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China to industrialise desalination of sea-ice

January 16, 2014

During an ice age as water gets trapped in expanding ice, the entire water cycle stabilises at much lower rates of flux than during an inter-glacial period. Evaporation (due to absorption of solar energy) is the primary force which drives the water cycle. During an ice age, rates of evaporation will decrease sharply, precipitation will reduce and the flow of fresh water through rivers and streams back into the seas will reduce as a consequence. Sea levels would drop by up to 150 m from current levels and while currently submerged land will be exposed, desertification of many regions will also take place.

One of the technologies that will be necessary at such a time will be for the extraction of fresh water from sea ice.

Bohai Bay China

Bohai Bay China

The Bohai Rim is one of the water-scarce regions in China. But every winter, more than 1 billion m3 of sea ice formed in the sea, about 40% of which distributes within 10 km offshore and is expected to be exploited and utilized as source of freshwater.

They may not be expecting a return to full glacial conditions anytime soon, but perhaps the Chinese are already preparing for another Little Ice Age and the fresh water availability reduction that will undoubtedly cause.

Xinhua reports:

China will soon begin production of large amounts of fresh water through the desalination of sea ice, according university research team and a Chinese company on Tuesday. A research team from Beijing Normal University signed a sea ice desalination technology transfer agreement with Beijing Huahaideyuan Technology Co. Ltd on Tuesday.

The company is expected to be able to produce at least 1 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually by 2023, said Yu Jian, executive president of the company. The salinity of sea ice is between 0.4 percent to 0.8 percent, much lower than that of sea water, which stands at about 2.8 percent to 3.1 percent, said Professor Gu Wei, head of the research team.

The research team has mastered the basic principles and technology of sea ice desalination and developed the equipment to be used in the process, including an ice-breaking platform and an ice-gatherer, he said. The salinity of sea ice water after desalination is 0.1 percent, which meets the national standard. The water can be used in agriculture, by industry and for drinking, he said.

The cost of desalination is expected to fall to 4 yuan per tonne, he said.

China’s sea ice desalination program started in 1996 when Shi Peijun, a professor from Beijing Normal University, realized that low saline ice could ease the water shortage around the Pan-Bohai Bay area in north China, after desalination. The program has received a total of 29.72 million yuan (4.88 million U.S. dollars) from various government departments in the past 18 years.

In winter in high-latitude oceans, there is a great amount of sea ice, which is being recognized as a new resource of fresh water by scientists.

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Climate “scientists” begin to acknowledge the obvious

January 16, 2014

It is obvious that the source of all heat is the Sun and that nuclear reactions in the earth’s interiror producing heat – if any – are negligible in comparison.

It seems equally obvious, considering the relative heat capacities of air with that of water, that the primary vehicle for the storage and distribution of the heat emanating from the sun, around the earth, is first by the oceans and only second via the atmosphere. The heat absorbed is attenuated by clouds. The heat lost from the earth is also primarily attenuated by clouds and only marginally by other constituents of the atmosphere.

But climate models have generally minimised solar insolation effects and largely ignored the oceans. Heat losses have been predicated primarily on carbon dioxide and other trace constituents of the atmosphere and have ended up treating the net effects of clouds as causing warming rather than cooling. Whither common sense!!

But the current “hiatus” in global warming – which may well become 2 or 3 decades of cooling  – is beginning to bring a whiff of reality into the “science”. They don’t acknowledge the possibility of cooling, of course, and don’t give up on their carbon dioxide fantasies but they are beginning to pay some attention to the oceans and the Sun.

But now they reckon models must be judged on a timescale of 50 – 100 years!

But note the phrase “sceptics and some scientists”! I thought scientists were supposed to be sceptical. Science based on belief leaves a little to be desired.

The heat is actually non-existent but the euphemism for that is “missing heat”.

Climate change: The case of the missing heat

Nature 505, 276–278 (16 January 2014),  doi:10.1038/505276a

… Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled.

For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe. But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field. Although there have been jumps and dips, average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998, in seeming defiance of projections of climate models and the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Climate sceptics have seized on the temperature trends as evidence that global warming has ground to a halt. Climate scientists, meanwhile, know that heat must still be building up somewhere in the climate system, but they have struggled to explain where it is going, if not into the atmosphere. Some have begun to wonder whether there is something amiss in their models.

Now, as the global-warming hiatus enters its sixteenth year, scientists are at last making headway in the case of the missing heat. Some have pointed to the Sun, volcanoes and even pollution from China as potential culprits, but recent studies suggest that the oceans are key to explaining the anomaly. The latest suspect is the El Niño of 1997–98, which pumped prodigious quantities of heat out of the oceans and into the atmosphere — perhaps enough to tip the equatorial Pacific into a prolonged cold state that has suppressed global temperatures ever since. …… 

….. But none of the climate simulations carried out for the IPCC produced this particular hiatus at this particular time. That has led sceptics — and some scientists — to the controversial conclusion that the models might be overestimating the effect of greenhouse gases, and that future warming might not be as strong as is feared. Others say that this conclusion goes against the long-term temperature trends, as well as palaeoclimate data that are used to extend the temperature record far into the past. And many researchers caution against evaluating models on the basis of a relatively short-term blip in the climate. “If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. …….

….

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Turney faces the wrath of the Global Warming Inquisition

January 16, 2014

The fallout from the Ship of Fools continues and the Global Warming Establishment is turning on Chris Turney and his tourists.

Last week National Geographic distanced themselves from the Ship of Fools. Now even Nature is turning. They first published an article by Turney defending his jaunt into the Antarctic. But they quickly realised that supporting Turney was untenable. Now, not just one but two articles in Nature (here and here): 

Turney's tourists

Turney’s tourists

Turney again

Turney again

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has added its voice to the growing criticism of a stricken private polar expedition by challenging claims that it approved the research element of the trip.

On page 291 of this issue, Nick Gales, chief scientist of the AAD, which is based in Kingston, Tasmania, responds to an earlier Nature column by expedition head Chris Turney of the University of New South Wales (see Nature 505, 133; 2014). Turney’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition aimed to retrace the steps of explorer Douglas Mawson, who led an outing a century ago. But members of Turney’s expedition had to be rescued from their ship, the MV Akademik Shokalskiy, after it became trapped in ice at Christmas, adding fuel to a debate about the merits of such privately funded trips. 

Gales challenges Turney’s implicit suggestion that the AAD had approved the expedition’s science plan. The AAD did not formally review the research strategy, Gales notes, but had issued the permits required for Turney’s group to visit the region in which it got stuck. “It’s an important distinction for us,” says Gales. He adds that the expedition’s rescue has delayed several projects in Australia’s national Antarctic programme that have been many years in the planning. ……

There can be few things worse for a scientist than being accused that “science was not well served” by his efforts!! And that too by his own faction.

Climate Audit has a good account of the follies of the Ship of Fools.

I get the impression that Turney is going to face the full rigour of the Global Warming Inquisition. He may not be burnt at the stake but he may be thrown under a bus or two!

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Climate – the second derivative

January 14, 2014

Change changes.

We take global temperature (which exists nowhere and is merely a numerical construct) as climate. When global temperature is not constant we call it climate change. When “climate change” starts to change (as now from warming to cooling) we are into the second derivative. The turbulence at the time of the change of climate change we call “extreme events”.

Changing climate change

Changing climate change

These articles do not say very much new but they are quite extraordinary in that they are carried by the Sydney Morning Herald and Real Clear Politics, who have been staunch supporters of global warming orthodoxy.

The Ship of Fools in the Antarctic seems to have been a “tipping point” – not for climate or for climate change or for the change in climate change – but maybe for bringing some reality back into how climate is reported. (Incidentally, the Akademik Shokalskiy managed to get free of the ice and reached New Zealand but Turney’s tourists who were so dramatically rescued are still stuck at Casey station in the Antarctic and are not due back home for another 10 days!!!!!)

Sydney Morning Herald: Game finally up for carboncrats

It was promoted as the voyage to study the melting of ice sheets in the South Pole as well as to retrace Douglas Mawson’s perilous expedition a century ago. Yet the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, led by UNSW climatologist Chris Turney, has become a comedy goldmine. …..

Real Clear Politics: Ship of Fools in the Antarctic

In the mega-bestseller of the 15th century, “Das Narrenschiff,” Swiss lawyer Sebastian Brant satirized the pretensions, delusions and follies of his day through descriptions of passengers on a ship bound for “Narragonia.” Brant’s depiction of humanity as a ship of fools sailing without rudder or compass captured the imagination, inspiring a painting by Hieronymous Bosch, a song by the Grateful Dead.

So when the research ship Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck in the ice about 40 miles from Antarctica, some who knew the purpose of its voyage dubbed it the “Ship of Fools.” ……

Real Clear Politics: Freezing Is the New Warming

This is looking like another bad year for global warming.

The year began with the news that an Australian “climate researcher” leading a tourist expedition to Antarctica got his ship trapped in the sea ice. Which is embarrassing, because the purpose of his expedition was to study the melting of sea ice supposedly caused by 20th-century global warming. The current expedition was meant to retrace the route Douglas Mawson took in 1912—but they were stopped 70 kilometers short of where Mawson landed. So they needed to have an icebreaker ship sent to rescue them. Then the icebreaker got caught in the ice, and someone had to rescue the rescuers. You can’t make this stuff up. …… 

The New York Times and Der Spiegel have started backing away from the orthodoxy towards reality – but very slowly. The Guardian, Washington Post and the BBC are among those who are still stuck in a fantasy world.

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“Climate” brainwashing at the BBC

January 12, 2014

I like BBC News. They are usually faster than CNN with breaking news though not as fast as the blogosphere. But they are generally very reliable for straight news. Their breadth and depth of coverage is – I think – unmatched by any other news organisation. Facts are well checked and the BBC serves as verification of news from the blogsosphere and other sources. For me they are a key “media of record” and the BBC is freely available. Together with Reuters (rather than AP) I think they are a vital part of the protections of “freedom” in today’s world.

But when it comes to opinion the BBC is inherently unsound. They always take the “politically correct” line. That the view from the left is usually over-represented in their opinions is no secret – and it is just a matter of fact that most “politically correct”  issues derive from the left of the political divide. And for such issues the BBC loses its impartiality.

That the BBC is – and has been – one of the high priests of the “global warming” faith is also no secret. That Roger Harrabin has been one of the high priests of the religion has also been rather obvious. But what is new is that the BBC has spent a great deal of money in brainwashing their journalists and presenters in the dogma of this new catholicism. And that Cardinal Harrabin – as has long been suspected – has had some commercial interests in the propagation of the religion within the BBC. A pensioner has apparently forced the BBC by means of the Freedom of Information Act into revealing how some of the brainwashing was carried out.

This report is from the Daily Mail  (which itself is more than a little biased) but is reasonably reliable as to fact as long as its “opinions” are discounted:

The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming. …. The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.

At the event, in 2006, green activists and scientists – one of whom believes climate change is a bigger danger than global nuclear war  – lectured 28 of the Corporation’s most senior executives. 

A lobby group with close links to green campaigners, the International Broadcasting Trust (IBT), helped to arrange government funding for both the climate seminar  and other BBC seminars run by  Mr Harrabin – one of which was attended by then Labour Cabinet Minister Hilary Benn. Applying for money from Mr Benn’s Department for International Development (DFID), the IBT promised Ministers the seminars would influence programme content for years to come.

The BBC began its long legal battle to keep details of the conference secret after an amateur climate blogger spotted a passing reference to it in an official report. Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.

In a written statement opposing disclosure in 2012, former BBC news chief and current director of BBC radio Helen Boaden, who attended the event, admitted: ‘In my view, the seminar had an impact on a broad range of BBC output.’ She said this included news reports by Mr Harrabin, and a three-part BBC  2 series presented by geologist Iain Stewart, who told viewers global warming was ‘truly scary’. According to Ms Boaden, ‘Editors and executives who attended were inspired to be more ambitious and creative in their editorial coverage of this slow-moving and complex issue.’ She claimed the seminar sought to  ‘identify where the main areas of debate lie’. However, there were no expert climate sceptics present. 

In an internal report, the IBT boasted that the seminars organised with Mr Harrabin had had ‘a significant impact on the BBC’s output’.

All four scientists present were strong advocates of the dangers posed by global warming. They were led by Lord May, former president of the Royal Society, who, though not a climate expert, has argued that warming is a greater threat than nuclear war. Other non-BBC staff who attended included Blake Lee-Harwood, head of campaigns at Greenpeace, John Ashton from the powerful green lobby group E3G, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, who argued there were only 100 months left to save the planet through radical emissions cuts, and Ashok Sinha of Stop Climate Chaos.

Mr Harrabin was the seminar’s principal organiser. He ran it through the Cambridge Media Environment Programme, an outfit he set up with Open University lecturer Joe Smith. …… by teaming up with the IBT,  an avowed lobby group trying to influence coverage, and accepting government funds when Labour was advocating radical policies to combat global warming, Mr Harrabin exposed himself to the charge he could be compromising the Corporation’s impartiality. During the legal battle, the BBC tried to airbrush both the IBT and its approach to the Government for funding from the record. Submissions and witness statements made no mention of it. …. 

David Rose comments:

Last week was a big one for weather news: the storms and floods in Britain, and the end of the bizarre saga which saw the Akademik Shokalskiy, the ship carrying climate scientists, tourists and a BBC reporter to inspect the ravages of global warming, trapped in Antarctic ice.

In both cases, the BBC stuck closely to its skewed, climate alarmist agenda. ……. 

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One cold wave is not proof of Global Cooling, but ….

January 9, 2014


One cold wave is not proof of Global Cooling,

Even if polar ice is now steadily increasing,

But a quiescent Sun is in another Minimum,

And AGW theory suffers a diverticulum,

For Climate Change is changing to a Cooling from a Warming.

From CBN News:

Global Cooling: Is an Ice Age Coming?

The fact that Arctic ice is growing may not be the good news that it seems to be. There are signs that the Earth is entering a very unpleasant cooling period. Sunspot activity remains very low.

“The sun has been very unusual for almost 15 years now,” Jens Pedersen, senior scientist at the Denmark’s Technical University, said.

Pedersen said the sun recently reached solar maximum and that there should be a lot of sunspot activity, but there isn’t.

“We have to go back 100 years to find a solar maximum that was as weak as the one we are in right now,” he told CBN News. “And the recent solar minimum…one has to go back 200 years to find one that was as weak.”

The last time the sun was this quiet, North America and Europe suffered through a weather event from the 1600s to the 1800s known as “Little Ice Age,” when the Thames River in London regularly froze solid, and North America saw terrible winters. Crops failed and people starved.

Pedersen said climate scientists know the Earth stopped warming 15 years ago. But the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of which Pedersen is an expert reviewer, suppressed a recent report from its own scientists that the U.N.’s climate model has been proven wrong.

“In particular one of the issues has been why global warming has stopped during the last 15 years, and climate scientists were very frank that the climate models do not match the climate we observe,” Pedersen said.

But politicians removed that embarrassing finding from the final draft.  It’s as if the alleged danger from climate change can’t be wrong because it is now too important.

It has become a political movement, a cash cow for climate scientists and environmental groups, and a way for world leaders to control economies and people.

“It’s a political agenda,” Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, said. “When you look at what the government will be able to do with climate change, it gives them (access) into every aspect of our lives.” ….. 

Related: https://ktwop.wordpress.com/tag/landscheidt-minimum/

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Turney’s tourists: the heroes who weren’t

January 9, 2014

Turney’s tourists on his Ship of Fools are severely taken to task by David Roberts in the National Geographic. They see themselves as heroes. But they were just a bunch of spoilt dilettantes who were out on a frivolous lark of no scientific significance. Douglas Mawson will be spinning in his grave.

The members of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 (AAE)—who intended to re-create a very small part of Sir Douglas Mawson‘s original monumental expedition of 1911-14—seemed strangely blasé—even giddily upbeat—during their ten days stranded in the ice. 

They recorded a New Year’s Eve sing-along for YouTube and chatted about yoga classes and knot-tying lessons to while away the time.

On their Spirit of Mawson expedition blog, one passenger signed off on December 28: “It’s Saturday and it’s bar-time (bar opens at 6 pm), so I am going to leave it here.”

They even seemed to relish their crisis. The BBC quoted Tracy Rogers, the team’s marine ecologist, as saying, “It’s fantastic—I love it when the ice wins and we don’t. It reminds you that as humans, we don’t control everything … We’ve got several penguins watching us, thinking ‘What the hell are you doing stuck in our ice?’ The sky is a beautiful grey—it looks like it wants to have a bit of a snow. It’s the perfect Christmas, really.”

For many seasoned adventurers, the team’s attitude was hard to swallow. It seemed to betoken a new kind of entitlement, in which folks who get into serious trouble take it for granted that other people will risk their lives to save them. ….

Perversely, for the general public, the hapless passengers seemed to emerge as the heroes of the story, even though they did nothing but twiddle their thumbs and wait for the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long to come to their rescue, which ended by trapping the much bigger vessel in the ice. The U.S. sent another icebreaker, the U.S. Polar Star, to rescueXue Long and Shokalskiy, but that mission was recently called off when the ships were able to break free from the ice. …..

…… The whole expedition, these experts implied, amounted to a “frivolous” lark that added almost nothing to our knowledge of the southern continent. …

The real heroes of the story were the 101 members of the Xue Long, the 22 crew members of the Shokalskiy who stayed with their ship, the crew of the Polar Star, and that of the Australian ship Aurora Australis that powered south to receive the airlifted refugees.

“It seems unlikely that the dilettantes who signed up for AAE 2013-14 would soon fork over the funds to pay for their perilous and expensive rescue. They’re still too busy congratulating themselves.

The Akademik Shokalskiy and the Xue Long got free of the ice 5 days after Turney’s tourists abandoned ship. Why the tourists needed to be rescued is still a mystery. Presumably the booze had run out.

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New Global warming “event”! All 50 US states record temperatures below freezing

January 8, 2014

I note that the global warming priesthood are busy contorting themselves to show that the current icy blast across the US is no proof that global warming has stopped and may even be proof that it is entirely due to global warming and ice melting in the Arctic!!! Every single US State – including Hawaii – recorded temperatures below freezing yesterday. Never mind that no climate model ever predicted record cold waves. The contortions can get quite amusing but it is a little frightening that “global warming ideology” has become the new catholicism of this age. (Note that Eric Holthaus was prepared to get a vasectomy for his faith and to save the world from global warming)

Ultimately reality must prevail – even when it conflicts with what computer models may say. This from  The Guardian ( which is still smarting from the Ship of Fools fiasco).

The Guardian: 

Polar vortex – temperatures drop below freezing in all 50 US states

Temperatures in all 50 US states dipped below freezing on Tuesday in a rare nationwide chill that will keep a grip on much of the country for at least another day, with cutting winds and blizzards posing the most danger.

Florida, a state that normally basks in its reputation as a warm winter escape, experienced unusually low temperatures. In the midwest, northeast and eastern Canada, it was dangerous to venture outside. At some point on Tuesday, at least one location in each of the 50 US states recorded temperatures below freezing, with the highest point on Hawaii, Mauna Kea, recording a temperature of 21F (-6C).

The morphing of the science

Global warming >> Climate change >> Extreme Events >>>>>>>> Global Cooling

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather, Winter | 1 Comment »

Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long break free from Antarctic ice

January 7, 2014

Four days after Turney’s tourists abandoned ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy and Chinese icebreaker Xue Long have broken free from the ice they were trapped in.

BBC:The Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy and Chinese icebreaker Xue Long have broken free from Antarctic ice where they had been stranded for several days.

The Russian ship’s captain said a crack had appeared in the ice after a change in wind direction. The Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck on 25 December. It has a Russian crew of 22. On Thursday, the Xue Long’s helicopter ferried 52 passengers from the stranded Russian ship to an Australian vessel. The Xue Long then became stuck itself on Friday.

“We’re going slowly and zig-zagging, we’ve already moved more than 20 [nautical] miles,” Captain Igor Kiselyov of the Russian ship told Itar-Tass news agency. “It’s tough going so far, a lot of mist, visibility is no more than 500 metres,” he said. He confirmed that the Chinese ship was also moving and that Akademik Shokalskiy was just north of it. “It may catch up with us – in that case, we’ll follow in its wake. But if not, we’ll get out together, independently,” he said.

All’s well that end well but Turney’s preceding comedy of errors will not be soon forgotten.

It looks like the services of the US icebreaker Polar Star will not be required.

Was all the ballyhoo from the heroic expeditioners truly necessary?

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Nature/Turney defend the Ship of Fools and their Antarctic pleasure cruise

January 7, 2014

Chris Turney, his global warming pilgrims (called scientists), his pet journalists and his tourists are due to reach Tasmania on 22nd January after being “rescued” (from what?) after their chartered ship Akademik Shokalskiy (ice-strengthened but no icebreaker) was trapped in the Antarctic ice on December 24th.

Nature (much to their discredit) have hurriedly published a defence by Chris Turney of his tourist trip on his Ship of Fools.  It amazes me that Nature would – so quickly – publish such an obviously self-serving and narcissistic article. Almost as if they had a higher agenda of defending the larger global warming community so grievously opened up to ridicule by Turney and his tourists.

“It was no pleasure cruise” he whines (though he seems to have taken his family along for this jaunt). He claims the ship was an icebreaker – which it was not – and that the event could not have been anticipated  – which it could. He claims to have advanced the frontiers of science – which is mere hyperbole. He even tries to take credit for rekindling public interest! 

“… the value of our expedition must be judged by the quality of the research it always intended to produce, and the remarkable rekindling of public interest in science and exploration that has come with it”.

But his attempt to salvage something from his PR disaster does not go down well judging by some of the comments that his self-serving “defence” elicits:

Roger Corbett 2014-01-07 04:46 AM

How does a couple of hours shoveling snow to get inside Mawson’s Huts reported at the time by Professor Turney http://www.abc.net.au/science/photos/2013/11/26/3897110.htm become “important conservation work” a few days later? When he is trying to boost the scientific credentials of a tourism exercise. When you are in a hole, stop digging. These little exaggerations add up to make it hard to believe the bigger things. “Never before has a science expedition reached out live to so many people from such a remote location”….er, “one small step for a man…” It’s a definite pattern in the accounts coming from the AAE-2 people. Reading as much as I can, I conclude that the tourism activities delayed return to the ship, despite increasing concern from the ship’s Master. The claims that the weather closed in so suddenly and unexpectedly by Professor Turney are exaggerated (like so many things he says and writes), either to deliberately deflect from his responsibilities as tour leader, or because ego doesn’t allow him to admit it even to himself.

Charles Rotter 2014-01-07 12:41 AM

…  I have been following the writings of the various blogs documenting this trip, and as far as I can tell, the only scientific discovery/conclusion/finding you have documented so far is that, if the food source for a population of penguins becomes much harder to reach due to added physical obstacles, then that penguin population will probably reduce in number. I am in awe at this insight.

Richard Tol 2014-01-06 04:09 PM

The way it turned out, this was indeed no pleasure cruise. At the same time, Chris Turney has yet to answer questions about the research purpose of this expedition. The Spirit of Mawson website is vague and many of the aims listed there cannot be achieved by a single, short trip. The successes listed above are from the first leg of the trip, rather than from the now-infamous second leg. If the second leg aimed to launch Argo floats, why did it sail on? And why were there so many people on board? There were 18 PhD students on the expedition. Only 6 have a research connection with Antarctica (the other 12 studying the North Atlantic, Australia’s coastal waters, brain injury, Iceland, New Zealand’s North Island, urban climates, pedagogy, the Equatorial Undercurrent, pharmaceuticals, time series statistics, microbiology, and Siberia), but only one of those has an obvious reason to visit Mawson’s Huts and even she would have collected more data in the same time had she flown there. Forgive me for asking, what research purposes were served by this expedition? Was this really the best way to spend the available funds?

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Posted in Alarmism, Antarctic, Climate, Media | 2 Comments »

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