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Chinese Icebreaker Is Stuck In Ice After Antarctic Research Vessel Rescue
New submitter Cochonou writes "In an unforeseen turn of events, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long is now stuck in heavy Antarctic pack ice, just a day after its helicopter was used for the rescue of the passengers onboard the ice-trapped MV Akademik Shokalskiy. The Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, which is now carrying the passengers of the Shokalskiy, has been placed on standby to assist. The Chinese vessel is waiting for favorable tidal conditions on Saturday to make another attempt at freeing itself."
We heard you needed an ice rescue, so we're sending you an ice rescue for your ice rescue.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Yo Dawg, I herd you like to break ice, so I put an ice breaker in your ice breaker so you can break ice while you break ice.
You can't handle the truth.
could an icebreaker break, if it could actually break some freakin' ice!
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
If you send a ship to rescue another ship from ice, and that ship gets stuck in ice... I don't think that's exactly an "unforeseen" event. They knew the ice was there. And building up fast. It's a humorous turn of events, sure, but hardly unforeseen.
I just think it is cool there is such cooperation between Russia, China, and Australia on this "saving" of essentially Antarctic party animals, on a Russian drinking and discovery cruise.
JJ
That's the problem with Chinese ice breakers. You get stuck again in an hour.
Trolling is a art,
Arctica !== Antarctica.
Actually he said it in 2007, and it was by 2014, and it was summer ice in the north pole. So, basically, you got everything wrong. Posting AC because of previous mods.
What everyone needs to remember is that believers are idiots who think it is all or nothing, Man is causing the problem and there are no possible other reasons
FTFY
Look, there are idiots on both sides of the isle You got the people who are no matter what going to say that man caused all the problems, there are those who will claim that the climate is not changing even when its clear that there is change, what is not clear is whether or not we caused the changes or if they are natural, and is there anything we can actually do to combat the change without causing unintended consequences or going broke from spending everything we have to make no difference whatsoever.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What everyone needs to remember is that believers are idiots who think it is all or nothing, Man is causing the problem and there are no possible other reasons
Except that's a stupid proposition that is just untrue. Of course people who understand global warming don't think it's "All or nothing". It's cold where I am today, and that has nothing to do with the fact that this winter is still, on average, almost a degree warmer than a decade ago. Your placing yourself right in-between scientifically accurate and idiotically wrong just makes you wrong too. It doesn't make you a "reasonable moderate" it just makes you another willfully ignorant person who doesn't even begin to understand the basic science in question.
The presence of idiots doesn't even begin to justify that one "side" is entirely idiotic positions.
Your the one that points out every storm or high temperature is PROOF of global warming.
No one is seriously doing that. The proof is in the absolute fuck-ton of easy to validate wide scale observational data, core sound principles(like absorption spectra of greenhouse gasses), and the staggering accuracy of mainline predictive theories.
To be fair, January is the middle of summer in Antarctica. That said, within the past decade I've still seen it snow in June in NY and have gone outside on Christmas in shorts. Personally, I'm in favor of the God Is Trolling Everybody theory.
I do not think that word is spelled how you think it is spelled.
If you'd like to read more about the Antarctic ice and how hard it is to survive down there, I highly recommend the book Endurance. It's about the voyage of Ernest Shackleton and crew in 1914. Their purpose-built ship got stuck in the ice for months then ultimately crushed. They survived on the ice floes for many more months before finally escaping. It goes into lots of detail and is a fascinating read.
Yes, and if weren't for the other parts of the post, that'd be a pretty good critique. It ignores the former(widescale observational data) and the latter(astounding predictive accuracy on primary variables, by mainline predictions, such as IPCC).
But yeah, if you ignore reality and data, it is "just a theory". Just like gravity
"Don't forget that Antarctica was void of ice during the Mesozoic era. It was pretty warm then."
As I recall, Antarctica as also north of Australia at that time, and just south of Africa and South America (as in you could walk from one to the other).
That, my friend, is known as the gish gallop where you propose so many wrong headed ideas(each of which a reasonable explanation of would take 10 times as long as spewing out) so quickly as to appear to have an undeniable point.
Yes, but what about the problem of Global Tilt -- Caused by the mass of all the icebreakers stuck in the Antarctica
Because they're *really* good at starting conversations with new people. I mean, just look how long this thread is already. They really broke the ice.
there are idiots on both sides of the isle...
So, is that Gilligan's Isle you're talking about?
Proverbs 21:19
...global warming is supposed to be melting all this ice.
... said the guy completely clueless to how chaotic systems work.
The "system" is determinist, not chaotic. If the weather is hot, its caused by global warming. If the weather is cold, its caused by global warming. If the predictions are wrong, there is still global warming. The "science" is settled, but if it has to be fudged to match predictions, then there is still global warming. If the predictions are right, it's, "Yeah! We were right. It's global warming!"
And, the followup is always, "give us money and your freedom because global warming!"
The winter has just begun.
Where the hell, did you get your 1 degree warmer average?
And are you talking about your little tiny local area or globaly?
Seriously, can we at least make it half-way through a season before saying its average anything?
Just like gravity
Go outside and look up. What do you see? Birds! Gravity isn't stopping them. If gravity were real why do we see things like dust floating around seemingly freely. Gravity is just a scam to keep airline profits sky-high.
Obvious sarcasm is obvious- I hope.
To tie this to another Slashdot story, this is exactly the reason I fear the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate. I have no doubt that Bill Nye knows his stuff, but I fear that the creationist will toss a hundred "arguments" out and Bill will only tackle one or two successfully (simply because spreading information/proof takes more time than spreading unfounded assertations). Thus, he will be seen as having "lost" the debate because he "couldn't" counter all of Ken Ham's talking points.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
* consensus in this case means 90% or more, as there are always guys who disagree.
Consensus != Fact
There was once consensus that bleeding patients was the cure for disease. There was once consensus that Earth was flat. There was once consensus that there was no relationship between eating citrus and preventing scurvy. And etc etc etc.
This goes to the fallacy that we (humans who are alive right now) have solved all the problems and now know everything worth knowing. Think about it. The elites who persecuted Copernicus thought themselves wise and modern at the time.
Thus: while I will not necessarily assert that today's climate "consensus" is wrong, I do maintain that there is a very real possibility that we will someday discover it to be, at the least, inadequate. Every generation finds previous generations to have held some pretty stupid ideas.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
What'r the chances of getting stuck in ice in Antarctica during the summer months of 2013-2014, when global warming is at it's peak (tongue in cheek) - not once, but TWICE? Imagine having to be carried by a helicopter over all that ice, just to set down on another ship that's stuck in the same ice.
On a side note, I live in Alabama (USA) and where it's generally been, for the past 8 years or more, 70+ degrees in January, it's 35 today. I wonder if the last 8 years or so have been hotter due to the sun's cycle. Because supposedly it just ended (last summer was the coolest it's been in 8 or more years) and now it's cold as shit this year.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Its not easy to validate when you cannot get your hands on their raw data. You only get summary reports from the "climate scientists"!
You can't?
Have you tried?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw
What exciting analysis are you going to do with this data now I've told you how to get it?
How come you didn't find it using Google? It's the first result.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The AGW bigots are kind of like Jehova's Witnesses. JWs, several times throughout their history, asserted the end of the world was coming. When the end failed to materialize -- each time -- the church would sidestep their inaccuracy with things like "well, we have 'new light' now." Or they'd flatly deny they ever said the end was coming, instead claiming they only meant a change of some sort was coming... and oh look, some kind of change did happen!
So how does this apply? When I was a wee lad, the "settled" climate science was that Earth was cooling, and we were careening head-on into a new Ice Age that was going to destroy us all. It wasn't just a tale, either -- they had mountains of data and the most sophisticated models the computers of the day allowed.
Then, as the science progressed a bit (and as the Coming Ice Age had failed to raise the requisite amount of alarm in the populace) it was decided that no, we're not cooling -- we're warming. In point of fact, the phenomenon was called "Global Warming". Pretty specific, that. Not, "we're not sure what's happening but it ain't good," but "it's definitely getting, and will continue to get, warmer, and we're all gonna fuckin' die!"
Then, as science, data collection, and computer modeling advanced yet further... "Global Warming" has been called into question. So much so, in fact, that many of the climate scientists of today will not use the phrase "Global Warming", but have chosen the trademark of "Climate Change". It's back to "we're not sure what's going on but we're all gonna die!" "Climate Change" is a delightfully vague yet alarming turn of phrase, and a stroke of genius.
So now, every time something odd, unusual, rare, extreme, or even normal happens with weather, it can be attributed to "Climate Change" -- because something changed, see? Climate Change equals different weather, so something in weather that didn't happen last year or the year before is now because of Climate Change.
This, kiddos, is what we call circular reasoning.
Go ahead, Climate Change bigots. Mod me down. I've got karma to burn. I could post AC, but I'm thumbing my nose at you.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Well, aside from the long term economic viability of my planet and region(which I consider a pretty big deal), I view ignorance, and particularly scientific ignorance a thing to be combated at every turn.
Sea ice has been steadily increasing, despite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's gloomy forecasts.
And that, folks is why only an idiot would read the Australian. (Or any other Murdoch rag).
Hint - total sea ice extent is decreasing. Antartic sea ice extent is increasing, but not as fast as Artic sea ice extent is decreasing.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-s/mean:12/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/mean:12
Watch this Heartland Institute video
But that's speculation, of course... Yet, here, for example, is what MSNBC had to say about them (emphasis mine):
But, of course, MSNBC aren't a reliable news-source... How about from the web-site of the expedition's main scientist — Chris Turney? He is a "Professor of Climate Change" (wow! a real scientist, not some nonsense-subject like "Womyn Studies"). And the "Latest News" from his very own front-page (last updated Oct 28, 2013) says (emphasis mine):
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Observed data does not support the models. Exactly opposite of what you just claimed.
You cannot toss out data that does not fit into your model; you have to change your model to explain/include the observed data. Data trumps every time. The IPCC models do not reflect actual, measured data - and thus they are wrong. Go ahead, explain the data in that graph - how temperatures haven't come close to the levels of warming reflected in even the most conservative IPCC model.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
There was once consensus that bleeding patients was the cure for disease. There was once consensus that Earth was flat. There was once consensus that there was no relationship between eating citrus and preventing scurvy. And etc etc etc.
You mean before the use of the scientific method was the consensus?
You've set up a false equivalency comparing superstition and folklore to scientific inquiry. Science, by definition is open to reevaluation. Because humans are involved it isn't a perfect process. But if the scientific consensus on global warming is the equivalent of blood-letting with leaches then the opposition to the consensus is on the order of suffocating a patient with a stubbed toe to put him out of his misery.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Science, by definition is open to reevaluation. Because humans are involved it isn't a perfect process.
That, sir, is exactly my point. There can be no such thing as "settled science" because of this. There was no false equivalency; I was alluding to the fact that humans are arrogant when it comes to their place in the time-line. We always think we're not only smarter than those who came before us, but it carries forward such that we think we're not going to get any smarter than we are now. *That* fallacy is why we have people saying absurd things like "settled science". (Yes, I know more politicians than scientists are saying that; it does not, however, disprove my point.)
It's like this: my old man had some rather... interesting... ideas about things. I had my science education, and I could scoff at some of his ideas. Haha, I'm superior in knowledge to my parents. Thing is, though... my kids and grandkids are going to do the same thing to me someday, unless I have already somehow achieved omniscience. Since I'm not certain I have achieved omniscience (I would know if I had, right?) I can assume, safely, that there is more yet to learn.
But if the scientific consensus on global warming is the equivalent of blood-letting with leaches then the opposition to the consensus is on the order of suffocating a patient with a stubbed toe to put him out of his misery.
It's not the equivalent, and I didn't say that. Kindly let me put my own words in my mouth. Here, I'll spell out exactly where I'm going with this:
I am strongly environmentalist, precisely because of science -- science that is of course not settled, but solid enough that I'm comfortable taking action on it.
For instance: I support, very strongly, alternative energy sources. Why? This is simple math. We live on a planet of a finite size, therefore, oil, gas, and coal must be of finite supply. Also, air pollution is an obvious factor -- more so in the developing world. Car exhaust, say. While the battle rages over the danger of C02, I already know that CO, NOx, and HC emissions are unhealthy. Duh, right? So THAT is why I follow biofuel research.
Coal plant emissions are unhealthy. Soot, acid rain, etc... we've been through this, and we have people working on it. Dear gods, look at China. You have to swim through the smog. It doesn't take much scientific data to prove to me that it's not a good thing. It's not that I see solar power as a panacea, but I'd call it a step in the right direction. I'm torn on nuclear. It rarely goes wrong, but when it does... hoo boy.
I live where a lot of fracking for natural gas goes on. There is debate on how much harm it causes, but again, it's not a pure process by any stretch. We use gas to heat our houses. Could we do something different? Sure. Passive solar design for newer houses. I have seen houses in the Colorado mountains heated through entire winters, with nights down to -30F, without fuel -- only passive solar heat and thermal mass and good insulation. This is scientifically sound stuff here, as well as economically.
I hope these examples will illustrate my position. There are many things, easy and hard, that we can and should be doing, to improve our environment. If (and I do mean, IF) AGW people are right, then I have already taken steps in the right direction. If not, I've still done the right thing. Simply put, I refuse to waste time arguing over whether more CO2 is bad, or whether polar bears are drowning, or whatever other ManBearPig lunacy the Algores of the world are spouting. I'm working with what we DO know. And unlike Algore, I'm not flying around in a private jet or spending a small country's GDP to heat my house.
I plant trees, not because Global Warming, but because I like trees for shade, bird habitat... it also turns out that trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Nifty, eh? I drive a fuel efficient car, not because Climate Change, but because I'm chea
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
As with everything ever said by deniers this is triviially proven false with the barest examination of facts.
In 2013 Akademik Shokalskiy was chartered by the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 to celebrate the centenary of the previous expedition under Douglas Mawson, and to repeat his scientific observations.[14] The expedition had nine scientific goals related to observations, mapping, and measurements of environmental, biological, and marine changes associated with climate change.[15]
That's multiple goals only some of which are applicable to the category. So, even in the off-topic, completely irrelevant to the accuracy of science discuss, you are unable to be correct.
Yup, a one year change means we can ignore the trend.
Splendid.
Funny you didn't quote more of your source which talks about extent, not mass:
The experts added, however, that much of the ice remains thin and slushy, a far cry from the thick Arctic pack ice of the past. Because thin ice is subject to rapid future melting, the scientists said this year’s recovery was unlikely to portend any change in the relentless long-term decline of Arctic sea ice.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I am simply stating that there is not enough proof either for OR against AGW.
What exactly constitutes "enough"? Consider an argument of this form:
- A happened.
- B happened after A happened.
- In lab tests, A leads to B.
- Causes C,D,E,F,... that experts in the field proposed for alternative reasons why B might be happening have been ruled out.
Would you consider the statement "A causes B" to be probably true, or probably false?
Substitute in "anthropogenic CO2 release" for A, "increasing global average temperature" for B, and a whole bunch of natural causes for C,D,E,F,..., and that's exactly where the global warming "debate" is. There's a reason why almost all scientists who actually study this stuff (including a guy hired by global warming skeptics to try to prove their point) believe that AGW is real.
I am officially gone from
First, it is important to note that Dr. Roy Spencer has a track record of providing misinformation on climate issues.
Looking at his graph and notes, I don't understand why he chose 1979 as the starting period for his graph, and what he's done to model runs that start after 1979 to extend their trend lines backwards. I would expect a single line with many points of divergence along it to show where each model begins to overestimate warming, the fact that they all seem to start overestimating by 1982 is a clue that someone is playing games with the data. Furthermore, just from looking at the graph it appears to be indicating that the average of the models is between 0.3 and 0.4 degrees per decade. That is significantly higher than the average from the IPCC1 report (which was between 0.15 and 0.3 degrees per decade) so where are these numbers coming from? Did Spencer cherry-pick the worst performing models for his graph or did he alter the results produce by the models in some way? The attached commentary doesn't provide the data or explain the methodology used to generate the graph.
Additionally, the only two reference points are an average of two sets of satellite data and 4 balloons? Where are the ground temperature series in this graph?
Skeptical Science has posted several blog posts that show a much closer match between models and observation, so I'm inclined to believe that Spencer screwed it up unintentionally or otherwise.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
When I was a wee lad, the "settled" climate science was that Earth was cooling, and we were careening head-on into a new Ice Age that was going to destroy us all.
No, it wasn't. What this statement shows is that you don't know the difference between a new reporter and a scientist. There was a little media hysteria over the possibility of a ice age, but the science supported warming over cooling at nearly 6 to 1 already by that point. The debate at that time was over whether the natural cooling effects that causes ice ages could overcome anthropogenic emissions (which were quite a bit lower at that point).
Then, as science, data collection, and computer modeling advanced yet further... "Global Warming" has been called into question. So much so, in fact, that many of the climate scientists of today will not use the phrase "Global Warming", but have chosen the trademark of "Climate Change". It's back to "we're not sure what's going on but we're all gonna die!" "Climate Change" is a delightfully vague yet alarming turn of phrase, and a stroke of genius.
This is also false, the IPCC has never been the IPGW. Many people don't understand this, but global warming is a specific effect of climate change. Just like warming is just one type of temperature change. The IPCC's mandate is to study climate change, whatever it is. Global warming is what we're currently getting from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The only people I'm aware of who tried to change the name for the phenomenon from global warming to climate change are George W. Bush's political advisors who suggested that climate change was less likely to disturb voters.
So now, every time something odd, unusual, rare, extreme, or even normal happens with weather, it can be attributed to "Climate Change" -- because something changed, see? Climate Change equals different weather, so something in weather that didn't happen last year or the year before is now because of Climate Change.
That is not at all what climate change means. Climate change is about changes in the long-term baseline for weather, so yes if new events are possible because the average amount of rain fall or temperature (for example) has changed over the long term, then climate change may be partially responsible for a new extreme weather event. For instance if you increase the average temperature by 1 degree over the long term, you also increase the maximum reachable temperature by one degree and the minimum reachable temperature by 1 degree (simplistically, it's actually a lot more complicated that). Regardless of that change, individual events aren't general regarded as scientific proof of climate change but changes in the distribution of events can be. For instance, in a stable climate you would expect a roughly 50-50 split over time between record highs and record lows and that the number of new records overall would decrease over time. For the last 20 years or so we've been looking at around 66-33 for the high/low split, and the difference between the number of record highs and record lows is increasing, plus the number of record highs is not falling off at the rate we would expect for a stable climate.
Go ahead, Climate Change bigots. Mod me down. I've got karma to burn. I could post AC, but I'm thumbing my nose at you.
You know, it'd be more effective if anything you wrote was actually correct.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
There was a little media hysteria over the possibility of a ice age, but the science supported warming over cooling at nearly 6 to 1 already by that point.
In terms of what scientists talked about with other scientists, you may be correct. However, it was not the public perception driven by the media. My (admittedly anecdotal) evidence is asking older folks what they remember about the time -- preferably people who were well mature, 30-40+ adults -- and the overwhelming majority remember hysteria about cooling/Ice Age, and not warming. Remember that most people did not seek out scientific papers; they watched TV or read newspapers. The message they heard was cooling. Accuracy of media is another story, not the point here.
This is also false, the IPCC has never been the IPGW.
The IPCC, Wikipedia reports, was founded in 1988. 1988 was not the beginning of history. (Was that before you were born? Just asking.) Here, again, media presentation comes into play... and even well past 1988 the buzz words were definitely "global warming". It is also reasonable to suppose that the UN would choose the more neutral-sounding "climate change" to avoid the appearance of presupposition.
That is not at all what climate change means. Climate change is about changes in the long-term baseline for weather, so yes if new events are possible because the average amount of rain fall or temperature (for example) has changed over the long term, then climate change may be partially responsible for a new extreme weather event. For instance if you increase the average temperature by 1 degree over the long term, you also increase the maximum reachable temperature by one degree and the minimum reachable temperature by 1 degree (simplistically, it's actually a lot more complicated that). Regardless of that change, individual events aren't general regarded as scientific proof of climate change but changes in the distribution of events can be. For instance, in a stable climate you would expect a roughly 50-50 split over time between record highs and record lows and that the number of new records overall would decrease over time. For the last 20 years or so we've been looking at around 66-33 for the high/low split, and the difference between the number of record highs and record lows is increasing, plus the number of record highs is not falling off at the rate we would expect for a stable climate.
I have read this paragraph 5 times, and it's still gobbledygook. It sounds like (correct me if I misunderstand) you are saying that climate change, whatever it may be, may or may not influence the weather. That's a pretty vague thing on which to base worldwide government policy.
As to your last phrase there, "stable climate", I would not suggest that climate is stable. Climate does indeed change -- I just oppose the alarmism, and question the tenets of what has already become a religion for many people. Heck, 12,000 years ago, there was a mile of ice over where I'm sitting right now. A mile of ice! If we reflect on what the climate was like in the Northern Hemisphere 12 millenia ago, we'd say "thank the gods for global warming!"
But as you must know, man did not cause that mile of ice to melt. Thus, factors other than (or in addition to) man affect climate. Thus, I remain skeptical -- not a denier, but not jumping on the bandwagon either. Why are the AGW people here so insistent that everyone must *believe*, or be branded a heretic?
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
*With the exception of a few obtuse contrarians that you can find in any human endeavor.
Like Semmelweis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
The overwhelming consensus, among the educated doctors and scientists of his day, was that washing your hands was pointless. We look back now and laugh at the folly of Semmelweis's detractors. But then, he was laughed at, driven to madness, and beaten to death.
My point was simple: just because there is consensus (which may or may not be manufactured*), does not mean that the consensus is correct.
Hence:
Consensus != Fact
* See Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent"
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
1979 is a great starting point as that's the start of the satellite record. Choosing an earlier date isn't possible, and choosing a later date would willfully edit part of the record. Starting in 1979 includes ALL the data, and also is covered by the models.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Is the data in error? Rather than focus on the messenger, address the message: satellite data does not show the warming that has been predicted by the models. When data and models conflict, it is always the model that is wrong.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!