Scientists who canceled their Arctic expedition due to thick ice conditions haves an interesting excuse for why they had to abandon their research project — climate change.
“We’re doing a large-scale climate change study and before we can even get going on it, climate change is conspiring to force us to cancel that study,” David Barber, a University of Manitoba scientist who leads the expedition, told The Guardian Wednesday.
Barber’s expedition set out in late May after being caught in 25-foot thick ice off the northern coast of Newfoundland. The expedition was forced to turn back after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a four-year project to study the effects of global warming on Hudson Bay.
Now, Barber and fellow researchers are blaming their botched expedition on global warming, or climate change, as they call it.
Their evidence? Not much, except the opinions of some scientists involved — at least, The Guardian didn’t present any evidence otherwise. The paper just assumed climate change was the culprit.
Interestingly enough, The Guardian blamed a similar event in 2013 as a product of “weather” and not “climate change.” That year, a Russian icebreaker carrying scientists ended up stuck in thick Antarctic sea ice.
“It’s not something you would expect to see there and not something we’ve seen there before,” Barber said. “In the high Arctic, climate change is causing the ice to get thinner and there to be less of it. What that does is that it increases the mobility of ice.”
Scientists studied the ice around them while they were stuck. They noticed lots of multi-year ice more common closer to the North Pole. However, what happened to scientists could be a weather-related event.
Scientists are expected to set out again in early July, but their study will no doubt be delayed.
“We’re very poorly prepared for climate change,” Barber said. “We pay lip service to the fact that we think we know it’s coming and society is trying to grapple with the complexity of it, but when it really comes down to brass tacks, our systems are ill prepared for it.”
This isn’t the first time scientists have been stymied by thick Arctic sea ice. Despite the overall decline in sea ice since the late 1970s, the Polar Ocean Challenge found itself caught in thick ice in July 2016.
The voyage’s purpose was to show “that the Arctic sea ice coverage shrinks back so far now in the summer months that sea that was permanently locked up now can allow passage through.” The ship got stuck off the coast of Murmansk, Russia.
The year before, a scientific mission to the Arctic was derailed by thick ice. The icebreaker carrying researchers had to be diverted to save supply ships stuck in ice in Hudson Bay.
In 2013, the Russian icebreaker Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck in sea ice off Antarctica while carrying scientists to study how global warming was affecting the South Pole. The Guardian blamed that instance on “weather” and not “climate change.”
Read more at Daily Caller
Climate change occurs . Who knew ? When scientists can’t yet predict natural occurring climate variables why would anyone think tweaking of a trace gas is the key to humans controlling the climate ? As George Carlin so astutely observed .. humans haven’t learned how to take care of themselves and we are going to save the f.. planet ?
There are lots of things we spend $billions on that really make no sense . Halloween , many undergraduate degrees , but the global warming industry is special because it
pushes an agenda to force the fleecing of tax payers worse than a religious cult .
You can tell these guys are real scientists though because climate conmen would have waited till August 30 before embarking on their photo op .
One flight over the route or a couple of peeks at satellites would show the pure futility of using limited supply ice breakers to do an open water propaganda campaign .
I predict that if we enter another mini ice age that the eco activists will blame it on mankind’s emission of carbon dioxide as well as other green house gasses. You have now heard this first on the Climate Dispatch.
So many hidden agendas depend on forcing the reduction of fossil fuel use, there is no way they are going to give that up. There is also the 1.5 trillion dollar a year industry (extortion) depending on the drastic reduction.
Just about every malady of mankind has been blamed on CO2 emissions, why not a mini ice age?
Unlike the slight warming we have had so far, which if anything has been beneficial, a mini ice age would be a huge disaster. With hundreds of millions of people in severe starvation, what better motivation could the eco activists put forth in order to reduce our emissions?
Thank you David for mentioning the EXTORTION element of the Climate Change Agenda. The same politicians who wish to eradicate free market capitalism are using the Climate Change Agenda to take shake down businesses, lining their own pockets while also funding the illegitimate movement.
Of course if they are successful the climate change left will at some point run out of other people’s money to steal. Socialist states are usually able to survive until such time as they have exhausted theft opportunities from the private sector and their revolutionary benefactors stop providing welfare support.
Is it too early to harvest these nuts or are they still too green?
They also can’t find the forest because there are too many trees blocking their vision…
The Arctic is cranking out fresh ice thick enough to stall an ice breaker. Why don’t we see that in the headlines? Most people believe that ice is disappearing, because that’s what the hoaxers want them to think.
Thin ice = Global Warming.
Thick ice = Climate Change.
Now I understand.