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Arctic Climate Change Study Canceled Due to Climate Change (livescience.com)

A Canadian expedition to study climate change in the Arctic has been canceled due to climate change. Specifically, the icebreaker CCGS Amundsen had to be cancelled "due to complications associated with the southward motion of hazardous Arctic sea ice," reports University of Manitoba. From the report: This regrettably postpones the much-anticipated Hudson Bay System Study (BaySys) involving 40 scientists from five universities across Canada. Timing was key for this $17 million, four-year, University of Manitoba-led project. The need to deal with extreme ice conditions in the south meant the ship would arrive too late on site to meet research objectives. This year the Expedition Logistics and Science Teams accelerated the mobilization of the 2017 Arctic Expedition to permit departure of the Amundsen six days ahead of schedule. This would allow CCG to carry out critical marine safety and security operations in the unusually severe ice conditions in the Strait of Belle Isle and along the northeast coast of Newfoundland before beginning the Science Mission. Unfortunately, the conditions required much more extended support than anticipated. Fleet management issues and inadequate alternative ships forced the cancellation of the science program due to significant safety concerns. This decision to cancel the BaySys 2017 program was not made lightly. Although the cancellation was due to circumstances beyond control of the Expedition Team, every effort was made to develop a viable option to allow this valuable work to proceed.

13 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Translation: Canceled because ice didn't melt a by Muros · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you read between all of the weasel wording, the real story is that some Warming Alarmists actually believed the hype about all of the sea ice melting - so when lots more ice came back the mission they had predicated on ice not returning, was totally screwed.

    That's pretty much the exact opposite of what the story said. It said that due to increased ice melt the remaining ice was much more mobile and was reaching further south than they had expected.

  2. Re:Global warming makes ice! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe he has a text-to-speech program, you insensitive clod!

  3. Re:Global warming makes ice! by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 5, Informative

    OK, I know that you are trolling, but here is the relevant section from the article:

    Dr. Barber and his team of experts were able to use the state-of-the-art equipment onboard the Amundsen to confirm that a significant proportion of the sea ice present originated from the high Arctic.

    He noted that, "Climate-related changes in Arctic sea ice not only reduce its extent and thickness but also increase its mobility meaning that ice conditions are likely to become more variable and severe conditions such as these will occur more often."

    It totally makes sense that as the ice is reduced and thins, it will break apart more and start moving around. Since climate change doesn't mean the temperature simply gets uniformly warmer, but leads to larger swings of temperatures, it means that the ice breaks apart and then can refreeze into more chaotic configurations. It is less likely to be a large, predictable mass of ice. This makes it difficult for ships to safely navigate, as they have to contend with moving masses of ice as well as facing the possibility of being trapped in the ice as it refreezes behind them blocking of what had been a safe passage.

    There was never any suggestion in the article that the problem was that there was more ice than before. But that doesn't stop the deniers trying to pretend that this is some problem with the concept of global warming. But then not looking at the facts and jumping to conclusions is what causes them to be deniers in the first place.

  4. Re:Global warming makes ice! by blindseer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The ice becoming more mobile to the point of becoming a hazard to navigation was something I've never seen predicted before. It has always been that the ice would get thin and recede which would open the waters to shipping without the need for ice breakers.

    Assuming what you say is true, that they simply saw effects from global warming that they could not predict then I have to wonder what else they got wrong.

    These global warming alarmists keep making predictions that prove to be wrong later. How many times does this have to happen before they admit that they cannot in fact predict anything with any kind of accuracy?

    But that doesn't stop the deniers trying to pretend that this is some problem with the concept of global warming.

    I have to ask, does everything have to be "proof" of global warming or not? Can't something just be a random event? They could have called this just a temporary unforeseen weather event, which is probably what it is. Instead they tried to explain this as "evidence" that the ice is melting. If the global warming alarmists want to be believed then every once in a while they will have to admit that some events can in fact be random events that could be contradictory to global warming.

    I took statistics in college and one thing they teach is that not everything has to line up to show a trend. There will be outliers. The global warming alarmists need to admit that there will be outliers once in a while or they start to sound like fanatics instead of scientists.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  5. Re:Global warming makes ice! by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ice becoming more mobile to the point of becoming a hazard to navigation was something I've never seen predicted before.

    Well maybe you never saw it, but...

    I took statistics in college and one thing they teach is that not everything has to line up to show a trend.

    Except that this point does fit the trend. Does it really not make sense to you that higher temperatures would make the ice break up into smaller pieces and become mobile? Have you ever seen a lake melt in the spring? It doesn't just melt down into a single little ice cube and vanish; it begins to crack and break up into pieces long before the ice completely melts.

    --
    Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  6. Idiots who can't RTFA! by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The title should then read as, "Study Into Sea Ice Losses Canceled Due to Unexpected Ice Thickness Discovered."

    Well done, not reading the article and substituting your preconceived notions which are the opposite of what the article says:

    "Climate-related changes in Arctic sea ice not only reduce its extent and thickness but also increase its mobility meaning that ice conditions are likely to become more variable and severe conditions such as these will occur more often."

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  7. More details by knorthern+knight · · Score: 5, Informative

    See for more details https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

    The icebreaker was supposed to navigate from Quebec City, down the St Lawrence River, up the east coast of Canada, and into Hudson's Bay for the research mission. But shit happens...

    > The icebreaker was soon diverted. Dense ice -- up to 8 metres (25ft) thick -- had filled the
    > waters off the northern coast of Newfoundland, trapping fishing boats and ferries.
    >
    > "It was a really dramatic situation," said David Barber, the expedition's chief scientist.
    > "We were getting search and rescue calls from fishing boats that were stranded in the
    > ice and tankers that were stranded trying to get fuel into the communities. Nobody
    > could manage this ice because it was far too heavy to get through."

    [...snip...]

    > The decision to cancel the first leg of the expedition was made after it became clear that
    > continuing north would interrupt search and rescue operations and probably put lives at risk.

    The first priority of the CCGS icebreaker is search and rescue, and there happened to be more work than anticipated, so the research mission was cancelled.

    For those of you wondering, no, it is not a good idea to charter an "ice-reinforced ship", when you want to get up close to the ice and do first-hand measurements. You need a real icebreaker. The Akedemik Shokalskiy fiasco http://news.nationalgeographic... is still fresh in people's minds.

    --

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  8. Re:Global warming makes ice! by shess · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But that doesn't stop the deniers trying to pretend that this is some problem with the concept of global warming.

    Yeah, I pretty much require all predictions to be 100% accurate before I believe any of it at all. For instance, if the weather person says it will rain with 10 mph wind, and there is no wind, do I take an umbrella? Hell no, because once any part of the prediction is wrong I know that all of the prediction will be wrong.

  9. Re:Global warming makes ice! by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the ice is too thick then the ice is too thick and we can call it an outlier, an unexpected weather event, or whatever the case may be. What this is not is "proof" of global warming

    The ice is not too thick. It is too fractured and mobile, and it's being pushed in the shipping channels. Therefore they've cancelled the research mission, so that the ice breaker can be used for search and rescue, as well as escorting ferries and fishing boats.

    They are twisting themselves in knots so that they don't have to admit the irony of a pair of ships being sent out to study thinning ice only to have to turn back because the ice was too thick.

    The only irony is you not reading the article.

  10. Re:Perfectly foreseeable by Namarrgon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Plenty of people are still denying that the climate is changing, and many more deny that humans have anything to do with it. We call these people "deniers" and not "skeptics" because real skeptics don't ignore all the evidence, when it's this overwhelmingly strong. The deniers refuse to consider any of it, and just spout the same old irrelevant nonsense like "the climate has always changed".

    And if you're looking for groups that have strong reasons to con people out of their money - wouldn't you agree that fossil fuel industry executives have far more billions at stake than a bunch of middle-wage climatologists?

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  11. Re:Global warming makes ice! by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Funny

    What do you mean with "predict"?
    Assuming what you say is true, that they simply saw effects from global warming that they could not predict then I have to wonder what else they got wrong.
    Stuff like that are known consequences since decades. No reason to "predict" them.
    To have ice like this in late spring, you need special geographic conditions (and probably certain wind conditions over an extended period of time), or do you 'believe' now that the whole arctic area is covered with 'unpredicted' fast moving ice?

    Next time you see an ice berg floating in front of New York, better think where it came from instead if panicking and thinking NY is freezing all over.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  12. Re:Global warming makes ice! by famebait · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just like I told my insurance company: Oh, you say my house is gonna burn, do you? Prove it! Greedy fuckers.

    --
    sudo ergo sum
  13. Re:Global warming makes ice! by dbIII · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can you give some examples of scientists predicting this phenomenon?

    Every fucking glaciologist who has lived for the last century and even every fucking person who has heard of the "Titanic" - where the fuck do you think the icebergs go? They go out to sea. Faster glaciers, more icebergs. Warmer water - sea ice detaches - just like it does every year only earlier.

    What's with deliberately pretending to be thirty times more stupid than you could possible be? It's incredibly insulting to everyone unfortunate enough to read such pretended ignorance.

    You couldn't resist some stupid offtopic charging at windmills and cheering for nukes either - it's all a big one package deal with you blindly following a Party line then isn't it? Well, not even your hero Putin is getting some nukes built, he's got his money in oil, so it doesn't matter how much you cheer it's not happening.