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)
“The damning evidence is here-”
http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/31/expedition-on-the-cheap-did-organizers-recklessly-negligently-put-lives-and-property-at-risk/#comment-910538
Michael Palmer at 9:28 am needs to think harder. Much harder.
The captain of the ship was faced with two choices: abandon the shore trippers or wait for them.
There appears to be a strong stench of selfish arrogance from those shore-trippers disregarding the captain’s position.
Since there were no shore facilities offering shelter (maybe for months) the captain had his hands tied.
And tied by whom? There is one selfish, arrogant and ignorant idiot in all of this. No need to guess too hard.
Retracing the steps of Douglas Mawson? Haaaaaa haaaaa haaaa.
I do hope that this ship of fools had SatNav and all the other gadgets that makes modern navigation so much easier? Yet they failed miserably whether they had it or not. It is a total and utter failure. FAIL.
Don’t you mean the TRIP and the rescue? Why didn’t they go by sail boat? Was their food cooked by windpower or solar? Did they wear hemp clothing? Did they eat beef from methane emitting cows? So many questions for these unrepentant hypocrites. Without modern fossil fuels such as diesel, natural gas and petrol very few of these fools would have dared ventured towards Antarctica. That is a lesson they must learn for themselves in a more honest way. I cannot help them with this issue of reality.
Don’t be frightened to call these climate gate liars what they really are .” FRAUDS ” . When you make false and misleading statements on purpose that are always wrong for loot ,that is fraud . Big money= big fraud . It is time it was stopped , Notice the volcano smoking ??
Such arrogance! “We know what’s best for you to hear”, media.
Every expedition after this wherever , the group sitting around the table will say let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a Turney.
somebody needs to do a wikapedia page , doing a Turney.
Turney , an expression used to signify an expedition already doomed from the start……..
“The mods point out that no actual seals were cored in recording this thread response.” Okaaaay they took biopsy samples 😀 But the seals will be suing anyway because they didn’t sign a consent form.
The “fools” are safe but the ship is still stuck in the ice together with it’s crew.
They are still in a very dangerous situation.
So please don’t drop the subject until the crew and the ship are safe.
New headline:
Now that the Akademik Shokalskiy is safe in Antarctica, tough questions need to be asked.
Hmm, are the 22 crew members now safe? Is the Akademik Shokalskiy now safe?
I assume this story will continue as to the fate of the ship and her crew. Probably not with the MSM. Any updates as to their fate?
*Didn’t mean for this to be so long. Just think the info here is important to the truth.*
Just got back from screen capping and copying URLs (instead of just cutting and pasting out key points) from http://www.spiritofmawson.com/blog/. We just never know these days when website pages will disappear. Right?
Not only does it detail all the sea ice they had to “grind through” (interactive map of the trips progress -https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z8QYRx-LCqEw.kFHpO8ktLaqI) in order to get anywhere CLOSE to the continent in the first place, but in the days BEFORE they got stuck in the ice for good, REPEATED posts on the blog by passengers demonstrate that the ice-fast ice-shore ice-was breaking up over and over again!!
Again, for Chris Turney to PRETEND after the ship got fatally stuck, to be shocked or surprised about all this ice suddenly showing up where it had not been before is ludicrous! It was there when they sailed in, it was breaking up and moving the whole time they were there, and Chris Turney admits on Dec 19th that he knew they were “between two low pressure system circulating the continent, promising fine, stable weather for at least the following two days. Unfortunately this is something of a double edged sword. We have been having extraordinary warm weather; so much so the fast ice – purportedly meaning the sea ice is locked ‘fast’ to the land – can spectacularly break out along the edge at any time.”
Not only that, but the ship ITSELF was breaking up fast ice on on shore!
*Dec 17th-Sean Borkovic-
“We reached a point when the ship veered suddenly to port aiming directly at the ice sheet. Just like that we ploughed into the fast ice in an effort to ‘park’ the ship so we could disembark. As we were rattled and shook by the manoeuvre it seemed crazy and bizarre yet it was not enough. We did not penetrate too far and instead of wedging in tight it instead cracked off several floes of ice. It took 12 goes before we had a suitable ‘berth’. ”
*Dec 18th- Robbie Turney-
“Later in the afternoon we took the Argos along the fast ice. We got half way before we realised it was too late and that we should head back. Although when we got back there was a large crack in the ice, 3 metres wide. It was too big for the Argos and Quad Bikes so we had to wait until the ship could barge its way to us. We were there for about an hour waiting in the five degree heat. Luckily there was no wind chill.”
*Dec 18th- Steve Lambert-
“Early evening as everyone on the ice was heading back to the ship, the cracks in the ice widened, separating them from the ship. Our obliging captain, Igor, manoeuvered the ship to a new spot, so that they could safely board.
Christmas Trees, decorations and lights are now up in the bar and dining room, We are festive. The Aussies have loved reminding our Pommie friends on board of that we have reclaimed the Ashes.
…9pm. Just at the end of dinner – the ice sheet that we were on all day has had a massive fracture and disintegrated into numerous sheets with large areas of water in between! Good thing that we are all on board, as well as all of the scientific equipment and vehicles.”
*Dec 19th-Ian McRae-
“The fast ice, the frozen ocean attached to the distant land, is rapidly breaking up and as we walk, cracks appear and occasionally we sink down to our knees to the ice below or, sometimes, to water. The surface we were walking on yesterday is now floating out to sea as pack ice and there is a danger that we could float out with it.”
Turney wraps up the 19th-20th on his entry on Dec 21st- (Note he acknowledges that he knew on or around Dec 19th that they are between low pressure systems and that stable weather might only last a couple of days)
“The weather forecast was excellent. We were between two low pressure system circulating the continent, promising fine, stable weather for at least the following two days. Unfortunately this is something of a double edged sword. We have been having extraordinary warm weather; so much so the fast ice – purportedly meaning the sea ice is locked ‘fast’ to the land – can spectacularly break out along the edge at any time. A timely reminder was during the evening we relocated. The Shokalskiy suddenly found it was in a mass breakout of ice. In just half an hour, an extensive area of ice (some of which we had been using for the Hangout on Air earlier that day) had broken up and was moving away from Commonwealth Bay with haste. Large pieces of ice, in the shape of shattered glass fragments – albeit large pieces – surrounded our vessel. There was no danger to the ship but it was a timely reminder how quickly things can change in this environment. You can never take anything for granted in the Antarctic! ”
By the 23rd, according to the Janet Rice site-they were surrounded by ice -http://www.janetrice.com.au/?e=98
“The ship is making very slow progress through pack ice. There is a narrow channel that we are inching our way along – it of course is pretty frozen in itself. There are icebergs on either side of us, some kilometres away – hard to tell exactly how far. We oscillate between hardly moving to suddenly being jolted sideways with a crunch as the ship bashes and barges its way through.”
Hey R. de Haan, you had the same thoughts as to the safety of the ship’s crew!!
They are not rescued yet.
The Aurora Australis webcams show no open water extending as far as the horizon and its heading direction has been changing throughout the day, as in, they are searching for a way through the thick ice.
The story would get even more bizarre if the Aurora got stuck just like the ice-hardened Russian ship and the Chinese ice-breaker before them. The French surrender upon first contact MO ice-breaker has made them look like the smart ones down there.
The fools are safe now but their “science is still stuck”.
Now don’t let them get away their propaganda and keep slapping them with real arguments.
These are no scientists but hacks.
By all means blame the master of the ship but what the heck was Mr. Turkey thinking? Doesn’t he have access to the computer model weather forecasts? 😉 The models surely told him that the waters were ice free and almost boiling. Can he not see the satellite imagery showing open water all the way to the solid coast? Questions are now being asked about why Mr. Turkey could not see these settled things?
As for the tourist passengers I do hope they have learned an embarrassing lesson. You have been had, you are a bunch of suckers. Put your tail between your legs and stop yapping about global warming………….which has stopped.
Question: How did Chris Turney’s colleague on the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre Team, Steven Sherwood, manage to get his “Global Temps to Rise 4 degrees by 2100” “research”published in Nature at precisely the time his team-mate was stuck in Antarctic ice?
Question: How come the MSM did not notice or, if they did notice, did not inform their audience, that the Alvin Stone who put out the “4 degree” Press Release was – ironically – the same Alvin Stone they were quoting regularly as the “spokesman” for Turney’s Antarctic Expedition?
Nature: Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing
Received 16 May 2013; Accepted 05 November 2013; Published online 01 January 2014
Affiliations: Steven C. Sherwood: Climate Change Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7481/full/nature12829.html
no prizes for guessing which of the two stories the MSM ran with, big-time
“Richard. says:
January 2, 2014 at 3:09 pm
Every expedition after this wherever , the group sitting around the table will say let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a Turney.
somebody needs to do a wikapedia page, doing a Turney.
Turney , an expression used to signify an expedition already doomed from the start……..”
So instead of the Gore effect, we’ll have the
power of a Turney…
The warmers lie. And they know they lie. They do it anyway.
Gail Combs on January 2, 2014 at 9:10 am says:-
“…… Prof Chris(tmas) Turkey went for the cheapest based …”
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha …
That really cracks me up.
Didn’t she mean ‘baste’ ?
I’m off again.
Historical perspective: From records of U.S. Operation Deep Freeze II, on New Year’s Day, 1957 there was heavy ice and strong winds near the mouth of the Ross Sea, at about 70 degrees South. To add to the drama, there was also a menacing iceberg, which got headlines back home. Two ships were severely damaged. Near the end of January, not far from the present site of Casey Station, about 65 degrees South, there was heavy ice and some ship damage occurred. However, by Feb. 1 the sea was open. Australians might want to comment on historical ice conditions around Casey. ,
andrewmharding says:
January 2, 2014 at 2:45 pm
…. only demonstrated that Antarctica now and in the days of Mawson, is not significantly different!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes it is. On the three summers Mawson expedition sailed there in wooden boats it was Ice Free or nearly so. (1929/1930)
See Anthony’s thread HERE
Sort of makes you wonder about the Hokey Schtick and data fiddling especially when you combine it with this data from the USA link
Well it didn’t take long for the parodies to start coming off the production line ….
Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/03SWGkxt72A
It would appear that the Global Warming dilettantes have escaped with their delusions intact. What will it take to get them in touch with reality? “Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius”, (Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.)
When the end of the tender date comes and goes and the ship is still stuck in the ice.
Who pays?
It could be there for a very long time if it doesn’t get crushed and sinks.
Which in turn raises almost two more identical questions.
Who pays for the clean up of “environmental catastrophe” caused by the global warmists?
Who pays the ruskys for the global warmists “losing” their ship?
I do hope there is a welcoming party with the appropriate signage to greet these idiots where ever they arrive home.
The story just keeps on giving.
ManBearPig-
I have your photoshopped “Ship of Fools” flag ready…where can I send it? 🙂
Just a curiosity:
“Louise Adie, of Trumansburg, New York, worked as a kayak guide and ship historian aboard the Akademik Shokalskiy starting 10 years ago, sailing on the vessel for five seasons.
Her opinion of the captain:
“When guiding with the Shokalskiy, Adie worked closely with the ship’s current captain, Igor Kiselev, whom Adie described as “calm, efficient, very wise and friendly. Highly respected.”
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/CB/20131231/NEWS01/312310080/Eye-Antarctica-Trumansburg-woman-worked-stranded-ship?nclick_check=1