The comedy just keeps on coming. Plus, now it seems that Turney failed to get some approvals, and his welcome home may not be all the happy. Maybe he’ll stay in Antarctica.
After having to prematurely abandon their mission due to being stuck in ice, and having a weather forecast provided that said all they had to do was wait a few more days, which came true, freeing the ship, the intrepid Dr. Turney and his gaggle of global warming geese tourists were evacuated by helicopter to the Aurora Australis, which then sailed to the Australian Casey Station to finish the resupply operations that got interrupted by Turney’s distress call.
The #spirtofmawson people are still at Casey Station, waiting for their ride home, while the Akademic Shokalskiy has made it to port in New Zealand. See the current positions of both ships:
Source: http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:168.3123/centery:-46.88068/zoom:8/oldmmsi:273458210/olddate:lastknown (h/t to reader “itdoesntaddup”)
Here is the current position of the Aurora Australis:
Above: View of Casey base from the Aurora Australis webcam. Source: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/aurora
From the Aurora Australis sitreps reports:
Sunday 12-Jan-2014 We arrived at Casey this morning ready to commence cargo operations at 8am. We continued moving cargo between the ship and shore until 1330 when the refuelling hose was loaded on to the barge. The hose and anchoring system were deployed then the hose tested for any leaks. Once the leak test was complete pumping of SAB (Special Antarctic Blend) began. We are expecting that the completion of the refuelling of Casey will occur at around 6am tomorrow morning and we will have delivered over 850,000 litres of fuel during resupply part 1 and part 2. There is one remaining hold of cargo on the ship to discharge. When it is possible we try and transport cargo on the shore to ship as well as the ship to shore. This is not always possible depending at what stage of unloading we are at and what needs to occur to make room for the RTA cargo. It is a bit like a jigsaw but the pieces don’t always fit so neatly together. Cheers Leanne and Mark
Source: https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/schedules/display_sitrep.cfm?bvs_id=19327
What irony that the “trapped” ship has made it back, while the #spiritofmawson fools are still at Casey base, waiting for their ride home.
Meanwhile, all is not well back home. I suspect Turney won’t get a heroes welcome:
Head of Australian Antarctic science div., chides @ProfChrisTurney for saying #spiritofmawson had official approval. https://t.co/7bP8dDA8WD
— Andrew Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ (@Revkin) January 9, 2014
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MattS says:
January 13, 2014 at 12:28 pm
“tourists were evacuated by helicopter to the Aurora Australis”
You are putting the wrong spin on things.
What really happened is that the crew of the Akademic Shokalskiy was rescued from the tourists by removing the tourists from the Akademic Shokalskiy.
===========
Sums it up perfectly.
Unbelievable, they are still at 66S (and were delayed for days from getting to Casey by a large number of ice-bergs apparently) while the Shokalskiy is already in New Zealand stocking up on vodka and getting their ship repaired.
You couldn’t even make up such a science-fiction disaster story if you were Al Gore.
Maybe another rescue ship/helicopter should be sent. Can we rescue them to 90S for a year or two?
Walter Clemens says:
January 13, 2014 at 4:24 pm
Just a technical question: how can a ship located in Antarctica be traveling “east-south-east”?
Aren’t all directions either “south” or “north”? What is the base reference point?
I answered this yesterday:
For directions in Antarctica the Prime Meridian is north. It is the line of longitude that separates east and west Antarctica.
http://www.mapsofworld.com/antarctica/
The winds are taken in a system called grid north where 0 degrees is north and 180 degrees is south.
http://www.usap.gov/travelAndDeployment/documents/FieldManual-Chapt21AntarcticNavigation.pdf
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area may set a record for the Highest minimum in recorded measurements, may even be as high as 4 million square kilometers, almost a million higher than previously. Should we be making something of this in view of this expedition or do you prefer to wait until after the event?
I wait for a journalist, to interview those presstitutes from the ship of fools.
“Why were you on board, sonny?
You did no reporting, so what was your function? Times 5.
tallbloke says:
January 13, 2014 at 4:41 pm
I expect the Akademik crew will have been enjoying a couple of scoops ashore by now. They’ll be in high spirits. With loosened tongues, the locals will be treated to some amusing details and anecdotes I’m sure.
tallbloke,
I’m sure you’re right!
Is there a WUWT pub crawler…. er, ‘investigative reporter’ in the Bluff port area that might locate the ‘ol watering hole, stimulate their tongues with a few rounds bought and report back here? Anybody???
“The biggest trouble we have in the skeptical camp is not that we need to marshal better arguments, come up with more telling data, or make our ideas more understandable. Our biggest problem is that the fellows who “buy ink by the gallon” are all telling the “CO2 will destroy humanity” myth day in and day out.”
A slightly smaller problem is that some of the noisier members of the sceptical camp seem to be wild-eyed, foam-flecked, right-wing loonies, who cannot refrain from inserting their political ideology into the debate. Reasonable, moderate people find their politics repellent, and associate those politics with the sceptical camp as a whole.
RoHa says:
January 13, 2014 at 7:00 pm
A slightly smaller problem is that some of the noisier members of the sceptical camp seem to be wild-eyed, foam-flecked, right-wing loonies,
RoHa,
Your wild-eyed, foam flecked comment is not reasonable, moderate, or informative. Who are you referring to?
Great humor in this thread! I hope that the following is not too over-the-top.
Q: What do you get when you cross a Penguin with a Turkey?
A: A mentally retarded Penguin.
Please, please, please let the Aurora Australis get stuck in ice…just for a few days 😉
Anthony might like to take on this newpaper reporter.
“I doubt that the polemical world occupied by Bolt and Watt has much room for such things.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/bolt-and-companys-claims-cut-no-ice/story-fnjj6013-1226801026797
@tchannon, thanks, the guy can’t even spell my name right. Watts, not Watt.
I here that it’s nice down there at this time of year. What a lucky adventure for this group to get the complete tour.
I visualise one of the new passengers on the Aurora Australis going up to the captian to complain about the delay in getting back to Australia. Material for a tragi-comedy there.
tchannon –
the writer who can’t even spell Watts correctly:
Huffington Post: Peter Boyer
As a freelance writer he worked for a long time for the Australian Antarctic Program…
As a presenter for Al Gore’s Climate Project since 2006 he has spoken to more than 9,000 Australians about our environmental and energy challenges. Since September 11, 2007 he has written a weekly column, Climate Challenge, published in Tasmania’s major newspaper, The Mercury. In April 2009 he founded the blog site Climate Tasmania.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-boyer
As I understood it, the press were on board so that they could bring to the world “what they found as quickly as possible”. Funny how quickly their mission got forgotten. Must have been all that vodka, no?
the Peter Boyer attack on Watt (sic) & Bolt originally appears in Boyer’s lonely little blog. surely if Boyer can get published in Murdoch’s Herald Sun, with a piece attacking one of their own writers, Anthony Watts should be given space to respond, given the popularity of WUWT!
14 Jan: ClimateTasmaniaBlog: Peter Boyer: The disorderly story of Antarctic sea ice
http://climatetasmania.com.au/2014/01/14/a329/
I don’t know where the post went but…Peter Boyer links to SkS and HotWhopper under the climate/energy debat section of his blog.
I learned (thanks to this fiasco) that Douglas Mawson dragged himself back to base camp, barely alive, just in time to see his ship disappearing in the distance, and had to spend the winter in Antarctica. I am saddened that this group was unable to duplicate his journey. Well… perhaps there’s still time…
Stop calling them “tourists”. These are Professional Scientists performing research vital to the survival of mankind in the most dangerous of conditions. [/sarc]
AP knows little about shipping. How about the Russian Maritime Register?
Their following list describes some ships as “Ice Breakers” as well as “Scientific-Research”. The Akademik Shokalskiy is listed under “Passenger Ships and Passenger Ships (unberthed) “
http://www.rs-head.spb.ru/app/fleet.php?index=810141&type=book1&language=eng
AKADEMIK SHOKALSKIY….
“Basic type: Passenger ship
Subtypes: Cruise”
http://www.rs-head.spb.ru/app/fleet.php?index=810141&type=book1&language=eng
Maybe Mr. Turney should write for AP. 😉
Speaking of Bolt; guess who’s on vacation in Unzid?
Vessel given the all-clear by NZ authorities:
http://nz.sports.yahoo.com/news/mpi-gives-icebreaker-clear-035616882–spt.html
Aaron Russ expects to depart with the next expedition on time:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Icebreaker-Akademik-Shokalskiy-arrives-in-Bluff/tabid/417/articleID/328422/Default.aspx
This is a tourist trip – no science:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10858934
Totally unrelated to the saga of the Akademic Shokalskiy, I had occasion yesterday to research the details behind the extreme roll incident of the Pacific Sun in 2007, depicted in this YouTube video. Views of the interior conditions can be seen here .
You can read the inquiry report from the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch here . It makes interesting reading. As is often the case it was not one single event or misjudgement which got the ship in such trouble, but a sequence of them.
I assume there will be come kind of official inquiry whenever a ship at sea signals distress, but in this case I do not know under what jurisdiction it will be held. The Akademic Shokalskiy is Russian flagged, but Australia somehow ended up with operational responsibility for the incident, so my guess is the inquiry will be held by Australian authorities.
It will be interesting to read the inquiry report when it becomes available. Perhaps Australian readers could monitor and report.
I botched one of the links above. External footage of the Pacific Sun rolling can be seen here . In case I botched it again, the link is: .
And the burning question of the day is whether WUWT/Wordpress will have a preview feature before someone develops a practical thorium reactor. Difficult to say which one would be a greater benefit to civilization, but here’s hoping for both.