This pretty much nails the cause of the situation, and blows expedition leader Chris Turney’s claim about being “surprised” about the situation literally out of the water.
In my post Now that the ‘Ship of Fools’ is safe in Antarctica, tough questions need to be asked one of the questions I asked was:
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?
In the Spirit of Mawson Blog, we have this entry:
Posted by Graeme Clark, December 24, 2013
It’s often said that Antarctica is a dynamic environment that can rapidly transform at a moments notice. Today we experienced that first-hand, as we came down from a high of exceptionally good weather to find ourselves surrounded by thick, impassable pack ice. Too dense to travel through, the sea-ice has stopped the mighty Shokalskiy in its tracks despite aggressive charges by Captain Igor. The ship is now resigned to wait for a change in wind conditions to loosen or dissipate the sea ice before we can escape to open water. These are the challenging conditions for which Antarctica is so well known.
The real answer to that event lies in the blog of the Australian green politician on-board, Janet Rice. WUWT commenter Aphan gave us the scoop from her log on how the stage was set for getting stuck, because the passengers weren’t heeding the captain’s warning quickly enough. Clearly the captain knew what was coming, but the passengers were just too slow. He couldn’t abandon them, so he had to wait, and this delay put the ship in jeopardy.
=================================================================
Aphan says:
January 1, 2014 at 5:13 pm
My apologies if someone above has mentioned this. It’s getting to be a chore to scroll through all the activity here! (grins)
From Janet Rice- http://www.janetrice.com.au/?e=98
*******************************************************
(After 1 am on December 24)
“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.”
***
“We were out in similar conditions this afternoon. Somewhat brighter – in fact there was blue sky and sunshine for some periods. The weather has been better than the forecast blizzard, so that was good.”
***
The first drama of the day was the sinking – or almost! – of one of the Argos. The Argos are designed to be amphibious – just. They were launched today off the ship – and two of the three made it safely being towed by a zodiac the 50 metres or so to shore. The third was towed too fast it seems – and water came over the bonnet / bow, flooding both the engine and the vehicle itself. Ben tried in vain to bail out with a spade and luckily they made it to shore before the vehicle sunk entirely. Ben ended up rather wet too, but similarly to Mary, not submerged enough for the lifejacket to come into play. Sadly Argo engines don’t take too kindly to being submerged… the ships engineers are still working on it and not very optimistic about its prospects.
“The third drama of the day is the one which is still unfolding. Because of the Argo mishap we got off late, and had one less vehicle to ferry people to and fro. I’m told the Captain was becoming rather definite late in the afternoon that we needed to get everyone back on board ASAP because of the coming weather and the ice closing in. As I write we are continuing to make extremely slow progress through what looks like a winter alpine snow field – it’s yet another surreal part of this journey that we are in a ship trying to barge our way through here! I’m sure the Captain would have been much happier if we had got away a few hours earlier. Maybe we would have made it through the worst before it consolidated as much as it has with the very cold south- easterly winds blowing the ice away from the coast, around and behind us as well as ahead.
We’ll see where we are in the morning – it may be a very white Christmas Eve!
PS. 9.30am 24/12. We have moved less than a kilometre over night, and are now stationary in a sea of ice. The word is that we are not stuck, merely waiting for a weather change. It seems to me that we are having the quintessential Antarctic experience. J Stay tuned.”
*******************************************************
THE CAPTAIN and PASSENGERS knew that bad weather and ice were coming on Dec 23-that a “blizzard had been forecast”. The Captain made it clear to them more than once, because he “became rather definite” later that they needed to get OUT of that area ASAP.
As of 1 am on December 24th, they were already progressing through “ice pack” that caused the ship to “bash and barge” it’s way through the ice! Need more evidence of how stupid these people are?
On the 21st, Turney blogged about their trip to the Mawson camp on the 19/20th. Trying to find the LEAST hazardous way to access the Commonwealth Bay area, they decided to move the ship up the coast-farther away, but with access to better ice to drive across. He says this-
“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!”
After experiencing the ship being surrounded by breakout ice on the 18th or 18th of December in just HALF AN HOUR, they stayed in that area, moved slightly up the coast and with an incoming blizzard and MORE ice on the way, they went onshore and forced the boat to wait for their return. THEN they got stuck.
For Chris Turney to then go on TELEVISION and act shocked that all this ice just mysteriously appeared and hemmed them in without any warning, is stunning. If the Captain gets sued for damages, I hope he takes every penny Chris Turney and the University of New South Wales will ever have in the future.
==============================================================
[ Anthony: I’ve saved the Rice log entry as a PDF here: Rice-log-Monday-23-December-2013 ]
==============================================================
UPDATE: A chronological summary by Aphan
*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.”
@Janice Moore. Ha ha. Thanks. I never thought that my name could be funny, but it is! At my age, my husband gently leans over, plucks a fine, blonde hair from my nose or chin and smiles at me. 🙂
Dear, dear, Mrs. Beardsley,
Please forgive me. No, no, your name is NOT inherently humorous. It’s just that I’m used to there being so MANY men on this site (percentage-wise) and there is a Margaret Har-something that someone said is actually man, and Beardsley is such a picturesque name, something I would choose for a kindly character in a novel, so… .
Are you pulling my leg, here, though… ? (smile) Well, I’d rather err on the side of asking your pardon than possibly making ANOTHER wrong assumption. So, PLEASE FORGIVE ME.
And tell your husband to stop doing that! Boy, that would really make me mad. He is really lucky to have someone as easy-going as you. I hope, other than that bit of effrontery, he treats you like a queen. Your gracious response shows that you deserve to be and that I am not wrong to have high hopes that you will let bygones be bygones, here.
Apologetically,
Janice
P.S. And — HOW FUNNY — I just read the post about the cross-dresser above! LOL.
“You can never take anything for granted in the Antarctic!”
Like melting sea ice.
Maybe they should have prayed the ice away. That always works!
Frozen Out: 98% of Stories Ignore That Ice-bound Ship Was On Global Warming Mission
A group of climate change scientists were rescued by helicopter Jan. 2, after being stranded in the ice since Christmas morning. But the majority of the broadcast networks’ reports about the ice-locked climate researchers never mentioned climate change.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2014/01/02/frozen-out-98-stories-ignore-ice-bound-ship-was-global-warming-missi
Typical…
Paulo deSouza says:
January 2, 2014 at 9:55 pm
I’m not going to copy/paste your post, it does not bear repeating.
We discuss the science, the politics, the effects of the whole CAGW and its off shoots
We do not denigrate, castigate or deride peoples personal choices and lifestyles.
Stick to the knitting, leave the personal issues out of it
Hey everyone, give the tourist/scientits(borrowed from RockyRoad)/reporters/politicians a break. They thought ASAP meant “All Singers At Practice”.
Someone noticed:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2014/01/02/frozen-out-98-stories-ignore-ice-bound-ship-was-global-warming-missi
How much damage to Chris Turney’s expedition did you cause?
(That blizzard was likely caused by climate change.)
The EPA helps you compute your liability.
It’s 9kg CO2/gallon of gas.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/documents/420f11041.pdf
(they also have handy calculators)
Now sadly the EPA was FORCED last month
(they didn’t like it a bit, but hey, climate science is climate science)
http://tinyurl.com/qhv7nwc
the EPA was forced to adjust your liability up by 50%.
To $35/ton = $0.035/kg of CO2.
Times 9 kgCO2/gallon of gas, it gives $0.33/gallon of gas.
(Now try to remember what you said about that EPA ruling – it was done with public comment – but don’t forget that this is a family newspaper)
***
So you cause about $7/tankful of gas in climate damage.
That’s with conservative climate models.
The more creative ones put it at triple that. Say, $20/tankful, to grow to $40/tankful + inflation by 2050. As the attribution of storms to you becomes more precise.
It’s what’s written in the official
http://tinyurl.com/pzf8vns
That’s how much damage you – and, yes, yes, they mean YOU – cause when driving. And much more than that by staying warm and cooking. And by using electricity.
Your life causes a climate mess even if you sit at home.
By changing the climate.
Especially by melting the ice at the poles.
And by causing blizzards.
Like the one which hit the poor climate change fellows.
Who went out on a limb to figure your guilt.
Waleed Abdalati was the fellow in charge, who contributed to switching the focus of NASA
– from outer space (remember the Moon landing? Voyager?)
– to adjusting the temps historic record so as to prove human caused climate change.
Here he explains the method.
“While scientists expect and observe more extreme weather with man-made global warming, some say it’s not quite fair to blame the Antarctic blizzard that trapped the ship on climate change.
University of Colorado ice scientist Waleed Abdalati, NASA’s former chief scientist, cautioned, like many scientists do, that while researchers can spot a trend in extreme weather, they can’t immediately associate an individual event –like a blizzard — with changing climate. When scientists do attribute an individual extreme weather event to climate change, it is usually more than a year later after numerous computer model simulations and then published in a peer-reviewed journal.”
See, it’s:
1) One of those great computer models, followed by
2) The peer review by an expert in the field of climate change.
An expert like Climate Change professor Chris Turney (when he makes it back)
That makes it become established, peer reviewed climate science.
http://tinyurl.com/pxwu42n
So be patient, cross your fingers and wait till next year to see this event attributed to the climate change due to global warming.
The global warming caused by you driving your fossil fueled car to work.
Scientifically attributed, goes without saying.
“… to reduce the surplus population.” Warmists have justifications for anything and everything. Unfazable.
[img]http://www.spiritofmawson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Change-in-sea-ice1_sm.jpg[/img]
This image was used in the lastest blog from Chris Turney at the spiritofmawson site.
He states,
He states this is the cause, and then he uses these pixelated images as proof.
I will shortly prove him wrong.
Good ‘un!
The Southern Lights
Have seen strange sights…
@Claude Harvey at 8:27 pm
Maritime law and centuries of tradition generally hold the captain of a vessel responsible for its safety. Period.
You refer to an Obama “Period.”
There is a very big exception as I understand it. When a vessel is chartered to another entity, an operator of the voyage, then the operator assumes a hefty chunck of responsibility.
When the Macondo #1 blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, April 20, 2010, the investigating boards didn’t place the magority of the blame on
Transocean Rig Captain Curt Kuchta
Nor TransOcean senior offshore installation manager: Jimmy Harrell.
Nor on TransOcean senior Toolpusher, Randy Ezell
Nor toolpusher “on deck” Jason Anderson, who was in control of well operations at the time of the explosion, and died in the explosion.
Not these.
Charged with manslaughter are Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine the Well Site Leaders employed by BP who contracted with Transocean to drill the well.
Radio NZ reports that the Xue Long has now become trapped or stuck in a polyna, Aurora Australis has been asked to stay in the area in case assistance is needed
Prof Turkey has a lot to answer for
Paulo deSouza says [lots of stupid gay bashing crap too dumb to repeat]
Dude what has that to do with anything?`Seriously grow the f&%¤ up.
The real perpetrators are the “leftist” and the activists that is behind the political decided UNFCCC.
These policy based scientists and Eco-journalists have all been established based on the UNFCCC. And the mission is also UNFCCC based funded. Those behind the UNFCCC are the real perpetrators?
Totally Off-Topic: Has anyone else read Into Thin Air? What a great travel narrative!
Note some parallels with the air plane crash in Smolensk in 2011.
‘The MAK report found the “immediate cause” of the accident was the failure of the crew to make a timely decision to proceed to an alternate airport despite being warned multiple times of the poor weather conditions at Smolensk […] . Additionally, the MAK report found an “immediate cause” of the accident was the presence in the cockpit of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Air Force, which placed “psychological pressure” on the Captain to “continue descent in conditions of unjustified risk with a dominating aim of landing at any means.”‘
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash
There’s not the slightest mention of this bizarre episode atm either in the mailonline or the telegraph (UK) online…they seem to be acutely embarassed ! There was some mention yesterday. I am completely disgusted by the MSM response, or lack of it. What is up with them all?
All credit to Anthony, Jo Nova and Aphan; the latter has done some very useful research into the logs.
I can’t believe the triviality of the attitudes of so many of the ‘passengers’. I do however think that Greg Mortimer has some notion of what has really happened and he looked very sober and shocked. I think they have had a very lucky and unjustified escape. I just hope the master and crew survive unscathed.
I feel like heading down to Hobart to greet those total idiot ‘passengers’ with a few questioning banners.
These are the people who we rely on to give us the true state of the planet. The media people have always told us that they know best what is going on. They can’t even interpret the weather, the state of ice around their vessel, nor do they understand captain Haddock’s gestures and what he means when he shouts: “Pockmarks…. Barnackles,…. Vodka, and Whiskey….!”
What a bunch of jollies. – These are Hippies gone to Antarctica instead of India….Wonder what they were smoking, on the taxpayer’s money…?
Hey, let’s play Titanic: “…aggressive charges by Captain Igor,” “jolted sideways with a crunch as the ship bashes and barges its way through.”
In a ship with a light steel hull? They should have been terrified to a man and been determined to get as quickly as possible to safety, not go back in for more. And they continued partying? Pure luck they aren’t all at the bottom of the ocean. Ultimately that has to be on Captain Igor, or did Turney threaten not to pay him if he aborted the mission?
Could Turney have been so convinced by his global warming ideology as to believe that, once there was a first breakout of the ice along the shore, there would be no refreezing? After all, this is early summer. Maybe Turney thought it was like spring ice breaking up on a river, and if this was going to be a big year for melting then there wouldn’t be any reversals. I can just see him laying his “expertise” on Igor:
Only too late did Igor realize that he had been taken in by an ignorant fool pretending to be an expert. How else to make sense of such otherwise inexplicable behavior? If this is what happened I hope Igor doesn’t keep it to himself. With official inquiries undoubtedly on the way any such foolishness OUGHT to come out.
Just past the solstice, this Antarctic Summer seems a bit –how you say?– chilled out. Given recent reports that central Antarctic mountaintops have registered near -200 degrees Fahrenheit, colder than a Martian antipode, one wonders what (if anything) this implies concerning Winter some six months from now.
As for Prof. Turney and his cookie-crumblers… may the flees of a thousand AGW Catastrophists infest their fetid under-armor.
And they call themselves “the reality based community.” It’s fake posturing all the way down.
No, Captain Igor is fully responsible, no matter what Chris Turney told him about Antarctica being nice and warm this time of year. I imagine Igor is plenty sea smarter than Turney as well, Ruskis and Kanuks can get to know their ice and snow. My bet is Igor probably regrets giving the hippies too much leeway, but he will get his ship home OK, eventually. But Next time they charge the stupid greenies double, they can obviously afford it.
(P.S. get over it Paolo)
How and why did the Akademik Shokalskiy become iced in?
The key info about that will be the official maritime incident reports and Russian media interviews of the captain and crew of the Akademik Shokalskiy.
That info will probably only be public after the final outcome of the situation that the Akademik Shokalskiy is currently in.
I look forward to it.
John