"Global Warming Team Stranded by Cold Weather"

Several weeks ago, a three-man British expedition set out for the Arctic - to collect data on the ice that's supposedly disappearing due to "global warming."

I know, I too was scratching my head when I heard about this - heading up into the Arctic in March, when it's still winter?  Apparently, some people really do believe the fevered hallucinations of various people like famous non-scientist Al Gore - that the Arctic has been warming up like crazy and is now a marvelous place for a little late winter jaunt.

So off they went.

Well, you can probably guess what happened next.  No plot twists or turns here.

More below the fold....

To no one's astonishment but their own, our intrepid heroes quickly found themselves marooned by (surprise) frigid Arctic weather conditions. Despite their dire plight, you'd have to be stony beyond human capacity to not find some humor in this situation, since the story came with the deadpan-irony headline of:

"Global Warming Team Stranded by Cold Weather"

In some sense it was good fun to mock them for their foolishness. But on the other hand, they were clearly in very deep trouble - marooned by the cold and bad weather, and nearly out of food. Fortunately, they were aided in the nick of time by the emergency arrival of a (carbon-belching) DeHavilland Twin Otter - that aircraft (deservedly) beloved by those who fly in the polar regions.

But one really does have to wonder about the bone-headedness (and sanity) of people who do silly things like this and nearly get themselves killed.

When dealing with the AGW-apocalypse types, one wonders which branch of the “church” is goofier.

On the one hand, there are a lot of them who insist that we’re in runaway warming and the world is burning to a crisp - but they never seem to schedule outdoor events in January to take advantage of this alleged change of circumstances.

On the other hand, there is apparently a collection of them (as has been noted occasionally) who actually do buy into the “epic warming” notion and thus quite happily go wandering off into the Arctic in winter, expecting conditions to be tepid.

Umm…. one really does have to wonder about the sanity of these people, particularly in this day and age of the Interweb Tubes - anyone can quickly look at the temperatures in the cold regions - e.g., with just a few mouse clicks, I can see that right now the temperature at Resolute, the Canadian outpost high in the Arctic Archipelago, is -36F.

Thus…. why was any of this a big surprise to them?

With perfect timing, the setting out from Britain of the “Global Warming Three” last month was hampered by “an unusually heavy snowfall”. When they were airlifted to the start of their trek by a twin-engine Otter (one hopes a whole forest has been planted to offset its “carbon footprint”), they were startled to find how cold it was. The BBC dutifully reported how, in temperatures of minus 40 degrees, they were “battered by wind, bitten by frost and bruised by falls on the ice”.

Umm, folks…. YOU…. WERE…. IN…. THE…. ARCTIC…. in the middle of March, when it’s still actually WINTER….

Meanwhile, they found that the cutie polar bears are far from extinct; in fact, they are in very good appetite….

Thanks to the ice constantly shifting, it was “disheartening”, reported Hadow, to find that “when you’ve slogged for a day”, you can wake up next morning to find you have “drifted back to where you started’’. Last week, down to their last scraps of food, they were only saved in the nick of time by the faithful Otter. They were disconcerted to see one of those polar bears, threatened with extinction by global warming, wandering around, doubtless eyeing them for its dinner.

It’s good to hear that they were safely rescued. But honestly - how dense can you be? This is really getting to be too much; these greenie types seem to be candidates for Darwin Awards….

One other thing though - it’s time for this foolishness to stop. In younger days, your humble correspondent actually accumulated a fair amount of big-mountain mountaineering experience. One piece of the code of conduct has always been that you have to be responsible far beyond “doing whatever you want.” If you do something foolish and then call for help, you are putting your would-be rescuers in danger. Mindlessly getting into trouble and then getting on the radio and screaming for help is dragging better people into your trouble with you. (Listening to someone melt down on the radio screaming for help is a very unnerving experience.)

Dear greenies - please cease these vainglorious tiltings at (frozen) windmills. You’re just putting innocent bystanders (such as that Twin Otter crew) in danger.

Oh, one last thing.

Why were they even bothering with this?

It took the Watts Up With That? science blog to point out that there is little point in measuring ice thickness unless you do it several years running, and that, anyway, Arctic ice is being constantly monitored by US Army buoys. The latest reading given by a typical sensor shows that since last March the ice has thickened by “at least half a metre”.

“In most fields of science,” comments WUWT drily, “that is considered an 'increase’ rather than a 'decline’.”

Indeed....

Comments

[Lazarus Long]

Sounds like the Monty Python crew.

[Ed G. Mann]

Polar bear food. We hear about them starving and now we take their food away.

I thought they cared about the cute Knut critters.

[txgordo]

I wonder who funded those nit-wits...