Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Scientists worried about global warming have embarked on a project to preserve the world’s glacial ice core record, by air freighting selected ice cores to a storage facility in Antarctica.
Scientists fly glacial ice to south pole to unlock secrets of global warming
In a few weeks, researchers will begin work on a remarkable scientific project. They will drill deep into the Col du Dôme glacier on Mont Blanc and remove a 130 metre core of ice. Then they will fly it, in sections, by helicopter to a laboratory in Grenoble before shipping it to Antarctica. There the ice core will be placed in a specially constructed vault at the French-Italian Concordia research base, 1,000 miles from the south pole.
The Col du Dôme ice will become the first of several dozen other cores, extracted from glaciers around the world, that will be added to the repository over the next few years. The idea of importing ice to the south pole may seem odd – the polar equivalent of taking coals to Newcastle – but the project has a very serious aim, researchers insist.
Earth’s glaciers are now melting at a unprecedented rate as a result of global warming – and that poses a serious scientific problem. As ice forms on a glacier, it encloses small bubbles of air that contain a sample of the atmosphere at that time. From these samples, scientists can measure atmospheric concentrations of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane over periods that range from hundreds to tens of thousands of years into the past.
“Ice cores are like books,” said project leader Jérôme Chappellaz, of the Glaciology Laboratory in Grenoble. “Each year a new layer of ice is put down and adds a page to that book, one that records data from a particular year of the glacier’s life. It tells us what concentration of gases and pollutants were in the atmosphere at a particular time. And the deeper we go down into the glacier, the further back in time we travel. Unfortunately, as our glaciers melt, the pages of these books – both the ancient and the more recent ones – are being destroyed.”
The Guardian story also provides a link to a more complete description of Jérôme’s “saving ice in danger” project.
I can’t help thinking that Jérôme’s team could have saved some money, by renting a cold storage room for a few decades. But an urgent rescue flight to Antarctica, to save large lumps of ice, is probably more fun, and will provide great footage for project film maker Luc Jacquet, who in 2005 produced the award winning documentary “March of the Penguins”.
Just in case you think American taxpayers won’t be helping to fund this adventure, think again – according to “saving ice in danger”, the project is backed by UNESCO and the IPCC.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Every time lousy science wastes millions some sound science is denied funding.
Considering the many billions being misappropriated for climate causes the deniers of funding for sound science are literally killing people that would otherwise be saved.
Is this worth it? I don’t think so.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2016/10-ship-naming/
…and the “Name our ship” our ship website is offline while essential updates are being made … “in the meantime please enjoy watching the baby penguin while you wait.”
I was going to suggest the name “SS Boondoggle”, not only because of the future plans for research, but because their primary historic research claim to fame:
“British Antarctic Survey scientists’ discovery of the ozone hole in the 1980s, following many decades of monitoring, was crucial to the Montreal Protocol, one of the most successful international agreements ever. British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists were not only leaders in monitoring stratospheric ozone but also made important breakthroughs in understanding the atmospheric chemistry that led to ozone depletion. Our continued investment in ozone research still provides abundant evidence for policymaking.”
“Saving Ice in Danger”
Ooooohhh sounds so dramatic.
“Saving the Polar Bears” I guess is losing its cool hip factor.
Not that preserving ice cores is a bad idea, it’s just all the propaganda around it that requires a barf bag.
“I can’t help thinking that Jérôme’s team could have saved some money, by renting a cold storage room for a few decades.”
Surely the energy cost for transporting the cores to Antarctica is dwarfed by the energy cost of decades of cold storage.
If the dollar cost of transport to Antarctica is more, that’s probably just because of red tape. Don’t forget to factor in the cost of backup power to make sure cores in cold storage are not lost to a power failure.
“But an urgent rescue flight to Antarctica”
It’s being planed well in advance. While they will have a tight time window for the flight once they get that far, it’s hardly an urgent rescue flight.
MattS March 28, 2016 at 10:05 am
Mmmm … I’d have to see the numbers on that. Once something is well insulated and frozen, it doesn’t take much energy to keep it cold.
Also, presumably the cores are still being studied … which means that instead of being able to study them locally, everyone interested will have to go to Antarctica and spend weeks there to study them, more fossil fuel costs for their travel, plus piles of red tape. We’re talking multiple trips, not just one to move the ice.
And while it may not cost much to keep ice cores cold in Antarctica, it takes a lot of energy to keep scientists warm there, not to mention the energy costs of feeding them there, where all food is flown in …
w.
I live in Newcastle and there used to be a thriving coal industry here. hence the expression taking coals to Newcastle; an exercise in futility! The coal became too expensive to mine, so this industry has long gone.Thanks though to loopy warmists we can replace that expression with: “Taking ice cores to Antarctica”
Anything to justify intercontinental air trips with thousands of tons of CO2 emissions in the name of saving the earth…
I’ve been very skeptical of the notion that a bubble of air trapped in ice could provide any meaningful knowledge about the state of the globe.
In my meager attempts to learn about these ice cores, I’ve read that there are continual forces acting on these bubbles even though we consider them trapped. Scientists use reconstructive methods on their measurements to compensate for these forces that have been acting for extensive periods of time. In effect, it seemed to me that these ice core bubbles reflect more of a 300 year global average rather than a discrete snapshot of environmental conditions. Yet we compare these values to specific annual measurements of today.
If we already have tens of thousands of ice cores from around the world stored in a facility in Colorado, why do we continue to drill holes in the very ice that we are told is so necessary for our survival?
The core drillers need to fill the deep holes with a liquid while they’re drilling to keep the drill-bit from freezing in place, they use either kerosene or n-butyl acetate. These are the environmentalists doing this, using fossil fuels to disparage fossil fuels.
“Earth’s glaciers are now melting at a unprecedented rate as a result of global warming …”.
===========================
Preposterous, some glaciers are retreating some are advancing as they always have, NASA reports net gain of the Antarctic ice mass yet the above glib statement and others like it (“Antarctic sea ice extent continues to make headlines because it has grown even as much of the globe, and Antarctica itself, is warming …” WUWT March 24) are regularly made in the media and accepted without any substantiation whatsoever as in ‘everyone knows that’.
Finally, Chris Hanley said it: Preposterous!
Again, some of these climate scientists assume too much. They think all the glaciers are melting. They think we are currently experiencing unprecedented atmospheric temperatures. They operate on false assumptions.
These claims ought to be slapped down every time they are made. Thanks Chris.
These folks are not stupid, liars yes but not stupid. Considering the future dilemma of preserving Ice core with refrigeration units powered by “green energy” invokes the specter of intermittent power supply issues and loss by melting. even they know what they propose for the future is untenable. The only solution is to store the cores where subzero is the zietgeist.