BBC News: Science and the Environment
A team of polar explorers has travelled to the Arctic in a bid to discover how quickly the sea-ice is melting and how long it might take for the ocean to become ice-free in summers. Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley will be using a mobile radar unit to record an accurate measurement of ice thickness as they trek to the North Pole. The trio will be sending in regular diary entries, videos and photographs to BBC News throughout their expedition.
The Catlin Arctic Survey team started its gruelling trek on 28 February. Last report was March 11, 2009.
WEDNESDAY 11 MARCH - DAY 12 - FEELING THE ARCTIC CHILL
From Pen Hadow: Conditions have been hard.
We have been battered by wind, bitten by frost and bruised from falls on the ice. Occasionally it’s disheartening too when you’ve slogged for a day and then wake up the next morning having drifted back to where you started. The Arctic sea ice is constantly moving, breaking open and reforming into different shapes - which means we can end up moving several kilometres in any direction while we are asleep in our tents.
The wind chill today will slice us up - it’s taking the temperature down to below -50C, so we have decided to take a day’s rest to recharge our batteries and soothe the aches and pains. We are resigned to several weeks of daily discomfort and general misery, safe in the knowledge that conditions, our progress and general well-being will improve over the coming months.
See video report from the group here.
See larger image here.
Read more here.
UPDATE March 17, AFP:
No Joke! ‘The cold is relentless!’ - Arctic Global warming explorers face frostbite, ‘brutal sub-zero weather conditions’ - AFP – March 17, 2009
Excerpt: Three British explorers trying to ski to the North Pole to measure the thickness of sea ice only have one day’s food left as bad weather hampers supply flights, the mission said Tuesday. Project director and ice team leader Pen Hadow and his colleagues Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels are now down to half rations and fighting to survive in brutal sub-zero weather conditions. “Wer’e hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and, because we’re not moving, the colder we get,” Hadow said Tuesday in a statement from the London headquarters of the Catlin Arctic Survey. “Waiting is almost the worst part of an expedition as we’re in the lap of the weather gods. This is basic survival.” Hartley, the team’s photographer, who has frostbite in his left toe, said he had hoped the supply plane would arrive Tuesday in time to celebrate his 41st birthday. The team aims to gather data to complement satellite and submarine observations to measure the sea ice and plot how fast it is disappearing. Global warming is believed to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom. Read more here. See a compilation of other nature thwarted attempts to demonstrate global warming in the arctic in this Marc Morano compilation here.
By Al Kamen, Washington Post
One of the foremost proponents of the view that global climate change is a myth, the Right Honorable Christopher Walter Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, was in town last week warning a House Ways and Means subcommittee that adopting a cap-and-trade system or another such tax plan to reduce pollution is unnecessary and would pretty much destroy the country. And it was a great show as Monckton, who has been a newspaper reporter and an adviser to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, prefaced his remarks at a hearing on the impact of climate change on the poor by intoning: “I bring you warmest fraternal greetings from the Mother of Parliaments to the Congress of your great athletic democracy, and I pray that God’s blessings may rest upon your councils.” Athletic? What happened to the obesity epidemic? Then, in a magnificent 428-word sentence, Monckton said that the leading proposals on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide—“a harmless and beneficial trace gas”—would “threaten” the lives of poor people, “gravely diminish liberty,” maybe “render unlawful the pursuit of happiness” and lead to “fiscal incontinence.” Yikes! There would be more poverty and higher birth rates, he said, and thus even more carbon dioxide as more people exhale. “The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are thickening. The Sahara is greening. There is no ‘climate crisis,’ “ he said. So the “correct policy is not to cap or tax carbon dioxide emissions. It is to have the courage to do nothing.” His lordship later blamed California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s enviro efforts for “the mass exodus” from that state and warned that the contemplated tax ideas to reduce warming would “drive your nation into bankruptcy.”
By the end of Monckton’s low-key opening statement, and despite his use of a little Latin and French—such as “soi-disant,” meaning “so-called” or “self-styled”—the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), got the drift. “Well, I guess we could mark you down as doubtful,” he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd. (For those who missed the testimony, Monckton will be discoursing for folks on the Hill at a lunch today sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition. It’s at noon in Room 1334 of the Longworth House Office Building.) See post here.
By Examiner Editorial
Prospects for passage of President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade solution for global warming have become decidedly chillier since the idea was first proposed in 2002. Obama wants to cut CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2050.
He’s got his work cut out for him. Not only are hundreds of credible climate scientists now publicly debunking former vice-president Al Gore’s claims of apocalyptic environmental disaster, a new Gallup poll reveals that 41 percent of Americans believe such alarms are “exaggerated.” Most significantly, more than 650 prominent international scientists now oppose the findings of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC), which are the basis of the Obama proposal.
By our math, the 52 authors of the IPCC report who are climate scientists are out-numbered 12-to-1 by their scientific critics. Former Senate Environmental Committee chairman James Inhofe, R-OK, insists that the IPCC report, funded by government grants and liberal-leaning foundations, was written by “bought and paid for” scientists with a pre-determined agenda. Inhofe has opposed the cap-and-trade concept ever since the original McCain-Lieberman bill was introduced in the Republican-controlled Senate. Only two of his Senate colleagues offered to join Inhofe then. Now, more than two dozen have joined the growing ranks committed to defeating the identical Warner-Lieberman bill.
Citing a recent Pew Poll in which Americans ranked the economy at the top - and global warming at the bottom - of a market basket of political issues, Inhofe calls cap-and-trade legislation “a form of global taxation” and believes it can be defeated again, even though it has the full backing of the Obama administration. The realization is slowly but surely growing here that duplicating Europe’s failed cap-and-trade scheme would be a knock-out blow for the U.S. economy because it would dramatically increase energy costs and cripple the nation’s dwindling manufacturing base.
The Detroit News aptly called cap-and-trade “a giant economic dagger aimed at the nation’s heartland.” Even Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-ND, warned that the president’s $3.5 trillion budget “can’t pass here” if it contains cap-and-trade provisions that virtually guarantee a stratospheric rise in energy costs for families and businesses.
The Obama administration has already signaled its intention to limit the supply of energy by blocking funding for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and canceling existing federal oil and gas leases. Less supply inescapably means higher prices. So let us hope that Inhofe’s bold assertion that “we are winning the argument with the American people” is correct. If it is, it comes just in the nick of time. Read more here.