9.30am AEDT Saturday 04 January 2014
Aurora Australis released from tasking in Antarctica
Xue Long’s attempt to manoeuvre through the ice early this morning was unsuccessful. Xue Long has confirmed to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) it is beset by ice.
The Master of Xue Long has confirmed to AMSA that the ship is safe, it is not in distress and does not require assistance at this time. There is no immediate danger to personnel on board the Xue Long. The Xue Long has advised AMSA it has food supplies for several weeks. The Aurora Australis was placed on standby by AMSA’s Rescue Coordination Centre Australia (RCC Australia) last night to remain in open water in the area as a precautionary measure.
The Masters of both Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long agree that further assistance from Aurora Australis is no longer required and they will be able to provide mutual support to each other. The Aurora Australis has been released from search and rescue tasking by RCC Australia early this morning and continues to make its passage to the Casey base to complete a resupply. It will then continue to Hobart. RCC Australia will maintain regular contact with the Xue Long and Akademik Shokalskiy.
Has there been an apology from any of the Tour Leaders yet. Maybe they posted one somewhere on the internet and I missed it. Meanwhile enjoy this.
http://youtu.be/Bv0gglFSUOc
“And that petulant young Guardian reporter is unlikely to get his milkshake in the station mess. (Sorry, the milk’s off.)”
Old Ranga, don’t be so sure! –
Alok Jha @alokjha 2 Jan
“.@AmiSedghi @loztopham Choice btn apple crumble, pecan pie, caramel thing, a treacly tart and multiple ice creams. Also, winningly, custard”
Very irritating, but the warmist explorers should have no trouble spinning this event to their advantage. They risked live and limb to gather vital proof of global warming that everyone knows full well is there for the greater good. Only to be stymied by a freak ice pack comprised of what little ice is left. How weird is that when Antarctica is nearly ice free! It will work because the media will fall in line. These people will be heroes in every sense. They will be able to mount an even bigger operation next year. Or a smaller one with airplanes to avoid another freak ice jam.
In the mean time: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/obamas-second-term-is-all-about-climate-change.html
An article in the UK Telegraph stated that the 52 passengers now on the Australian ship are “recovering”. Yeah right! Recovering like an alcoholic.
Alphan. So where did the other MILLION come from? The BBC? The Guardian? Some University? I’m digging…but I can’t find anything….
Not the Guardian, They don’t have two cents to rub together. I doubt they paid for the two berths they occupied.
I’ll bet there’s some economy with the truth going on here. They probably got ABC and BBC to fund a part of it with some kind of media rights deal, which is technically a commercial contract, not govt funding.
Maybe some well targeted FOIA requests in London and Canberra could come up with something.
You would think that any sponsors would be pleased or even insistent that their contribution to saving the world was recognised publicly by the project.
Perhaps “privately funded” means private as in we won’t tell you ?
This begs the question that if now, both the SA and Snow Dragon are happy to sit in the ice until it breaks, why was there so much urgency to get the loons off the SA. I am aware that more bodies on the SA could have meant a bigger potential disaster but still, couldn’t they have cooled their heels (pun intended) for another week or so?
Aphan says:
January 3, 2014 at 5:06 pm
“Not only a ruined trip, but a ruining of much more science too. How sad. :(”
Sad? What gives you the idea that those “serious” scientists are not as much of a fraud as Turney. Has anyone ever assessed the percentage of fraudulent science when the government runs it? Just because they’re willing to sit in an antarctic station for a year doesn’t make me trust them. Just a different business model than joyriding Turney. Not necessarily honest.
Yeah, CO2AGW taught me a thing; and some other 20th century scientific “discoveries”.
Antarctic debacle biggest set back since Climategate: Now take care that Obama and Kerry get the message as they pull they plug on the US economy: http://www.thegwpf.org/ft-antarctic-debacle-biggest-setback-campaigners-climategate/
I hope that for both vessels that the normal ice melt resumes pretty soon. I would wish no harm on anyone whether as a result of their own folly or the folly of others.
Perhaps ask them up front on Twitter. They seem to like that medium and it would be interesting to see how they react to the question.
Financial Times: “The Australian group belittled the winter that nearly killed them and got a comeuppance, say the detractors.”
OMG , FT thinks it’s winter in Antarctica.
Steve; “…why was there so much urgency to get the loons off the SA. ”
Because they are a friggin liability and they did not want them around crying into their milkshakes when the real job of freeing the vessel gets started.
Of course it had to be an emergency rescue…can you imagine those poor crewmen being trapped with those blowhards for weeks on end? The humanity!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11181370
A plane will drop medication off at an Australian base in Antarctica for some of the passengers who were stranded for eight days on a research vessel in thick sea ice.
What more can add to this fiasco? I doubt the welcome mat will be out for this lot when they arrive at Casey
Steve says: “…[W]hy was there so much urgency to get the loons off the [AS?]…”
Why did sailors throw Jonah overboard?
The idiot on this expedition who said she loves it when the ice wins, well, did she remain on the Akademik Shokalskiy, or at least the Xue Long so as to gain a further loving experience of ice winning? Or, as I expect, did she file for divorce from her lover, the ice, and hop on the Aurora Australis for a new lover: industrial civilization?
J Martin says:
January 3, 2014 at 4:05 pm
“If they can’t get out then the Polar Star is in Sydney, though by the time it gets to them the Southern hemisphere summer may have melted the sea ice.”
If you go to the WUWT post . . .
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/31/wuwt-and-weatherbell-help-kusi-tv-with-a-weather-forecasting-request-from-ice-trapped-ship-in-antarctica-akademik-shokalskiy/#more-100200
. . . it becomes clear that melting (from summer air temperature) isn’t likely, rather a shift in winds is the thing that can break up these large masses of ice and provide water for the ship to sail to open ocean. Some of that ice may then reach warmer water and melt after a time. Recall (if you saw this) the comments that the ice around the Akademik Shokalskiy was multi-year old ice, not annual sea ice.
Outfitting an Antarctic expedition, $10,000,000
Lost time for two ships stuck in the ice, $20,000,000
Alarmist scientists and journalists stuck in Antarctic ice, priceless!
I don’t wish to rain on the parade but in apportioning blame there are one or two questions that require answers. Aphan has done a remarkable job highlighting the reason why the ship became caught in the ice. But who was piloting the zodiacs that we’re towing the Argo,s to shore. If it were a member of the expedition then they would definitely be culpable. If it happens to be a member of the crew then that would put a different complexion on things. Anybody ?
So what’s the booze-supply situation on the A. Australis?
“Aphan
We also know that they couldn’t even afford to purchase another $8,000 Argo for the trip because the website/fund didn’t earn enough. So where did the other MILLION come from?”
1st Argo, submerged under tow and could not be used
2nd Argo cut out every 5 mins due to fuel failure and required 15 mins to restart.
Brain dead Republican Todd Palin has won the 2,031 miles Tesoro Iron Dog off-road snowmobile race across Alaska, four times.
majormike1 left out a key little tidbit….
“Alarmist scientists and journalists stuck in SUMMER Antarctic ice, priceless!”
Greg –
a reader puts FT right on the season. btw the writer must take responsibility for the use of “Winter” – it was not his gloating contrarians posting comments on CAGW websites. he couldn’t link to the likes of WUWT or JoanneNova etc, where all the investigative reporting has been going on, could he?
3 Jan: UK Financial Times: Christopher Caldwell: A cruise that will cost the climate campaign dear
(The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard)
Amid the worldwide relief that the passengers are now en route to Tasmania on the Australian supply ship Aurora Australis, another note is audible. Many websites where readers normally take climate change for granted have been inundated by posts from gloating disbelievers. ***The Australian group belittled the winter that nearly killed them and got a comeuppance, say the detractors. Such posts appear on the many YouTube videos uploaded by passengers (“For all your self-aggrandising bluster, you will go down in history as Turney’s turkeys . . . You are an international laughing stock”), on the Spirit of Mawson Twitter feed (“If the #spiritofmawson has taught us anything it’s the low level of intellect among those who have ‘settled’ the science”) and even on the New York Times’s Dot Earth blog, where the writer Andrew Revkin notes that the incident has “energised climate change contrarians”…
COMMENT BY FreeOregon: It’s SUMMER in Antarctic, not winter…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04276fd8-69ca-11e3-aba3-00144feabdc0.html
“The head of France’s polar science institute has voiced fury at the misadventures of a Russian ship trapped in Antarctic ice, deriding what he called a tourists’ trip that had diverted resources from real science.
In an interview with AFP, Yves Frenot, director of the French Polar Institute, said he had no issue at all with rescuing those aboard the stricken vessel.
He said the trip itself was a ‘pseudo-scientific expedition’ that, because it had run into difficulties, had drained resources from the French, Chinese and Australian scientific missions in Antarctica.”
“The trip on the Akademik Shokalskiy was aimed at emulating a 1911-1914 expedition by the Australian explorer, Sir Douglas Mawson.
‘This kind of commemorative expedition has no interest from a scientific point of view,’ said Frenot.
Because of the rescue operations, French scientists had had to scrap a two-week oceanographic campaign this month using the Astrolabe, Frenot said.
‘The Chinese have had to cancel all their scientific programme, and my counterpart in Australia is spitting tacks with anger, because their entire summer has been wiped out.’
Antarctica has about 80 scientific bases, of which around 40 are permanently staffed and others manned on a seasonal or temporary basis.
Only three bases are inland; the others are on the coast.
‘If we want these bases to operate all year round, it is essential to resupply with food and fuel during the brief window of opportunity,’ Frenot said.
Diverting supply ships to rescue tasks ‘imperiled’ this link, he said.”
http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=939155