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
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: @ur momisugly 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/