Spokesman Alvin Stone tells The Australian that the stranding of their vessel, Akademik Shokalskiy, has been misconstrued.
“One of the misconceptions is that this is a climate-change voyage full of climate scientists, which is actually not true,” he says.
“There are a couple of climate scientists on board, but it is just a scientific expedition and it is quite broad, with biologists, geographers, looking at penguin and seal populations and a whole lot of other things.
Nothing to do with climate change? Expedition leader Chris ‘The Penguin’ Turney explains the aims of the expedition in August 2013:
We are gong to discover just how much has changed in the last 100 years since the Mawson Expedition…melding science and adventure…a major research programme…looking at islands that are facing the uncertain impact of a warming planet….and trying to understand past climate to inform the present, the Southern Ocean plays a crucial role in global climate and the carbon cycle and the latest research suggests large changes are afoot..we will be collecting precious data on sea temperatures and salinity:
Note he also states that Commonwealth bay is badly clogged with sea ice limiting access over the last three years…he says they will try to reach Mawson’s hut but if unsuccessful will push on to other ice free locations and continue the work.
Good luck with that…oh…too late….didn’t listen to his own advice obviously!
I was going to add this to David’s indepth look at the troubled Antarctic expedition and the BBC’s less than perfect coverage but it grew too big as I linked through so here’s something the BBC aren’t mentioning (ironically from the Expediton’s Online who organised the trip):
Near Record Sea Ice in Antarctica (again)
The sea ice extent in Antarctica attained a near-record high level of 18.7 million square kilometres in mid-August this year, according to studies by the USA National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Normally averaging 18 million square kilometres at the height of winter, the increase is part of a long-term trend and is paradoxically consistent with how scientists believe global warming may affect the southern ocean around Antarctica.
oops….Somebody may have got it wrong:
The Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre says:
Changes in Antarctic sea ice extent are predicted under future climate change scenarios, although models for the 21st century show wide variability with a 25-40% decrease predicted.
Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say that the melting of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica has suddenly slowed right down in the last few years, confirming earlier research which suggested that the shelf’s melt does not result from human-driven global warming. Dr Pierre Dutrieux of the BAS states bluntly: “We found ocean melting of the glacier was the lowest ever recorded, and less than half of that observed in 2010. This enormous, and unexpected, variability contradicts the widespread view that a simple and steady ocean warming in the region is eroding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”
GRAINY film footage from Douglas Mawson’s epic Antarctic survey and expedition provides lasting proof that when the adventurer’s team reached Commonwealth Bay exactly 100 years ago, it was free of sea ice.
The BBC had on writer Sarah Wheeler a few days ago who claimed it was the Mertz Glacier collapsing which produced the ice…to everyone’s complete surprise apparently….as I mentioned earlier
Here is expedition leader, Chris Turney’s explanation:
It has been a sobering week.
The conditions we are experiencing over the Shokalskiy are a result of the frequent and deep low pressure systems that encircle the continent. In combination with a funnelling effect from the ice sheet, these lows are producing strong and pervasive winds from the southeast. The wind is not unusual but what is unexpected is the major reconfiguration of thick multi-year sea ice to the east of the Mertz Glacier. In 2010, a large iceberg known as B09B, calved from the continent and collided spectacularly with the extended tongue of the Mertz Glacier. The knock-on effect has been that Commonwealth Bay has filled with sea ice (termed ‘fast ice’), preventing direct access from the sea to Mawson’s main hut at Cape Denison. Unfortunately for the AAE, it appears the region has just undergone a massive reconfiguration of sea ice, years after the loss of the Mertz Glacier tongue.
So nothing to do with climate change….no melting glacier as implied by Wheeler….a massive iceberg hit the protruding ‘tongue’ of the Mertz Glacier knocking it off in 2010…the bay coast then became clad in ‘fast ice’ which clogged the bay…as already known by Turney before the expedition began.
Sea ice research at ACE CRC tells us that:
Sea ice is frozen seawater. It forms when the surface layer of the ocean becomes cold enough to freeze, not to be confused with icebergs, which have their origin in land glaciers.
Here is the Sunday Mail’s latest on the foolishness:
A university researcher has accused a group of scientists of carrying out an expedition to the Antarctic “on the cheap”.
Robert Headland, of Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute, blamed the team for not investing in a ship suitable to the ‘easily predictable’ sea ice.
Passengers, scientists and journalists were evacuated from the ship via helicopter on January 2, but the Russian crew must wait until the ice thins before heading home.
Mr Headland said: “The team were in an area where it is common for ice to suddenly build up, and instead of using an icebreaker, they used an ice-strengthened ship, which is totally unsuitable.”
The team were taking the ship, which cannot break ice sheets and can only operate in light ice, around to repeat measurements taken by Douglas Mawson, an Australian explorer, in 1912.
It is thought that the rescue will cost £220,000.
I [Chris Turney] am an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor of Climate Change at the University of University of New South Wales where my team and I are focussing our efforts on using the past to better understand the changes we are seeing today. To do something positive about climate change, I helped set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.
So…the expedition is based on climate change research…they knew already that there was huge amounts of sea ice present…and the expedition leader has a vested interest in AGW.
Shame the BBC doesn’t seem to want to look at all this indepth.
Yep!……Whatever the weather the BBC and their allies have got this topic covered…….Here’s a frothing at the mouth denialist approaching the subject from “naturalnews”…
Obviously he’s a “Fascist” where the BBC and their Guardianista friends are concerned…
http://www.naturalnews.com/043395_freezing_weather_global_warming_scientific_evidence.html
‘Global warming, in other words, is climate voodoo. Worshippers of the false science can invoke it to explain any event whatsoever: hurricanes (or lack of hurricanes), tornados (or lack of tornados), too much rainfall or too little rainfall, high temperatures, low temperatures, and basically any event that we used to simply call “weather.”
Well, gee, if ALL weather events are evidence of global warming, then you have to ask yourself this simple, commonsense question: Which weather evidence would be evidence of global cooling?The answer is “None.” Because ALL weather events are invoked as evidence of global warming.’
Brilliant.
Pop the words “Cairo” and “snow” into google and you get several news outlets covering this story
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/cairo-snow-egyptian-capital-sees-2923418
‘Cairo snow: Egyptian capital sees snowfall for the first time in 112 YEARS’
BBC News doesn’t appear to cover this. Strange because the BBC are often keen to bring us unusual weather stories.
Still I expect the Met Office are busy crunching the world temperature figures for 2013 and the BBC are waiting with baited breath so as to trumpet the “fact” that last year was a record warm year. Yeah, right.
Just pathological liars, really, aren’t they? The BBC (very much) included.
Helena Kennedy was on Andrew Marr yesterday and stated with great meteorological certainty (for a barrister) that the recent spate of storms in the UK were the result of climate change and those who didn’t agree were “deniers” – to be aligned to Holocaust Deniers.
Andrew Marr supported this view as any BBC employee would.
Baroness Kennedy is, of course, correct. In the past, the UK never had any winter storms nor strong winds until AGW reared its ugly head – just some light rain and the occasional stiff breeze.
She on strike today I wonder-or do we have a scab on our hands…and what does the Beeb think of its interviewing such strike breakers.
Arthur and Len deserve better Marrdy boy!
Most riverside towns/villages have a fixed calibrated indicator board somewhere near to the river bank showing the depth of flood water over the past 100 years or so. In most if not all cases these show previous flood levels in excess of those we are experiencing now. Furthermore local libraries have photographs in their archives of people at the turn of the centenary up to their knees or worse in flood water with others taking to rowing boats to move their possessions to safety or conduct their trade. These of course do not represent what the Global warmers consider to be proper ‘science’ upon which to base their speculations . They are in fact a true record, an inconvenient truth as far as they are concerned.
Problem is all of the current reporting is analysis free
Unless you know how much rain fell, on what ground, the watercourses floodwater passed, through the state of drainage and dredging of riverbeds, the amount of urban spillage onto floodplains and the affect of recent flood control schemes it is impossible to determine whether things are getting worse. In a nation with a growing population and increasing density in some areas where flooding has been prevalent in the past (ie around rivers) it seems to me that increased disruption is inevitabel – and nothing to do with the elevl of rainfall which while a bit weteter than average this year is certainbly not exceptional on climactic timescales
P..p..p..pick up a Penguin eh?
No matter how much it costs, how many coolie lives are put at risk on zero-hours contracts…nor how many other Indian or Chinese/Russian seamen were without cover at the time?
No matter how many greased guillemots and Antarctic terns need a bath in Fairy to remove the helicopter oil and ship effluent from this most pristine of environments…whci cannot be renewed overnnight after zillions of years of virgin isolation?
Any news from WWF, GreenPeace, Friends of the Earth and all those Arctic/Anti-Arctic goons fronting up “cheridees” to protect the snow leopard or Arctic hare(or its soft southern equivalent!)
Juniper?…Monbiot?…Porritt?…ANYBODY?
Packham or Attenburger?….must be hibernating for a few days eh, boys and girls?
So-in the absence of anybody caring enough to save Stones polished penguins and pebbles down there-Have taken up my sons habit of spraying ozone copiously into the air and leaving my fridge door open-as well as any shop doors that support my efforts to save the Penguins…and keep Alvin “The Chipmunk” Stone rolling round the Antipodean media with his shovel and a sickbag!
Let`s hope Justin Rowlatt is leaving all those doors and windows open in Salford right now. Most of Strageways finest only get back to Salford on Friday lunchtimes, so it`ll be safer than later to do this now!
Gaia deserves nothing less…my salty tears at their plight are both sad ones(er) and laughing ones…does one freeze differently from the other Turvey?
And-absolutely NO comedy here, no continual nagging at me, no updates or reviews of all this…Norfolks Tsunami of 2010 got more hype!
The cocky little tw*t who landed himself a cushy job in Australia had it made until he hatched this plan. Let’s hope it wipes the stupid grin off his face.
This incident will do no more to dissuade a single person – never mind Turney or his fellow travelers – from believing in AGW than when one of those buses filled with passengers on a religious pilgrimage in South America goes off the road into a ravine and kills everybody dissuades anyone from being Catholic.
In fact, you can pretty much bet on whatever science they did get done to prove their theories.
Note that much of the effect of the storms seen over the Christmas period have been the result of astonomical rather than meterolical factors.
1) Earth closest to sun in January – raising tides
2) Moon closest to earth on January 1st (so called supermoon) – raising tides
3) New moon at same time as supermoon – raising tides.
(Supermoons happen several times a year, but not usually at new or full moon)
These factors have served to exacerbate the natural effect of atlantic storms (the storm surge) – which may or may not have been in themselves influenced by warm air being sucked up from Saharan Africa.
Thus there may be some climate change factors involved – however any organisation (mentioning no names) insnuating that it is entirely due to clmate change insults our intelligence.
With record low temperatures and snow storms in America its a blessing we have global warming otherwise they would all have frozen to death by now, so keep flying in those planes and running those V8 engines. Its our only chance of survival.
Channel 4 (sorry, I know this is a blog for BBC bias but Channel 4 gets some of our money too) reported tonight that 2013 was Australia’s hottest year ever without a mention of the weather in the US.
Sorry to correct you before the BBC droids turn up, but C4 receives no money from the licence fee.
stick your green taxes up your arse.
period.
Won’t that make them choke?
I’m pretty sure that particular space will be occupied.