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)
a) For any negligence case, the outcome has to have been “reasonably foreseeable”. Given that Commonwealth Bay has been covered in sea ice for three years, I’d say that negligence wouldn’t be difficult to prove. Christmas Turkey, your goose is cooked.
b) I think the Sherwood article in Nature was timed to coincide with the expedition, in order to ramp up the scare in a crescendo of alarmism. There is a lead-time on getting these articles reviewed and published.
c) Further question: Why did climate “scientists” on this expedition not have the latest weather data and forecasts available to them, and why did they have to “phone a friend” days into the saga to get these forecasts?
Negligence, negligence, negligence.
Kevin….I can’t stop laughing…..can’t breathe…..ohhhhhhhhh…..”The Penguin”!!!
Listened (watched) ZT’s video (1.56pm) and it is obvious he is a ‘Londoner’ probably S.E. of the river. English, obviously, but surely he can’t be yet another product of the Uni. of East Anglia.
A quick google, Bing actually, confirmed my suspicion. Exeter as well, Met Off HQ.
What a small world is CAGW.
Relying on the new Aussie gov. to bail them out. C’mon Tony Abbot show us your speedos are not just for show.
Watching the cricket in Sydney with a smallish G+T!
An earlier “Ship of Fools” by the Doors – and yes I am dating myself. Cheers –
Sorry. He of course is Turn(k)ey.
A lot of questions.
Many answers will be in the unsw risk assessment of tte project. The person who
Signed off might be getting nervous now.
All phd students have to do formal research proposals. Wonder how many have
This expedition mentioned in thir proposals.
The risk assessment might also have something about the purpose of
The trip. There might even be an animal ethics application if anyone was
Going to catch penguins.
Evening US mainstream TV news had a short story about the rescue (can’t remember which network). To paraphrase: “They were never in any real danger- they had plenty of food, water and fuel.” And then the clip of singing in the tent.
http://christurney.com/Australasian_Antarctic_Expedition.html
“Privately Funded”…by whom? Is he talking about the money from the PAYING passengers? Or did someone agree to foot the bill? And does that person (or fund) plan to pay ALL OF THE BILL now???
First off; they were not going to Mawson Station which is in MacRobertson Land about 1000 miles west – common mistake of the uninitiated. Second, there is nothing wrong in using a ship of this kind for a trip to Antarctica; the commercial companies charter several of them to take tourists to the Ross Sea, Antarctic peninsula etc. They all have Russian crews and captains who are the most experienced ice navigators, bar none. The critical issue is to heed their advice. In this case the Shokalskiy’s captain knew that the weather was changing and set a deadline for departure to reach open water – then only two miles away. But Turney’s mob, either from inexperience, incompetence or hubris – sounds like a mixture of all three from reports I have heard from pax on the ship – fumbled their return and so the window of opportunity closed. One experienced Antarctican on board has said that had the ship left by the captain’s deadline, they would have got out OK. So now he is wearing the consequences, and I feel truly sorry for him and his crew. I have sailed on many Russian icebreakers and ships similar to Shokalskiy and the captains are invariably both pleasant and supremely competent. A third factor that no one has mentioned is that Shokalskiy is chartered to Heritage Expeditions for a trip to the Ross Sea beginning at Bluff, NZ on 17 January. It’s highly unlikely she’ll make it, so there will be another 50 disappointed tourists, a furious CEO of Heritage, a huge insurance row….and incidentally, presumably Shokalskiy is still under charter to the AAE…are they paying for this??
“Jim says:
January 2, 2014 at 5:07 pm
A lot of questions.
Many answers will be in the unsw risk assessment of tte project. The person who
Signed off might be getting nervous now.
All phd students have to do formal research proposals. Wonder how many have
This expedition mentioned in thir proposals.
The risk assessment might also have something about the purpose of
The trip. There might even be an animal ethics application if anyone was
Going to catch penguins.”
I was also wondering about the PhD students and their proposals
(especially in view of Turney saying a lot of science had been done, etc.).
Further up in these comments Richard Tol had the following information:
“Richard Tol (@RichardTol) says:
January 2, 2014 at 8:52 am
I repeat this comment from Climate Etc
There are 18 PhD students on this expedition. Six (1/3) work on the Antarctic. The others (2/3) work on the North Atlantic, Australia’s coastal waters, brain injury, Iceland, New Zealand’s North Island, urban climates, pedagogy, the Equatorial Undercurrent, pharmaceuticals, time series statistics, microbiology, and Siberia.”
It would be interesting to find out what science had been “done”, if it was part of the
PhD students’ programs, or if they were part of the group that Turney enticed by his
revised advert with offers of hazards, etc. (somewhat ironic now…).
Another thing to consider is the science delayed or no longer able to be performed at the Australian,
Chinese, and French research facilities that were waiting on resupplies, etc. affected by
the rescue operation.
Finally, considering the deafening silence of the Western MSM on the plight of the crew of the
Akademik Shokalskiy, is there anyone out there who can/is following the Russian media
on this?
(Granted, they may have their own issues – amazing how politics gets into
every crevice of science anymore….)(or just plain everything, for that matter).
Typo, “was” should be “were”.
[Fixed. Thanks, Jeff. ~ mod.]
Another important question,
Is it too late to recruit the media members who are spinning this story?
The way they are denying reality, we are guaranteed a gold medal in the figure skating competition in the Olympics.
Triple , quadruple spins, move over olympians you are out classed.
Um, the banana is part of the milkshake. Try it, you’ll like it.
PS;
Whipped frozen (overripe, black) banana makes OK ice cream substitute.
Man Bearpig says: January 2, 2014 at 10:05 am
That quick blend you wanted.
Regarding comment from Richard Tol
Looking at the link toi the expedition site from climate etc it is clear that
a significant number of the PhD students are effectively on a junket.
The buzz-word that would be used would be “enrichment program.
A significant number of the students are not from UNSW. So was this
activity officially approved at their home institution. Did their home
institution provided funding, if so, then there should be paperwork regarding
risk. Did they just do a tick and flick and assume that unsw had everything
under control. One would assume all the home institutions had a copy of
the unsw risk assessment. The bottom line is that unless the students
from other unisplaces are officially on leave, then their home instiution is liable
for their safety while on the expedition.
Students go to the antartic all the time, but normally they would be associated
with the government run antartic programs which I suspect are all done
more professioanally and they would not countenance (I hope I am not being
overly optimistic here) students going down to such a dangerous environment
for something that was not core to an approved Ph.D. reserach program.
May I humbly recommend the ORIGINAL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Fools_%28film%29
And point out that Micheal Dunn is MARVELOUS as the Narrator? AND, the movie is much more serious than THIS SHIP OF FOOLS EVER COULD BE?
Max
At what price do the msm members do double back flips for their lie masters of the CO2 Kills Fraud LLC.?
Could this trip also be blamed on the same vidio that the attack on Bengazie was blamed on?
Is it possible that all progressive programs and ideas are based on lies and fraud?
End Game.
@fobdangerclose 7:32
Perhaps we are confusing the dog for the tail?
This behaviour by the media is consistent across coverage of a range of rather mendacious persons.
Maybe the media is the dog,the fleas it is protecting just useful plague carriers.
Except as Conan shows, they do seem too stupid to much more than repeaters.
Guardian reporters (intrepid adventurer) whining “I want my Mummy” video is still on their web site:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/video/2013/dec/30/antarctica-live-video-diary-trapped-ice-missing-milkshake-video
AJB: Excellent new pic of the famous banner. . . . penguins with the blender, dairy cow, and the peanut butter cracked me up! but you forgot to have the penguin in the middle bringing over a pile of bannanas. . . . and where are all of Pooh’s friends and rabbits relations with their own banner . . . . c’mon, if this really was a serious “Expotition to the South Pole” surely they would have come along.
About funding… watch this video and try not to miss the “government funded” part:
And on the website below, “We are a public funded expedition and in need your help to support Antarctic science.”
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-support-antarctic-science-and-exploration
Many parrot sites are reporting that the “expedition” was “privately funded”.
Whatever is the whole story, someone is spinning wool.
It was a tourist jolly.
Last night on RT (russian news) there was a documentary aboust Vostock and Progress ice stations in ther Antartic. The director who had wintered at theses stations for about 30 years said it is not scioence.Little science is done and there is little need for scientists to be stationed there. He said it was geo political and the science bit is just a cover.
If the manning of Vostock is geo political with little real science done, then this voyage which did not investigate anything of particular or discover anything new, or add anything on top of satellite imagery of the area, was just a jolly; hence the reason why so few genuine scientists were on board.
fobdangerclose says: @ur momisugly January 2, 2014 at 7:32 pm
…Is it possible that all progressive programs and ideas are based on lies and fraud?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They have a completely different mindset and view of reality.
If you can grasp the philosophy of Hegel much becomes clear. In CAGW we already had the struggle between thesis and antithesis years ago and are now in the synthesis stage and working on what to do about CAGW.
This is why there is such an emphasis on “97% of Scientists agree” This is a statement that the synthesis stage has been reached. You can see this in the IPCC mandate which states:
The struggle between the thesis and antithesis has already taken place there is a new synthesis and the world is now ready to move to the next stage mitigation and adaptation.
THIS is the reason we are called ‘Den!ers’ It is the process used to reach agreement that we are actually denying.
This philosophy of Hegel appeals to academics because it puts them at the top rung of society. They are the thinkers who shape reality. Since they are sitting in their air conditioned ivory towers and buffered from stark reality by our civilization’s technology, reality doesn’t get much chance to womp them up side the head and hand them a Darwin Award.
It also appeals to the young especially university students again because as thinkers they can shape reality. The protests and equal rights marches of the 1960s and 70s that ended in legislation and a shift in how the world runs just adds fuel to the fire.
It also explains Obama’s harping on CHANGE, meaning a new synthesis.
There is a lot of truth in the saying “A conservative is a liberal that got mugged” Unfortunately academics and politicians are pretty much immune to the bite of reality.
Kevin White:
Thanks for that. I laughed out loud at the line saying’
“Don’t worry. He would make a very good clown.”
Richard