Price to Americans for helping other countries deal with “climate change”: $7.45 Billion.
Price of an international air-sea rescue of 52 passengers (including 4 journalists and 26 paying tourists, and various academic advocates of “global warming”): Millions of dollars, to be paid by the shipping companies and their insurers.
Price of the enjoyment brought to millions of “global warming deniers” when reading about the expedition of warmists on a Russian ship trapped in ice: Priceless.
A CBS report (video):
As an extra entertainment bonus: The Chinese ice-breaker that helped rescue passengers stranded on the Akademik Shokalskiy vessel in Antarctica may now itself be stuck.
Fans of Legal Insurrection will recognize I have been a denier for sometime, along with a group of scientists with whom I work closely on a variety of regulatory issues (hat-tip, Roger Cohen, Lorraine Yapps Cohen, Martin Fricke). In fact, it will be recalled that many of us believe the sun and its cycle are the most significant factor in climate change — and the fact that it is approaching an energy minimum while we are experiencing massive winter storms like Hercules would lead most reasonable people to conclude that this may be the better climate model.
But who said global warming advocates were ever reasonable?
One of the lead scientists is still clinging bitterly to his beliefs.
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.
Perhaps if Dr. Turney had spent a moment doing some real research, he might have planned his trip a little differently. In October, 2013, a report was released indicating that a new record was set: The most sea ice in Antarctica in 30 years by extent and by volume.
The means were 19.48 million in September 2013 square kilometers, an area once covered more than 50 times larger than Germany with sea ice. The absolute maximum of 19.65 million square kilometers was reached on 18 of September. Although this maximum in the ice-covered surface can not be equated with a maximum of the total volume or mass, suggest that sea ice physicist Marcel Nicolaus and Stefan Hendricks from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) “This winter there is in Antarctica as much ice as long gone, if it has ever been since the beginning of the regular satellite observations ever so much sea ice.”
One wonders how the tourists invited by the scientific team to defray costs are now feeling about “climate change”. Turney offered several witty remarks during an Australian Broadcast Corporation interview prior to the launch.
MARGOT O’NEILL: Initially there were few applicants, so Chris Turney re-versioned Ernest Shackleton’s apocryphal advertisement: “Wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition assured.”
CHRIS TURNEY: I always loved that advert.
MARGOT O’NEILL: Almost immediately his inbox overflowed, proving the spirit of adventure still lives.
During that interview, Turney also said that explorer Robert Scott could have survived had he chosen his team more wisely.
One of the journalists who was trapped on the ice has the following report:
Guardian journalist Laurence Topham on the “Spirit of Mawson” now demonstrates how that spirit lives on in this ship of warmists, awaiting rescue by helicopter after a week trapped in ice they’d assumed was melting away:
It is quite stressful… I miss banana and peanut butter milkshakes… I’ve got this really thin, small bed… I’ve hurt my back… I jammed my leg in the door last night… And it’s only going to get worse… Stranded in ice. Oh, God I’m going mad.
For those of you interested in real science and supporting Legal Insurrection, order The Sun’s Heartbeat: And Other Stories from the Life of the Star That Powers Our Planet,which offers a history of the science behind the study of the sun.
It is good that no one has died, sacrificed on the altar of “global warming science.” I think Jim Treacher sums up my feelings best: Schadenfreude is a dish best served cold.
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Comments
I have to admit that I’m really enjoying this spectacle. I would really like to know who is paying for the rescue, though. Your link “to be paid for by shipping companies…” seems to have changed. I read the article and found no mention of the rescue costs or who was paying for it.
I think Gore should foot bill. As someone wrote, let’s just call it what it is: weather.
Lending truth to the old allegory of the “ship of fools”, this is actually more entertaining and funny than the Anthony Weiner debacle from a year or two ago.
The irony of the whole event is beyond hilarious.
Excerpt from Wiki: “The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.”
I doubt that reading that September, 2013 report about the Antarctica ice mass would have mattered to them, even if they’d bothered to do so.
Game time forecast at Lambeau Field tomorrow: zero degrees.
C or F ?
Could be Kelvin *whistles as he walks away from the flabbergasted people who know better*
Muwahahahahha!
Will that stop our money going to these frauds? No.
Part of me would like them to sit on that ship til spring, til all they can do is sit in a corner and cry, maybe even ask for volunteers to fuel a sacrificial bonfire.
Oh, no…!!!
See, part of the delicious irony here is that it is SUMMER in AA just now.
The hot time of year there.
You are smarter than Betty. Regular summer ice thawing could also extend the coastline.
My guess is they entered their co ordinates too early & did not allow for floe.
The crew is staying with their ship but warm-mongers and journalists are just to precious to put at such risk.
An additional reference to space weather and macro earth weather is suspicious0bservers on UTube and the same name dot org. Note the “0” is a zero not an oh. He seems to be mostly a-political.
-25 f at 7am this morning. last 2 days never made it above -5.
think we’re entering a cooling cycle.
Was Topham joking? or is he really that much of a wuss?
Doesn’t anyone understand that the ice is there because Obama stopped the oceans’ rise, and healed the planet from its fever?
So if Obama was white, would the warmists still support global warming baloney? (a revision of the question “if Obama were white, would conservatives support Obamacare/Hillarycare”)
The most disturbing thing about the global warming religion is how devoted so many are to obviously bad science, bad and fraudulent, and damaging to our economy. Yet it is still preached as fact and deniers are called bitter clingers or worse. As with Benghazi, IRS, and “you can keep your insurance” … we have reached Orwellian levels of contempt for honest evaluation.
So true. Libtards disdain the truth. They just roll over any facts that don’t support their agenda and conjure their own “facts” to support their beliefs and the public fleecing that goes along with it.
They are as costly as and even more detrimental to society in the long term than all the chronic welfare parasites rolled together.
This one resonated. My apolitical highbor who never talks politics and current events had a gleam in her eye when she mentioned this story. It doesn’t hurt that a good portion of the country is either in or is anticipating a major deep freeze. Sunday night could see the coldest NFL game ever and a lot of plumbers will be very busy next week repairing frozen pipes.
I remember a few years ago taking wicked delight in the story of a “research vessel” sinking in Antarctic waters.
It may have been a “Green Peach” ship.
What these are, typically, is ships of pseudo-scientists and very well-off eco-tourists, doing exactly what they would prevent you or I from doing…
going to a wild, pristine place, at huge expenditure of resources to keep them in comfort.
It is a paroxysm of elitist hypocrisy.
When the ship I mentioned sank, it was doubtless one of the worst pollution events ever in those waters.
And you likely never heard of it.
It appears that the “global warming” theory is on ice for the time being.
These loons are not capable of understanding how foolish they are. There will always be some excuse for why the world is colder than it “should” be, or why it is not warming at all, or why there is massive ice that should have been extinct by now, or snow cover from snow that shouldn’t exist. Global warming is their religion, and they must keep the faith, whatever the evidence in front of their eyes.
Yes, this one has been funny to watch but let us remember to have compassion for these poor souls, who don’t understand why “climate change” is so cold. They thought they were signing up for a few days of fun in the sun but somehow a freak cold snap or something ruined their noble vacation. What a weird coincidence!
Poor dears. It must be terrible going through life in a world where nothing makes sense.
“Poor dears. It must be terrible going through life in a world where nothing makes sense.”
Have you considered the possibility that the reason for this is that they HAVE no sense, and are thus oblivious to the irreconcilable nature of their beliefs? They are bound by religious fervor and therefore facts are not reconcilable.
What are you celebrating here?
First, the book you told the world to read includes a chapter that supports the theory of global warming. Second, the sun’s effect does not mean that global warming is not also in play; maybe the sun’s effect is giving us more time to respond to the effects caused by man-made change.
I don’t want this to be true; but maybe it is, and the folks on that boat are not quite as obviously deluded as you suggest.
I don’t care if they are deluded or not. They are welcome to their delusions.
When they start passing laws that reflect their delusions, or mau-mauing me with their delusional demands, they have a fight comin’.
Fair enough. But these delusions cost money, and all of us pay for them at the end of the day (see for example Estragon below). And worse is that they fully intend to impose their delusions on the rest of us, as visions of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade dance in their heads.
Ship of fools.
Just when you think this Global Warming expedition farce can’t get anymore absurd the Global Warming fanatics trapped in Antarctica’s summer sea ice releases the statement: “Sea Ice Is Disappearing Due To Climate Change…”
.
What are you celebrating, exactly?
The book that you told the world to read includes a chapter that supports global warming, and the sun’s effect might be happening at the same time as global warning, in which case the sun is giving us a chance to respond to a man-made situation.
I don’t know that this is true, but the folks on the boat might not be as stupidly deluded as you suggest.
Also, I hope that my previous note was lost in cyberspace and not deleted.
I don’t know much, but I do know if they’re global warmists/liberals, they ARE “stupidly deluded”. I’m being kind and not calling them insane.
@benm Global warming is in play, but it is much weaker than natural effects, as anyone can plainly see. There is simply no reason for the alarm and dark predictions of catastrophe — and that is the key point. The second that the funders and politicians understand this, the boondoggle will disappear along with the billions being wasted on it.
Why weren’t they allowed to freeze to death from “global warming” or “climate change?”
The real tragedy of this incident is that of the several vessels dispatched to the area to attempt or assist in rescue efforts, most were also involved in other research projects.
At least two major research expeditions will have to be cancelled or postponed now because their equipment could not be assembled in time to depart before the ice got too bad, that equipment being on board some of those vessels attempting rescue.
Due to the nature of the research and the harsh reality of the Antarctic Circle, those projects will now have to be put off a year IF funding can be secured – the entire staffs and support crews of the missions will now either be unemployed for a year or seek/take other employment, leaving them possibly unavailable even if funding is eventually secured.
It’s a waste of serious science to save a grandstanding idiot who chartered a ship that cannot break ice to travel along routes where only icebreakers are relatively safe (and even they can get stuck and crushed). A travesty.
It would be better in the long run to leave these fools where they were.
Yes it is more along these lines than the above posters, some of whom (including the author () are a little wierd.
The problem is every man & his dog thinks they can be Mawson. There are teams of wounded vets dragging themselves along (& dragging poor Prince Harry when he just wants to go partying ). At first they put it out as a race then had to back off because it was likely to kill them.. FFS.
i had a mad relative who went on such a cruise & almost got swept off the deck & landed head first against the rail. They had to get airlifted to Hobart . Then they tried to sue the shipping line & at one stage were going to go to Moscow to do it. UI said -hey they will shoot you there.
the irony is that wimpies are today complaining about Mawson & how mean he was. especially how he ate someone . tsk tsk tsk.
TERRIFIC PIECE! There’s no quit in the AGW proponents – it’s a faith, not science.
Martin
It is neither faith nor science. It is politically co-opted science, for which some adherents have developed a religion-like faith.
Global warming is seen by cynical political activists as an excellent vehicle with which to effect their agenda, which boils down to tax and spend wealth redistribution on a global scale. They’ve managed to infiltrate and co-opt the scientific aspects to make horrific predictions sufficiently scary to prompt the actions they recommend.
It is also a bit of a protection racket. Wherein your local mafia grunt stops by your shop and says, “Nice little business you got here. Be a shame if something bad happened to it. Gimme $1,000 a month and I’ll make sure nobody burns it down, capice?” becomes nice little planet you got here, our authority says it’s gonna burn unless you shell out $$$ from taxpayer for studies, projects, etc., that’ll fix it.
They tried the exact same thing in the 1970s with global cooling, but that got shot down as stupid before it caught on with a blindly believing media, and before the scientific establishment, tied to academia as it is, became so completely liberalized. At the University of Liberalism, ends justify means, and falsifying scientific data is OK if your intentions are ‘good’.
But Henry! There’s a scientific consensus!
Right.
Michael Crichton, anthropologist and medical doctor turned author (Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) sets the correct assessment of scientific ‘consensus’:
“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
The correct term for these idiots is the enviro-mentally ill.
Quick, and serious, question: Why didn’t they use hovercraft? Hard to get stuck in ice when you are floating on air above it. I suppose it might be because there is the potential of pieces of ice in the sea one is “floating above” to be blown up into the underbelly of the hovercraft. Or something.
It’s ok Leslie, we all know you’re still going to vote for the people who push this nonsense the hardest.
It’s actually way, way worse.
Now they’re claiming that the ice is thicker *because* of global warming means there’s more fresh water and that freezes faster.
I kid you not. (Just trying to find a link…)