The gift that just keeps on giving.
Bishop Hill writes:
I did wonder if applying the “Ship of Fools” tag to Chris Turney and his shipmates wasn’t just a bit rude, but take a look at this video (below), recorded before his departure, in which he talks about the trip. You have to say that Turney does not come over well. And to spend most of the interview discussing the life and death nature of the expedition and the hardships they will face, before revealing that he is taking his wife and family along, is almost too much.
You can see how the trip might end in a shambles.
There is a transcript also. Click image for video and transcript.
=========================================================
Who Is Behind The Ship Of Fools? The Spectator, 4 January 2014
Ross Clark, The Spectator
As Chris Turney and his colleagues make their way home from their failed adventure, the next question is: who is going to be paying for their folly? It certainly isn’t the general public. The efforts by Turney and his co-leader Chris Fogwill to crowd-fund money have been an embarrassing failure. They were seeking to raise $49,000 in this way – a small fraction of the $1.5 million overall costs – but they managed to raise a mere $1,000 from 22 people.
Not even the promise of a signed copy of Turney’s book, 1912: the year the World Discovered Antarctica was enough to tempt donors into action: not a single one chose to receive the book.
British taxpayers, needless to say, have dipped in their toes. One of the sponsors is the University of Exeter, Professor Turney’s previous employer. The university is fast on its way to taking over from the University of East Anglia as the global warming lobby’s chief mouthpiece. Universities claim to have fallen on hard times but there seems to be no lack of money when it comes to broadcasting the global warming lobby’s case: Exeter has just launched a ‘massive open online course’ on climate change which the public are all invited to sign up – all for free. I don’t think I would be pleased about that if I was paying £9,000-a-year tuition fees for one of Exeter’s other course.
Another question that needs to be asked about Turney’s expedition is how come the only journalists aboard are from the Guardian, which has sent two reporters, the BBC and Radio New Zealand – all eager mouthpieces of the global warming lobby. I would be fascinated to know if anyone else was invited.
The timing of the publication of a paper by Turney’s current employer, the University of New South Wales, is also fascinating. That appeared in Nature on 1 January, claiming that current climate models under-estimate the level of warming, which could reach 4C by 2100.
As I noted here on Thursday, as the world fails to warm, the greater faith seems to be put into faulty climate models which so far have proved wrong in many respects – among them predicting ever hotter and drier summers for the UK, the exact opposite of the trend of the past decade. As a sign of just how far the climate debate has veered away from genuine science into ideological nonsense, have a look at this quote:
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.’
Any ideas where it comes from? The IPCC report of 2001, when that body still recognised that predictions of the sort made by Turney’s colleagues are fantasy.
=========================================================
WUWT Reader LeAnn (Quin Tessential) writes to us suggesting that things aren’t as they seem to be:
According to all I’ve read, researched, recorded, and documented… I’m beginning to think that there is NO WAY that the Akademik Shokalskiy got anywhere near the open polyna at Mertz glacier. That (could) mean that Chris Turney reported that the ship was somewhere that it never really arrived at.
From “thesargasso”
From the http://thesargasso.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-12-28T20:38:00-08:00&max-results=7
DATA ON CAPE DE LA MOTT:
Country USA Latitude 67° 00′ 00.0″ S -67.000 Longitude 144° 25′ 00.0″ E 144.417
A prominent cape separating Watt and Buchanan Bays. Just southward the continental ice surface rises 520 m at Mount Hunt. Charted by the AAE (1911-14) under Douglas Mawson, who named it for C.P. de la Motte, third officer on the expedition ship this cape is “Point Case,” which the USEE (1838-42) under Lt. Charles Wilkes saw from what was called “Disappointment Bay” on Jan. 23, 1840.
A prominent cape west of the Mertz Glacier on the coast of George V Land. Discovered by AAE (1911-14) under Sir Douglas Mawson, who named it after C P de la Motte, a member of the expedition.
Also from the Sargasso.blogspot.com website-
SOS ANTARCTICA–THE FATE OF THE AKADEMIK SHOKALSKIY
“The 620 dwt research vessel Akademik Shokalskiy became trapped in ice off the coast of Antarctica near Stillwell Island. The Akademik Shokalskiy had been at anchor 40 miles off Mawson’s Hut on Cape Denison, Antarctica with 74 people when it departed for the Mertz glacier. The vessel became stuck in heavy ice floes as it approached Cape de la Motte.”
Based on the maps of the Antarctic coastline provided by the Sargasso website AND the interactive google maps on both the guardian.com on Alok Jha’s posts about the expedition AND the one on www.spiritofmawson.com-the expedition NEVER went further down the coastline than Cape de la Motte.
So when Chris Turney says that they made it into “the open water polynya” on the Mertz glacier, he’s either completely mistaken about where his group actually made shore, or he’s lying.
According to the blog entries on the www.spiritofmawson.com, AND a livefeed interview with Chris Turney himself on December 22-there was a blizzard coming in and the ice was closing around them.
See Chris Turney himself-
The above YouTube video titled “Farewell to Mawson’s Base (Cape Denison) which was streamed live on Dec 22,2013. It’s an interview with Chris Turney standing on board the ship in howling wind, sub degree weather, yelling into his mic, and you actually SEE the zodiac zip past behind him on the open ice behind him.
At 1:58 in the video he says:
“We knew this bad weather was coming in”. He goes on “We’re basically here at the base of Mertz Glacier, and we’re basically being hammered by a blizzard.”
You can also see the zodiac running back and forth behind him and people walking on the ice near the ship.
According to the blog entry made by Peter and Judy Stevenson, on December 22, 2013- We know this:
“The journey today is to move east around the large B9B iceberg. This will take all day and into tomorrow, hopefully placing us at the shore edge of the Mertz glacier and Stillwell Island area, and providing the opportunity to step onto the Antarctic continent.”
Now. …IF the ship had to travel EAST, “around” the B09B iceberg towards the Mertz Glacier, then that means that it previously been anchored somewhere to the WEST of the iceberg that blocks the entrance to Commonwealth Bay. And that trip was supposed to take “all day and into tomorrow” which would make their arrival at the Mertz glacier on December 23rd.
In the video,Chris said they were at the base of the Mertz glacier on the 22nd. The passengers say ON the 22nd that they are more than a day away from it.
Chris’s twitter feed shows this entry on the 21st–
Off to Mertz Glacier.-2degC, -11degC wind ch
Hours later on his twitter feed, he shows a video from Alok Jha showing them passing ICEBERGS between the shoreline and the ship-since the ice and land are on the ships starboard side, it indicates the ship was headed in the direction of the Mertz glacier, away from Commonwealth Bay.
Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 22 Dec
We’re passing some fantastic looking ice bergs!
#spiritofmawson Alok Jha https://vine.co/v/hEJq7utbQj7
On the 22nd-twitter feed-
Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 22 Dec
Blizzard. -4degC, -15degC wind chill.
There are NO twitter entries for December 23, and only ONE on the 24th. Why would a scientist on a historical expedition who had done nothing but tweet and blog and record videos suddenly STOP communicating at ALL for two days?
And we know from both maps that the ship didn’t make it past Cape de la Motte-which it would have to to reach the “open water polyna” on Mertz Glacier.
Yet Chris Turney said this on Dec 26th in a blog post on www.spiritofmawson.com-
“Following our successful visit to Cape Denison, sea ice remained clear, allowing our science expedition to proceed to the Mertz Glacier and open water polynya on the other side of Commonwealth Bay. Good conditions allowed the team to reach the Hodgeman Islets to continue our science programme and make comparisons to our findings around Mawson’s Hut. We managed to collect a range of samples for three of the science teams on these rarely visited islands; a fantastic result. The distance from the land to the sea ice edge is only 5 kilometres, providing an excellent test of the impact of the large sea ice extent around Cape Denison.
Supported by volunteers on board, our teams investigated marine mammals, ornithology, glaciology while oceanographic work continued on board. Kerry-Jayne Wilson of the Blue Penguin Trust found the penguin colony on the Hodgeman Islets is thriving, demonstrating the distance the Mawson Hut Adelie penguins have to travel is a major factor in the fall of numbers. Tracey Rogers of UNSW also obtained the largest number of seal blubber samples on the expedition while Eleanor Rainsley collected geological samples that will provide an invaluable insight into the history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Returning to the Shokalskiy, conditions started to close in and we quickly loaded the vehicles on to the vessel.”
And then in the Guardian article where he tries to justify the trip, he said this:
“Unfortunately, events unfolded which no amount of preparation can mitigate. To provide a comparison with the samples we collected in the Mawson Hut area, we relocated the vessel to the Mertz Glacier area in the east, a major driver of ocean circulation and importantly an area where the continent is closer to the sea ice edge. Late on 23 December, we returned to the Shokalskiy. We had completed our work programme on the continent and were heading north into open water to continue the oceanographic work on the return home.
Unluckily for us, there appears to have been a mass breakout of thick, multiyear sea ice on the other side of the Mertz Glacier; years after the loss of the Mertz Glacier tongue. There was nothing to suggest this event was imminent”
More damning evidence? In the numbered Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 videos on youtube, you will see Parts 13 and 14 showing the trip to Mawson’s huts, and Part 15 shows the first mayday call from the ship. Where is the day or TWO days that is supposed to be between the Mawson trips and being stuck in the ice? Where’s video footage showing the groups on shore collecting samples? Or any photographs from them? Or even ONE of the Mertz Glacier they are supposedly so close to? Was Turney actually in Watts Bay (oh the irony) or Buchannan Bay when he thought he was near the glacier?
Something’s wrong here.
UPDATE:
For the record, the lack of any publicly available and accurate log (the Live EXPEDITION Tracker on spiritofmawson.com is woefully incomplete) makes interpreting the expedition times and dates a murky proposition at best, and leaves interested parties to interpret other available evidence, such as blog posts, Twitter entries, and other anecdotal records. In that process, along with time zones, and the way certain web pages might log times differently, confusion is likely to set in. In the above third piece by LeAnn, there are some claims that can’t be substantiated either way and speculation abounds. That said, there are some things in LeAnn’s post that are probably a result of that sort of confusion due to lack of a good timeline. From my view Turney’s expedition most likely made it to Mertz glacier, but they did a poor job of documenting it. Social media really shouldn’t be the way to log a scientific expedition.
While LeAnn’s entry raises some questions that are worth seeking answers to, I would caution readers not to speculate until such time those things can be nailed down, and wait until an official expedition log is posted, so that anecdotal information can be reconciled with the official expedition log. Given the intense interest of this expedition, and the fact that it was publicly funded, I think it is incumbent on the spiritofmawson.com website to post a valid trip log so these questions about who/what/when/where can be reconciled. I look forward to this happening.
Never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.
– Anthony
UPDATE2: Other editorial cartoons are following Josh’s lead:
Source: http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/01/global_warming_irony_global_warming_research.html
“Was Turney actually in Watts Bay (oh the irony)…”
Classic!
🙂
The hotsheet is out of date already.
Alok Jha and Chris Turney have a history:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/13/charcoal-carbon
Bill “Wikipedia” Connolley (of all people) doesn’t quite get it either:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/01/05/the-spirit-of-mawson/
I also note that the Australian video production team kept using Ralph Vaughn William’s ‘The Lark Ascending’, when surely it should have been his’ Sinfonia Antarctica’. Is that the level our MSM has dropped to. Idiots and amateurs it would seem, all round.
Lies, or incompetence,it doesn’t really matter because these are the ways of the AGW believers that we have all come to expect.
It would make a good film script for the Monty Python team, it would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the risk to the lives of the poor saps crewing the boats and rescue helicopters.
This is probably the most stupid, reckless adventure I have heard about for a long time!
There’s a couple of images here of the Mertz and Iceberg, which might help give perspective
One from 2001, and the other in 2010.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/turneys-iceberg-calved-in-1987/
BTW – Do we know where the Hodgeman Islets are?
“Unluckily for us, there appears to have been a mass breakout of thick, multiyear sea ice on the other side of the Mertz Glacier; ”
More like a mass breakout of thick “scientists”!
More damning evidence? In the numbered Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 videos on youtube, you will see Parts 13 and 14 showing the trip to Mawson’s huts, and “Part 15 shows the first mayday call from the ship. Where is the day or TWO days that is supposed to be between the Mawson trips and being stuck in the ice? Where’s video footage showing the groups on shore collecting samples? Or any photographs from them? Or even ONE of the Mertz Glacier they are supposedly so close to? Was Turney actually in Watts Bay (oh the irony) or Buchannan Bay when he thought he was near the glacier?”
“Something’s wrong here.”
Pathological liars doing what they do best!
The pre-trip video alone tells you all you need to know – Turney lacks any sense of perspective; the evocation of Shackleton and the implication that Shackleton’s leadership style was silly are as idiotic as they are offensive. None of Turney or his “crew” would have survived two days in the conditions that Shackleton and his crew endured. Shackleton’s iron will brought his men through to safety – Turney isn’t fit to even use Shackleton’s name.
– – – – – – – – –
The supporting analysis and report following that statement shows wonderful investigation skill .
John
I’m almost embarrassed for the guy – but not quite. The repercussions from this farce will echo for a long time…I hope.
“Could the great British Antarctic explorer Robert Scott have survived his epic journey if he’d chosen his team more wisely? That’s the view of Professor Chris Turney from the University of NSW who is about to lead one of Australia’s largest science expeditions to the frozen continent.”
hm, ok… did we just saw how this team made a difference?:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/02/now-that-the-ship-of-fools-is-safe-in-antarctica-tough-questions-need-to-be-asked/
The Cli-tanic hot sheet! Boy, you could have some neo-Freudian fun with that construction. Along with the Starbucks and the companions selected for their communitarian values of sharing the wealth and hardships, did the ship come with a hot tub for tension management and facilitating nibbling among the crew?
http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/9548974-113/bears-commentary-guest-offend
I distinctly recall a couple earnest yet childish initiatives/adventures from my university days – nothing of this scope mind you. With each passing revelation and quote this surreal effort feels like deja vu.
Saw this in today’s Telegraph in Christopher Booker’s column. ”
All this is uncannily like a more dangerous rerun of the famous Catlin expedition in 2008, backed by the BBC and Prince Charles, when Pen Hadow and two other global-warming zealots set out to walk to the North Pole, again to measure how quickly the ice was melting. They were shocked to find the Arctic so cold that they soon had to be rescued by a helicopter containing David Shukman, now the BBC’s science editor, who at least made no mention of “global warming” when he came to fly them back to safety. The trouble with all these people, of course, is that instead of doing any research, they believe what they are told by the BBC and The Guardian.”
Not hard to believe an “expedition” as ill-prepared as this one could have also been lost. After all, the cause of the initial entrapment of the AS (depending on what day it is in this saga) has changed. The amount of danger they were in? High; but let’s take the children along and send them ashore in a vehicle better suited for use on the farm. The amount of danger the AS, former passengers or the remaining crew was/is in? Bad enough for a “May Day,” but not bad enough to curtail the New Year’s Eve party. Missing tweets/reports? Who would have thought climate change scientists would want to hide anything?
/Sarc on: My proposed screenplay was going to be a feature film. Now it appears it will be a mini-series, as the chapters on the Polar Star (due 12 Jan.) rescue and uncovering the cover-up have yet to be written./
This looks very much like the healthcare.gov disaster.
It is easy to talk a good game but at some point implementation occurs … or not.
“You have to say that Turney does not come over well”. A masterful understatement Bishop.
Prof Turkey treats the entire escapade as a jolly wheeze, although who knows what the editorial team left out? Based upon his depicted attitude, the fool looks entirely culpable for the entire debacle.
don says: @ January 5, 2014 at 10:55 am
…. the companions selected for their communitarian values of sharing the wealth and hardships, did the ship come with a hot tub for tension management and facilitating nibbling among the crew?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We do know they had to bring an espresso machine (most important piece of scientific equipment) and they ran out of peanut butter and banana milkshakes.
I am glad the caving trips I went on never had these type of people. Of course crawling in the mud some how doesn’t have much caché so the prima donnas are few and far between.
Not sure why it’s called the Cli-tanic as it hasn’t sunk- yet.
Though the Polar Star is certainly powerful enough to free the ships. Sadly the tax payer funded Polar Star doesn’t have a webcam that I could find, it would have been better if the Aussie icebreaker had been capable as it has a webcam. To be frank I would like to see the Polar Star fail (it won’t) and the Russians send one of their nuclear icebreakers, just to piss off those Aussies who are wimpy anti-nuclear.
Perhaps the Englishman Turney will not have a much longer career in Oz after this and will be forced to return to the grey, wet and miserable land where the Guardian newspaper is based and which I endure.
It seems these climate activism folk talk much, say little.
I strongly suspect the American Geophysical Union (AGU, should write Formerly Geophysical) will come to “The Ship of Fools” aid by making Turney and his colleagues Union Fellows and extol their “Science” and “Bravery” and “Public Outreach” bestowing “Media” medals and cash prizes. The AGU “President” will write a lengthy editorial in EOS and even get the US National Science Foundation involved with more medals and cash prizes. To cap it off, a visit by Turney and his colleagues to the White House to visit the National Science Advisor and a photo op with Obama.
The “missing day or two?” Can’t have Turney et al. vomiting their “egg nogg” on camera now can we.
Per the ABC Turney interview, supposedly the Scott party were wiped out because one of the party ate slightly more than their fair share, i.e. a miscreant failed to think collectively.
But, the Scott expedition famously made the error of using horses for sledge towing instead of dogs, and after the horses died, compounded the error by drawing the sledges themselves instead of scrubbing the mission; and in general, displayed a fatal lack of expertise compared to the Amundsen expedition, which breezed to the Pole and back ahead of them. One day of missing food didn’t kill the Scott expedition. Rather, they screwed up so badly that there was no margin for error left.
But none of this is mentioned in the ABC piece. Their version is, for the want of a nail, for the want of one day of food, because of one selfish class enemy who thought individually…. I don’t think so. By operating fecklessly in a dangerous environment, Turney did indeed follow in Scott’s footsteps.
Could it be that the reporters who accompanied Turney are participating in a cover-up?
OT, but on the video I couldn’t get past the sadistic mistreatment of animals as some sort of involuntary antarctic insanity. I say b.s. People can be unspeakably cruel. I’m ashamed to be a member of the human race at times…more frequently as I get older…
That the tourists might be confused about navigational details in their tweets is not surprising. But Turney should have been in regular communication with the vessel master. And the vessel master surely knew where he was at all times, via multiple methods including GPS. So there appears to be some deeper disfunction evidenced by the locational inconsistencies.
Warmists always justify their use of carbon because it is “doing good work.” Well this proves that wrong.
Could the reason of the misreading or misunderstanding of where the ship really went be due to the early lack of beer? They had planned to be back January 4th, but the call for more beer came way before that.
Btw. re. the Sea extent in North Pole….
…..
<strongCOMPARING AREAS
Please observe this:
Extent for North Pole Ice 31 december 2013 12.341.252 km2
Compare this with the Area of United States of America approx 9.830.000 km2
This gives us the fact that the Sea Ice Extent in North Pole in 31 december 2013 was more than 125 % of US total land area..
Please notice that the estimated figures for Ice Bear north the pole circle is 20-22,000…. this means that each Ice Bear have approximated 560 km2 each to walk on without having to meet an other Ice Bear.
That might not seem a lot when using the scale above. But please remember that the area for New York City is 1.213 km2 which gives a figure af close to half the area of New York City for each individual Ice Bear to walk on.
So Greenpeace and WWF ought to rethink the need for ‘saving the Ice Bears’ and to present where on Earth the collected money has been used!North Pole Sea Ice Extent 31 dec 2013</A
You mean to say that they don’t have a clue to where they are, what they’re doing, counting or collecting?
Well, Duh!
And because they’re green through and through they got money to go pretend around Antarctica.
Kinda reminds me of a BlackAdder episode where Edmund hired a skipper (Tom Baker) to take him on a voyage of discovery only to discover the skipper usually just sails around till they run out of fresh water and are forced to drink their ___.
It does cause one to wonder two things:
Do the Russians watch BlackAdder?
Just what were those mixed drinks they were running out of?
Surely not the almost fresh water under the ice?
Today’s revelations and videos show clearly who is the incompetent, bungling, and ignorant idiot responsible for the Akademik Shokalskiy fiasco. Almost obscene!
I’m also curious about the “Mayday” call. What has been described everywhere about the predicament would constitute a maritime “Panpan”, not a Mayday. There should be questions being asked about the nature of the distress call. These days, emergency assistance requests at sea are automated ( although I don’t know if there is coverage in Antarctic waters). If the adventure is/was not in immediate threat to life, however inconvenienced they were, then a Mayday was a false call, and unnecessarily endangered other vessels and crew, when a more considered approach may have been made, instead of rushing to them. Yes, assistance was perhaps required – yet to be determined. It is possible the Captain had a greater concern about the hull breach than anybody has let on. Answering a Mayday has compromised the Chinese ship. Responding to a Panpan may have guided the Chinese captain to a different approach strategy.
It’s very dangerous … I think I’ll take my wife and kids with me! RAOTFLMAO!!!
And the award for Irresponsible Parent of The Year goes too…
Hoo Boy!
Keeps on giving . . . !
Let’s see them try to do a whitewash-inquiry on this. The Russian captain won’t let Turney get away clean.
The Uniiversity of NSW is living up to its common nickname, “Kensington High School” (after the suburb in which it is located) yet again.
Anthony, FYI
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/pantomime-on-ice/#more-4254
When all has been said and done this needs to be cataloged in to the Climate Fail Files, Epic division.
Christmas Day (and its ax-fall) has YET TO COME for these turkeys!
Paul Coppin says:
January 5, 2014 at 11:46 am
Agreed. If it was so desperately urgent to get the “tourists” off, why isn’t it desperately urgent to get the crew off? It sounds like the greatest danger to the passengers was boredom and running out of alcohol.
The climate is fine.
Climate Science not so much.
Looking across the heap of idiocy and deceit that has defined Climate science in recent years
it appears as though it has been taken over by unethical nitwits.
This latest chapter is a hefty real world example of the reckless disregard people with no integrity
have for what should demand extreme caution and the highest interest in thoroughness.
The willy-nilly attitude by this clown is thoroughly shameless and reveals a total lack of conscience.
Other than that he seems to have had a swell time.
When I watched the video, I had a vague feeling that I’d heard Professor Turney’s voice before. Then I remembered. He provided the laugh track for the Happy Days Jump the Shark episode.
No ships may have sunk yet but this escapade has further ripped the seam open along the waterline of the SS CAGW (or whatever they’re calling it these days) that already was taking on water and down at the bow.
As to him having his family along, this just points out what others have mentioned: I’ll start taking these clowns seriously when they start acting like they believe their own dire predictions and put their money where their mouth is.
OH WAIT. Al Gore already has. Hasn’t he divested himself of a lot of his carbon tax sheltering schemes?
Cli-Tanic is very apropos.
Scandalous revision of Scott history! According to Roland Huntford, the real story is Scott took FIVE men on his final push to Pole, but they had cached stores planning for FOUR! Furthermore, Amundsen who made it to the Pole and back, marked his depots carefully with lateral markers hundreds of feet to each side of each depot so each could be found in case of a blizzard. Scott made no such preparations. Read Huntford. Scott’s worst team choice was Scott.
Carry on the Antarctic!
Scott would have been successful if he wasn’t such a hard-headed ass. His team died for him, you can’t pick a better team, but you can pick a better leader.
I wonder why he is using a fountain pen. I haven’t seen one of those in use for years.
andrewmharding says:
January 5, 2014 at 10:43 am
Lies, or incompetence,it doesn’t really matter because these are the ways of the AGW believers that we have all come to expect.
It would make a good film script for the Monty Python team, it would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the risk to the lives of the poor saps crewing the boats and rescue helicopters.
This is probably the most stupid, reckless adventure I have heard about for a long time!
//////////////////////////////////////////////
This strongly reminds me of Monty Python’s “Lake Tahoe Expedition” sketch – an all-time classic:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DlN4Sh06po&w=640&h=360]
Theo Goodwin says: @ January 5, 2014 at 11:27 am
Could it be that the reporters who accompanied Turney are participating in a cover-up?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why not? They have already proven they have zero integrity.
pokerguy says: @ January 5, 2014 at 11:30 am
OT, but on the video I couldn’t get past the sadistic mistreatment of animals….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You would think there is plenty of film of Antarctic animals around. Why he chose two clips showing mistreatment and ONLY clips showing mistreatment really makes you wonder about the guy and the type of person he is trying to recruit.
(Another comment vanished. No idea why. I’ll just one more time.)
I said this under another post. I think I’ll repeat it.
Gunga Din says:
January 3, 2014 at 2:26 pm
“Ship of Fools”. I’ve read it and used it as a figure of speech.
A “figure of speech” is not literal but is used to communicate the “literal” more truly than a simple statement of the literal. (i.e. “The ground is dry.” vs “The ground is thirsty.”)
Now I’m not sure in which category “Ship of Fools” belongs.
(Captain and crew excluded.)
rogerknights says: @ January 5, 2014 at 11:49 am
…The Russian captain won’t let Turney get away clean.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No wonder there are no film clips or quotes from the Captain.
Gail Combs says:
January 5, 2014 at 12:23 pm
rogerknights says: @ January 5, 2014 at 11:49 am
…The Russian captain won’t let Turney get away clean.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
No wonder there are no film clips or quotes from the Captain.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Wait until Putin get’s informed…
The more we are exposed to Chris Turney, the more apparent it becomes that he is a light weight climate scientist, a shameless fear mongering climate hack-tivist, and a complete poseur as an antarctic expedition ‘leader’.
I would not trust this guy to lead a group of kindergarteners on an exploration of low tide pools.
2013 2nd hottest NZ year on record
Last year was the second hottest ever recorded in New Zealand, with the annual mean temperature nearly one degree higher than average.
Winter temperatures were nearly 1.3 degrees above average, which made it the warmest winter since records were first kept 150 years ago.
Climate scientist Jim Salinger of Auckland University says the warmer weather reflects an overall increase in global temperature, which was nearly half a degree higher last year.
Dr Salinger says the impact of greenhouse gases on climate change will continue to push temperatures up in the coming year.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/232557/2013-2nd-hottest-nz-year-on-record
As we’ve heard before, more global warming = more polar sea ice. In spite of this apparently really warm winter, we still managed snow this last winter.
Some of the speculations in this post and comments are, in my opinion, very off base. I’ve done a number of time chronologies interweaving Australian and North American times and considerable care has to be taken with ensuring that one knows the exact time zone that is being reported. I’m pretty sure that the Twitter dates of “December 22” are in North American time and therefore are “December 23” in New Zealand time, which is 18-21 hours ahead of North American time. This is supported by Turney’s Christmas greeting which is shown as “December 24” in North American twitter time. I see nothing inconsistent with the ship moving on December 21-22 New Zealand time. They landed on the ice near Mertz Glacier on December 23 and hared around on the Argos on December 23. By 1 am on December 24 (New Zealand time), they were closed in.
There’s lots to criticize about this expedition, but I urge that people not go a bridge too far.
cnxtim says:
January 5, 2014 at 11:52 am
The Uniiversity of NSW is living up to its common nickname, “Kensington High School” (after the suburb in which it is located) yet again.
****************************************************************************************************************
Awww don’t be too tough on UNSW. My son is doing a PHD there but in engineering not climate change. From what I am told the students and staff in other departments laugh at these Climate Change enthusiasts. Just as a side note – UNSW has the record for a solar car traveling from Perth to Sydney so there is some good stuff there.
Obviously accurate position fixes were supplied the recovery vessels. Any hams in range or lucky enough to get a skip signal could have intercepted these. Any out there? The USCG and other agencies should provide the accurate position if asked. I have emailed the USCG requesting the positions. Someone with press credentials should ask as well, and specify they want exact positions. Are there live satellite views of the area?
Let us wait for accurate data before name calling.
P. S. I am a complete skeptic on CAGW and have been since it first became an issue.
artwest says:
January 5, 2014 at 12:01 pm
I think the Mayday, as it would have come directly and only on the authorisation of the Russian Captain was quite justified. After spending time with Chris Turkey, his poults, gobblers and hens I imagine it was becoming increasingly difficult for the Captain to prevent his own crew from slinging the lot of them overboard. I would say that constitutes imminent danger.
I would suggest that Turkey was lucky to escape.
Theo Goodwin says: @ January 5, 2014 at 11:27 am
“Why not?” asks Gail Combs.
Well, it isn’t due to their integrity but it may be due to their employers’ integrity. At some point they have to go full on cover-up of a news story that has been reported around the world or, figuratively, throw Turney overboard.
Why not ask the journalists directly:
-Where were they on the missing days?
-What they were doing on the missing days?
-Why they had a media black-out?
They may decide their bread is buttered on the other side.
But I can’t ask them as my comments are automatically “pre-moderated” at the Guardian and I’ve never had a meaningful response from the BBC.
Paul-
“BTW – Do we know where the Hodgeman Islets are?”
While I was researching, I realized just how UNcharted this area is compared to the West Side. I had to track down really OLD maps, and newer obscure ones to make sure that I had my shoreline in the proper order between Commonwealth Bay and the Mertz Glacier.
“The Hodgeman Islands (67°1′S 144°14′ECoordinates: 67°1′S 144°14′E) are a group of small islands lying close to the coast of Antarctica, 4 nautical miles (7 km) west-southwest of Cape De la Motte, in the eastern part of the entrance to Watt Bay. They were discovered by the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911–14) under Douglas Mawson, who named the islands for Alfred J. Hodgeman, a cartographer and assistant meteorologist with the expedition.”
(Hodgeman Islands”. Geographic Names Information System, U.S. Geological Survey. Retrieved 2012-06-20.)
As it shows, the Islets are WEST of Cape De la Motte, and Cape De la Motte is WEST of the Mertz Glacier.
WIKI- “Mertz Glacier is about 45 miles (72 km) long and averaging 20 miles (32 km) wide. It reaches the sea at the head of a 60 km fjord where it continues as a large glacier tongue out between Cape De la Motte/Buchanan Bay on the West, and Cape Hurley/Fisher Bay on the east, into the Southern Ocean. The Mertz Glacier Tongue (67°10′S 145°30′E)”
From Commonwealth Bay, one must head East-around Cape Denison to Watt Bay. The Hodgeman Islets are in the entrance to Watt Bay. Heading East still, you come to Cape De la Motte, and then Buchannan Bay and then Mertz Glacier.
The coordinates on Turney’s twitter feed on December 22, are 66.92648 Lat and 144.30736 Long.
The coordinates on Chris’s twitter feed, his interactive map (www.spiritofmawson.com) and Alok Jha’s interactive map on the Guardian.com prove that they were never far enough East or South to have reached Mertz Glacier.
LeAnn- aka Aphan
(Quin Tessential is the “nickname” on the email account I sent the story to Anthony from. Sorry to confuse anyone.)
mogamboguru says: @ January 5, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Yes, if the ship is not near Mertz glacier then his thin excuse of an iceberg causing his woes walks out the door and he is back to not doing his homework.
So Steve McIntyre thinks that there was no media blackout period – it was just a dating issue between US and NZ time zones.
Makes sense.
But there was still a sudden decline in media output. Perhaps it was just Christmas or the post-Christmas hangovers?
Warrick says: @ January 5, 2014 at 12:30 pm
….Climate scientist Jim Salinger of Auckland University says the warmer weather reflects an overall increase in global temperature, which was nearly half a degree higher last year…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I guess Salinger didn’t get the message that the rest of the crowd has reluctantly acknowledge there has been no warming in over 15 years. link
I was thinking about the dip in output last week but put it down the Christmas spirit. Too much booze, dance with the wrong person, smack in the gob from the missus.
‘Thats the last time I bring HER along on one of my epoch making adventures’
Steve McIntyre says:
January 5, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Some of the speculations in this post and comments are, in my opinion, very off base. I’ve done a number of time chronologies interweaving Australian and North American times and considerable care has to be taken with ensuring that one knows the exact time zone that is being reported. I’m pretty sure that the Twitter dates of “December 22″ are in North American time and therefore are “December 23″ in New Zealand time, which is 18-21 hours ahead of North American time. This is supported by Turney’s Christmas greeting which is shown as “December 24″ in North American twitter time. I see nothing inconsistent with the ship moving on December 21-22 New Zealand time. They landed on the ice near Mertz Glacier on December 23 and hared around on the Argos on December 23. By 1 am on December 24 (New Zealand time), they were closed in.
There’s lots to criticize about this expedition, but I urge that people not go a bridge too far.
============================================================================
I never considered time zones and date lines. There are enough screwy things about this “scientific” tour that there’s no need to invent loose screws.
Steve McIntyre-
I only use the dates as reference points. But here’s what I want you to understand.
I have no problem assuming that they could have disembarked off the ship and taken the Argo’s across the sea ice around Cape de le Motte, past Buchannan Bay, and to the Mertz glacier. But that’s not what Chris Turney SAYS. Chris reports in his own words, written AND spoken on camera, that the ship is “anchored at the base of the Mertz glacier in the polynya.” BUT-
According to the coordinates (not the dates) on Chris’s twitter feed, the coordinates on the map on the spiritofmawson.com and the coordinates on Alok Jha’s map, at NO point in their entire saga did the SHIP EVER travel far enough East or South to have reached the Mertz glacier. At all.
And according to Janet Rice’s blog entry on the 23rd (early AM hours of the 24th) they had spent the last day they were “free” on/near the Hodgeman Islets-taking seal samples and visiting penguin rookeries. The Islets are near the entrance to Watt Bay between Cape Denison and Cape de la Motte, not near the Mertz glacier.
Turney looks like the kind of “leader” that you keep on a short leash so that he doesn’t accidentally hurt himself. Or best, gag and hogtie him and put him in his bunk til the expedition’s over.
Professor Turney left off the last and most important line of Ernest Shackleton’s famous advertisement: “Bring Children–half-price discount.”
“The smallest mistake can cascade into a disaster”. LOL, he got that part correct.
With the proliferation of inexpensive handheld GPS devices, I would be surprised if Chris Turney really didn’t know the precise location of the ship. Heavy falling snow (or heavy rain) may interfere with reception but that would be a relatively short duration effect. Even a $300 handheld GPS should provide +/- 100 feet accuracy, when signals are received from 2 or more GPS satellites.
“Tracey Rogers of UNSW collected the largest number of seal blubber samples”.
This is another puzzle – how do you collect large numbers of seal blubber samples without killing the seals? Killing seals is a heinous crime for greenies.
Seals are not going to sit still while you stick a painful probe into them and it is doubtful if they would have let anyone come close.
In addition, the comment on Eleanor Rainsley’s geological samples “which will provide a valuable
Insight into the history of the East Antarctic ice sheet” is obviously complete BS.
So did these actually happen?
How do we know that the Japanese were mistreating the penguins? I have a parrot living on my shoulder and I can tell you that birds often enjoy rough play. Birds are not nearly as fragile and defenceless as people think. They are also very tough, tougher than me.
None of us were there and the old film is taken from a distance. I really doubt that a person could deliver a hard punch on a bird that is free to move. The bird may have been enjoying the attention.
“Dr.” Turney looks like the kind fellow who populates the climate scare movement. I would be gobsmacked to find a really intelligent man who was a climatologist and believed that man-made CO2 was going to fry the earth. I would not be surprised to find an intelligent man who was just in it for the money, grants, vacations, prestige, and so forth however.
I do notice that none of these “Good Doctors of Climatology” are willing to have live debates with knowledgeable skeptics on a neutral field. I wonder why. 🙂
From above:
“Pathological liars doing what they do best”
Can’t improve on that!
Surely someone on board had a portable GPS.
Peter Miller says:
January 5, 2014 at 1:20 pm
“Tracey Rogers of UNSW collected the largest number of seal blubber samples”.
This is another puzzle – how do you collect large numbers of seal blubber samples without killing the seals?
Peter,
If the seals can be approached closely, this can be done easily with a ‘jab stick’. It is an extendable pole with a hollow needle affixed to the end. Poke the animal with the hollow needle and you get a small core sample of skin and underlying blubber/fat. There are ‘dart guns’ and similar that can be used, if the animals won’t allow real close approach.
MtK
That one is also good:
Forest needed to cover carbon footprint of icy rescue
The expedition had pledged to plant about 800 kauri trees in Northland to cover its carbon footprint. Environmentalists believe planting trees helps to offset the impact of burning fuels such as diesel.
But former Act Party leader and Herald on Sunday columnist Rodney Hide said that would have to increase to about 5000 trees to make up for the fossil fuels burned in the rescue.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11181470
Do they care if they have to plant 800 or 5000 or 500’000 trees? Someone else is paying these trees anyway.
Aphan says: @ January 5, 2014 at 1:05 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks for the clarification.
Thank you Steve. Your comment reminds me of the theme (and back story theme) of “The Bridge Over The River Kwai”. Most definitely a bridge too far. Which is why we sometimes experience someone on our side blowing up the bridge we built.
I keep hearing conventional wisdom and famous quips in my head:
– “Rumors of my competence are greatly exaggerated”
– “Lord, let me not become a victim of my own Bullshirt”
– “Those who can, do – those who can’t, teach (Climate Science)”
– “We have Ice to our front, Ice to our rear, and Ice on all sides – the Warming won’t get away this time”.
– “What we have here is a failure to appreciate (reality)”
This “Expedition” was nothing more than an ‘Activist’ fund-raising scam, with on-board Public Relations consultants/propagandists.
Paul Coppin at 11.46,
Yes, I was also wondering about the distress call. And in response to John Whitman’s comment 10.50 to the studious researcher WUWT Reader LeAnn (Quin Tessential)
From Australian news sources (note this website was ‘closed’ until Aus 6/1/14)), Falmouth, UK received the distress message:
Update1 25/12/2013
The Falmouth MRCC received a distress message via satellite from a Russian flagged vessel, MV Akademik Shokalskiy, with 74 people about 7.20am (AEDT).
http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/
Difficulty accessing Dec 2013 news/events to ascertain whether Falmouth UK stated they had received a distress call. They do have a Facebook account and comment may be there?
406 Beacons are registered at Falmouth UK office
http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/mcga07-home/emergencyresponse/mcga-searchandrescue/epirb.htm
Contact listed for UK Falmouth Search/Rescue Centre
http://www.dft.gov.uk/mca/mcga07-home/emergencyresponse/mcga-searchandrescue/mcga-theroleofhmcoasguard/mcga-hmcgsar-contacts.htm
General interest Falmouth http://www.marinelink.com/maritime/FALMOUTH
Australia offers free registration of 406 beacons
http://beacons.amsa.gov.au/registration.html
After watching that video for a couple of minutes, I turned it off.
The absence of seriousness in such a mission is quite evident. Do these people not have the capacity to think?
‘MARGOT O’NEILL: Even the most charismatic of Antarctic leaders, Ernest Shackleton, was willing to use his gun to keep order.
CHRIS TURNEY: He did prepare to shoot someone who was questioning his leadership style and basically he just stamped down there straight away and as a result that man survived and so did the rest of the team.’
Well he got that a bit wrong. Harry McNish was the highly able ship’s carpenter, but an opinionated character whom Shackleton disliked so much that he was the only member of the party not to be awarded the Polar Medal by Shackleton, despite arguably doing more to save their lives than anyone. McNish thought Shackleton’s plans to manhaul the boats across the ice was stupid, as indeed it turned out to be, with that effort having to be abandoned and camp set up on open ice until they ended up on a small ice floe in imminent danger of disintegration, and had to make an emergency launch and desperate run for Elephant Island. McNish’s own plan was to stay with Endurance while the ice slowly crushed it, while he would build a boat big enough for them all from the crushing ship, so that when the Weddell gyre swept them out into open water, they could just sail to safety. A much better and lower risk plan. That was when Shackleton pulled the gun on him and threatened to shoot him on the spot if he did not obey the order to manhaul the boats across the ice. Once on Elephant Island, McNish adapted the lifeboat James Caird for the hazardous open ocean voyage to South Georgia. At least Shackleton had the sense to take McNish on that trip, for during it he had to build a coming to stop the boat being swamped, from the thwarts on which they were sitting, otherwise they would have sunk.
Chris Turney “Iceboats” himself.
iceboated, Iceboating, and Chris Iceboats himself all trade marked by Wattsupwiththat and poster fobdangerclose
“Study: Dogs Relieve Themselves In-Line With Earth’s Magnetic Field (Drudge)”. Finally, some media exposure for scientific inquiry more illuminating than a Leftist Antarctic ‘Climate Change’ ClusterF*$k.
Peter,
Here’s a document from the NOAA on procedures for how tissue samples should be collected and documented. They list dart guns for direct sampling or remote application of anesthesia allowing direct sampling, physical restraint for direct sampling, etc.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/permits/instructions_appendix2.pdf
MtK
Thanks for putting the “-” in the title.
I’ve been out for several hours. Regarding Steve McIntyre’s comments on the uncertainty in the expedition timeline and not going a “bridge too far” I agree, and I’ve added this update to the body of the post.
UPDATE: For the record, the lack of any publicly available and accurate log (the Live EXPEDITION Tracker on spiritofmawson.com is woefully incomplete) makes interpreting the expedition times and dates a murky proposition at best, and leaves interested parties to interpret other available evidence, such as blog posts, Twitter entries, and other anecdotal records. In that process, along with time zones, and the way certain web pages might log times differently, confusion is likely to set in. In the above third piece by LeAnn, there are some claims that can’t be substantiated either way and speculation abounds. That said, there are some things in LeAnn’s post that are probably a result of that sort of confusion due to lack of a good timeline. From my view Turney’s expedition most likely made it to Mertz glacier, but they did a poor job of documenting it. Social media really shouldn’t be the way to log a scientific expedition.
While LeAnn’s entry raises some questions that are worth seeking answers to, I would caution readers not to speculate until such time those things can be nailed down, and wait until an official expedition log is posted, so that anecdotal information can be reconciled with the official expedition log. Given the intense interest of this expedition, and the fact that it was publicly funded, I think it is incumbent on the spiritofmawson.com website to post a valid trip log so these questions about who/what/when/where can be reconciled. I look forward to this happening.
Never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.
Gunga Din-
I DID consider time zones and date lines when I did the research. 🙂 No matter what dates you choose, the coordinates on the maps demonstrate that the farthest South and East that the ship traveled was off the East corner of Cape de la Motte.
Here’s a map with the longitude and latitude markings of that area on it.
An old hearsay army officer evaluation.
” His men would follow him anywhere, mainly out of curiosity”
Long and Lat map…
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n5/images_article/ncomms1820-f1.jpg
OOoops 🙂
What is really needed is the ships log.
In the video I like the pith helmet in the background above the Antarctica book perhaps he is exploring Africa next?
“From my view Turney’s expedition most likely made it to Mertz glacier, but they did a poor job of documenting it. Social media really shouldn’t be the way to log a scientific expedition.”
Really? PhD types…not documenting research to even 2nd grade level….appears to be more like a vacation…no…take that back…even a vacation gets more documentation.
How any one could stand to be around the garrulous and foolish laughing Turney is beyond belief. If the Cockney accent didn’t get you down, the incessant laughing at his own “wit” would make you feel like landing him one.
Now the criticisms he has made of real leaders in the Antarctic look even more ignorant and smart-ass in light of his own shameful performance in the face of his pathetic errors, particularly the delaying of the departure from Commonwealth Bay.
This wasn’t an expedition, it was an amateur film making jaunt with the very antithesis of science to the fore – namely trying to cherry pick data for a scandalous “science is settled” program.
(Made worse with the ABC’s Ms O’Neill obligingly using the “grappling with climate change” mantra – pass the bucket, please.)
Mum (who is obviously well suited to cold climes), Dad and the kids, Uncle Tom Cobley ‘an all, trying to play Antarctic “scientists” for whose gain?
– – – – – – – –
J Martin,
That would clarify the situation.
Turney knows it exists, so he will need to come up with new statements soon less it be publicly perceived he is hiding from issues.
John
Anthony,
Happy New Year to you and family, and thank you for the update.
It would be highly likely be that the expedition will be required to report to the University New South Wales (UNSW) and the Australian Research Council (ARC) OH&S Committee.
2010 OHS Certificated course for UNSW http://unswfminduction.e3learning.com.au/content/FMContractorInductionSep2010.pdf
Additionally most Iridium Sat phones these days provide the user and receiver with GPS coordinates. A necessity in remote areas.
UNSW would have a provider contract that ensures such expeditions are well equipped and that expedition members presumably able to use all features of the device.
Our Man In Antarctica
==================================================================
The map was missing but OK.
The point, now more general than specific, is that this was a screwed up mess.
Keep the facts straight and “the truth will out”.
Steve M pointed out time things to consider. I hadn’t thought about them. I’ve no doubt that an honest look at them will not negate their dishonesty during the “expeditions” spin cycle.
I’m not saying you have done this but there is no need to do any spinning ourselves.
Mac
Thanks for your informative comments.
Next question, do you think these clowns had the ability to take the samples in the way you suggest?
I just invested my life savings buying up the worlds supply of kauri seedlings at £2.00 a shot.
C.Turkey (canned laughter) will have to pay me £10 a plant.
thats it. I made a fortune out of this adventure
Friends:
Members of the expedition posted several photos and videos of parties on the web, but I have failed to find any photos of the Mertz glacier they posted on the web.
That seems strange.
Assuming adequate visibility, tourists could be expected to provide some ‘I was there’ photos,and scientists could be expected to provide some photos of a major landmark where they were taking samples.
If visibility had become inadequate for such photos then why did not everyone rush back to the ship?
I am puzzled.
Richard
Absolutely Anthony. It’s why I started the article with “I’m beginning to think”, and not “I have proof”.
I agree with caution. I spent two days digging before I even told Anthony I thought I was onto something, and then another day editing and paring DOWN the information to something more easily digestible before sending it to him for his review.
That said, I know the group had sat phones and that a girl from Google was listed on board as part of the “science” team. I’d hope that means that the Google coordinates could be trusted. *evil grin*
Additionally- Today, I pulled this off of Chris’s twitter feed on December 30th, he posts a picture from PolarView.aq-taken from RADARSAT-2. As you can see from the satellite photo, which includes the Long and Lat markings, that the ship is stuck a long ways from the Mertz Glacier polynya. According to the coordinates I’ve taken from Chris and Alok Jha’s own personal accounts-the ship barely moved once they departed due to incoming weather and ice.
https://twitter.com/polarview/status/417812258652438528/photo/1
Based on this spectacular specimen-actual IMAGE of where the ship is, and how close to the last longitude and latitude readings from Turney before they “left” for open water, I’m even more confident now than I was yesterday.
I’m proud to be one of those people who posts here that questions everything. I’m not looking to build a strawman I can easily defeat, or for a chance to accuse Chris Turney of ANYTHING without a solid case to support what I’m saying. I’m not that kind of a person. I also love it that there are people here who aren’t just taking what I’ve posted as FACT, and are openly questioning the information. It makes me dig DEEPER, and has led to two links today that bolster my argument that I probably wouldn’t have found and saved otherwise.
RE: Mac the Knife says:
January 5, 2014 at 12:29 pm
“….I would not trust this guy to lead a group of kindergarteners on an exploration of low tide pools.”
Ever try to lead a group of small children? It is not all that easy. However leading this particular group of eco-tourists sounds like it was even harder. How much training did they receive before they left? In some ways the entire jaunt seems a woeful example of the uneducated leading the uneducated.
Paul Coppin says:
January 5, 2014 at 11:46 am
I’m also curious about the “Mayday” call. What has been described everywhere about the predicament would constitute a maritime “Panpan”, not a Mayday. There should be questions being asked about the nature of the distress call. These days, emergency assistance requests at sea are automated ( although I don’t know if there is coverage in Antarctic waters). If the adventure is/was not in immediate threat to life, however inconvenienced they were, then a Mayday was a false call, and unnecessarily endangered other vessels and crew, when a more considered approach may have been made, instead of rushing to them. Yes, assistance was perhaps required – yet to be determined. It is possible the Captain had a greater concern about the hull breach than anybody has let on.
——————
I think the captain was worried about the Akademik being released into the water before the damage suffered when the ice floes lifted it was repaired.
I would have radioed PANPAN and explained the situation to the responders.
Aphan says:
January 5, 2014 at 2:00 pm
“Long and Lat map…
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n5/images_article/ncomms1820-f1.jpg
OOoops :)”
Your hypothesis and supporting information are very interesting. It seems likely that your hypothesis will be confirmed by the hard data including the logs of various craft. In the meantime, I am wondering along with richardscourtney why the intrepid explorers have published no photos of the Mertz glacier.
Earlier I said
” the farthest South and East that the ship traveled was off the East corner of Cape de la Motte.”
Sigh…that SHOULD read, the WEST corner of Cape de la Motte.
I normally have zero problems with N,S,E,W orientations, but the whole south pole region is a nightmare! Between the different countries who stake claims there, the time zones, and the LACK of normal N-S orientations on ANY maps of that place, I told myself a hundred times in the past three days-“You’d better get this right, you’d better double check that”. Looks like I need to keep doing that. 🙂
To whom it may concern (and I know it may for all the right reasons)
In the end I might end up being completely incompetent. I know I have no malice. But the idea that something I post might have a negative effect on all the hard work done here by Mr Watts and others makes me sick to my stomach. I have zero problem taking a total and complete face plant over everything I am currently thinking, or admitting that I’m wrong if someone can prove otherwise. But I hold Anthony and this blog in extremely high esteem and would rather remain silent than put him or his reputation into question in front of the vultures that circle this place. I thought long and hard about it before I sent it to him for that reason alone.
It is discomforting to witness maniacal laughter as a punctuation to each paragraph uttered by Turney. Reminds me of “The Shining”.
It’s not as stupid as it sounds. If you’re going to have a crew working out in the boonies for months at a time, its important to keep up morale. Some of the best meals I ever had were in a tent in the arctic.
Canada has the Polar Continental Shelf Program. http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/the-north/polar-continental-shelf-program/polar-shelf/10003 It provides logistical support for researchers and others working in the north of Canada. Among other things, they provide training. It’s wonderful and prevents the kind of idiocy we’re witnessing right now in the antarctic.
Professor Turkey’s son , Robbie, was on a sight seeing trip out on the ice on the 23rd, hours before they got stuck.
He left this blog post:
A day in the Argos
Posted by Robbie Turney, December 23, 2013
Today was absolutely stunning. This was the day we got a full on drive in the Argos, along the fast ice and straight to the continent. It was very enjoyable, possibly the most fun I’ve ever had outdoors before. The ride was really bumpy and we were going up and down getting some jumps when at full speed.
Getting onto the Argo was a bit rushed I have to say. They had people assigned to be in each convoy. But when one of the Argos got flooded, the numbers of people in each convoy went down. I was supposed to be in the third convoy which didn’t have assigned people, except one person decided not to go on the second, so there was one space open. They called out my friend Pat a couple of times yet he didn’t answer. So I was brought in on the last half minute. I rushed to put on my Antarctic clothes but missed the Zodiac onto shore by a couple of seconds. Luckily Greg came back to pick up the Skiers and me with them. That was how I got to the second convoy.
Once we got to the continent we saw a massive towering rock that was home to a colony of Adelie Penguins which were all laying on their eggs. This made great photos but they were pretty aggressive because of it.
But that pretty much wraps it up for the day. And out to Donovan in Switzerland, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blogs.
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/a-day-in-the-argos/
So it seems they made it to land somewhere, but was this the glacier?
I’m sure the ship had all kinds of GPS and satellite instruments. I also know that region is SO isolated that they had a hard time getting signals several times, and we all know Chris has problems with numbers and estimations.
My argument is one of two things.
1) Chris got caught pushing the envelope. For science. For pride. For whatever reason. I believe that the ship got stuck in ice that he KNEW was coming. I believe that he MADE UP the story about it being a total shock/surprise ice “blown out” from the other side of Mertz to cover his butt. And that in order to make that even remotely plausible, he had to be closer to Mertz than he was.
2) That Chris’s above mentioned problems with numbers, his newness to the area, and his passion for the adventure MORE than for the science/facts/data simply caught up with him and he wasn’t where he thought he was.
Either way, he’s not someone I can admire or trust my life with. And it angers/worries me that others do and did.
Aphan, again, your speculations are offbase.
You’re forgetting that the border between the pack ice and polyna has changed during these proceedings. Blown by the easterlies, the pack ice built up rapidly to the windward side of AS. After a day, it was 2 km from the polyna; within a week about 20km of pack ice had built up.
There is a real issue about the prudence of positioning a vessel in a location that is so vulnerable to pack ice accumulation – an issue that hasn’t really been discussed in detail and which I plan to discuss at CA. <—[Climate Audit ~mod.]
The downside of bridge-too-far speculations (as I regard yours) – and one reason why people should be cautious in even making such speculations – is that they afford Turney an easy allegation to refute, which he and others will use to dodge valid criticisms.
Retracing Mawson
Alarmist stunt gone awry
Crunching ice sound, brrrrrr.
Anthony, when you and Joe provided weather forecasting for the AS, you knew where the ship lay. The other ships locations are (were) also known. How far away from Mawson’s huts were they then and what speeds were they able to make? Also, is there any electronic artifacts of the tweets, etc. that allow positioning of the transmissions? Are their satellite images that would reveal the trip trace? I’m sure there will be official investigations, especially when insurance companies and maritime agencies are involved.
The shameful hubris of this unimpressive, bungling, failed expedition leader Turney borders on some sort of limit when he says “Scott could have survived if he had chosen his team more wisely..”
Oh, oh, oh, you ignoramus! Scott’s party WALKED to the pole in 1912 for goodness sake, and almost made it to within a few kms of a vital cache of food and fuel on the way back that would have saved several of them. He did this remarkable feat without the benefit of charts, or any idea of how extreme the elevations, temperatures, winds, etc. could be. I’m sure Doc (remember to asterisk this one, too) you number yourself in the same cadre as a scientist as Einstein and other greats whose metier is being sullied by clowns. You jerks set off without availing yourself of the abundant information available on the ice conditions and weather – heck there are new pictures put out every day and now there are serious questions about whether you made landfall on the continent!!! Scott’s expedition would certainly have been doomed at the outset had he been able to choose you as member of his team.
Is there some way to take these guys’ toys away from them and cut off the cash? I think defunding the UN would even be only a small start at this stage of the rot. Shame, shame on you Turney and the A-list of your ilk.
Turney is an interesting guy. He has apparently raised a bunch of money promoting a fanciful way to turn wood into charcoal, he claims without burning. And people bought into it. At the least, a nice hard eyed review of his alleged breakthrough is long past due.
Turney’s voyage is similar to questing, a la Monty Python’s Holy Grail:
This expedition was doomed from the start, has anybody ever meet a left wing academic that believes in CAGW, that has the capacity of logical thought or common sense. Thus they had a turkey leading them. Them being a team of moddycoddled other peoples money addicted fellow travelers.
Aphan – keep digging.
***i’ve said it before, & i’ll say it again, until Turney & co understand. any “science” done/concocted on this particular trip is TAINTED by the presence of the particular media personnel on board & the Greens Party Senator-elect for Victoria, Janet Rice. best to stop digging a deeper hole, Turney, & recognise this trip was not the way to do science.
6 Jan: ABC: Leader of ill-fated Antarctic expedition, Professor Chris Turney, defends voyage
It is likely millions of dollars have been spent on an international rescue mission, which has affected the scientific programs of a number of countries and there are calls for the expedition to foot the bill for the rescue.
Expedition leader Professor Chris Turney has been criticised for inexperience and for taking risks by entering Commonwealth Bay.
However, writing for the British Observer newspaper, Professor Turney says the expedition was not a “jolly tourist trip” but represented serious science, which had two years of planning behind it and achieved much before it became stuck…”During the expedition we pioneered a new route into the huts and were able to deliver two large teams to work in the area, including undertaking important conservation work on the huts,” he wrote.
“The AAE is not a jolly tourist trip as some have claimed, nor is it a re-enactment.
***”The AAE is inspired by Mawson but is primarily a science expedition; it will be judged by its peer-reviewed publications.””…
“Unluckily for us, there appears to have been a mass breakout of thick, multi-year sea ice on the other side of the Mertz Glacier; years after the loss of the Mertz Glacier tongue…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-06/leader-of-ill-fated-antarctic-voyage-defends-trip/5185666
Aphan,
Pardon me for asking a stupid question, but where is Turney’s ship? It is stuck in the ice. Doesn’t the location of the ship tell us how close Turney came to Mertz glacier? Or was the ship wandering about all over the place before it got stuck?
Paul-
Both Turney and Janet Rice declare that place was the Hodgeman Islets. They are further west, at the entrance to Watt Bay (oh please…please…let the name Watt be the delicious frosting on this cupcake of irony).
Again, looking at the satellite image, either Chris is a lying idiot (who made up the “blow out” story for some reason) or he mistook the protruding point of Cape de la Motte for the Mertz glacier itself, and Watt’s Bay for the open polynya beside the glacier. Nothing else makes sense because the ship was never documented anywhere near the glacier at all.
Now with that in mind, read this from Chris Turney, posted on the SOM blog on the 26th…AFTER they got stuck.
“Following our successful visit to Cape Denison, sea ice remained clear, allowing our science expedition to proceed to the Mertz Glacier and open water polynya on the other side of Commonwealth Bay. Good conditions allowed the team to reach the Hodgeman Islets to continue our science programme and make comparisons to our findings around Mawson’s Hut. We managed to collect a range of samples for three of the science teams on these rarely visited islands; a fantastic result. The distance from the land to the sea ice edge is only 5 kilometres, providing an excellent test of the impact of the large sea ice extent around Cape Denison. Supported by volunteers on board, our teams investigated marine mammals, ornithology, glaciology while oceanographic work continued on board. Kerry-Jayne Wilson of the Blue Penguin Trust found the penguin colony on the Hodgeman Islets is thriving, demonstrating the distance the Mawson Hut Adelie penguins have to travel is a major factor in the fall of numbers. Tracey Rogers of UNSW also obtained the largest number of seal blubber samples on the expedition while Eleanor Rainsley collected geological samples that will provide an invaluable insight into the history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Returning to the Shokalskiy, conditions started to close in and we quickly loaded the vehicles on to the vessel.”
FIRST sentence-
The open water polynya next to Mertz Glacier is NOT “on the other side of Commonwealth Bay”. Its not even on the “other side” of Cape Denison! It’s on the OTHER SIDE of Buchannan Bay…and you have to pass both Watt Bay AND Cape de la Motte AND Buchannan Bay to reach it. So why would Chris reference it as being on the other side of CB?
SECOND sentence-
The Hodgeman Islets are NOT near the Mertz Glacier or it’s polynya.
LAST sentence-
Unless you can show me ANY blog post, or twitter, or account that states that the SHIP MOVED to another location after it stopped at the Hodgeman Islets, and that that other location is where they were leaving from when the weather turned, all I can conclude is that they were leaving the Hodgeman Islets area when conditions start to close in and they get stuck. Not the Mertz glacier area.
For those who would like to see the Spirit of Mawson’s travel agency promotional “travel brochures” before they disappear, this is where they can be found:
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AAE_Leg1_itinerary_02.pdf and
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AAE_Leg2_itinerary_02.pdf
Theo-yes, in a simple situation. BUT, after leaving the last place they anchored in, they did travel for some period of time, very slowly, through ice. Rice states it bashing against the ship. All account indicate that there was a hurried leaving, followed by a small amount of travel-attempt to get out-and then being stuck.
The question is…how MUCH travel-distance was possible? I’m not a mariner, so I have no idea how to read the TINY variations in degrees contained in the coordinates. Was it mere feet? Was it miles? Was it tens of miles? All I know is that there is a difference in them, and that NONE of them match with the coordinates required to put them at Mertz Glacier or even Buchannan Bay.
Does anyone here read maritime coordinates/longitude and latitude maps fluently that could tell me what the distance is between very slight changes in coordinates in MILES or feet or KM?
Gail Combs says: @ January 5, 2014 at 12:23 pm
For possible reference, here is the Voice of Russia (English) search-returns page for the term, ‘[Captain] Igor Kiselyov’, of the Akademik Shokalskiy.
Capt. Kiselyov seems quite cooperative with the Russian media. There are 5 articles here in which he is quoted, ranging from Dec 29 to Jan 4. He seems calmly competent, articulate, and temperate. (A commonly encountered demeanor of ordinary professional Russians who unexpectedly find themselves the object of media attention.) There are one or two other good Russian papers, in English, and they may have separate material.
I generally avoid video, for bandwidth reasons, but it could obviously refine our sense of the man. This may or may not exist; searches could be done.
Similar eye-opening material is available in the Chinese media. Indeed, China is quite enthusiastic; their coverage is extensive, and they post generous collections of images.
Could they use the Argo’s and / or zodiacs to go from the ship
near Stiilwell island past Cape de le Motte to the area of the face of the Mertz glacier?
By my rough estimation is that would be a round trip of ~100 standard miles. Does that look to be too far for a cautious trip over unknown surface and/or sea ice conditions in Argos and/or zodiacs?
Can some check my estimation of the distance?
John
Oops …
For possible reference, here is the Voice of Russia (English) search-returns page for the term, ‘[Captain] Igor Kiselyov’, of the Akademik Shokalskiy.
Turney’s wife and daughter on the “expedition”
http://static2.stuff.co.nz/1388537233/211/9569211_600x400.jpg
An image quickly “disappearing” from the internet.
leaving the analysis of Wadham’s explanation to those who understand it:
ABC: THE ICE-ING HAS BEEN TAKEN UP AS A CAUSE CELEBRE BY THOSE SCEPTICAL OF GLOBAL WARMING…ETC. what’s going on?
joined by:
GUEST: Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University
ENDING: ABC: thanks for that, fascinating to get an explanation and deep insight into what’s going on down there.
AUDIO: 6 Jan: ABC Breakfast: Antarctic ice conditions
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/antarctic-ice-conditions/5186104
yes, ABC looks to this guy for the explanation:
24 July: WUWT: An alarmist prediction so bad, even Gavin Schmidt thinks it is implausible
(Peter) Wadhams added: “The imminent disappearance of the summer sea ice in the Arctic will have enormous implications for both the acceleration of climate change, and the release of methane from off-shore waters which are now able to warm up in the summer. This massive methane boost will have major implications for global economies and societies.”…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/24/an-alarmist-prediction-so-bad-even-gavin-schmidt-thinks-it-is-implausible/
How many on the expedition would know the Mertz Glacier if they saw it? How many would claim they were visiting the Mertz glacier without questioning what they were told?
Turney is looking more and more interesting: amazing technology that burns without oxygen, a quest for the holy grail of AGW that turned into a publicity lark then into a world wide media spectacle. People really should get to know the good Dr. Turney much better. And not the Turney news release version.
As for establishing the current location of the ship: a web-site exists that records all the “Ships at sea: postions and Weather Observations” here: http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/index.html
Searching by callsign of Akademik Shokalskiy which is UBNF, we can get a map with ship’s position marked on it: http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=UBNF
The map is zoomable down to at least 4 nautical miles / inch.
Now it all depends who and how precisely the position was originally reported…
Btw, callsign of Aurora Australis is VNAA, and of Snow Dragon is either WUR5468, or WTR7440.
Hope this help.
commieBob says @ January 5, 2014 at 3:05 pm
It’s not as stupid as it sounds. If you’re going to have a crew working out in the boonies for months at a time, its important to keep up morale….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am aware of that since I was cook (and organizer) for several cave expeditions and my people ate very well. However the topic is not something I would bring up in an interview about a caving expedition much less a scientific expedition except as a thank you to the cook/organizer.
What this sounds like is amateur hour.
my two cents worth. apologies if it’s been posted before. i recall that the Shokalskiy was trapped – but not stuck – in sea ice from Monday, 23rd December. i commented on WUWT & JoanneNova, complaining that the MSM were keeping to the STUCK since xmas, or STUCK since xmas eve narrative, when in fact the ship was going TRAPPED & going nowhere fast from the 23rd:
26 Dec: Guardian: Stuck in Antarctica’s icy grasp
Trapped in heavy pack ice just off the coast of Cape de la Motte for the past two days, we await icebreaker assistance
Alok Jha and Laurence Topham are with the Australasian Antarctic Expedition
We were meant to be visiting the Mertz glacier this week – named after Douglas Mawson’s trekking colleague and not far from the original Australasian Antarctic Expedition’s base camp at Cape Denison. But plans change as fast as the winds in Antarctica, as I’ve learned in these past week…
By Christmas morning, we were beset with ice. Our expedition was forced into a temporary pause, while we waited for the polar winds to be kind to us and blow the pack ice out of our way…
***We are stuck in heavy pack ice just off the coast of Cape de la Motte and have been here almost two days…
http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/2013/dec/26/stuck-in-antarcticas-white-christmas
thought this was interesting on an earlier thread:
Scute commented: This video from the Guardian by Alok Jha and Topham are video evidence for everything Aphan is highlighting from the various blogs. You have to scroll half way down the page to the three videos after the Mawson interview extract.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/antarctica-live/2014/jan/02/antarctic-rescue-akademik-shokalskiy-live-coverage
The first video shows the ship encountering thick pack ice from a long way out (Jha gives the date at times- this could be related to the marinetraffic.com positions for the Sholkalskiy.)
The other two videos below also show some pack shots.
All these videos are in danger of being wiped by the Guardian when they realise their significance to any enquiry and especially if they read this article on WUWT. Can someone here copy and archive?
They were only posted yesterday despite showing activities (and sea ice) as far back as 16th December 2013 and at 65 deg south. This is why I think this is new evidence and will soon be disappeared.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/02/the-cause-of-the-akademik-shokalskiy-getting-stuck-in-antarctica-sigtseeing-mishaps-and-dawdling-by-the-passengers-getting-back-on-ship/
Ted Clayton says:
I had pointed to Voice of Russia a couple of days ago when someone wanted to know the name of the Russian Captain. Interesting that we had to go to Voice of Russia to find the name.
Pat, that’s an AMAZING find. It demonstrates that the AS was NEVER near the Mertz glacier or it’s polynya at all…they never made it there! But Chris Turney has said in comments AND on video interviews that they had “moved the ship to the polynya at the Mertz glacier”. He BLAMES them getting stuck in the ice on a MASSIVE “blow out” of sea ice from the other side of the glacier-like it snuck up on them from out of nowhere..a freak thing. Most likely caused by global warming.
I’m trying to prove that Chris Turney and Mortimer, were either completely inept, OR that they PUT that ship directly into a situation that they KNEW could turn at any moment. Either Chris Turney had no idea where the ship actually was when the storm blew in, (claiming it next to Mertz when it wasn’t) or he knew exactly where he was and he LIED about knowing that the sea ice was coming PRIOR to getting stuck.
Where the ship is stuck NOW is easy to find. I’m trying to find out where it was anchored the FINAL time before the weather closed in. Now I have a witness that says they never reached the glacier. Thank you!
25 Dec: AAP: Sydney Morning Herald: Antarctic tourist ship trapped by sea ice
Australian explorers are stranded near Antarctica after their ship became wedged in thick sheets of sea ice.
The Spirit of Mawson voyage, which includes scientists, explorers
and tourists, is trapped in Antarctic ice floes and awaiting rescue.
But with the nearest ship with ice-breaking abilities at least two days away, the crew will spend Christmas and Boxing Day stuck about 1500 nautical miles south of Hobart.
The ship had been on a multi-day tour from New Zealand to visit several sites along the edge of Antarctica…
It is not known how long the ship has been unable to break free from the ice floes…
http://www.smh.com.au/national/antarctic-tourist-ship-trapped-by-sea-ice-20131225-2zwjr.html
comment i posted on JoanneNova 28 Dec:
all MSM saying the ship has been trapped since Christmas Day, when i have read often it got trapped on Monday 23rd Dec:
27 Dec: NPR Blog: VIDEO: Rescuers Are Drawing Near To Ship Stuck In Antarctic
“There’s a lot of relief amongst the team and there’s lots of happy faces,” expedition leader Chris Turney said Friday in a fresh video posted from the deck of the MV Akademik Shokalskiy — an expedition vessel that’s been trapped by Antarctic Sea ice since Monday…
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/27/257538107/video-rescuers-are-drawing-near-to-ship-stuck-in-antarctic
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/merry-christmas-4/
27 Dec: Hobart Mercury:
“There was a change in the weather conditions, such that significant pack ice put itself between us and open water and despite the fact that we have a very capable ship, we were unable to progress any further north and just came to a halt,” he said.
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/rescue-mission-for-trapped-antarctic-ship/story-fnj4f7kx-1226789717821
Aphan,
Maybe this can help.
I spent twenty years at sea although not as a navigator.
Basically, a degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles and a degree of longitude is 60 nautical miles times the cos of the latitude.
At the equator a degree of latitude equals a degree of longitude equals 60 nautical miles.
At say 45 degrees North or South a degree of longitude equals cos latitude(45) times longitude which equals 60 nautical miles times cos latitude(45)= 42.43 nautical miles.
As the Earth is an oblate spheroid, there are also other minor corrections: meridional parts.
Willis Eschenbach seems to have experience in this area, maybe he could confirm my explanation, or not.
APHAN asks
about degrees of lat or long conversion …1 degree = 60 nautical miles….there are 60 minutes to every degree so 1 min = 1 nautical mile….however this only holds true for latitude anywhere on the globe. For longitude the further from the equator you are the more inaccurate it becomes.
At Sea I dont bother with the trig I use a divider to measure the distance on the chart and then compare it to the latitudinal scale to find the longitudinal distance…hope that makes sense.
Aphan says:
January 5, 2014 at 3:42 pm
There’s a simple convertor at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gccalc.shtml – give it
two lat/longs and it will give you the distance nm/sm/km.
A factoid you might find useful- a latitude change of one degree is 60 nautical miles, a change of one minute is one nautical mile. Good for checking your work.
At latitude 67, a change of one degree of longitude is 23 nm. (It goes from 60 on the equator to zero at either pole.)
Do you have the lat/long data or do you just have maps with spots and lines?
John Whitman says: @ January 5, 2014 at 3:43 pm,
On the map I pulled up, it was about 30 kilometers from the Cape to Mertz. So 100 miles should be a useful number.
No, under typical/usual conditions, that won’t be a day-trip. It would very slow going, if it could be done at all. If it was really necessary & important, whatever the difficulties, it would readily take a few days, each way.
If it was ideal water, fine visibility, calm, smooth, the Zodiac can go 20-30 mph. But realistically, conditions were poor-to-impossible. It does not take much of a semi-submerged, water-saturated, nearly-invisible chunk of inconveniently placed ice/snow, to flip a Zodiac.
Argos are slow. They have zero suspension, relying on nothing but the pneumatic tires to smooth the way. As a result, they get downright scary at speed – which tops out at typically 20-25 mph. At 10 or 12, you are doing good, and you’re on a known, prepared surface. Across pack-ice, if indeed it could be traversed at all, you will rarely exceed a trot. There are normally many obstacles & dangers on this ice (many of which will be hidden) … and what you scope out today, may be different tomorrow. A few miles is quite a long outing.
They had 4×4 or Quad ATVs, as well. These have real suspensions, and are geared & powered for real speed; 40-60+ mph. As already said, the pack-ice is no place for open-throttle exploration & travel. But once you groom a good trail, they can bomb up & down it at a good clip.
Considering that the weather was mostly bad, and the ice was thick, with lots of ridges, and big cracks, and thin-ice leads between larger pans, and a good skim of drifted fresh & old snow on everything … no, I don’t think they ever traveled more than a few miles on the ice. From the description I’ve seen, the Zodiac was ‘iced-out’, for everything but short landings or crossing open leads to the next floe (a few yards).
If you have information that they got a perfect day at Stillwell Island, with no ice in the water, calm, no chop, clear, unlimited visibility, then the Zodiac could have done it. But still, that would be seriously sticking the ol’ neck out there. Most folks’ survival-instinct would rebel.
That 50 miles or so down-coast in Antartica would just be an awful lot to bite off. Even under perfect conditions.
Some updates on the Akademic Shokalsky from Russian news sources:
Captain Kiselev estimates the Polar Star will reach the ice bound ships around 12th January, assuming no weather hold-ups. “The thickness of the ice we have now is 3-4 meters. The crew feels good – it’s a normal job – everyone understands that the Polar Star is able to bring us to clear water. True, the weather does not spoil us today: a strong south-easterly wind (14 meters per second ), blizzard, visibility about 300 meters. We maintain a constant working relationship with the Chinese ship “Xue Long”, which stands 11.8 miles from us. They are also stuck, thus we have an agreement – just that, we will help each other.”
According to the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of Hydromet, weather should change around the 7th-8th, and in particular the wind direction will become Westerly, which may allow a brief window for the vessels to free themselves. After that, Easterlies will return, and the chance of unaided escape would be minimal before the summer ends at the end of the month.
Supertankers are ships of fuels, but don’t seem to have these problems.
my two cents worth were meant to show no mention of Mertz glacier, etc:
click on “About this episode: The Return to Mawson’s Antarctica – Part Two ”
this was first broadcast on 23 Dec & was 29 mins.
2mins30secs in: Turney: going back and forward for the past 48 hours;
12 mins in: Luck-Baker interviewing Turney about the rushed visit to Cape Denison, 12 hours to do all the scientific work, with climate change in mind.
26 mins 30 secs: 24 Dec: AUDIO: BBC: Discovery: The Return to Mawson’s Antarctic
Duration: 29 minutes
First broadcast: Monday 23 December 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01n9gcv/Discovery_The_Return_to_Mawsons_Antarctica_Part_Two/
There are many unanswered questions about this farrago of lies, and some of those involve the money. Apparently this expedition cost 1.5 million to set up. Fares from passengers would appear to only account for 500,000 of this.
Do we know of any climate propagandists with 1 million just lying around? The BBC and the Guardian do have a vested interest in keeping global warming alive, but they probably just got free passage. Currently these presstitutes are franticly spinning the “narrative” that this was not anything to do with climate science. Answering the question of who paid for this inanity will answer the question of its true purpose.
Some of the sponsors listed on the expedition website appear to have just donated equipment or services. Did the extra million come from the Australian Research Council? Did the universities listed have a million to blow? Who really paid for this?
It’s interesting that the historic track of the Akademik Shokalskiy seems to have disappeared from sailwx.
Paul Coppin;
Thanks for that. Hadn’t heard of this before. Clearly appropriate. Wiki:
Yep. Given that this has messed up the research season for several nations, heads should roll.
Turney appears late in the climategate files as seemingly the lead in putting together a consortium chasing a NERC grant. Virtually all the major principals of CRU and elsewhere appear to be following his lead in an attempt for a submittal that I read as a hopeful for AR5 inclusion. Did this eventually morph into the Gergis, et al paper?
=========================================================================
Shouldn’t that be, “…I also know that region is SO ice-solated that…”. 😎
Evidently, Turney applies the Precautionary Principle selectively.
I wonder if Prof Turkey could be in trouble for “Child Endangerment”? At least in places like California, willfully putting your child at risk can result in loss of parental rights…
Thanks to Anthony Watts for all of the updates. This has been a fascinating and revealing expedition, though almost certainly not in the way that the organizers envisioned.
Lying to cover dangerous incompetence rarely ends well, except perhaps in Climate Science.
I remember back in the 60s when the space race was in high gear and we were just about ready to put a man on the moon. Criticism was launched that it sucked up money that could be used to alleviate poverty among other things. I won’t get into that argument one way or the other except to ask, ‘what the heck are we in the Antarctic for in the first place?’ And, more specifically, what the heck is the good climate change professor, Dr. Chris Turney, doing there?
Oh, I know, supporting the climate change meme. And, thus supporting a company he helped found: Carbonscape? Let us see what it is:
‘Within this eclectic mix of innovation and natural beauty, the idea behind Carbonscape was conceived by a team motivated to address the burgeoning problem of carbon dioxide (CO2) release. This resulted in the development of a process to convert waste biomass into charcoal, that when applied in agricultural operations as biochar, captures more atmospheric CO2 than it produces.
‘Today, Carbonscape is pioneering the use of microwave technology in a series of patented processes that refine low cost biomass such as waste saw dust from timber processors into valuable finished products. These finished products are:
Activated Carbon
Charcoal and Biochar
Bio-oil and Fine chemicals
Syngas
Carbonscape’s technology exploits the benefits of lower costs associated with cheaper inputs, higher heating efficiencies and faster processing times as compared to traditional techniques. Furthermore, Carbonscape’s process allows for a high degree of customization and the ability to process various types of feedstock.
‘In short, Carbonscape derives economic benefit whilst simultaneously aiding our planet through patented technology. It is the epitome of clean business, creating a winning combination of producing valuable products as well as a better and more sustainable environment.’
Ok, got that? Dr. Chris Turney has developed a new way of making … what … charcoal! Don’t cook that wood in your stove. No, do it the modern way; pop it in your microwave. Just make certain your microwave has a browning function. Genius, I tell you. But, before you’re ready to slap down several big ones on this surefire, lucrative, investment, be forewarned that savvy and connected investors have beaten a path to Carbonscape’s door. Yeah, it will be with your money after all, like it or not, and my guess it’ll be more a not like it, than a like it, since the likelihood you get a return on your forcibly (i.e. tax) extracted money will be just as likely as Santa Claus actually exists. How do I know this? Here it is:
‘Our main links to Government funders and private industry associates are as follows:
Ministry of Science & Innovation
Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries
New Zealand Trade & Enterprise
Foundation of Research, Science & Technology
FertilizerNZ
The Rutherford Innovation Fund’
Look at that list. Did anybody harbor a thought that government funding wasn’t involved in this enterprise? The only possible non-government fund was from Rutherford which sounds suspiciously like one of those pesty foundations but I couldn’t verify that since I couldn’t open the linked website.
So, we have a climate scientist; taking a stupid trip to Antarctica to ‘prove’ climate change; a trip that will end up being funded by governments to and fro; and directly or indirectly to support a business solely existing because of the meme of climate change; with the primary investors being, well, government.
I’d say if we can’t return to the moon, maybe we can send Chris Turney there. As well as quite a few other asstrolenauts (did I misspell that?).
Don says:
January 5, 2014 at 11:09 am
/Sarc on: My proposed screenplay was going to be a feature film. Now it appears it will be a mini-series, as the chapters on the Polar Star (due 12 Jan.) rescue and uncovering the cover-up have yet to be written./
*****************************************************
Don, do you have a working title yet? How about using the “Carry On” monika. “Carry On Irony”, “Carry On Turkey” , “Carry On CAGW” perhaps. Over to you…
Question – who paid for Turney’s wife and kids?
My understanding being that tourist berths were on the order of $8k each. So, either Turney’s family paid that out of their own pocket, or they passed themselves off as “scientists” and their berth’s were paid for out of funding for the science portion of the trip.
If the latter, then…well, a word that would send me to moderation comes to mind. The former is certainly possible if Turney is very well off, but one wife and 2 kids at $8k each comes to a smidge more than most university professors can afford for a summer holiday.
Watching the Lateline video, I was amazed at the comic brashness of Turney. A real gung-ho attitude which reminds me of the rashness of George Custer at the Little Bighorn. Perhaps he is now Custard Turkey or Turkey Custard—I can’t decide.
or they passed themselves off as “scientists”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of course, given Turney’s claim that carbon accounts for a greenhouse effect double that greenhouse effect in total, distinguishing between a teenage son and a scientist is probably not in Turney’s skill set.
Ric,
Chris Turney tweets contained the coordinates of the ship on multiple occasions.
You can also find the coordinates by clicking on the interactive map points on the http://www.spiritofmawson.com website. It shows them trying to move out of the area after the Hodgeman’s Islet storm hits them with several different little jags. But not much movement at all.
For example-
TWEET-Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 20 Dec
http://fms.ws/E-mLk Made it back to the ship. V happy!!@ -2degC
If you click on the link-fms.ws/E-mLk part, it pops up a map on Findmespot.com with a pin and a tab that says:
(POP UP)
Made it back to the ship. V happy!!@ -2degC
Device Name: AAE_Connect
Latitude: -66.49207
Longitude: 141.81169
This is the day they got back to the boat anchored to the West of Commonwealth Bay after the Mawson Huts trip.
*********************************
TWEET-Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 21 Dec
http://fms.ws/E_LuU Off to Mertz Glacier.-2degC, -11degC wind ch
(POP UP)
Off to Mertz Glacier.-2degC, -11degC wind ch
Device Name: AAE_Connect
Latitude: -65.76899
Longitude: 142.18417
As they head for the Mertz Glacier-which means they aren’t anchored in it’s polynya yet, they are just leaving the CB area.
************************************************
TWEET-Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 22 Dec
http://fms.ws/F0K8_ Blizzard. -4degC, -15degC wind chill.
(POP UP)
Device Name: Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 22 Dec
http://fms.ws/F0K8_ Blizzard. -4degC, -15degC wind chill.
Expand _Connect
Latitude: -65.76899
Longitude: 142.18417
This is where they anchored for the day trip to take samples etc at Hodgeman’s Islets. The blizzard hits them in the late afternoon of this day. They make it roughly a KM that night between 1:30 am (ish) and 9:30 am the next morning according to Janet Rice.
*******************************************************
TWEET-Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 25 Dec
http://fms.ws/F1gYd Heavy ice but all well-windy! #spiritofmawson
(POP UP)
Heavy ice but all well-windy! #spiritofmawson
Device Name: AAE_Connect
Latitude: -66.86300
Longitude: 144.31505
I keep seeing the figure of ~$8K per berth for the “scien-tourists”. I understood from the various promo vids that the first leg of the “expedition” might start at that price, but the second leg – which was the more entertaining one – was priced at $16K and up. As I remember, the second leg berths sold out fairly quickly.
I don’t see much problem with the descriptions of the locations the AS has been. It is very helpful to look at satellite images of the area. Hope this link works:
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/?switch=antarctic&products=baselayers,MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,!MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor&time=2014-01-05&map=-2048000,,,3072000
You should be looking at all of Antarctica. From this image, zoom in to the bottom just right of center. Then click on the date scale at the bottom and select Jan 3, 2014. This is a fairly clear day that shows the current picture of the ice conditions. You should see 2 polynyas in the ice (and a third larger one to the right). The left one is just off Commonwealth Bay. If you zoom in further you will see a large rectangular iceberg. This is B09B, just off the coast of Commonwealth Bay.
Now on the date scale select Dec 20, 2013. It isn’t quite as clear but you can see both of these polynyas are now open to the sea. The AS could have been in this polynya, anchored, which would put it about 40 miles off-shore from Mawson’s Hut. This would match the quote:
“The Akademik Shokalskiy had been at anchor 40 miles off Mawson’s Hut on Cape Denison, Antarctica with 74 people when it departed for the Mertz glacier.”
They would have to cross about 40 miles of fast ice to get to the hut. Sounds dangerous to me, but what do I know. Then the AS could have moved out of the polynya and headed east (left) toward the open water off the Mertz Glacier. This is where the tongue was broken off by B09B in 2010. This area is free of ice.
This quote appears OK to me:
“The journey today is to move east around the large B9B iceberg. This will take all day and into tomorrow, hopefully placing us at the shore edge of the Mertz glacier and Stillwell Island area, and providing the opportunity to step onto the Antarctic continent.”
They leave the polynya and move east to Mertz, which is ice free, and get close to the coast.
Just east of Mertz (right) is a land protrusion called Cape de la Motte (AKA the Stillwell Island area). This is where the AS is stuck. Advance the dates and you can see what happened to the ice across the cape. Good, relatively clear dates are 12/07, 12/15, 12/16, 12/19, 12/20, 12/25. 01/02.
The area off Cape de la Motte freezes up sometime between 12/20 and 12/25.
I’m looking at some images of various climate types….and there’s facial expression that turns up quite often…I call it “drama-face”. Chris Turney makes one in the cap at the top of this post, as does Christina Figueres back at COP while visiting a bamboo bicycle display with Ban Ki Moon, who seems also to be making the face:
http://bolerhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Figueres-drama-face.jpg
http://bolerhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/turney-drama-face.jpg
This face always seems to be made when there is some form of embellishment being asserted in the speaker’s dialogue….and it really is rather comical to see.
Steve – Thinking “Carry On Professor” would work well in that vein. There could be a lot of comedic action available to fill out a script. But, I really wanted an action-adventure sort of film. Action shots of the Polar Star breaking ice with those CO2 belching turbines wound up to max hp. Nice. (And the Polar Sea could be rented cheap for interior shots.) Anthony Watts would portray himself, and I want a cameo as “scientific assistant.” Unfortunately, don’t have the time nor skill to flesh the script out. I’m just sitting in my kitchen dumfounded watching this unfold over the last two weeks. Had this happened fifteen years ago, they may have gotten away with it.
Clay,
They reach Antarctica and anchor above Commonwealth Bay. The next day they scout routes into Mawson’s Huts. The ship gets caught in a break out. Chris Turney tweets-
Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney 18 Dec
“Ship just caught in middle of massive sea ice breakout. Incredible how fast. Huge area cracked up in 30 mins!”
They move the ship, but it’s still above Commonwealth Bay. Then they travel over fast ice on the Argos to Mawson’s Hut on Cape Denison. The round trip took them two-to two and a half- days-one day in, and one day out.
The next day they leave for “Mertz glacier”. They reach Hodgeman’s Islets. They get off to do sciencey stuff. The captain demands they get back on board as the storm hits. Chris Turney films stormy video stating they are anchored at the base of the Mertz glacier (which they clearly were not). People are still on the ice and in the water behind him in the video. They try to leave the area-get stuck in the ice. They travel less than 1k that night according to Janet Rice before the ship is solidly stuck. They bash around for a day or so attempting to free themselves. But they don’t move far.
According to the stats I can find, and Ric’s handy dandy calculater, the Mertz Glacier tongue and the Hodgeman Islets are 27 nautical miles apart. There is NO WAY that the ship got from Mertz to the spot they were stuck in (27 nautical miles) in the storm they were in. They moved several miles, if that much.
When I go to your link I’m looking for answers to the following-
Was the polynya at the base of the Mertz glacier tongue 27 nautical miles wide-was there 27 nautical miles of OPEN WATER between Mertz and Hodgeman Islets with NO “sea/pack ice” anywhere out to sea close to that area that could have blown in rapidly and pinned them in? If there’s ICE in those images, Turney is toast. We already know he missed the base of Mertz by 27 nautical miles.
I keep seeing posts about this team’s plan to plant 800-5000 Kauri trees in New Zealand to offset their carbon footprint. While this is worthy (Planting trees, not for the carbon offset boondoggle), the tree of choise is wrong IMO. Kauri are, usually, over their lives very slow growing and can be as old as 2000 years or more. They are a native tree and thus are protected. So once planted, they are their for their natural life and can never be “farmed”. The Environment Court can issue severe fines for people who remove native plants from land, even if that land is their own. So, all their lives sitting there converting CO2 to wood and oxygen, they then die, releasing CO2/CH4 back to the atmosphere when they decay. The other issue is the sheer area required for them to grow. Tane Mahuta (The largest living Kauri in NZ) has a girth of ~14m at the base and is ~50m tall. Scale that up to 800-5000 individuals. Rather pointless if the objective is to remove CO2 (Sins) from the atmosphere permanently. If they want to plant any tree to offset their emissions they should plant some existing imported exotic such as Radiata Pine. Fast growing and can be farmed to make building materials, paper etc.
This is just a typical publicity stunt to pluck heart strings without really thinking about what they are saying.
Thanks SO much for that link Clay. I’m very visual and that helps SO much. And technically he could very well have been within the “polynya” that covers the whole area between Denison and the Glacier, because it’s huge. I’ll accept that.
But I see it, no matter what day between Dec 19th and Dec 23 I put the A.S. rounding Cape Denison, the iceberg B9B sitting at the end of it, and the pack ice around it, and entering the openish water between Denison and the base of the glacier, I see still see tons (literally) of pack ice, and floating icebergs to the east and south of there that Turney should have been able to see, or have had it sent to him on satellite image, that he KNEW could shift and pin them in FAST. Especially after his repeated comments about the south east winds pushing an iceberg and pack ice into Commonwealth Bay. AND he WATCHED the pack ice crack up and surround the ship just days before while they were anchored near Commonwealth Bay. He HAD to have known a “massive breakout” was possible, inevitable.
We know he never reached the actual BASE of Mertz glacier-the coordinates simply never place the ship there, there’s no photos of any kind of it, Alok Jha says they never made it, and it’s 27 nautical miles from the Hodgeman Islets to the base of the glacier. They attempt to leave the area at the end of the day they spent at Hodgeman.
If the coordinates for Hodgeman Islands from GNIS are correct, they lie just off the coast between Cape de la Motte and Watt Bay. This area had at least 5-7 miles of fast ice along the coast at a minimum, so that is as close as they could ever get in the AS. And this would be around 30 miles West of Mertz Glacier.
The whole area off Mertz to Cape de la Motte is a large open polynya. The most ice free day appears to be 12/20 and the weather is fairly clear a few days before. After 12/20 through 12/25 storms came in, though I can’t tell what day the blizzard hit. The 12/25 image is still cloudy but shows the change in ice: Cape de la Motte and West is iced in; as is the AS.
I’d say they never went to the base of Mertz Glacier tongue but instead were West of this off Cape de la Motte. Possibly they passed by on the way to the Cape, but that would be an unnecessary 25 mile loop east. The AS appears to be stuck at least 25 miles West of Mertz.
Steve McIntyre is correct; there are definitely time problems with the posted logs and they seem to jumble up locations. They cannot be moving east around B09B on 12/22 and also be at the base of Mertz Glacier and the blizzard starting all the same day.
Aphan –
i don’t know your time zone – maybe u have gone to bed by now – but am hoping u will listen to all this one which i posted earlier –
26 mins 30 secs: 24 Dec: AUDIO: BBC: Discovery: The Return to Mawson’s Antarctic
Duration: 29 minutes
First broadcast: Monday 23 December 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01n9gcv/Discovery_The_Return_to_Mawsons_Antarctica_Part_Two/
i feel this has vital info for your investigations.
if anyone knows how to save this audio, i’d be grateful if they would do so, as bbc only keeps these files available for a limited time, usually. thanx to anyone who can assist.
Turneys claim that the sea ice conditions in Commonwealth bay were not predictable defies credibility. Someone else posted this on another thread on WUWT but the original re-enactment in 2011 was cancelled because of the ice conditions in Commonwealth bay following the collision of the iceberg and the Mertz glacier tongue.
The leaders of the prior 2011 voyages were responsible and prepared and avoided getting the ships stuck in ice and avoided disrupting genuine scientific programs, this 2013/14 expedition not so much.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-21/mawson-expedition-stalled/3742012
Perhaps one of the reason for the “Mayday” vs a “PanPan” call may have been the hull damage caused by the ice. Anthony mentions it in the KUSI interview below.
Didn’t find much info but I remember reading it was above the water line and something about 1.5 meters.
I suspect it was very load with much grinding and banging as ice surrounded the ship. Add that the ice seems to have the ship pushed slightly out of the water and listing slightly. Add some hull damage, even if just to armoring plates (I believe I read the ship is ice hardened) and one might see where an initially panicked crew might send a Mayday.
http://www.kusi.com/video?clipId=9686594&autostart=true
Clay: try setting your satellite image to “corrected reflectance 3-6-7” and look at December 18 to 24. This setting lets you see a bit better through the clouds and you can see the ship was in trouble from the start. It looks like the ice was already closing in around them on the 19th of December. While the amount of ice behind them varied, it appears that they had to push through ice to get to the polynya and then got stuck as the ice thickened and moved but it was always there. The ship probably followed the thinnest areas but it looks like it shifted and closed the ship in.
Thanks for the link, Clay. Most illuminating.
That’s a video worth archiving. My goodness, what an arrogant man.
Talking about choosing the right team! LOL
It was all about Turney. Well, now we know what he really is made of. He is a complete bag of air. I hope this trip will haunt him for the rest of his life, in his science and reliablity.
Funny how this video is presenting the trip as purely scientific, funded by tourists. And how it is now portrayed as pure tourism, with some scientific activity on the fly.
Just a tangential question: given the total incompetence demonstrated by the “scientists”, why didn’t the captain of the ship intervene and over-ride their stupidity?
Seems to me that the captain has final and over-riding authority over anything concerning his ship.
What happened here?
davidmhoffer says:
January 5, 2014 at 7:16 pm
“Question – who paid for Turney’s wife and kids?
My understanding being that tourist berths were on the order of $8k each. So, either Turney’s family paid that out of their own pocket, or they passed themselves off as “scientists” and their berth’s were paid for out of funding for the science portion of the trip.”
Mrs Turney (see http://www.spiritofmawson.com/aae-science-leaders/) is listed among the “AAE Science Team” as:
“Annette Turney
Leg Two – Education
Annette is a teacher and educational researcher based in New South Wales, Australia. Originally from the UK, Annette taught for a number of years before moving out to Australia. Her great interest in exploring how we communicate led her to undertake a MEd Language and Literacy at University of Wollongong followed by an MSc in Educational Research focusing on multimedia education at University of Exeter, UK. Annette is passionate about getting students engaged in the world around them and developing critical thinking skills. On the expedition Annette will be coordinating the development of educational materials for schools.”
So, going to Antarctica to do some research in Education, I suspect her trip would be fully paid.
The cost for the children – 12 years old daughter and a few years older son – is little cheaper than what you quoted. On Leg1, for a cabin ranked ‘Superior’ (one bunk with one upper and one lower berth), that figure is only $5,750 per person, or $6,750 pp for one ranked ‘Superior Plus (two lower berths)’. I am not sure whether the children were on board for that leg of the Expedition.
For Leg2, the same figures are $16,900 pp and $17,500 pp. The only other option would be a ‘Mini Suite” which was priced at $18,900 pp ($7,500 pp on Leg1). Details taken from here:
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AAE_Leg1_itinerary_02.pdf and
http://www.spiritofmawson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/AAE_Leg2_itinerary_02.pdf
Gary Pearse says:
“Scott’s party WALKED to the pole in 1912 for goodness sake, and almost made it to within a few kms of a vital cache of food and fuel on the way back that would have saved several of them. He did this remarkable feat without the benefit of charts, or any idea of how extreme the elevations, temperatures, winds, etc. could be.”
Nonsense. Shackleton had followed exactly the same route and mapped it (including elevation and weather) in 1908/09. He also found the best route up to the plateau along the Beardmore glacier. However Shackleton, unlike Scott, had the sense to turn back (at 88,4 degrees south) when he realised that he had insufficient supplies to go all the way to the pole and back. The only “uncharted” stretch Scott had to do was 100 miles of featureless ice.
Actually it was Amundsen who was in uncharted territory and had to find a new route across the Transantarctic mountains.
“Someone else posted this on another thread on WUWT but the original re-enactment in 2011 was cancelled because of the ice conditions in Commonwealth bay following the collision of the iceberg and the Mertz glacier tongue”
The difficult ice conditions in Commonwealth Bay in recent years are common knowledge. “Mawson’s Hut Foundation” which is trying to maintain said hut had to cancel expeditions both 2011/12 and 2012/13. Apparently they didn’t even bother to try this year
(http://www.mawsons-huts.org.au/news/expedition-cancelled-for-2012-13/)
One hypothesis Professor Turney did manage to prove was that penguins are not the only flightless birds in the Antarctic.
http://i43.tinypic.com/2uz6n7o.jpg
Does that moron ever stop laughing? That is a well known sign of deception, by every police interrogator on the planet. What could he be hiding?
Oh my word, what an embarrassment he is to England? I finally watched the clip with the Japanese and the penguins. It appeared they were trying to push them over rather than ‘punching them in the face’. I read, many years ago, that penguins would fall like dominos if you pushed one over. Perhaps they were amusing themselves by seeing if that happened? Not that it is a right thing to do, but less brutal than the ‘punching’ scenario.
Didn’t mean to put a question mark in my first sentence. There is no question that the man is a buffoon.
This all rather reminds me of this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
I watched the MacNeil interview with Turney prior to the disembarkment to Antarctica.
Chris Turney incessant inappropriate laughter made me uncomfortable to the point that I didn’t hear much of the interview. All I was doing was preparing my body to cringe at the next round of forced jocularity.
Turney is not a serious scientist nor is he a shadow of the likes of Scott, Shackleton and Amundson. He is a fool. Taking his family for heaven’s sake! What an @$$.
“Ship of fools” is not rude. It is a generous understatement.
Paul Westhaver says:
January 6, 2014 at 7:10 am
He has been described as “a modern day David Livingston” (see his bio at SOM). On another thread I said: “So we know how the Chinese greeted him: ‘Dr Turkey, I presume’
(Sorry to repeat this poor attempt at humour but I thought it appropriate given this video—I’m keeping my day job BTW).
Excellent post, a lot of true!
Be aware, they will alter that Lateline video. At present it says:
ROBERT TURNEY: Dad, on the blog, basically, it’s just: day after day, more ocean.
CHRIS TURNEY: (laughs) Don’t be dreadful! No one wants to read that!
IN THE FUTURE IT WILL SAY:
ROBERT TURNEY: Dad, on the blog, basically, it’s just: day after day, more ice.
CHRIS TURNEY: (laughs) Don’t be dreadful! I don’t want to read that!
L-band based GPS (1575.42 MHz to be precise) is immune to weather effects, unless it is ‘raining’ strips of aluminum foil (heavy chaff) … weather effects are noticeable on small-dish subscription Ku-band sat services on account of the much shorter wavelength (almost an order of magnitude shorter) and the tighter RF-downlink signal loss or “link budget”.
.
Maybe the whole Turney family got to go free, in berths slated for cruise organizers´ guests. That´s often how tour junkets work.
Apologies if this has been linked before:
Hitler as Turney, but not so as to violate board Nazi name-calling policy. The ever-ready Führerbunker scene recycled yet again.
Steve says: @ January 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm
A real gung-ho attitude which reminds me of the rashness of George Custer at the Little Bighorn. Perhaps he is now Custard Turkey or Turkey Custard
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How about The Chris(tmas) Turkey Custard for describing the whole fiasco. Turney is certainly doing enough spin to make a very fine custard or a Custard Ice Cream
Walter Clemens says: @ January 6, 2014 at 12:13 am
… What happened here?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Captain gave them a time limit and they ignored it due to stupidity (allowing ample time for problems) and the submerging of one of the Argos.
That Turkey allowed his son off the boat that day, KNOWING a storm was blowing in and the Captain was anxious is stupefying and truly shows that this bunch had a major lack of common sense.
I do not think that idiot has any idea of how close they came to getting themselves killed. Pack Ice and a storm and being off the boat? They are darn lucky none ended up in the water and then had the ice shift closing the hole.
Mention was made (by the son?) of leads opening up and giving them trouble.
Good grief even us lowly cavers know enough to carry three sources of light but these idiots go off with no excess transport capacity.
Gail Combs says:
“… even us lowly cavers …”
What was the lowest descent? 🙂
“Everyone will be supporting everyone else’s science.”
Yup.
Another USCG Ice Breaker, the Nathaniel Palmer appears to be heading towards the trapped vessels at 10 knots, currently East of Antarctica and heading North up the coast, may presumably turn West towards the incident. I’m assuming the Polar Star has slowed in order for both vessels to arrive at the same time.
Nothing from the uncommunicative AMSA on the subject, they haven’t responded to the email I sent them.
http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:6.439021/centery:49.68177/zoom:8/mmsi:367255000
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=WBP3210
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_B._Palmer_%28icebreaker%29
Also the Akademik Federov was last placed a few days to the West of the incident, but there seems to be no update on it’s position since the 1st of January.
Colorado Wellington says:
January 6, 2014 at 11:19 am
“… even us lowly cavers …”
What was the lowest descent? 🙂
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
33 meters to the world’s depth record.
Turney has plenty of money to pay for his wife and kids to join him. As an Australian Laureate Fellow, he gets a “salary supplement from the ARC of $114,170 per annum (plus 28 per cent on-costs) with a standard tenure of five years. The Administering Organisation will appoint the Australian Laureate Fellow and provide a salary equivalent to a professor (Level E) or equivalent salary.
In addition to a salary supplement and salary-related (on-cost) support, the ARC may provide Australian Laureate Fellows with Project Funding of up to $300,000 per annum and additional funding to appoint up to two postdoctoral research associates and up to two postgraduate researchers.”
So, in addition to the $114,170 per anum plus 28 percent, he ALSO got a position as a professor-Level E- whose salary is in the $165,000 a year range. PLUS IF he got the project funding, that’s another $300,000 a year-plus enough to hire 4 other people.
So a grand total of almost $600,000 a YEAR-not to mention any grants, or other awards etc, and income from publishing his books etc, plus speaking fees. Who says climate scientists are poor?
icebound and yet claiming***
29 Dec: Guardian: Antarctic expedition: still icebound – what happens next is anyone’s guess
Like explorer Douglas Mawson 100 years ago, Alok Jha and the expedition he joined face a long wait to be rescued
Since then we have been stuck in pack ice. The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long has given up its attempt to rescue us as ice sheets continue to spread and thicken. Now Xue Long is waiting for the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis to join it in a joint bid to free our ship…
We are at Cape de la Motte in East Antarctica, ***on our way to the Mertz glacier, in a sea covered in ice floes up to four metres thick and several years old, making them dense and tough. Winds have pushed these floes towards the Antarctic mainland and pinned us in…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/antarctica-live/2013/dec/29/antarctica-expedition-ice-wait-rescue
I was rather taken aback to read, in Turney’s statement defending the scientific achievements of his expedition: “During the expedition we pioneered a new route into the (Mawson’s) huts and were able to deliver two large teams to work in the area, including undertaking important conservation work on the huts.” His statement seems to constitute ‘gilding the lily’ to a remarkable extent.
The route the expedition took to the huts was across fast ice from where the Shokalsky was berthed – and would be impossible to duplicate by any future expedition. The two ‘large teams’ appeared to consist of only a dozen or so people. And in the one or (at most) two days spent at the Mawson Huts, it would be impractical to undertake any important conservation work.
Having visited three of the historic huts associated with Scott & Shackleton on Ross Island, as well as viewing the intricate and time-consuming conservation work being undertaken at Scott Base on artifacts from these huts, I would very much doubt that Turney’s group would have had the time, resources or expertise to do any genuine conservation work at the Mawson’s Huts.
icebound and yet claiming
29 Dec: Guardian: …We are at Cape de la Motte in East Antarctica, on our way to the Mertz glacier,
Well it sort of depends on how one defines “on our way”. Once the Captain got all the children on-board they were already 2 miles from open water, which would be the polynya North of Metrz. They never made it even that far. It does match the idea that they never got to “the base of Mertz Glacier”.
Neil from NZ –
Turney admits halfway through this that they were only at Mawson’s Huts for 12 hours:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01n9gcv/Discovery_The_Return_to_Mawsons_Antarctica_Part_Two/
they obviously worked fast!
Neil from NZ
“Gilding the lily” seems a very appropriate description. The gentleman really does seem to have a problem of exaggerating the importance and nature of his work. Why promote it as one of the largest Australian “expeditions” to Antarctica when the numbers include a bunch of tourists and PhD students with peripheral interest in Antarctica (not to mention the family members)?
The whole idea that measurements a century apart will tell very much about climate change is overblown in the justification for the re-enactment.
“Pioneering a new route” over fast ice means it is not a route anyone else will ever use… sorry, just far too much spin for my taste.
I accept anthropomorphic climate change and believe we should be doing more. But I can’t see how this sort of expedition helps and the reinvention of its purpose and importance after it has stuffed up other people’s work is dreadful. I’m very disappointed that the UNSW and the Climate Change Centre there have gone into unquestioning back-up mode. They should be making genuine inquiries about (1) whether delays to the Russian ship leaving the area were caused by expeditioners tardiness; (2) whether Prof. Turney has covered this up; (3) was a MayDay call justified over a PanPan call – thus putting the chinese ship in more danger than it ought to have been and (4) truthfully documenting the damage to other people’s work and apologising and compensating for it. I know he says he “regrets” it, but he always adds a comment that there isn’t much impact, when he really wouldn’t know.
And on the importance of team selection – how does UNSW’s HR Department view hiring of one’s wife?
Still quite a bit of sea ice around the A. A. And she’s been underway for nearly three days. At 14 knts, she should have traveled 1008 Nm. In 72 hours.
The current stern cam view shows three people working on some sort of instrumentation or a drone. I wonder if the are using a drone to select a path through the ice.
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
Once the Polar Star arrives at the ice bound ships what is the technique for freeing them. Do they circle to relieve the pressure or motor close in and parallel to it to free up space?
Astrogirl. says:
January 6, 2014 at 7:15 pm
I accept anthropomorphic climate change
============================================================================
I think maybe you used the wrong word:
an·thro·po·mor·phic [an-thruh-puh-mawr-fik] Show IPA
adjective
1.
ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human, especially to a deity.
2.
resembling or made to resemble a human form: an anthropomorphic carving.
Or maybe not. Maybe it isn’t AGW but just looking like AGW having morphed a bit. 😉
AMSA replied to my email to tell me that Nathaniel B Palmer and the Akademic Federov have not been tasked to assist.
Why doesn’t the Polar Star have a webcam on it ?
Isn’t the American tax payer entitled to watch the rescue operation ?
Clay Marley –
i just thought it would be more accurate to write:
“we had been on our way” or “we were on our way”. using “are” makes it sound a bit silly, given the ship has not moved since then, & alok jha and the rest are on their way home.
however, as u say, it does, once more, indicate they were never near the Mertz Glacier.
http://www.marinetraffic.com no longer give the most recent position for the Polar Star, but instead give it’s position on the 1st of January, North of Sydney. Presumably to get people to pay for the up-to-date information.
If neither the Snow Dragon nor the Skokalskiy have webcams then we might not get to see much of the rescue, as it seems the USCG have never heard of webcams and don’t reply to emails on the subject.
Yes, of course! Nothing to do with being out-of-range of any participating VHF ‘receivers’ set up to receive AIS position information transmitted on dedicated VHF marine frequencies, and then sent via an accompanying internet connection to ‘backhaul’ that data to the marinetraffic.com server for display to the public. After all, the area south of the antarctic circle is just a) crawling with civilization and b) plumbed to the hilt with broadband, DSL, fiber et al ‘connections’ …
/mild sarc
This raises a pertinent question … how did the Guardian videographer get videos loaded off the Akademik Shokalskiy and viewable by us back in ‘civilization’?
The clue and the answer lie within the video embedded on this webpage; notice in the video at the 0:53 point, in the lower left corner, a small Inmarst up/downlink ‘terminal’ (a model “EXPLORER® 500” by Thrane and Thrane) is viewable:
. . . http://www.inmarsat.com/news/extreme-polar-conditions-match-bgan/
Here is a screen capture at that point with a couple insets showing the little sat terminal:
. . . http://i43.tinypic.com/20hr1g8.jpg
The battery-powered “Explorer 500” offers data rates comparable to DSL uplink datarates (448 up Kbps):
. . . http://www.groundcontrol.com/BGAN_Explorer_500.htm
This small terminal works with the Inmarsat “BGAN” (sounds like ‘vegan’) service detailed here:
. . . http://www.inmarsat.com/service/bgan/
A comparison of available terminals for the BGAN service:
. . . http://www.inmarsat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Inmarsat_BGAN_Terminal_Comparison.pdf
.
.
PS. Iridium and Globalstar ‘phones’/sat phone service does not seem to offer anything in this category with this kind of speed to allow vids to be uploaded to a server.
.
What (or who) would they use as a data ‘uplink’ service?
Even the Inmarsat BGAN ‘broadband’ (nearly!) service doesn’t provide service ‘at the poles’ (the ‘look angle’ would be/is *at* the horizon since these sats are in geo synchronous orbit over the equator).
‘Data services’ aren’t as freely/easily available in all parts of the uninhabited world contrary to movie depiction and/or ‘contemporary thinking’ might imagine.
Even the so-called ‘sat phones’ have their limitations:
. . “Satphone Shootout — SPOT-Globalstar VS Iridium”
. . http://www.wildsnow.com/10280/satphone-review-iridium-9555-9575-extreme-globalstar/
.
@ Jim. OK so there are technical issues I had overlooked having no knowledge of these things. All I know is that the Aurora Australis seemed to provide webcam views when it tried to break through the ice and had to pull back. I’ve just had a look at the AA webcam page and it seems to be a series of stills that later get stitched together to provide a time-lapse video. Maybe it’s one frame every half hour. Though I thought I had seen a smooth motion webcam video at some point of the AA trying and failing to get through the ice, perhaps sometimes they manually upload interesting sequences.
The Casey webcam seems to update intermittently sometimes after 5 minutes sometimes much longer watching it just now, looks like the ship has to offload supplies to a small boat.
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
Maybe the Polar Star will film some of the rescue and we’ll get to see it once the ship gets back to Australia.
Looks like the wind shifted, the Chinese are out and the A.S. is moving:
http://rt.com/news/antarctic-ice-trap-freed-274/
It would have been nice to see some film of the Polar Star going through some serious ice compared to the way the ice brought the Aurora Australis to a surprisingly quick halt when it tried to push into the ice. Well, I guess all’s well that ends well.
J Martin says: @ January 7, 2014 at 11:46 am;
Afaik or can find, the Polar Star does not have a webcam in service. This could be simply because the ship is only now coming back into service; the cam is a low priority, and they just haven’t gotten that far down the list yet.
However, USCGC HEALY (WAGB-20), “the United States newest polar capable icebreaker, was commissioned as a U. S. Coast Guard cutter on August 21, 2000”, does have such a cam.
See the USCG IceFloe site for lots of good stuff, and then go either directly to their Healy webcam image archive index, or stop off at their Healy Realtime Data page, for links to other sources of info for the big ‘breaker.
Especially, you may want to look at their “Cruise Catalog”, so you can identify when the ship was actually in ice somewhere. Webcam archives of the ship doing nothing but crossing the Pacific Ocean, lengthwise, get pretty repetitious.
I don’t know why the Polar Star does not have a webcam, but if I really wanted visuals for it, I would start searching on the work that they are scheduled to perform in the coming days & weeks, the area they are going to clear channel in, and all the associated/related place & activity names.
Search on the US base they are going to re-supply; look into the various science projects that are supported by that base – they often have their own webpages – and as I’m sure you know, all those people down there are waiting excitedly for the Polar Star to arrive & do it’s thing …. so it’s no doubt a leading topic of conversation in Antarctica! 😉
So if they accepted your forecast and waited for a week, they’d be free now and likely to get home quicker than sitting five days unloading at Casey?
Did they actually issue a MayDay call?
Is it true that Professor turney is planning a re-enactment of the Franklin Expedition?