am outside the US. ”
fwiw.
I couldn’t get that direct link to work either from a Smart Phone (Apple), in GB, but it was OK when I switched to the Desktop view.
WUWT is my first port of call everytime i go on line. Anthony, methinks your a legend in the making. By the way, did not Mr Gore go to The Antarctic last year in the hope of photographing penguins dying from heat exhaustion or whatever else he could find to scare the kids back home. I heard no results, can someone help with the outcome of that little soiree.
The irony is so rich.
Anthony, thanks for demonstrating what a class act you are.
Mod says –
[ Miriam O’brien is “Sou” where you got that content from -mod]
Never heard of her. The content in question was a satire on warmist thinking (term used looooosely), and came entirely from within my own pointy little head. From the sounds of it, the truth of warmist thinking is truly stranger than any fiction one might imagine about them. Ha!
Congratulations to the Ice Breaker crews the Helicopter crew and the huge International effort backing them up with all the benefits of modern technology.
Does that chopper really have twin main rotors stacked on top of each other ?
( I suppose it must be a great help in the rarified atmosphere of Climate Science:)
Franny from Svenska says:
January 2, 2014 at 6:44 am
Congratulations to the Ice Breaker crews the Helicopter crew and the huge International effort backing them up with all the benefits of modern technology.
Does that chopper really have twin main rotors stacked on top of each other ?
( I suppose it must be a great help in the rarified atmosphere of Climate Science:)
http://www.pbase.com/llukee/image/153992786 here is a picture of one taken in Peru. It is a KA 32 Russian built helicopter. the counter rotating main blades allow for the aircraft to fly without a tail rotor freeing more power to the main blades.
So the Chinese used a Russian helicopter?
The Russians do make wonderful helicopters.
I don’t think the Chinese have developed their own yet (some things are harder to copy then others). They may be building some Russian varieties under licence.
Anthony, this is what we call ‘standing tall.’ When people call for support we have to put all the past behind us and do our best to support them, which you did. Well done! Congratulations.
General P. Malaise says:
On January 2, 2014 at 7:15 am
” http://www.pbase.com/llukee/image/153992786 here is a picture of one taken in Peru. It is a KA 32 Russian built helicopter. the counter rotating main blades allow for the aircraft to fly without a tail rotor freeing more power to the main blades. ”
I guess that means if one rotor fails they’re pretty stuffed then – just like a tail rotor failing, or could they survive by switching off both rotors and allowing them to autorotate (auto-contra-rotate I guess) ?
General P. Malaise says:
On January 2, 2014 at 7:15 am
” http://www.pbase.com/llukee/image/153992786 here is a picture of one taken in Peru. It is a KA 32 Russian built helicopter. the counter rotating main blades allow for the aircraft to fly without a tail rotor freeing more power to the main blades. ”
I guess that means if one rotor fails they’re pretty stuffed then – just like a tail rotor failing, or could they survive by switching off both rotors and allowing them to autorotate (auto-contra-rotate I guess) ?
===================================
http://usafhpa.com/2012/09/02/h-43-huskie/ This is the one I flew. HH-43 Husky, dual inter-meshing rotors. Technically a syncropter, not a helicopter. There was no procedure for loss of one mast that I recall; not to be contemplated.
What’s that Anthony was saying in the Video a few comments up, about Russian technology, while being rather kinder about Climate Scientists who cannt help themselves 🙂
a tail rotor failure does not mean you are stuffed. there are fail safes built in. physically losing a blade would be like losing a wing on an airplane in which case you are stuffed.
the rotors are driven by the same shaft. this particular helicopter has 2 engines driving a single transmission. it will fly on one engine within certain parameters.
No idea what a TiGT is… Have I mentioned lately that I hate acronyms? Not enough data redundancy in them to know what they mean….
@TheLastDemocrat:
White. Camp is at the North Pole….
@All:
Yes, it’s quite possible to have 2 contra rotating lift blades. One on top of the other or offset to the sides or fore aft and synchronized. In some ways more elegant than tail rotor designs…
Thanks Anthony for what you did btw 0n dec 17 the ship was @168.32E longitude, now on Jan 2 (after the rescue) where they are on that wind map is a large pocket of stagnant air, it may be a while longer before that Katabatic wind gets there I sincerely hope the Russian crew makes it out. Oh are the CoastGuard still going down there to assist that ship do you know?
“I had looked at what was happening and saw what I thought might be an opening in 7-8 days based on the forecast graphics from WeatherBell, where the winds would shift to offshore in the area where Akademik Shokalskiy was stuck.”
That was 12/31/13 it is now 01/07/14 and we have this report.
Antarctic break: Russian, Chinese stranded ships navigate out of ice trap
http://rt.com/news/antarctic-ice-trap-freed-274/
Hindsight. Is a wonderful thing but foresight is even better when you have it. If this Alarmist band had sat it out, as Mawson would have, instead of making all the song and dance then they could have got away with much less damage to their cause when the opening forecast by Anthony arrived , right on cue.
For directions in Antarctica the Prime Meridian is north. It is the line of longitude that separates east and west Antarctica.
http://www.mapsofworld.com/antarctica/
The winds are taken in a system called grid north where 0 degrees is north and 180 degrees is south.
http://www.usap.gov/travelAndDeployment/documents/FieldManual-Chapt21AntarcticNavigation.pdf