Bishop Hill Green propaganda can be dangerous
Aug 30, 2013 Climate: Surface Via Barry Woods comes this story from Sail-World.com. It seems that a number of yachts have been attempting the North West Passage, no doubt some of them with a view to "raising awareness of global warming", but have come unstuck as this year's melt has been much smaller than expected freeze has come early.
The Northwest Passage after decades of so-called global warming has a dramatic 60% more Arctic ice this year than at the same time last year. The future dreams of dozens of adventurous sailors are now threatened. A scattering of yachts attempting the legendary Passage are caught by the ice, which has now become blocked at both ends and the transit season may be ending early.
Apparently there is a cruise ship which may be in need of assistance too. Disturbingly, nobody seems to be quite sure if there is an icebreaker in the vicinity.
Bishop Hill
Blimey. Apparently there's a bunch of jet skiers out there too.
Bishop Hill
An expedition to row across the North-West Passage has been abandoned.
Reader Comments (115)
There are actually two cruise ships in the northwest passage right now.
MS Hanseatic (east to west) made the trip through Bellot strait and Peel Sound with the help of a Canadian ice breaker. Five of the seven yachts waiting at the mouth of the Bellot straits followed them. Two turned back. It is now approaching Cambridge Bay .
MS Bremen (west to east) was near Cambridge Bay yesterday but todays locator shows it near Iceland. I don't think that's accurate.
Alex
"Is a Taser enough"
Only as hors d'oeuvres. But then the main course comes straight after...
Somehow I feel that does not bode well. Is a Taser enough, or will it just annoy the bear?
Aug 30, 2013 at 5:34 PM Alex Cull
It might discourage the first bear but it won't affect his pal.
Andy
Have you looked at the temperature graph?
It dropped below the 0C line a good two weeks (according to this Mk I eyeball) ahead of normal. I'll not argue that re-freezing doesn't start at 0C but on that evidence the freeze is starting early, about two weeks early.
Your links take me to data for Canada. We're talking about the mean temperature north of 80N.
And the link to Sail-World.com shows the NW Passage closed at both ends.
A delicious case of Shadenfreude. Mainstream are the gangsters behind the project to plaster the Irish midlands with turbines and export to the UK. The 'main man' there Eddie O'Connor is particularly obnoxious, not only in his dealings here but in other countries. I had picked up earlier this month that ice was building up rapidly and had a wry smile:
http://mainstreamlastfirst.com/
If you zoom out on the tracker, they have a long way to go.
Pat
Why are there not more jetskiers nominated for the Darwin Awards? This one nearly took himself out of the gene pool without killing himself.
Re Andy @ 5:12 pm
The Environment Canada chart for the Eastern Arctic (26th. August) is shown here :
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS55CT/20130826180000_WIS55CT_0007236119.pdf
For those unfamiliar with egg codes, new (2013) ice formation is indicated by a number "1" in the third box down.
A study of the chart shows that new ice has been forming in the Canadian Archipelago as far south as 77N, and that was 4 days ago. I have been following these charts in recent years (since 2007), and can assure everyone that this is about 2 weeks earlier than I have seen before.
jamesp wrote:
So why does Greenpeace have an ice-breaker..?
It could be a sign of common sense - or that their belief in global warming is not quite as strong as they make out.
Andy, I don't see what your problem is. Arctic Bay, Nu, seem one of the closest stations in the link you provide. The airport was already reporting a temp of -2.0 C overnight on Thursday. It's not difficult to believe that freezing is occurring in the region.
I wonder how many of them are right now thinking ' ice free Arctic my frozen ars*'
Still has its bound to be a 'fossil fuel funded denialist lie' that its not ice free , no need for any rescue which is good news all around .
5:34 PM | Alex Cull
Taser? - a 9mm pistol is inadequate to stop a determined bear (and a few people have paid with their lives on that score) - by the time you see the bear - it is usually quite determined to have some hi-viz "seal". On the Spitsbergen archipelago it is pretty routine to carry a very powerful handgun worn outside clothing - a .45 Magnum revolver (I've seen one of these ) seems a favorite sidearm commonly seen on the street in Longyearbyen where polar bear warning signs outnumber any other traffic signs...
Taser ? like trying to stop a compact car with a flyswatter.
Don Keiller says
Speaking of the congenitally stupid- how about this lot?
http://climatenamechange.org/#
>>>>>>
‘…in the North East U.S., the sea level has risen four times faster than the global average.’
How does that work, then?
Pat Swords,
That lot gave up a while ago. Apparently they're not going further than Cambridge Bay.
Some discussion here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mainstream-Last-First/143857365738368
Their decision to give up seems to have been announced here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/travel/long-haul/
northwest-passage-diary-we-needed-mother-nature-to-help-she-hasn-t-1.1501355
It's also worth noting the glowing success of The Coldest Journey. You know, those guys who were going to take Ranulph Fiennes across the Antarctic in winter. Well they were, before he pulled out with frostbite and they got stuck because it was cold and dark and dangerous. The good news is they're not dead and they're almost ready to head back the way they came. They've managed to prove that with luck, money, highly engineered equipment and copious amounts of fossil fuels it is possible to sit out a south pole winter... even if you don't get to the pole.
http://www.thecoldestjourney.org/blog/
I don't know if you are aware of the Last First Expedition which aimed to row a boat through the North West Passage.
They've just completed their journey - except they ended it at Cambridge Bay rather than Pond Inlet which seems quite a shortfall to me.
Although the tone of the last message is as you would expect (completed journey against all odds but things are worse than we could have imagined, waste more money on climate change activists now) part of the article is very revealing.
"Over the past 54 days we traversed more than 1500-kms of the Northwest Passage from Inuvik, NWT to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut and come away humbled and awed by the experience. We had hoped to make it to Pond Inlet, Nunavut by early September but this has proven impossible. Severe weather conditions hindered our early progress and now ice chokes the passage ahead.
"Our ice router Victor has been very clear in what lies ahead. He writes, “Just to give you the danger of ice situation at the eastern Arctic, Eef Willems of “Tooluka” (NED) pulled out of the game and returning to Greenland. At many Eastern places of NWP locals have not seen this type ice conditions. Residents of Resolute say 20 years have not seen anything like. Its, ice, ice and more ice. Larsen, Peel, Bellot, Regent and Barrow Strait are all choked. That is the only route to East. Already West Lancaster received -2C temperature expecting -7C on Tuesday with the snow.”
"Richard Weber, my teammate to the South Pole in 2009 and without doubt the most accomplished polar skier alive today, is owner and operator of Arctic Watch on Cunningham Inlet at the northern end of Somerset Island. Arctic Watch faces out onto our proposed eastern route. Richard dropped me a note the other day advising: “This has been the coldest season with the most ice since we started Arctic Watch in 2000. Almost no whales. The NWPassage is still blocked with ice. Some of the bays still have not melted!”
"The days are getting significantly shorter now and the temperatures are dropping fast. Our intention all along was to make it to Pond Inlet by mid-September as the lack of light and colder temperatures would significantly curtail our movement and slow us down. Extrapolating from our current rate of movement, even if there was no ice in the passage ahead, we’d require at least another 50-60 days to make it to Pond Inlet. Throw in the issues of less light, colder temperatures, harsher fall storms and lots of ice blocking the route and our decision is easy. Moving forward at this point would be foolhardy and hubris won’t force our hand. Cambridge Bay, Nunavut is our final port of call."
http://mainstreamlastfirst.com/we-row-into-cambridge-bay-the-official-conclusion-of-our-mainstream-last-first-expedition/
To me this plainly says, "We imagined that there would be far less ice than there is" but this is not the message that will be presented to the media.
Another fail though.
Interesting that the author wrote "so-called global warming".
Is it the case that such cynical views are becoming more acceptable and even mainstream?
Even BBC Radio 4 apparently expressed some scepticism this evening - see unthreaded.
Paul - also Nottingham
Lots of ups and downs in all things "weather and climate" including yesterday when
Yet today has a greater extent of Arctic sea ice than yesterday?
With thich multi-year ice the Western end of the NW passage, it probably will not open this year, after opening in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
What is more interesting is a question.
High latitude temperatures have been lower this year than at almost any time since 1959.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Why are we only seeing an increase to sea ice areas similar to 2009?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
Aug 30, 2013 at 11:56 PM Entropic Man
Dunno, lag? Or maybe the tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity?
Arthur Peacock.
Sea level rise is not uniform. A variety of effects from variations in the geoid to local prevailing winds to isostatic uplift and sinking affect the sea surface height at different locations. The 3.2mm/year quoted as the average recent rise is just that, an average. Some areas see more, some less.
In the British Isles there is a gradient. Land in the Northwest is rising as it rebounds with the weight of ice sheets removed, while sinking in the Southeast.
Blind faith or crass stupidity - you choose.
I know these dolts have been indoctrinated, along from potty training onwards - in the holy mysteries of the Great man made warming scam. Through their time, at the bog standard comp' they have learnt by rote that 'man did it' and all that green propaganda - 'the world is doomed' guff from older but only slightly more experienced agitprop teechurs.
By all the saints and mother Gaia help us, suitably wound up and ticking, they then wobble off to a uni and go on all sorts of field trips on some enviro' course or other, either that or they read the graun' have joined WWF and so it goes.
Eco-warriors they are told that; soon the Arctic will be ice free, that, the sea ice is melting and the ocean is warming up and unfortunately most of them take that as the 'gospel according to St Mark [Serreze] - or Pete Wadhams at Cambridge.
However, seeing as the ice is taking its time to melt this year and it being September just about, it takes some leap of faith, or a special type of boneheaded lunacy to believe you can sail across the Arctic - and when the globe is in a cooling phase.
Yep, there is daft and there is suicidal daft.
Green Sand
Lag is certainly part of it. The water temperatures are still at 21st century levels, despite the low air temperatures. This has been a very cloudy year in the Arctic by recent standards, so insolation has also been low.
It would be nice to believe that this is the start of a recovery, but we're probably not that lucky.
A bunch? Well you are the wordsmith so I must bow. But really are you sure you have the most appropriate collective noun?
re: Aug 31, 2013 at 12:09 AM | Entropic Man
"Sea level rise is not uniform."
The issue was the quote about the US Northeast and "four times" the global average.
Click away to your heart's content and show us where that is happening.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
Entropic Man
Whilst there are many things "weather and climate" in play "luck" is logically not one of them.
I propose a "turbulence of jet skiers".
If the Mainstream Rowers can't spell Schadenfreude, I sure can.
I've just discovered the first human who thinks Polar Bears are really just pussies........................
They should offer him a stipend to go with them in case any of the above pussies happen to meet them....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpMZr_u9t_Q
I also think he'd be suitable company of the intrepid seamen in debating the finer points of Rousseau in the context of the mind/brain dialectic and deeper philosophy of Marxist phenomenology during the cold and becalmed nights oop north.....
As long as they don't run out of food...........
The bunch of jet skiers are probably bunching together to keep warm.
Eco Tourist caught in ice Ha Ha. Shame it wasn't the coast of Somalia.
Whenever I've seen this type of eejit interviewed by the Beeb they invariably seem to be public school toffs. The standard comp' output is in my experience far more sceptical, or less boverred anyroad.
May I suggest that this shows that arctic ice loss was always less about air temps and more about other factors, such as AMO/sea temp/black carbon.
Bunch of trapped Eco Tourists.
Lunch for the Polar Bears.
So Entropic when you going Sailing around an Ice free Arctic Ocean.
Due to Global Warming there is zero chance of you getting trapped in sea ice.Perfectly safe.
The Bishophillbillies we will club together and buy your ticket if you cant afford it.
I propose a "turbulence of jet skiers".
A death-rattle of jet skiers?
EM
In the British Isles there is a gradient. Land in the Northwest is rising as it rebounds with the weight of ice sheets removed, while sinking in the Southeast.
So no sealevel change in the UK just land movements?
Lag is certainly part of it. The water temperatures are still at 21st century levels, despite the low air temperatures. This has been a very cloudy year in the Arctic by recent standards, so insolation has also been low.
So air temperature has little influence on sea temperature, how does that fit in with climate models and Trenberth's missing heat?
There's little doubt that the high Arctic has had much colder than average spring and summer air temperatures this year, but sea ice area and thickness depends more on water temperatures (and strength of the in-flows from the North Atlantic Drift) and winds than air temperatures. Witness the mass transport of ice out of the Arctic Ocean down the Fram Strait in 2007; and the sudden breakup and dispersal of the sea-ice after the severe storm in late July 2012. Nansen recorded very strong currents of mild Atlantic waters under the ice. [He also noted that sea-ice thickness can actually increase during high summer, as frozen snow-ice melts and the freshwater from the resulting melt ponds then hits the colder salt water (usually at -3C) just below the sea-ice and re-freezes].
Anyway, for all these and other reasons, the Arctic sea-ice is not a good proxy or indicator of global average temperatures. However, Antarctic sea ice is a better indicator, as detailed by Jim Steele in a recent post on Tallbloke.
As for the NWP - two things always spring to mind:
1. These guys, who managed to row, sail and sometimes haul their little 17ft open boat over 2000 miles through the NWP (over 2 seasons), without once mentioning climate change or global warming. The Arctic Mariner, west to east, 2009 & 2010.
2. Shelly, the waitress in Northern Exposure, who in her youth had won "Miss North West Passage" (the programme was fictional but apparently there is a real beauty competition of the same name).
"It would be nice to believe that this is the start of a recovery, but we're probably not that lucky."
Aug 31, 2013 at 12:16 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic Man
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You lot don't want a recovery. You want this warm cycle to last a bit longer - but you're not in luck: it's over.
It will be interesting to see, once all these idiots have returned home, whether they have altered their views about global warming/man-made climate change. Or will they retain their delusions come what may?
Ice breaker USGCG Healy is at the western end of the NW passage.
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=NEPP
Ice breaker CCGC Henry Larsen is allegedly at the eastern end of the NW passage (but not reporting on AIS - coverage is poor up there).
@ jamesp. Greenpeace have two ships with icebreaking ability; Arctic Sunrise (was a sealer), and MV Esperanza (was a firefighter). They have them to harrass the Japanese, but Arctic Sunrise is a total "party ship" for jet-set activist-wannabees (imo): it sails from Amsterdam, winters in the Canaries or the Med, maybe visits the West Indies in the spring, and only goes up the Arctic in midsummer.
Esperanza sails from Australia, and is currently off Taiwan. They _do_ mix it up with the Japanese fleet and have got into some legal trouble as a result.
Video: Yacht Fine Tolerance being rescued by ice breaker (prob CCGC Henry Larsen).
http://northwestpassage2013.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/video-you-dont-want-your-boat-rescued.html
a Swiss catamaran might have a chance to succeed ... they arrived in Cambridge Bay on 27th August, and left for Cape Bathurst on 29th ...
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/libellule/?xjMsgID=285530
It will be a race against time and very tricky ... and they already got a little help from the icebreaker Henry Larsen to pass through the west side of Bellot Street ...
(I've read some of their blog, and I might be mistaken, but I don't believe them to be true AGW-ers ...)
sleepalot
Thanks. I guess an icebreaker's a usefully tough vessel for throwing your weight about, even if you don't break ice with it. A warship might be a bit obvious...
A gaggle of jet skiers?
steveta_uk
I stand corrected steveta_uk.
Yes, I accept that comment - and it was foolish to blame the children [in bog standard comps and truly - they certainly are not all bad schools]. It is the educational system which is at fault - in teaching politicized CAGW pap.
I also accept that, the useless idiots of greenpeace/WWF/FoE are usually well spoken toffs and toffettes - having a rich daddy enables young uns to secure their silver spoons, after a gap year, charity work and with a helping hand then to climb up and ride on the gravy train and thus have oodles of 'thinking' time to fret and worry about saving the polar bear. Whereas, poorer kids really cannot afford the dubious luxury of having, life style choices, a social conscience and anxiety about something which mankind has no control.
I'm a bit astonished at the condescension here for sailors attempting a northwest passage. Friends from Bundaberg did it a couple of years ago - east to west, without incident. As they were repeat circumnavigators, one might assume that they took reasoned care. They also staged it to align their trip with timing of open water.
Of course, that they did it then, doesn't mean that they would have this year.
And no, they are not greenies, nor eco-nuts nor identifiable by any of the other pejoratives written above; only sailors.
This year, the outlook median (4.1 million km2) was for more ice in September than was observed last year, with a large range (from 3.4 to 6.0 million km2)
Aug 30, 2013 at 3:45 PM | Registered CommenterRichard Betts
Ah this is like the UKMO temperature forecasts for the 5 - 10 day period.
Quote "
Temperature (°C)
Highest temperature: 22°C to 32°C
Lowest temperature: 13°C to 20°C
+ or - 60%. So you could freeze your vitals or melt your meat. Very useful that.
The rowers' article is worth reading for the glimpse it gives into the schizophrenic lunacy of the environmentalist brain. In one part of the article they say:
"Residents of Resolute say 20 years have not seen anything like. Its, ice, ice and more ice.... This has been the coldest season with the most ice since we started Arctic Watch in 2000. Almost no whales. The NWPassage is still blocked with ice. Some of the bays still have not melted!”
and then a couple of paragraphs later
"Our message remains unaffected though, bringing awareness to the pressing issues of climate change in the arctic."
jferguson
I know that yachtspeople like to put themselves into into danger and quite often reap the rewards. Tony Bullimore and Simon LeBon are the most famous individuals I can think of. Then there are the Fastnet and Hobart to Sydney race disasters. Small boats in the middle of large oceans is a risky combination even for those who "know" what they are doing. However throw in a bit of CAGW nonsense then disaster is almost inevitable those who come out unscathed are the lucky ones, IMHO