Stuck In The Non-Existent Ice

As I noted on Twitter yesterday, you’d have to have a heart of stone to not laugh out loud at this.

Also:

As a commenter there notes, irony, like revenge, is a dish best served cold. Very cold.

25 thoughts on “Stuck In The Non-Existent Ice”

  1. I viewed the 3-part You-Tube on Steve McIntyre’s lecture to Heartland (yes, Heartland) on “Hide the Decline.”

    He starts off his talk by saying that whether the predicted doubling of CO2 will have an adverse effect or even any effect is an important question, but that his criticism of Mann, et al. and their Hockey Stick neither proves nor disproves whether CO2 will noticably and adversely change the climate. In other words, Mann et al. could be doing it all wrong, and their temperature record/proxy “proof” of Climate Change/Global Warming could be complete nonsense, but this still begs the question of whether CO2 emissions are a problem (or not). He goes on to say that to the extent that Mann and his colleagues are sloppy in their scientific procedures, such a thing is harmful to making a determination of whether “global warming is for real” and what actions we need to take.

    A lot of nonsense is taking place in the discussion of this subject. Like blaming Superstorm Sandy on Climate Change. Or blaming the Philippine typhoon on Climate Change. And yes, even blaming the Russian ship turning into the Shackleton Expedition.

    OK, enjoy the irony, that the Climate Change brigades will shove Sandy in our faces, shove Haiyan in our faces, but an “extreme weather event” “the other way” is simply “what kind of an idiot are you, that is ‘just weather.'”

    Repeat it with me. Sandy is just weather. Haiyan, tragic as it was, is just weather (someone around here tried to spread some nonsense that it was anything other, with “I dare you to tell that to the people in the Philippines”), and yes, the stuck Russian ship in the Antarctic . . . is just weather.

  2. My concern is that if they do have to pull a Shackleton, and walk and row to Elephant Island before sailing to South Georgia Island, well, they’re probably a bunch of tree-hugging vegetarians, so not even cannibalism will save any of them.

    1. I read “Endurance” it was a phenomenal story. If I had to bet, I’d bet none of the tree hyggers have the kind of moxey it takes to pull a Full Shackleton.

    1. ” I wonder what kind of post-traumatic councelling would be required”

      What about counselling for the penguins? Putting up with eco-nuts must be traumatic for them. The smell alone must be terrible.

  3. OK, Jim tells me I am often not well-informed, so the rest of you may as well pile on.

    The NBC Nightly News with Brian WIlliams, Lester Holt substituting, calls them “scientists.” You call them “eco nuts.” Just who is on this ship, what are they doing there, and what are they trying to prove? Maybe if you fill me, I will share in your schadenfreude.

    1. Well the Daily Mail refers to the attendees as:

      ” The crew of 48 passengers and 26 researchers pose for a holiday photograph in the depths of Antarctica”

      And the leader of the expedition as :

      “Chris Turney, a climate scientist and leader of the expedition, ….”

      Though they don’t give his degrees and experience.

      Fox News reports him as:

      “Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at Australia’s University of New South Wales, ”

      And he has evidently written a book:

      Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past

      The Fox article puts it very nicely:

      “But Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at Australia’s University of New South Wales, said it was “silly” to suggest he and 73 others aboard the MV Akademic Shokalskiy were trapped in ice they’d sought to prove had melted. He remained adamant that sea ice is melting, even as the boat remained trapped in frozen seas.”

      Turney is clearly a monk in the AGW religion.

    2. I am just mocking. I am sure the people who were trapped by ice trying to document the ravages global warming has done to polar sea ice are not nutty at all. The probably were very rational about choosing when to go, doing lots of research on predicted weather patterns.

      So I was wrong to use the term eco nut. But I do wonder about their methodology and how their research would be reported. Had they found clear sailing, it is doubtful the season they chose for the voyage would have had any impact on their conclusions.

  4. I don’t understand… how that that ship be stuck in the ice? Surely, they have papers and models aboard proving that the ice can’t be there in summer, and can thus us them at any time to browbeat the ice out of the way by endlessly vacuously citing “consensus” and “97%”, etc…

  5. Well, my problem-solving engineering brain kicked in, and I think they could free their ship by melting a path through the ice with a liberal dose of burning irony.

  6. It is easy to write them off as eco-nuts and revel in the schadenfreude, but repeating the experiments of Maswon 100 years later is a worthwhile scientific endeavor.

    1. Care to point out which specific experiments of Mawson would really be worthwhile to carry out today? I’m not talking for nostalgic reason’s, but rather those that might actually yield real data on phenomena we might not yet fully understand. This trip was a PR stunt, otherwise why bring along the eco-tourists that will now greatly raise the cost of the rescue. If it were just a group of scientist, they could wait out the ice on the ship until it melts later this summer.

      1. They’ve been measuring ocean temperature and salinity in the same locations as Mawson. And no, they can’t just wait it out. It is mid summer there right now, and if they can’t get the boat out it could be stuck there for years – if the ice doesn’t crush it first.

  7. Can’t they just rev the ships diesel engines so as to raise the surrounding CO2 concentrations high enough to simply melt all the ice away? 420 PPM should do it, no?

  8. Another humorous opbservation:

    “Cute how these Warmists who hate fossil fuels take a trip to the Antarctic to show just how horrible fossil-fueled climate change is, then need rescue from their fossil-fueled trip by other fossil-fueled ships and helicopters, which still can’t rescue them,” wrote one blogger

    I think they should insist upon being rescued ONLY by solar or wind powered vehicles.

  9. OK, OK. So this is a ship full of “scientists”, “documentary filmmakers”, and “eco tourists” who were on an exhibition to get us film footage of how the Antarctic is warming and the penquins are suffering, complete with ominous music, somber narration, and Hockey Stick charts, only they got themselves stuck fast in the ice — Shackelton style?

    Alright, already, I “get” the irony.

    But isn’t Climate Change beyond falsification? That the increased CO2 is revving up moisture, which brings more snow and hence “unusual” levels of ice . . . in Antarctica?

    1. Climate change beyond falsification? I honestly don’t know a single sceptic who denies the climate changes — past, present or future. The issue is how big a driver CO2 is with respect to all the other factors. Alarmist would have us believe that CO2 is the dominant driver in climate change since the 19th century and they use their models to make their case. Skeptics would point out that the models have failed to yield accurate predictions of the Earth’s incredibly complex climate system, thus the climate scientist need to go back to their drawing board and get things right before encouraging political and social changes that would force the rest of accept pre-industrial lifestyles.

    2. “But isn’t Climate Change beyond falsification?”

      Only in the same sense that the Sun is what causes daylight: i.e. the climate always changes.

      “That the increased CO2 is revving up moisture, which brings more snow and hence “unusual” levels of ice . . . in Antarctica?”

      Ho ho the latest attempt to salvage discredited models….

      No, sorry, that statement is not “beyond falsification”.

  10. The captain of the Shokalsky is Igor Kiselyov, I’m assuming from his name that he (and the crew) came with the charter of the ship.
    The captain and only the captain can be held responsible if the ship becoming trapped was a result of human error.

  11. It’s brainiacs like this one who so clearly illustrate a total disconnect from reality:

    ” Particularly vexing is what seems to be a devil-may-care attitude expressed by some of those on the trapped ship.

    This was on display in a New Year’s Eve singalong posted on YouTube, but more so in a Christmas Day comment by the expedition’s marine ecologist Tracy Rogers, quoted by the BBC:

    “It’s fantastic – I love it when the ice wins and we don’t,” said expedition marine ecologist Tracy Rogers.”

    I wonder if she’ll love it if she has a Shackleton Experience…or what she’ll be thinking if (hopefully not) she has an Amundsen moment…..

    http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/rescue-effort-for-trapped-antarctic-voyage-disrupts-serious-science/?_r=2&

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