THEY went to the Arctic lamenting global warming, but ever since they got there they have been wishing for warmer weather. That was how I started a post earlier this year, about three Brits who set off for the North Pole in February hoping to draw attention to the issue of global warming and take a few measurements of ice thinning along the way.
Still 500 kilometres from the North Pole the team now plan to be “lifted off the ice” by the end of this week because it’s just too cold – too cold to keep going and too cold to get the measurements they intended.
According to Steven Goddard blogging at WUWT, “I believe that they have done a fantastic job educating the public about the Arctic. Their mission has been followed breathlessly by BBC and Guardian reporters, who previously believed that the Arctic had melted and become a place for sunbathing.
“Following the daily reports of ice, cold, frostbite, hypothermia, pain and general misery being endured by the team – even the most daft newspaper reporter must be aware now that the Arctic is a very cold and icy place.”
According to the Catlin website, the three members of the expedition have been reflecting and commenting on how one of the many truly positive aspects of the expedition is the way in which they’ve worked so well together.
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Catlin Arctic Ice Survey Packing It Up – What Have They Accomplished?
By Steven Goddard, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/11/catlin-artic-ice-survey-packing-it-up-what-have-they-accomplished/ Above image also from this blog post.
AGW Activists Wishing for Warmer Weather, by Jennifer Marohasy
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/04/agw-activists-wishing-for-warmer-weather/
Catlin Arctic Survey, http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
“For the sake of our children and grandchildren, I pray that we will heed the findings of the Catlin Arctic Survey, and I can only commend this remarkably important project to you.” HRH The Prince of Wales.
The principle sponsor, the Catlin Group Limited, is a leading global specialty insurer and reinsurer writing more than 30 classes of business. We provide creative risk management solutions and excellent financial security to clients worldwide.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
WWF, Prince Charles and the rest of the promoters should be held to account for this farce.
There should be a well publicised and detailed carbon and pollution accounting process carried out by the promoters showing the action taken to clean up the fuel and food dumps and all other impacts that this schemozzle created.
How about it WWF?
Are you now going to convince the world that you’re really fair dinkum?
Scary science as well from Jennifer as from the activists. Arctic can be defined as :
” The Arctic region can be defined as the area north of the Arctic Circle (66° 33’N), which is the approximate limit of the midnight sun and the polar night. Alternatively, it can be defined as the region where the average temperature for the warmest month (July) is below 10 °C (50 °F); the northernmost tree line roughly follows the isotherm at the boundary of this region.[3][4] Socially and politically, the Arctic region includes the northern territories of the eight Arctic states, including Sapmi, although by natural science definitions much of this territory is considered subarctic.”
Jennifer has once again forgotten the vast areas we are dealing with( remember her post about Churchill, which is a SUB Arctic region).
Remember as well that the world’s most northern outpost for human settlement is Svalbard , and it’s a whole 1000km from Svalbard to the North Pole!
And it is never warm in the springtime up in the north….
spangled drongo – WWF and Chuckles and co. should do the decent thing and offer themselves to the next polar bear.
Ann Novek – “it’s never warm in springtime up there in the north”
I’ll remember that! Can you still freeze in summer as well?
Can’t wait for the spin.
Pure publicity stunt, nothing more, nothing less. The good thing is that Mother Nature tried to teach them an important lesson, but I’ll bet She failed, since the people that do these moronic things are extrememy arrogant (to be kind). They should have gotten the Darwin Award for 2009.
There was this agw-booster who used to post over at Bolt’s, who always closed his rubbish with “and still the ice keeps melting”.
What a tool.
If you’re out there – how stupid do you feel now?
Anne, and others, you can cut and paste this anyway you want; these bozos went to the Arctic specifically to demonstrate that it was melting and to establish AGW was real; they failed. If their backers and the supporters of AGW were rational people proper doubts about AGW sould now be expressed by these same people; but, as your comments demonstrate, being rational is not part of their make-up.
At least my awareness has been raised, about what I am not yet sure, but it sure has been raised, which was the whole point of the expedition, surely!
Personally I think these activists only were out for a media stunt and serious climate ( AGW) people shouldn’t support such things. There are serious people out there doing serious science about climate , such as the Norwegian Polar Institute.
The Norwegians were out the whole April last year studying polar bears in Svalbard and said it was damned cold ( about- 28 C) . Still they see the ice melting , but not in this time of the season!
If you want to check the temperature in Svalbard and look at the surroundings check their paper Svalbardposten:
http://www.svalbardposten.no/
If you want to check out how it looks in subArctic Sweden , latitude 60 degrees north , check my blog:)!
Ice chart Svalbard:
http://www.svalbardposten.no/iskart ( Updated daily)
” Their mission has been followed breathlessly by BBC and Guardian reporters, who previously believed that the Arctic had melted and become a place for sunbathing. ” – Jennifer Marohasy
I don’t know why Jennifer reports this story in such exaggerated way ( suppose it’s the blog style).
I admit that climate change is not my area , but I doubt the journos at those mentioned papers had believed that the Arctic had melted away!!!
And don’t the models predict that the Arctic will be ice free only during the summer months???
I also know that institute’s like the Norwegian Polar Institute , believes that climate change consists of BOTH a natural factor and a human factor.
Jennifer has just reported the statement from the source at WUWT.
“Their mission has been followed breathlessly by BBC and Guardian reporters, who previously believed that the Arctic had melted and become a place for sunbathing.
Following the daily reports of ice, cold, frostbite, hypothermia, pain and general misery being endured by the team – even the most daft newspaper reporter must be aware now that the Arctic is a very cold and icy place.”
http://www.surfersvillage.com/gal/pictures/ArcticSunbathe-Francois_Len.jpg
Probably courtesy of Photoshop.
That’s right dhmo, Jennifer has uncritically reproduced an obviously false statement from WUWT.
What’s your point?
It is not an obviously false statement and it is not Jennifers position to criticize WUWT. If you have a problem take it up with WUWT don’t be ridiculous. The interviews I have seen by daft reporters who seriously report anything they are told means it is entirely possible they will report sunbathing is possible.
One of my ” whale circle” friends told me that he had received a photo from one of his female whale researchers, showing a totally naked whale researcher sunbathing in Arctic Canada , only with a total sun block stick!!!:))))
“and take a few measurements of ice thinning along the way. ” Errrr……Jennifer perhaps they could have used the mouse to obtain the data, nevertheless I anxiously await the results.
But is this the best bit of “tantalising” rubbish you could provide? You are indeed skating on thin ice.:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic_thinice.html
The image
http://www.surfersvillage.com/gal/pictures/ArcticSunbathe-Francois_Len.jpg
does not have the initial appearance of digital modification. Judging from the foot and hand prints in the snow, a couple of people parially disrobed enter left & hastily sat down for a photo. They had not even been there long enough to move their hands much. In a short time, hands would have become rather painful.
Then you look at shadows of arms on bodies and you ask why the female has a shadow of her right arm over her back, from armpit down. Why does the guy have no similar shadow?
Next you notice that the shadow on the snow from the guy’s left hand, closest of all hands to the camera, actually throws a shadow further away than that from the girl’s right hand nearby, which is more distant from the camera. Can’t all happen like this with the apparent sun angle.
As usual, with photos of strange events like UFOs, the quality of the image is not good enough to do proper analytical work.
(Is Anne Novek trying to be funny, or is she , well, thick?)
If ever an ‘expedition’ cast ridicule and insult at Polar research, it is this one. From their dodgy methodology, their seeking out of (rare) one year ice, and the mess they have created, this little bunch of no-hopers brings their AGW stance into total disrepute. Perhaps that is at least a bonus!
The backers should share some of the blame and disgrace – Prince Charles’ support is mightily disappointing – someone needs to take him aside and have a rather frank and open talk to him, not to mention a swift kick.
I take note of Prince Charles’ comment. Yes, there is a lesson here for us, our children and grand-children. It is freaking cold up there! But as a Canadian, I already knew that. Chuck should go back to conversing with plants.
The Catlin Adventurers are by now probably familiar with the song of the Kee Kee Bird – Kee kee riste it’s C C Cold up here.
Hope they get off the ice OK
Their expedition is a perfect metaphor for teh whole global warming ponzi scheme.
Set off on a journey to find evidence of global warming (so guess what you’ll find), carry on with multiple publicity stunts and use fake data (their “live” biometric data that came from a canned data file).
The only thing missing was the team carrying hockey sticks.
I read elsewhere that these dummies didn’t even bother to bring Vapor-Barrier Liners for their sleeping bags! Without the VBLs, the H2O gas given off by their bodies will condense in the outermost part of the sleeping bags, thereby degrading the dead air space that’s responsible for the insulating effect in the first place. At least one scientifically literate manufacturer (Stephenson’s Warmlite) has been building VBLs into their sleeping bags for more than 30 years.
That pesky weather again caption competition on WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/12/caption-this-photo/
FDB,
One of the signs of a true believer is that they opt for a humorectomy in the area of their true belief.
If you seriously think WUWT is promoting the idea that the Arctic has become a sun bathing capital, you are fer sure suffering from the effects of a humorectomy. It was a joke caption.
And, by the way, our world is not going to end due to a climate catastrophe.
These people should have been given mental stability tests before embarking on this escapade.
The people who encouraged them to do it, and the people who continued to egg them on, knowing very well what an imbecile stunt this has been – really ought to be horsewhipped.
Heaven only knows I hope they don’t return and continue life as global warming “activists”.
They would do a world of good by returning and reporting exactly what they discovered: the validity of this “global warming” charade couldn’t be farther from reality than anybody’s wildest fantasy.
Arctic Activists – hmmm, someone who is close to freezing would not usually be described as “activist”. Oh, it’s a political term, and not a physical one. 🙂
Stupid is, as stupid does! Let us not forget that Prince Charles, Al Gore and Hansen all believe the ice is melting contrary to the evidence. Oh, but they are using a tape measure, so this is about as good as science gets even at the Goddard Institute run by Hansen. The Chinese and Russians, who do not believe in Global Warming must be cracking up at the idiots runing the United States and most of Europe. It will not be Islam that brings down Europe. It will be the serioulsy deranged lunatics running the show!
One of the main aims of this “expedition” was to gain evidence of Arctic ice thinning and present this to the Copenhagen conference later on this year.
This is still the objective. And they will present this and it will be hailed as great evidence. Any other aspect of the expedition will be spun away.
I forgot to include this with the last post.
Christopher Booker
Toxic; the ice trend appears to be recovering from the +ve PDO from 1979-2000; I’m not sure what your problem is; after all, if increasing CO2 was causing ice melt how could there be a recovery when CO2 is still trending up?
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090504_Figure2.png
They say a trend outside the 2 deviation standard is unnatural; that standard is inself unnatural because it doesn’t consider the prevaling PDO climate phase.
I have come to the conclusion that our polititians can’t be this stupid. I have looked at the evidence, and I dove into the original source data when available, and have come to the conclusion that the recent climate optimum is ending. Will it be a new Dalton minimum? or perhaps a Maunder minimum event? According to the past 500 million years of cycles, it could be the end of the Holocene. That’s pretty hard to call, since one lifetime just won’t be long enough to tell. I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but a few facts are knawing at me.
I once thought this was all about putting one over on the taxpayer, by making a lot of whoopla over the warming, and collecting carbon taxes to fund more nanny state stuff. Now I think the Govmnt. is using mis-direction intentionally to throw everyone off the real purpose of all this hype.
We have had increasing grain harvests every year for many years, but surplus stockpiles have dropped from 60 months in 1998 to only 15 months in 2008. That tells me that the population is out consuming production despite ever increasing harvests.
We have had tremendous cooling since 1998 that has been largely mitigated by the oceanic heat sinks, and moderated by the ice caps. The rate of cooling capable of building this much ice, and cooling the oceans if only slightly, is staggering.
If the earth cools much more, we will see northern crop failures all over, and with dwindling stockpiles of grain, there is not much more than a year’s supply before mass starvation grips the population. We all know what happened in France during the little ice age: starvation, death, disease, and revolution.
Could this be why the Bush admin. was revitalising and modernising cold war bunkers with no appearant reason? Could they know? Why has the Obama admin. not stopped the work?
We could be on the cusp of life changing events. Is it time to stockpile dried foods before “A barrel of gold will not buy a loaf of bread, and a quart of wheat will be a day’s wage”?
“This year, the summer melt came a little early,” Hadow said during a Webcast conference from Resolute Bay in northern Canada. “We would have rather reached the Pole if we could have, but we’ve always regarded (getting there) as the cherry on the cake.”
The summer melt came a little early?
http://www.heraldonline.com/wire/world/story/1342700.html
Here’s the word from a world class scientist who lives in Alaska. All they had to do was ask him.
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/climate.php
Man is but an atom in a vast universe
to assauge the fear of irrelvance he creates importance
there are many feats and acts of self aggrandizment
Al Gore has propelled himself in a clever way to reach that
faux nirvana where men especially need to go else they sense
the meaningless of their purpose and their distance from God
only women have that extra connection to life as they may bear its fruits
and as such connect to the cosmos in a small way
yet we drift about on our little raft uncertain of anything
we must conjur constantly to distract and amuse and pretend
that we really can and do effect a mechansim we have no clue about
so onward mankind as deluded as ever!
Only know that your ancestors suffered mightily to survive an indifferent mother
nature cares not whether we exist and only we can dirty our own bliss
how ironic that our feats of triumph to survive our sorry souls
is resulting now in a hubris that eclipses the notions of Socrates and Aristotle
who sat in robes on stone under clear night skies imagining our existance
now only the angels laugh as we are the fodder for their comedic cries.
Most comments on this thread take the view that the expeditioners have been shown to be ridiculous, and that, as a publicity stunt it has failed.
Unfortunately I think that may be giving too much credit to the onlookers and the media.
The other night I watched an item on “our ABC” television which showed footage said to be from the expedition and which purported to demonstrate how thin the ice had become.
The method was a model of media bullshit. A man (I think) who was wearing some sort of yellow exposure suit (or something) stood on some ice saying how afraid he was that it would prove too thin to hold his weight.
What a surprise! It was too thin to hold his weight! But of course he had chosen what was very clearly a thin piece of ice close to the edge of an expanse of water (which may well have been the edge of the icesheet, I don’t know and nor does anyone else).
See Peter stand on the thin ice. Look, the ice is cracking. Oh goodness! See Peter fall into the water. This pathetic little charade was accompanied by commentary to the effect that global warming was becoming more serious and that unless we “do something” about it, it will get irretrievably worse.
I cannot begin to imagine what vacuous fool came up with this sort of drivel. Nor can I imagine what kind of idiot might actually be persuaded that it has the remotest connection to anything in the real world.
And yet….And yet, there it is being promoted on ABC television by some earnest talking head!
It is truly incredible.
Of course these dummies have to take some responsibility for their lost toes and fingers. After initially choking back laughter at their plight one realises that its not really that funny, its pretty sad. And this happened to another group of female protesters that went up there a while back. These people, alarmists themselves, are also victims of the relentless lying of the alarmists more generally. So are millions being hurt by hunger at the moment and people who will be hurt by high energy prices. Hunger and high energy prices go together by the way.
Its just unethical to lie all the time. Because if millions of leftists lie all the time then many people are convinced by these lies. And they make decisions on this basis. They wind up in the arctic and lose toes and fingers and things. We can laugh at it but its really not funny for the people involved.
I grew up around a lot of hot beaches but the worst case of sunstroke I ever got was in the Arctic.