UPDATE: Perhaps the headline was premature, the latest SITREP from the rescue ship Aurora Australis indicates they are having some trouble getting into open water.
UPDATE2: It seems the cause of getting stuck was nothing more than dawdling while sightseeing.
Since the Guardian reporters shown above probably won’t do anything but complain about beds and lack of milkshakes (that video has now been “disappeared”) while writing glowing reports about the “adventure” of it all, it will be left to others to ask the tough questions. Now that they are on their way to Casey Station in Antarctica, Andrew Bolt starts off with these questions. I have a few of my own.
- Who paid for this expedition?
- How did the expedition team come to include Turney’s wife and two young children?
- How serious was this scientific endeavor?
- Was the choice of ship wise, given it is not an icebreaker?
- How did the ship, in these days of satellite imaging, high quality weather forecasts and radar, come to get stuck in ice?
- How much did the rescue cost?
- Who pays for this rescue?
- Why have the ABC and Fairfax media, so keen at first to announce this expedition was to measure the extent and effects of global warming, since omitted that fact from their reports after the expedition became ice-bound?
- Why have all those reports – and the expedition leader himself – neglected to mention that sea ice around Antarctica has increased over the past three decades – and is greater than the ice cover Douglas Mawson found a century ago?
I have these questions:
- Who pays for the trip back to Australia once they get let off at Casey Station?
- How much damage has this fiasco done to real science expeditions in Antarctica, not only from a delayed logistics standpoint, but also from PR standpoint?
- Why did the stranded ship reach out for weather forecasts and data when they should have been equipped for this in the first place?
- Who will be responsible if the ship ends up being stuck in ice permanently or gets its hull crushed and sinks?
- What will be the duties and fate of the crew left behind?
- Who funded the ARGO ATV’s after Turney’s Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign failed miserably? Do those people get a refund?
- Why would Turney book this ship when it has only the barest of ratings for sea ice?
UL = Ice strengthening notation of the ship (independent navigation in the Arctic in summer and autumn in light ice conditions and in the non-arctic freezing seas all the year round) More on ratings here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/icebreakers-class.htm
8. Was Turney mislead about the intensity of the ice by his own beliefs that Antarctic sea ice was melting?
9. Did the sightseeing excursion to Mawson’s Huts on December 19th and again on Dec 23rd (apparently to Mertz Glacier, though their blog and “tracker” are unclear on this point) cause delays that caused the ship to be trapped in rapidly changing weather which closed the sea ice around them?
10. Apparently the crew of the Akademik Shokalskiy spoke next to zero English, did this communications barrier contribute to the situation? Was Turney warned that the weather and wind were changing while the second Mawson’s Huts sightseeing tour was in progress, and if he was were those warnings understood/heeded?
11. Why did the ship have a mix of tourists and media when it was pitched as a “scientific expedition”?
5 Nov: ABC Lateline: $1.5 million Australian expedition to Antarctica Professor Chris Turney from the University of NSW is mounting the largest Australian science expeditions to the Antarctic with an 85-person team to try to answer questions about how climate change in the frozen continent might be already shifting weather patterns in Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3898858.htm
Related articles
- Expedition On The Cheap? Did Organizers Recklessly, Negligently Put Lives And Property At Risk? (notrickszone.com)
OLD DATA says:
Interesting and bizarre. The text appears botched by an incompetent and careless editor, and the main thrust seems like an attempt to bite a feeding hand. Interesting too, that this attack on fraud would come from one of the most infamous outlets of institutionalised fraud.
Today, thanks to a hostile comment on the Pravda website, we know who Gary Novak is. Here is the original:
http://nov79.com/physics.html
Even more interesting.
According to the headline in the Australian the cost of the rescue is $400,000.
This probably does not include the cost to existing Australian research due to
The unavailability of the rescue boat.
Jim
there all COLLECTIVIST ASSHOLES WITH NO BRAINS AND NO MORALS
I agree with most of those commenting here, it was a ship of fools and they deserve all the derision that has been heaped upon them.
But, that is not the way the MSM and Alarmist are going to play. They will be hailed as heroes.
Consider the story as it has been revealed. The “expedition is out on the “fast ice” (so called because it is stuck fast to the land. It gets “warm” ( 4 degrees C- about 40 degrees F. In New England in January, that would be called the “January thaw”). The fast ice breaks up, (because of the warm temperature, of course) causing the expedition to hurry back to ship, with their lives in danger from falling through cracks in the ice. By the time they arrive, the broken fast ice, now sea ice, has engulfed the ship.
Fortunately, the tax payers of Australia have agreed to pay for their rescue. They are rescued by an international effort, having risked their lives to prove that global warming is breaking up the fast ice in the Antarctic. What heroes!
Not the story I hope would be told, but the spin I see the MSM and Alarmist putting on it.
I am an Australian tax payer and haven’t agreed to pay for the rescue. But who is asking me?
old engineer says: @ur momisugly January 3, 2014 at 12:00 pm
I agree with most of those commenting here, it was a ship of fools and they deserve all the derision that has been heaped upon them.
But, that is not the way the MSM and Alarmist are going to play. They will be hailed as heroes….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually that will depend on what happens to the Captain and crew. If the ship goes down (I really hope not) and/or the Russians do an inquiry the “Heroes” can easily become clowns at best or villains.
The MSM keeps forgetting about the internet and the fact people now realize they lie. This means they see a story and check out the rest of the story on the internet.
This is an interesting story, that is not going to endear the public to the media: Haters gonna hate. Dec 17, 2013. Note in the story the people they call Haters are 34% of the US voters who are fed up with both parties. ” [T]hey constitute a significant and growing share of the electorate” Way to go Washington Post, you really know how to win friends for the political class.
Scott Rasmussen, of Rassmussen Polls has some pithy comments on the story HERE.
Jason Mundy acting director of the Australian Antarctic Division stated on ABC radio that Commonwealth Bay and Mawson’s Hut had been difficult to reach in “recent years”, so Chris Turney MUST have been aware of the dangers. The ongoing rescue effort has impacted on the AAD’s programs and delayed vital supplies to Casey.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-03/chinese-icebreaker-stuck-after-helping-with-ship-rescue/5184210
Gene Selkov says:
January 3, 2014 at 5:41 am
OLD DATA says:
Very interesting Pravda.ru article: http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/31-12-2013/126523-
—–
I would be careful of this one. I cannot evaluate his scientific statements, but he seems to take issue with too many accepted norms in the scientific community to be trusted. A contrarian is not a sceptic.
Here is the explanation from the Prof himself as to what they will undertake and what they expect to study. From the Spirit of Mawson website..
We are going south to:
1 gain new insights into the circulation of the Southern Ocean and its impact on the global carbon cycle
2 explore changes in ocean circulation caused by the growth of extensive fast ice and its impact on life in Commonwealth Bay
3 use the subantarctic islands as thermometers of climatic change by using trees, peats and lakes to explore the past
4 investigate the impact of changing climate on the ecology of the subantarctic islands
discover the environmental influence on seabird populations across the Southern Ocean and in Commonwealth Bay
5 understand changes in seal populations and their feeding patterns in the Southern Ocean and Commonwealth Bay
6 produce the first underwater surveys of life in the subantarctic islands and Commonwealth Bay
determine the extent to which human activity and pollution has directly impacted on this remote region of Antarctica
7 provide baseline data to improve the next generation of atmospheric, oceanic and ice sheet models to improve predictions for the future
For more information, do feel free to contact us. We hope you can join the team.
Professor Chris Turney and Dr Chris Fogwill
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014
University of New South Wales
negrum says:
“A contrarian is not a sceptic.”
Nor is a sceptic a contrarian.
Scientific skeptics simply ask climate alarmists to validate their claims with testable, verifiable evidence. It is not the fault of skeptics that alarmists have not been able to do so. That does not make sceptics “contrarians”.
There are some posters here who can not spell “Antarctic”; however, they only make ONE error, and call the place the “Antartic”. Then there are the REAL geese who have listened to the illiterates in the (commonly North American; but not always) TV industry who pronounce the word “Anartic”. So we see the REAL illiterates who spell it that way. That degree of illiteracy should disqualify people from posting on an intelligent web-site like this. And should disqualify the TV people until they learn English.
Hey, John – the mangling of the root word, “Artic”, is the real culprit. But keep watching for a tsunami of texting abbreviations that will make spelling as irrelevant as cursive writing and penmanship! Advanced academic degrees for deciphering hand-written letters by the end of this century…..
Maybe the ultimate rescue will be *preformed* by one of them *nucular*-powered icebreakers.
The Führer Gets Trapped in Sea Ice http://wp.me/p3Bc8A-VP (taxpayer millions wasted again on green BS)
Suspicions confirmed. These global warming/climate change zealots cannot and will not accept any evidence that is contrary to their “religion.” To do so will discredit years of their pontificating about the coming of the end of civilization and their self elected role as saviors of the planet and all the living things on it. Delusional intellectuals unfortunately have nothing else worthy of note to claim about their life’s work and their dedication to it. They will not go down quietly. Any “climate change” event worthy of note, i.e., that creates an inordinate loss of life and property, will be publicized to the max as evidence of the excessive greenhouse gas emission “problem.” Events such as this one, which illustrate the fallacy of their doom and gloom scenarios will be spun as this one so aptly illustrates.
Well it’s all pretty silly commentary here – there’s ice all year round near Commonwealth Bay even in the middle of summer. If there’s ice there you can get stuck in it. End of story. That’s WHY you have icebreakers. It has no implications for or against warming. Fairly obvious really if you know the first thing about the area.