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)
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Fairness would have required that the crew be rescued, and the tourists and politicians be left behind
The pathos of that milkshake video may not be lost forever. Here it is (or was) on the Guardian site: http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/video/2013/dec/30/antarctica-live-video-diary-trapped-ice-missing-milkshake-video
A Ship of Fools or a Ship of Wimps, or both?
If the crew can remain on board and there was no shortage of provisions why did these fools – who have the gall to invoke the Spirit of Mawson – have to be rescued? From What?
The “cruise” promotional material lists 26 berths for rent at about 17,000 $AUS each.
The rescue reports list 52 passengers – so it would appear everyone was double-bunking. Small wonder about the party-time atmosphere, especially after the bar opened daily at 6
Add 22 crew still aboard, and that adds to 74 total
Prior reports list 84 on-board. Who were the other 10?
In addition to all other calamities, was this ship seriously overloaded? How many Personal Floatation Devices were on hand?
Just wonderin’
AnonyMoose says January 2, 2014 at 8:42 am
Why remove the passengers now? Why not wait a week to see if the expected winds will blow the whole mess out to sea and break up the ice?
On http://www.tvc.ru/news/show/id/26865 it says (Google translate)
DECEMBER 26, 2013
Crew stuck in Antarctic ice “Academica Shokalski” closed up the crack on the casing of the vessel and preparing for worsening weather.
I would say it was to risky to keep the passengers on board. The weather could change very quickly and the situation could get even worse.
Did none of the passengers speak Russian? Surely it would make sense to have had someone capable of acting as interpreter, at least.
Very interesting Pravda.ru article: http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/31-12-2013/126523-criminal_global_warming_fraud-0/
Can anyone photoshop that photo with the two clowns holding the flag so it say Ship of Fools.
Was that Chinese icebreaker their because it was supporting research, conducting oil/gas exploration, or clearing the way for Chinese factory ships gill netting the antarctic waters for fish?
I’m more care of the crew that decided to stay to clean up, and of their worried families . I pray for their safety.
Please, I suggest you keep this story going so we can see the total aftermath these environmentals brought upon so many souls, if not the environment at the bottom of our globe for their little cute stunt.
How much of an involvement did the university of NSW HAVE IN this fiasco, planning, financial, therefore liability?
If the ship is damaged and breaks up due to the ice and there is a leak of fuel oil and other shipboard materials, will this team take responsibilty for the ensuing pollution in what are pristine waters?
Ponzi scheme.
Once more, though, the greenies have covered all bases – they went South to highlight the loss of sea ice; when they find that there is actually a lot more sea ice, they then moan on about how the extensive sea ice is starving penguins, and blocking out the Sunlight, which is killing off forests of algae. The truly sad thing is that the MSM will push out every lie that they spout, without a single attempt at verification.
In order to assess some of the (excellent) questions posed here it is necessary to better understand what passes for normal in the Antarctic. The link below is in reference to the Sparta, a Russian fishing boat that struck underwater ice and was stuck for 10 days in 2011 until the crew could make repairs and be escorted out of the ice by an ice-breaker. Some similarities here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2079374/Russian-fishing-ship-trapped-Antarctic-begins-2-200-mile-trip-port-Korean-ice-breaker.html
I certainly wouldn’t bring my wife and 2 kids into such a potentially dangerous area. Maybe my mother-in-law… This strongly suggests they saw the adventure but did not understand the potential danger.
As another aside I worked in a remote area of Northern Canada where we were to be issued insulated flotation suits – the ones that keep you alive in the event you fall through the ice (both flotation and insulation are important). These one-piece devices are very expensive. They also cause you to sweat profusely and end up stinking like your personal body smell. This is why they were issued to individuals – no one wanted to put on a used floater suit worn previously by others. That could be worse than drowning. My point here is that the crew of the Akademik Shokalskiy likely have these suits issued to them while the “guests” are more likely to have cheaper life jackets (to make them feel safe but almost totally useless in Antarctic waters). Otherwise who paid for 54 floater suits that typically cost north of $1,500 each that were never worn?
@Jean Parisot. The Chinese ice-breaker is there to bring supplies to the Chinese Antarctic exploration program. There also seem to be fishing vessels in the area that are ice strengthened but not ice-breaker capable.
I have the answer to all of these questions.
“I get the thrust of your ‘questions’ and have a question of my own: Why do you hate science and oppose important research into the climactic byproducts of man’s arrogance that what will surely lead to planetary extinctions?”
Same answer of last 17 years (and counting).
Let’s face it, it was a tourist cruise. They often have celebrities on board to keep the customers happy. The selling point was that those celebs would be real scientists, doing real science and the passengers would get to help out if they wanted to. In addition they could feel like they were following in the footsteps of a real explorer. They got to count birds, watch ice cores and seal cores being drilled and ‘throw’ a few temperature buoys over the side. There were lectures. The helicopter ride was probably an unexpected bonus.
Problems with Antarctic cruises don’t seem that rare and was probably more noteworthy because of the journalists on board and the irony of the situation. A large part of the cost is probably insurance.
[The mods point out that no actual seals were cored in recording this thread response. The seals may have been bored, but they were not drilled, schooled, nor marched. Mod]
I’m hoping Nick Stokes will explain to us simple minded folks that the current ice isn’t the same as ice was 35 years ago when there was less ice, and that he’s not convinced it was even ice that trapped the ship.
Seems Govment Climate Science is done no better than Govment mail delivery
what do you expect from a ship of fools …but foolishness!!
the below are from
http://anonymousconservativ.ipage.com/blog/
“As such, it indicates a Liberal who is being made uncomfortable by holding the Liberal position on an issue, in the face of the information you are focusing them on. Much of Liberalism only sustains itself on a deep denial of inevitable truths, as a way of shielding their amygdalae from the stress of cognitive dissonance.”
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/serial-sex-offender-richard-hirschfield-and-the-defective-amygdala/
“It amuses me that when a researcher schooled in the field sees a man with a smaller amygdala, his reflexive response is to use that to explain any deviant, selfish, cruel, narcissistic behavior. Of course, that specific trait is also a hallmark of the Leftist brain, so what does that say?”
these are liberals and they have damage mental faculties. Most of us are aware of the answer to those questions Anthony. They (…the pretend scientists) are not nice …you are. THAT gives them a terrible advantage.
Next time they will charter a plane to do a fly over and write a lot of content about seeing some open water and insert comments from the biased tourist observers in tow to give a real time first person feel. That is the Al Gore way but without the VIP carbon industrialist on board to pay the way with indulgences.
The schedule from the AA’s web site places the ship in Hobart on 8 Jan.
https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/voyage.cfm?season=1314
“Now that the ‘Ship of Fools’ is safe in Antarctica, trough questions need to be asked”
Fixed that for you.
“Of course, it is not unexpected that MSM when covering this story are not informing their readers/viewers that Antarctic ice is at a 30 year high.”
Any attempt to post a comment with a link to the official NSIDC data on Antarctic ice entent gets deleted.
Apparently scientific facts are against the Guardian’s “community standards”.