Bloomberg News, in a desperate attempt to keep a straight face;
Three U.K. explorers bound for the North Pole on a scientific expedition to study global warming said they are close to running out of food after “brutal” weather conditions halted three attempts to fly in supplies.
The support team hopes to decide within hours on when it can send an airplane to land on nearby ice with provisions, Tori Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Catlin Arctic Survey in London, said in an interview today.
“We’re hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice,” expedition leader Pen Hadow said in a statement e-mailed yesterday by his team. “Waiting is almost the worst part of an expedition as we’re in the lap of the weather gods.”
The severe weather is jeopardizing a journey aimed at projecting when global warming may melt the entire Arctic Ocean cap, a phenomenon that scientists say might trigger further gains in temperature.
And only 82 days left to go! On a more hopeful note, starvation among the local polar bear population may be averted...
h/t Dave K.
I hope that other eco-warriors block the plane from leaving with their emergency survival gear, so as not to further destroy the planet with its carbon-belching engines.
ROFLMAO!!
“We’re hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice,” expedition leader Pen Hadow said in a statement e-mailed yesterday by his team. “Waiting is almost the worst part of an expedition as we’re in the lap of the weather gods.”
Can't hack it can they, reality that is...
And the displayed stupidity is priceless.
This expedition has nothing to do with data, everything to do with egos, politics, and stupidity.
If they really wanted to collect useful scientific ice thickness data all the way to the NP, they'd get a fleet of about 6 Nodwells and just drive.
Where are the polar bears to hunt these sad human specimens? Oh yeah, the bears are looking for hapless,cute baby seals. Ironic justice if a polar bear took them on - wonder if they are even carrying rifles to ward off the cuddly, white bruins.
Yay! They're back! (I mean, not from the North Pole. You know what I mean.)
Huh? It's cold in the Arctic in the middle of winter? There's wind? And ICE???
When did THAT happen?!?
Seriously, what do these idiots do for research, watch Gore's crockumentary and surf Suzuki's website? What'd they expect to find, drowning polar bears and fields of orchids?
Flip on the freakin' Weather Channel before you head off to the ice floes, morons. And pack a lunch, there's no Starbucks north of Fairbanks.
Hilarious!
I still can't get over the wording of their mission. They are on a mission to measure how much the ice is thinning. You would think that a true scientist would wait until the results were in to say whether it was thinning or not.
By the sounds of their expedition's progress, the ice may still be thickening for the year.
There is a great book about the life experiences of people like this, The Darwin Awards. It's all about people who volutarily remove themselves from the gene pool through their incredibly stupid actions. I can't wait to read about these tools in the latest edition.
Flashback:
"The Franklin Trail"
"British sailors would never do such a thing!" Such was the response to Dr. John Rae upon his return to England in 1854. He had just returned from the Canadian Arctic with the first evidence of the demise of the crew of the Franklin Expedition. He brought with him spoons, knives, forks and trays that were purchased from an Inuk at Pelly Bay. The thing that most repulsed the British public was the story of ..."
http://www.netscapades.com/franklintrail/cannibal.htm
Thank you for making my day Kate! There is so much bad news - I needed a smile.
Do these people still not grasp the irony and hilarity of their situation?
Reminds me of a trip to the Arctic Ocean when we took our bathing suits -- secure in the media-knowledge of retreating ice. We merely wanted to wade in, just for the photo-op.
Trouble was, the sea was hard as ice, and to the northern horizon it was hard, bright white. I guess that Inupiat whaler who was leaving for the South because of so many hard, frozen years not being able to "haul whales" as he said, was not talking through his neat hat.
And this was all before the Gore-acular spasms of Obasmic self-satisfaction.
"There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth." -GKC
Mind you, while they wait they can measure the ice in their sleeping bags...so it won't be a total waste. :)
Hope the al-gore bots get billed for the inconvenient rescue/recovery as well.
It would be most interesting to read their diary entries from the first days of their expedition.
Let's hope the Catlin Arctic Survey will be billed for saving their sorry asses from the "Melting Arctic Ice Cap"
The prevailing wisdom is that the results of this expedition are already printed....for production at Copenhagen.
One "Ursus Marinus" (Polar Bear) should settle this matter expediciously......
If they perish it will be a Capricorn One scenario-----minus the black helos of course.
At least with Sir John Franklin and company there was the possibility that lead poisoning resulted in irrational decisions. What the excuse for these modern day “scientists?”
. . but they had the most stylish snow suits so they would look cool on TV.
Hope the bears appreciate the nice fabric as they chew through it.
Maybe they can parachute Anderson Cooper in to do an update for his Planet in Peril series. Heh
What's brown but smells green?
Polar Bear pooh.
Also note - they have gone backwards for the past week (ice drift). They have averaged abiut 1.5 km/day net progress towards the pole since they started 2 weeks ago.
PFF, I say!
"abiut" is an Inuvialuit word meaning "about".
The similarity is quite striking.
The Three Stooges.
Al Gore must be under his desk at this point. If not, he should be.
No matter how frozen this earth becomes these idiots will never admit they are wrong.
Yes, they might make the Darwin list .... soon.
No sympathy here.
I wonder if it's Gore-Tex®?
Frankly, I had been hoping for frost bite for them when I first read of this, but in the interests of helping the sustainability of polar bear populations, I now hope for their being guests of honour at a polar bear dinner.
dganabbit...what pathetic specimens....why when i was a young feller we had explorers the like of Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wickham-Fiennes....
never a glum word escaped Sir Ranulph's stiff upper lips(for the lower WAS every bit as stiff as the upper).....HE would never fret or moan or be downcast when circumstance seemed to favour adversity...
great blubbing nancy-boys is what they are nowadays...with a coupla' cissies and brown hatters among their expedition i'll warrant....and not one man jack of them accompanied by a faithful esquimaux bearer or beater either i'd bet my anorak....
Ice: 63 feet.
Irony: too thick to measure.
Those fellas could learn a bit or two about the Arctic from these guys:
Lance Mackey poised to win 2009 Iditarod (next hour or so)
http://www.iditarod.com/race/race/currentstandings.html
"Previous estimates of melting have been based on less reliable depth soundings made by satellites and submarines, which can’t distinguish ice from snow.
I may be mistaken, but I thought that it hardly ever snowed up there. How much snow accumulates on top of the ice each year? I the snow depth is negligible, it would add to the argument that this expedition is not much more than a publicity stunt.
"Maybe they can parachute Anderson Cooper in to do an update for his Planet in Peril series. Heh"
Yes send the Q-Tip up there. That would be funny.
Imaha
Imaha ouput
Imaha oupusat
Maybe
Maybe tomorrow
Maybe day after tomorrow
Response in Inuktitut to the question "When will the Polar Bears be hungry enough to eat these stupid POMS ?"
One more point...How can they land a plane if there is that much snow? Don't you need a hard surface?
fred says " . but they had the most stylish snow suits so they would look cool on TV.
Hope the bears appreciate the nice fabric as they chew through it."
Actually, those stylish snow suits will act sort of like the pita bread wrapped around a shwarma. It keeps everything from spilling out when the polar bears are dining.
Pen Hadow
"Bred to be a winner"
Is now:
Bread and weinerless.
http://www.penhadow.com/index.php
"One more point...How can they land a plane if there is that much snow? Don't you need a hard surface?
Posted by: Gus"
It will be a Twin Otter and there are options. Likely one is wheel skis, second choice is balloon or "tundra" tires.
One thing about the Arctic is there isn't actually a lot of snow - it is a desert after all, but what does fall is packed hard as concrete by what the Arctic has in abundance - fierce winds.
A 'Twotter can land in a very short distance - less than 300ft. With an experienced pilot and if the little switch on the landing gear that prevents the props from going into reverse pitch while airborne has been disconnected, you can put one down and dead stopped in 100ft - even loaded.
They don't need much runway - any almost flat piece of sea ice will work. In my experience it won't be a problem finding a place to land nearby.
. . . and speaking of Global Warming, The One has started his "Bait & Switch" campaign.
There by Unicorns here, matey !
"President Obama’s climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House’s initial estimate of the so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.
At the meeting, Jason Furman, a top Obama staffer, estimated that the president’s cap-and-trade program could cost up to three times as much as the administration’s early estimate of $646 billion over eight years."
Further to this article, the heartbreak of global warming had not reached Calgary this morning either.
I can't remember where I read it but one day the crisis was the woman left her beverage in the cup and it froze. The way it read it took the rest of the day to thaw it out and they had to eat in the dark. Hudson, Frobisher and these guys.
If only the Won had promised Flying Horses instead of Unicorns, there would be no problem whatsoever in getting these guys out.
btw: GoreTex? LOL
btw2: Shwarma? Racist?
If they freeze to death, might someone be liable ?
Some day we may see Big Al taking the stand to be questioned by expert witness, Bjorn Lomborg.
Or Tim Ball asking Suzuki to explain the science.
How much does it cost to send a plane up there to save these Bozzoes ? All those in favor of chipping in, raise your hand.
BHA AHH AAH HAAA . BAAA. You can't even parody these folks.
If you read the links to the actual sites of the people on this mission you'll get a good laugh. The head of the expedition is Pen Hadow and he is billed as "The thinking mans explorer". Obviously he's not a deep thinker or he might have seen this situation coming. And if he is the smart one the others must be borderline cretins.
For future reference they might want to write down these important facts.
ice=cold
fire=hot
Handy stuff to know.
Read the comments, seems the Brits agree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdRtHrhe2T8&feature=related
Once there you can find profiles and other self puffery
Swimming in the pool in jolly old is pretty funny.
"Adventure is just bad planning." - Roald Amundsen
So we are to believe these idiots when they predict climate 100 years from now. They don't know it's cold and nasty in the arctic today ? Doh !
I think they were expecting green grass and balmy weather up there.
Did I not state that they could end up doing what the Donnar Party did? Cannibalism anyone?
But, but how much water from melting ice have they collected kate???
Check out the below site to see where they plan to land the plane.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/opsroom
If they were trying to get data on the melting of Arctic sea ice they would not be taking a single pass across the ice, they would be setting up monitoring stations to measure the shrinking sea ice thickness. Without knowing what the thickness was to begin with how can you figure out how much ice has melted?
Their snowsuits are white, lota heat absorption there, I prefer dark blue. I'm with nodwell, shoulda used Nodwells if they were serious. Did alot of ice checking on the MacKenzie channels between Tuck and Inuvik, just hook up the GPS behind the ski-doo with the ice-checker sled and go, 40 clicks per day , two passes are needed to check your data. We packed enough food for ten days and toilet paper for twenty every day,you never knew what could happen. The Nodwell was basically a safe room. These blokes are definitely Darwinian.
I wonder if these people have ever been outdoors longer than it takes to walk from the house to the car? Who mounts an arctic expedition in the winter?
It's like that old joke about the scientists building a rocket to take them to the sun. "But if you land on the sun you'll be incinerated!" exclaims the layman. "Oh no, we've solved that," say the scientists, "we're going to arrive at night."
Similarly, someone might have objected, "but an arctic expedition in winter will encounter severe weather!" But the intrepid adventurers answered, "then we'll turn up the thermostat."
Nothing like getting a bigtime bitch slap from Mother Nature eh?
Anyone having visions of someone doing a dance on Fat Al Gore's cushy lap. Yeech!
Ice in the sleeping bags is a bad thing. As much as I enjoy the irony as everyone else, I really don't wish these guy to suffer the same fate as that other famous UK expedition, led by R. F. Scott, whose untimely end was about this time of the year.