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'Stuck in our own experiment': Leader of trapped team insists polar ice is melting
Published December 30, 2013 /

The leader of a scientific expedition whose ship remains stranded in Antarctic ice says the team, which set out to prove climate change, is "stuck in our own experiment."

But Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at Australia’s University of New South Wales, said it was “silly” to suggest he and 73 others aboard the MV Akademic Shokalskiy were trapped in ice they’d sought to prove had melted. He remained adamant that sea ice is melting, even as the boat remained trapped in frozen seas.

"We're stuck in our own experiment," the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said in a statement. We came to Antarctica to study how one of the biggest icebergs in the world has altered the system by trapping ice. We ... are now ourselves trapped by ice surrounding our ship.

"Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up," the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said in a statement.

Turney later told FoxNews.com the ice surrounding his ship is old, rather than recently formed, and likely from a particular 75 mile-long iceberg that broke apart three years ago. Climate change may have prompted the iceberg to shatter and float into the previously open sea where the mostly Australian team finds itself stranded, Turney said.

“The ice was swept across to this area by the South-East wind, its pieces creating a knock-on domino effect,” Turney told FoxNews.com, speaking from a tent erected on the stranded ship’s top deck. “We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

But the situation has global warming skeptics poking fun at the scientists.

“Cute how these Warmists who hate fossil fuels take a trip to the Antarctic to show just how horrible fossil-fueled climate change is, then need rescue from their fossil-fueled trip by other fossil-fueled ships and helicopters, which still can’t rescue them,” wrote one blogger on Pirate’s Cove.

The website Newsbusters said much of the media has bent over backward to avoid linking the ship’s current fate with its mission.

“Somewhere far, far to the south where it is summer, a group of global warming scientists are trapped in the Antarctic ice,” read a post on the site. “If you missed the irony of that situation, it is because much of the mainstream media has glossed over that rather inconvenient bit of hilarity.”

So far, ice breakers have been unable to get closer than 10 miles from the stranded ship, which is surrounded by ice up to 10 feet thick. Stuck since Christmas Eve, it is about 100 nautical miles east of the French base Dumont D'Urville, and about 1,500 nautical miles south of Brisbane.

Turney‘s team is studying climate change, as well as how wildlife is adapting to it. He noted that numerous penguins have traipsed across the ice from the nearby mainland to curiously observe the explorers.

A Chinese ice breaker was unable to reach the ship, and another vessel, the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, got to within 10 nautical miles of the stranded ship but couldn’t see it through a driving blizzard, and had to turn back to open water. Turney told FoxNews.com his team is in good spirits, though it only has 10 days of food supplies.

Icebergs pose an even greater danger to the ship than the surface ice that now has the ship in its grip, because they can pierce the hull of a ship like the Akademic Shokalskiy, in a Titanic scenario . Lisa Martin, of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating rescue attempts from their New South Wales headquarters told FoxNews.com icebergs have been seen in the area.

‘There are icebergs around,” agreed Turney. “[The ship] is not a good position.”


Film at 11......

Irony - 1

Science - 0

Someone is gonn be in Hot Water Over This !

These greenies sure are wasting a lot of fossil fuel resources on this expedition/failure.

I'll bet the real greenies everywhere are hiding under tables in embarrassment over these boobs.

I think they were trying to prove ice was melting here, or something. Was Al Gore speaking somewhere nearby?

Hillary Clinton is there. She spread her legs and everything froze solid....

Speaking of global warming, why hasn't that fat assed, lying, Mr. Ozone burner from Tennessee been loaded onto an ice breaking barge for the rescue???

Wheel is from Texas. Not Tennessee.

Why don't/ didn't they just walk to safety on the 10' thick ice?

Sounds good actually. Maybe they shoulda just sent out for some pizzas, wait for spring. Maybe take some measurements now and again.

Kinda funny the way this has been spun. Initially it was an expedition to prove global warming. Now it being billed as retracing some historic expedition. Go figure.

Nor to a Libtard...

Damn you're stoopid.

Global warming from pollution might be happening and if so it would be lessening the overall global cooling period we are in now. Fight the next ice age.

(no, I don't nee my windows cleaned. I just washed the car)

If only we wudda saved a bit and bought some portable heaters…why…those scientists that want to play "Gilligan's Island" wouldn't be stuck right now!


Americans Spent $7.45B in 3 Years Helping Other Countries Deal With ‘Climate Change’


American taxpayers spent $7.45 billion to help developing countries cope with climate change in fiscal years 2010 through 2012, according to a federal government report submitted to the United Nations on a subject that Secretary of State John Kerry described as “a truly life-and-death challenge.”

That sum of $7.45 billion, which reached more than 120 countries through bilateral and multilateral channels, met President Obama’s “commitment to provide our fair share” of a collective pledge by developed nations to provide a total of nearly $30 billion in “fast start finance” (FSF), the report stated.

The pledge was made at a Dec. 2009 U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, and the FSF funding aims to support developing countries adapt to and cope with phenomena blamed on climate change, such as droughts and rising sea levels.

“International assistance for climate change continues to be a major priority for the United States,” the administration said in its “Climate Action Report,” submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on Wednesday.

It noted that since the U.S. ratified the convention in 1992, its international climate funding had increased from “virtually zero” to an average of $2.5 billion each year in the 2010-2012 FSF period.

“During the period, average annual appropriated climate assistance increased fourfold compared with 2009 funding levels,” the report said. “U.S. climate assistance has increased in the context of an overall increasing foreign assistance budget.”

According to UNFCCC data, of the $7.45 billion in U.S. funding, $4.7 billion was congressionally-appropriated assistance while development finance and export credit support accounted for a further $2.7 billion of public money.

It’s time to ‘do what our faiths require of us’

In a cover letter accompanying the report, Kerry underlined the high priority the administration – and himself personally – accords to the issue.

“Climate change is one of the most urgent and profoundly complex challenges we face,” he wrote. “That’s why, everywhere I travel as Secretary of State – in every meeting, here at home and across the more than 280,000 miles I’ve traveled since I raised my hand and took the oath to serve in this office – I have made this issue a top priority.”

Without directly mentioning those scientists and others who question the “consensus” on climate change, Kerry reiterated his view that the science is incontrovertible and implied that anyone arguing otherwise lacked “conscience or common sense.”

“Today, all the scientific evidence is telling us that we cannot afford to delay the reckoning with climate change,” he said. “With each passing day, the case grows more compelling and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or common sense should be willing to contemplate.”

Kerry pointed to the most report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released last September, and summed it up as follows: “Bottom line: Climate change is real, it’s happening now, and human beings are the cause.”

(The report’s actual wording was, “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” The language was somewhat stronger than the previous IPCC report, in 2007, which asserted that global warming was “very likely” man-made.)

“In the face of these risks and these warnings, it is time for all of us to do what the science tells us we must, to do what our faiths require of us, and to do what our fragile planet demands of us: It’s time to take strong action to combat a truly life-and-death challenge,” Kerry stated.

Much more to come

FSF programs funded by the U.S. cover a wide range, including helping Peru and Nepal to deal with glacier-related risks, working on making Mozambique’s coastal cities more resilient to “sea level rise and other climate change stresses,” and assisting Pakistan to address its power shortage, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and its reliance on fossil fuel.

The funding directed to the FSF channel in 2010-2012 is a drop in the bucket compared to what is to come. At that same 2009 conference in Copenhagen the U.S. and other developed nations in a longer-term commitment undertook to set up a $100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund by 2020. The money is meant to come from public and private sources.

“The United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at Copenhagen. “We expect this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.”

Since the GCF was launched in 2011 few nations have begun to direct money to its coffers (as of June 30, 2013 it had received just $7.5 million, from seven European countries plus South Korea, Japan and Australia.)

But officials want that to change this year, as UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres made clear while speaking at the opening of the GCF’s new headquarters in South Korea on Dec. 4.

“Governments now have a crucial tool at their disposal to leverage billions in finance for developing counties to green their economies and increase their resilience to the inevitable effects of climate change,” she said.

“As soon as the final modalities are clarified in 2014, governments must capitalize the fund. This is essential so that developing countries know that the developed world will deliver on its promise to help the poor and vulnerable gain access to the finance and technology they need.”

In the report sent to the UNFCCC this week the administration outlined its commitment in mobilizing public and private funding in working towards the GCF goal.

“Maintaining a strong core of public climate finance is essential, and the United States intends to maintain its commitment to climate change as an important component in the U.S. assistance budget,” it said.

“Private investment will inevitably play an increasingly important role as developing countries put mitigation and adaptation policies and actions into place. The nation is working to combine its significant, but finite, public resources with targeted, smart policies to mobilize maximum private investment into climate-friendly activities.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/americans-spent-745b-3-years-helping-other-countries-deal-climate#sthash.6GzvUXtr.mKXh9YG7.dpuf


We cudda just saved the money and sent them to www.wunderground.com.


PS: Secretary of State Lurch could prolly alter the weather if he just stopped flying all over the world and used some sweet video teleconferencing…jus sayin'

Just another means to siphon public funds.

That's it man! Lean into it with your intellect . . . .

YOU own a car???




jk

I figured it was cause dupont invented a new freon and a few congressmen pushed it thru.... worked even better than the 'New Coke'....

Bucket of shiners and ice traps ready for the morning! Damn warming.

Your just trying to hurt my feelings, aren't you?

Btw, what exactly does "feel the troll" mean?

No......Fuzzy is a jerk.

Brewha is a good dude.

Yes.
Yes.
No.
No.

And where would Cbid be without it's small contingent of liberals?
Face it FGM, without us pablum puking libtards the political forum would be nothing more than old conservative curmudgeons cut and pasting Fox News articles, carping about Obama, reminiscing about the Reagan years.
It's the disagreement and discourse that makes this country great!
Excuse me while I go down to the post office to salute a flag . . . .





And thx Z and DZ, nice of you to say.

still think all they need is some dynamite....




and didn't Drew Barrymore and the eskimos dig a 100 mile trench thru the ice to free Willy or somethin..??