Thursday
Jan022014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Exeunt stage left
Jan 2, 2014 Greens The evacuation of passengers from the Akademic Shokalskiy seems to have begun. The helicopter from the Chinese icebreaker, the Xue Long, is being used to transport them to the Australian ship, the Aurora Australis. It looks as if the passengers will get away in one piece. The crew of the Shokalskiy will have to wait and see.
Reader Comments (86)
"sHx - a full on, detailed and exhaustive skeptical Marxist analysis of CAGW must be out there....?"
tomo, if there is, then I am not aware of it. I spent many solidarity dollars so I could encounter such an analysis in the pages of the Green Left Weekly, or lately, an even more alternative fresh publication, the Red Flag. http://redflag.org.au
But I have certainly noticed a more muted interest about climate doomsday hysteria in Red Flag than in Green Left Weekly (he GLW is still screaming about it). And the RL, I must stress this, is run by Trotkisysts who parted ways with the GLW. Yes, those Trotskyists who are hated by Stalinists as well as the right-wing cranks in this neck of the woods.
As a matter if if further note, I believe -I believe!- that the reason the truly worthy and 'noble' anti-capitalist Occupy Movement collapsed is because it was hijacked by a collocation (thanks, johanna) of the Greens, hippies, ferals, and other affiliated 'state of nature' eco-nuts. That is why we didn't see interests supposedly representing the working class demonstrate before the Big Insurance (Munich Re, Catlin, etc) for drumming up the climate doomsday hysteria that cost so many jobs and put so many people in fuel poverty.
I was hoping for a better opportunity than now to state this. Until and unless you win Marxists over to your side you will never win this fight against climate doomsday hysteria politically. If you want to win this 'scientific' war, you must go to the heart of the matter and demonstrate why this new weird hippie religion represents a threat to the interests of working class people and the poor masses at home and abroad.
If there is a full on Marxist critique of this climate doomsday hysteria, I'd expect to find it in Chinese or Russian before I read it in English.
And on that point I am signing off, comrades. Who said Trotskiysts were the last ones to leave the debate?
michaelhart: "I'm hoping more of the English-speaking MSM will come to recognise this in 2014, but I'm not holding my breath".
I agree. But there are some possible triggers for a dawning realisation. For example, in September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is inviting "Heads of State and Government" to a conference "aimed at catalyzing action by governments, business, finance, industry, and civil society in areas for new commitments and substantial, scalable and replicable contributions to the Summit that will help the world shift toward a low-carbon economy." He says this:
When - as will happen - the "developing economies", led by China, frustrate the whole process (albeit in complex and evasive language), the Western MSM might just begin to notice. But, like you, I'm not holding my breath.
If you're still here, sHx, you might note that some BH contributors - Geoff Chambers, myself and others - have for some time been going "to the heart of the matter and [demonstrating] why this new weird hippie religion represents a threat to the interests of working class people and the poor masses at home and abroad". We've done so, for example, on New Left Project where they publish our comments - and seemingly ignore them.
The crew have been left behind to deal with the problems imposed on them by the buffoon who led this sorry fiasco. He, and the sundry dupes, fellow-travellers, and useful idiots of 'the cause' are getting out thanks to the technology of, and efforts by, people I suppose some of them may despise as benighted. The real world intruded into their self-serving fantasies, much as it has been doing with the 'climate movement' in general for those with eyes to see. How far can this sorry saga be an allegory for the big picture?
We the people are represented by the crew. The rag-tag collection of modellers, opportunist academics, journalists, politicians and sundry activists or dupes taken off the boat represent the 'climate movement'. They go back to the milkshakes they have been missing so much. The crew, and others who will help them, are left behind to clear up the mess.
We too shall be left behind to deal with the mess when that 'movement' finally disappears into the distance. A mess that pervades our schools, our universities, our political class, our scientific institutions, and our mass media.
@sHx "Now that would be really bitter and twisted, not just cynical. That would be like hoping 'extreme weather' events kill as many people as possible so that the world could see we're heading towards a climate doomsday."
sHx just where did I say I hoped that people died?
Read what I said again- with more care this time- What I said was that I hoped those eco-loons get the fright of their lives.
Maybe it would scare some sense into them?
The main reason the captain & crew remain on board, is to prevent anyone else claiming the value of the vessel as "salvage".
"I really enjoy PJ Harvey's music, but she has fallen into the same trap as Steve Jones and Lord Rees, of thinking that her prominence in one field ....."
Prominence?
On what planet?
sHx - it's encouraging that some are open minded enough to actually work their way through to a reasoned position from evidence and debate a case.
The problem with undermining or deconstructing the rabid catastrophic warmist position you're not actually dealing with reasoned, rational behaviour. It's been demonstrated repeatedly that groupthink isn't susceptible to logic - it's usually illogical anyway. I suspect that many on the left (and right and centre) subscribe as they see it as a useful foothold, handhold or platform for their own psychopathic demagoguery (Hello Mr. Huhne!) or simple utility in pursuit of power and influence. Wingnuts and opportunists are not necessarily stupid. CAGW has been a very obviously useful tool for the unscrupulous opportunist and those of a pre-existing messianic catastrophist mindset. You're never going to win them all over and the best you can reasonably hope for is to identify the weak points / open minds and drive in wedges that break the groupthink up. If you're a Mao or Stalin I suppose you just order as many as practical to be purged - otherwise with luck we might be able to sign them up for a place of their own as Mars pioneers...
Politicians all over the place are I suspect beginning to get an inkling that the tail is wagging the dog. The evidence is that CAGW trancends political definitions and in some quarters resembles a mania. Maniacs have their uses ... but as a general rule it's unwise to take instruction from them - throw in some naturally occurring hubris and you've a right old mess on your hands.
There's a parody diary of the expedition at Luboš Motl's blog.
In the OP link - The BBC's Andrew Luck-Baker, who was on board the Akademik Shokalskiy, says the 15-minute one-way flight was a "white-knuckle ride".
Imagine what it was for the pilot.
At least Turney gave a public thanks to the Chinese in a tweet for the helecopter rescue.
I do look forward to the results of their research, since it was a resounding success.
Saved by Chinese fossil fuel!
So to whom will this little bit of carbon footprint be attributed to? The rescued or the rescuers?
Akademik Shokalskiy rescue: Tears of joy as passengers come in from the cold. Nicky Phillips is on board the Aurora Australis, Antarctica
http://www.smh.com.au/travel/akademik-shokalskiy-rescue-tears-of-joy-as-passengers-come-in-from-the-cold-20140102-307y6.html#ixzz2pHFaywqp
Who foots the bill?
When it became stuck on Christmas Eve in heavy pack ice near the bay it forced the Australian government to interrupt a critical resupply of Casey base and send the Aurora Australis to the rescue, leaving some polar researchers' gear on board.
''Short- and long-term impacts on the Australian science program are pronounced, as you can imagine,'' American research professor Joe McConnell told The New York Times.
''Many of these guys can't complete the research they've been planning for years because some or all of their science gear still is on the Aurora.''
Dr McConnell, who is from Nevada's Desert Research Institute, was at Casey for the ice-drilling project.
With the rescue operation still under way, it was too early to determine what impact it would have on the Australian program, a spokeswoman for the Australian Antarctic Division said. ''It will inevitably squeeze an already tight season,".
I think I just spotted Chris Turney's next project - in fact I think it's one we should try and get him auditioned for
Really - it'd work wouldn't it?
Further to my earlier comment on the description of the rescue in the 1pm news summary on BBC Radio 2, I noticed that in the main television news bulletin at 10pm on BBC1 the report not he expedition once again failed to mention global warming or any "green" objectives.
The main BBC TV news bulletin this evening had quite a lengthy report on the rescue. They managed to avoid the word "climate". The BBC continues to manipulate the news by omitting important aspects of the story.
The whole fiasco poses some interesting questions. The climate scientists must have known that the Antarctic ice has been increasing for about 30 years so why have a mission to study the melting caused by climate change? Perhaps they do believe their models rather than reality, but I doubt if that is the main reason.
However, close to the middle of summer, the annual melt is nearing its peak. You don't suppose they were planning to swan around filming melting ice with suitable alarmist commentary and a bunch of climate scientists on board to wring their hands and wail about their tests showing fresh water from the melt - all "proof" that the entire Antarctic was melting before their eyes....
The BBC and the Guardian would never get involved in something like that, especially with their new policy never to mention climate change or global warming or even "climate" and "scientists" in the same sentence.
sHx
I might not agree with your politics but I do agree with your assessment of this fiasco. The "Turkey" leading this expedition might have thanked the Chinese ( and rightly so ) but he makes no mention of the Russian skipper & crew.
John Slade sums it up well but we should add that I hope the Russian owners go for cost recovery ( and I hope they get their boat back). The interesting thing is that a Green leader in Australia has publically come out with the truth -- the skipper tried to call the scientists back early because he could see the weather deteriorating , but they did not respond to the warning by getting back quicker. Therefore while insurance might pay out for the owners the insurance company will go the expedition for their cost recovery ( which probably means the Australian taxpayer).
BTW did the Turkey thank the fossil fuel that helped their recovery and what was the total carbon foot print for their fiasco ? /sarc
I sincerely hope the Russian skipper and crew are OK and get out of there ( boat in one piece) very soon.
@Ross
I concur, and I am sure they will be fine. I am also sure they have in their possession all the necessary
autographssignatures from the responsible dignitaries .This whole thing is quite strange. It's being treated by everyone as a full scale rescue, but it does not appear that anyone was in immediate danger - they had plenty of supplies, and the ship can't be in danger of sinking if the crew has been left on board when they could have been taken off.
So why the urgency? Could it be that these characters are so self important that their busy schedules must be maintained at all costs?
I have always understood that a maritime distress call is only to be made where there is imminent danger to life, which does not appear to be the case here - unless of course the ships crew were on the point of killing some of the annoying prats if they weren't taken away quickly which would be understandable!
Good point NW. Now the real irony, the rescue boat is having difficulty getting out of the ice ( is nature trying to tell "Turkey" something?)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/02/rescue-ship-aurora-australis-slowed-to-a-crawl-fighting-heavy-sea-ice-to-reach-open-water/
Ross
Yes, "exeunt stage left" now looks like "exeunt extremely slowly stage left" - at a quarter of a knot per hour,
If you manipulate the URL you can get updates of the bow view from Aurora Australis. This is the latest I could get : Ice out to the horizon ?
http://images.aad.gov.au/webcams/aurora/14/A140030330A.jpg
(.......30330A = Bow view at 0330 GMT on 3 Jan. B gives the port view, C gives stern view. The pic is updated every 30 minutes - sometimes it is 31 minutes, so you need to juggle a bit)
It looks to be quite a few km to get through to open water. And if and when AA gets round to the Casey station - there is sea ice there as well, I gather.
NW - maybe the "urgency" was to evacuate the Ship of Fools while Aurora Australis could still get through to open water ?
tomo (Jan 2, 2014 at 4:20 PM)
I’m working on it ;-)You can do a Marxist-style sociological analysis without espousing Marxist politics. You just have to acknowledge that political movements have a sense in terms of the long term social and historical processes of class struggle. Since the onset of mass university education, the luvvies have become a social class with their own culture and aspirations. It shouldn’t be too difficult to trace the links between penguinophilia in Antarctica and politics in Brighton and Islington. The problem is that the Marxist social scientists with the tools to do it are part of that class, and blind to the absurdity of their cultural norms. It’s like asking a Papuan to explain the sense of his cargo cult.
Come back sHx, we need you.
When an intelligent conservative like John Shade (Jan 2, 2014 at 6:52 PM) expresses his solidarity with the Russian working class, you know a shift in socio-political thinking of Hegelian proportions is in the offing.
I wonder what Ben, the historian of working class polar exploration, who was one of the “climate scientists" on board, makes of it all?
Latest appears to be that if Aurora Australis gets to open water it cannot head on to the Casey station - where I believe it had completed only one-third of its re-supply unloading and refuelling. The Chinese vessel is worried about breaking out to sea, so Aurora Australis is now under orders to stand when it reaches open water.
John Anderson's important news is in Xue Long calls for help after becoming stuck while trying to help Akademik Shokalskiy in the Sydney Morning Herald an hour and a half ago. Arrival date in Hobart now estimated as end of January. But who knows. This epic PR failure could have more surprises yet.
Note the prominence given to the story on the SMH home page, just after the Test Match. Doubt we'll be seeing anything similar from the BBC.
The BBC World Service has been broadcasting a series “The Return to Mawson’s Antarctica” (as part of their long-running Discovery series):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01n9gcv
I haven’t listened to all of this yet, but here's a taste: in Episode 2 Prof. Turney explains that one idea that the AAE specifically set out to investigate is that the East Antarctica ice sheet is melting and that this is causing the expansion of sea ice.
There will be I think five episodes in all, with possibly much of interest there.
geoffchambers
aye - and there's the rub - as I struggled to explain in my little ramble earlier - CAGW mainstream crosses political beliefs because it plays to catastophism which isn't particularly susceptible to logic. It's a thread in human thought older than civilisation - we know awful things have happened in the past. Irrationality is a very difficult thing to counter - particularly when lots of money is involved.
Senna the soothsayer is a useful character to use - catastrophism comes in a variety of dilutions for various purposes - I notice that my old sparring partners at The Environment Agency have opened the floodgates of scary as soon as they got back to their desks/screens after the winter break - mostly ignoring what had actually happened and promising / hyping doom by the bucketload. The proliferation of "communicators" has played a significant role in getting us to where we are at the moment....
Alex Cull
Put me down for some transcribing now that the holidays are over.
tomo:
True, but countering it has been the great project of humanity from the Ancient Greeks through the Enlightenment right up to this thread. And it’s not over yet.Free speech is one of the essential weapons in this project, and this is being stifled by the BBC and other media that collude in silence. Media silence on uncomfortable truths is nothing new, but in most circumstances the normal processes of democratic debate redress any imbalance. Normal processes have broken down with respect to global warming hysteria, and finding out why should be part of the sceptical project. An important insight. (More on this later, perhaps on the Discussion pages)
The urgency attached to rescuing the Ship O'Fools might have had less to do with an immediate danger of it being crushed by freezing ice and more to do with its poor souls being crushed by searing ridicule. As we saw, it had made itself a sitting du... err, penguin - the humiliation must have been rawly felt.
Antarctic rescue ship now stuck in ice
The Chinese icebreaker which helped transport passengers away from a stranded Antarctic ship has itself become stuck in ice
"A ship which was used to rescue by helicopter 52 people from a trapped Antarctic ship has now found itself in need of rescue – after it got stuck in heavy ice.
Having not moved for several days while preparing to airlift the passengers, the Chinese-owned Snow Dragon is now wedged in ice.
The ship was used as a launch pad to pick up the passengers on Thursday, after they had spent nine days stranded. Their ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, became wedged in ice on Christmas Eve as it was heading towards Antarctica."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/antarctica/10548690/Antarctic-rescue-ship-now-stuck-in-ice.html
Darn this Global Warming! Their carbon foot print is becoming embarrassingly large!
John Anderson, if that was the case then the opportunity should have been taken to rescue the crew as well.
The question may be was this a SAR operation as the media coverage implies, or arrangements made by the organisers of the junket to get their guests out, which seems to have been the outcome.
The key question, not unusual where alarmist scientists are concerned, is who pays the bills. Again as usual for this lot, it looks like they have found a way to do it with taxpayers' money.
I have a serious dislike for these characters who play the rugged adventurer until the moment anything goes wrong when they immediately hit the panic button and sit back and wait to be rescued at vast cost.
Peter S,
I highly doubt these clowns have any sense of shame. If they did they wouldn't have commissioned this trip in the first place.
Regards
Mailman
It does seem important to share this link with you. H/T to freetheCO2 on the Spectator...
Chris Turney discovers he is stuck in Antarctic ice...
Just noticed this, Turkey's twitter description of himself:
"Chris Turney
@ProfChrisTurney
Scientist, explorer and author of 1912: The Year The World Discovered Antarctica (http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/1912/ …)
University of New South Wales · christurney.com"
That's right. He sees himself as being an explorer.
I was so pleased when I found the link....
Professor Turkey is collaborator with Baldrick which leads without much of a stretch to Richard Curtis and 10:10 = small world really innit?
'ere... I've got this great idea... really, it is...