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.
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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
rogerknights says: @ur momisugly 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: @ur momisugly 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: @ur momisugly 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: @ur momisugly 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: @ur momisugly 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.