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Discussion > What really happened on the Akademik Shokalskiy

Nice one, Skippy.

Jan 3, 2014 at 1:40 PM | Unregistered Commentermichaelhart

LMFAO. This deserves wider circulation!

Jan 3, 2014 at 3:40 PM | Unregistered CommenterFarleyR

Love it. What do we have to do to get it better known on Youtube?

Jan 3, 2014 at 10:30 PM | Registered Commentergeoffchambers

Geoff - One for "tips and notes" at WUWT, if it's not there already! :-)

Jan 4, 2014 at 12:12 AM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

In 1912 a scientific expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson sailed from Australia to map the coast of Antarctica. They encountered savage weather conditions but managed to make it to Cape Denison, where they built their main base, or winter quarters. Eighteen hardy men spent the winter of 1912 and seven spent the winter of 1913 in huts they erected and which still stand today – two intact and two as ruins.
It was an amazing adventure. Coastal and inland sledging journeys enabled the teams to explore previously unknown lands. In the second half of 1912, there were seven major journeys from the main base.
Mawson himself was part of a three-man sledging team, the far eastern party with Xavier Mertz and Leiutenant B Ennis, who headed east on 10 November 1912 to survey King George V Land. On 14 December 1912, after three weeks of excellent progress, the party was crossing the Ninnis Glacier, when Ninnis fell through a snow-covered crevasse.
Six dogs, most of the party’s rations, their tent and other essential supplies disappeared into a massive crevasse 300 miles east of the main base. Ninnis was never seen again. Mawson and Xavier Mertz turned back immediately. Their scanty provisions forced them to eat their remaining sled dogs, unwittingly causing a quick deterioration in the men’s physical condition. The liver of one dog contains enough vitamin A to kill a man. Mertz became incapacitated and incoherent; in an attempt to nurse him back to health, Mawson fed him most of the dog livers, which he considered more nourishing than the tough muscle tissue. After Mertz died, Mawson continued alone. He cut his sled in half with a pen knife and dragged the sled with geological specimens but minimal food the remaining 100 miles back to the base at Cape Denison.
This adventure took place before global warming when the Antarctic weather conditions were as hellish as nature intended, even though photos of the base camp showed bare rock on an Antarctica which in 1912 was not completely covered by snow.
In December 2008 the global warming prophets Al Gore and John Kerry confidently predicted that, thanks to mans’ madness, by December 2013, there would be no ice at all on the journey taken by Sir Donald Mawson in 1912. To prove Gore and Kerry’s theory, a group of climate scientists, accompanied by me, set off to re-create Mawson’s famous voyage and finally demonstrate to climate sceptic idiots like James Delingpole and Lord Monckton that global warming is real and is happening now!
Our trip advisor was Al Gore and he assured us that the weather would be extremely temperate thanks to global warming. He advised that we pack shorts, t-shirts and flip flops although he warned that we might want to pack a jumper for the December Antarctic nights, although I didn’t bother because I didn’t think I’d need one and I needed the extra room in my bag for a bucket and spade.
I shared a cabin with Climate Realist George Monbiot, who instead of warm clothing had packed a frisbee, a deck chair and a knotted handkerchief, and we excitedly postulated how, when faced with the evidence which we would show them, the sceptical world would finally be forced to wake up to the harsh truth of global warming.
“You’ll find a lot of changes in the Antarctic since Mawson’s day Kevin,” George confidently predicted, “there will be no snow or ice – I don’t know how we’re going to keep the champagne chilled – and all the polar bears will have drowned.”
“It sounds like Hell on earth George,” I replied.
“It will be much worse than that,” said George, “I’m going to demonstrate just how far global warming has gone by swimming at the South Pole in December wearing nothing but a mankini – that should be an image that will shock the world!”
“You’re right there,” I agreed.
We set off on our six-week scientific expedition from Hobart on November 25th 2013, led by world renowned climate scientist Professor Chris Turney.
Before the expedition he gave a press conference.
”This expedition is very much science-driven,” climate scientist Professor Turney said of our privately funded $1.5 million voyage. It was his fifth trip to the Antarctic and the world renowned climate tourist was confident that the information collected by Mawson and his team between 1911 and 1914 would be a valuable comparative resource for modern scientists.
”They generated a vast amount of data and things like the saltiness of the water is today a very useful measure of how much of the ice is melting. Sea surface temperature data collected by satellites will be compared with measurements taken during the modern voyage to confirm accuracy rates. Scientifically, it’s just so exciting,” Professor Turney told the world’s media, “by going down there and doing this whole range of measurements we hope to get a better understanding of just how much that part of the world – and by default, the temperature of our planet has warmed since 1912. This trip will prove, once and for all, that global warming is real.”
George Monbiot and I were so excited as our Russian ship, the Akademik Shokalskiy, left Hobart, that we resolved to wear nothing more than a t-shirt and shorts during the entire voyage to show the watching world how hot the South Pole had become thanks to Global Warming.
“I might even do a bit of sunbathing,” said George, “and use one of Mawson’s 1912 huts as a beach hut – it will be like the Lido at Venice won’t it Kevin?”
“I don’t know George,” I replied, “I’ve never been to the Lido at Venice.”
“Neither have I really,” George looked embarrassed, “we only went there briefly on a school trip when I was at Stowe.”
The expedition passed without incident until we got within a bare hundred miles of what in 1912 was the relatively snowfree rocky outcrop of Cape Denison, where Dawson’s expedition built their camp a hundred years ago. Then, just as George Monbiot had donned his mankini for his antarctic Christmas swim, our ship inexplicably became trapped in sea ice. We weighed anchor for the night but antarctic winds battered our ship and when we awoke we found ourselves stuck fast in sea ice. George Monbiot didn’t believe it, and was lowered by a rope onto the ice to measure it’s thickness. In 1912, during Mawson’s expedition, there had been no sea ice, not even enough to cool a gin and tonic, but in 2013, on the same date, thanks to global warming the ice was over 3 metres thick!
George initially found it hard to measure but luckily, or so we thought, he found a hole in the ice and was able to measure it’s thickness. His luck then ran out. The hole in the ice was being staked out by one of the few polar bears who hadn’t been killed by global warming and, as it’s natural diet was oily mammals with very little intellect, George turned out to be a perfect snack.
We were stuck in the Antarctic sea ice until we were finally rescued by helicopter on January 3rd, missing Christmas and New Year. Numerous rescue attempts by three ice breaker vessels and helicopters had been thwarted because of the intensely cold weather conditions – with sea ice levels being the highest recorded in history and temperatures the lowest ever. After our rescue the Chinese ship which had rescued us also got stuck in the ice and their crew, along with the crew of the Russian ship we were rescued from, will now have to wait until the ice thaws before they can free themselves and return to their families.
During our ordeal we amused ourselves by learning Yoga and thinking up ludicrous explanations why, in spite of the record cold conditions we had encountered, global warming was real and our scientific trip was a success.
We finally all agreed on the following statement, released by Professor Turney, “It is silly to suggest that global warming isn’t real just because we are trapped in ice we sought to prove had melted. The sea ice is melting due to man made climate change, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have spent a lot of time by the sea in 2013 and until this trip encountered no sea ice at all. I have sun bathed in the Maldives; swum off Ipanema beach in Brazil; travelled by jet ski across Lake Victoria from Kenya to Uganda; windsurfed off the Pacific coasts of Colombia and Ecuador and travelled by helicopter through the Indonesian islands – and not only have I not encountered any sea or lake ice I have not seen a single polar bear.”
During our ordeal we stayed in touch with the outside world via Facebook and Twitter. On Christmas day I opened my presents and was glad to receive a woolly Christmas jumper from Al Gore.
I tweeted my thanks and received a lovely message back from Al Gore which I think sums up the entire expedition and finally settles the global warming debate.
“Dear Kevin, a Happy New Year to you and the valiant crew, I fervently believe that your expedition has now proved beyond all doubt just how much global warming has affected the world’s climate. A hundred years ago there was no sea ice and very little snow at Cape Denison – now – in 2013 there are over 3 metres of sea ice, the highest ever recorded in history, and Cape Denison is covered in several metres of snow. No wait – isn’t that the wrong way round? I had a lot to drink tonight and can’t think straight, but you don’t need to think straight to realise that global warming is an inconvenient truth – in fact our beliefs are more a matter of faith than logic! Tell Professor Turney that I hope you don’t all freeze to death trying to prove that global warming is real.
P.S. Sorry to hear about George Monbiot’s death – he was an annoying self-righteous little Bollinger Bolshevik but his heart was in the right place. I was surprised that he was eaten by a polar bear because, as I revealed in my film “An Inconvenient Truth,” they’ve all been drowned thanks to global warming. Are you sure it wasn’t a grizzly bear or even a lion?

Thanks to Marx On Monday
(c) http://bogpaper.com/global-warming-the-coolest-subject-in-all-of-liberalism/

Jan 16, 2014 at 12:00 PM | Unregistered CommenterKeith

Drinking, eating, dancing, blogging, fart-sniffing and patting each other on the back. Followed by a ceremony where they made speeches and gave each other awards for their contributions to stuff. Everyone got an award, no one felt left out. It was really nice.

Jan 16, 2014 at 1:16 PM | Unregistered Commenterjaffa

Oh and Chris Turney laughed a lot.

Jan 16, 2014 at 1:17 PM | Unregistered Commenterjaffa