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.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY