Little Joe Posted said:Frozen Out: 98% of Stories Ignore That Ice-bound Ship Was On Global Warming Mission
The Shokalskiy was two weeks into a four-week expedition to follow the path taken a century ago by the Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson when it became trapped after being hit by a blizzard on Christmas Eve.
One of the aims of the expedition was to track how quickly the Antarctic’s sea ice was supposedly disappearing.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and the Chinese and Russian governments have requested the help of the US Coast Guard, which has agreed to make one of its largest ships, the Polar Star, available for the rescue mission.
"The Polar Star is able to continuously break ice up to 1.8 metres while travelling at three knots and can break ice over six metres thick," AMSA spokeswoman Lisa Martin said.
The powerful US icebreaker has been en route to Antarctica since December 3 on a mission to clear a shipping channel for re-supply ships.
The Polar Star has a crew of 140 people and boasts a reinforced hull and a special bow which is specifically designed for open-water icebreaking.
"The commanding officer of the Polar Star has a lot of experience with ice-breaking, this is not his first gig, he's been doing this for a while," she said.
"So he understands ice, he understands ice-breaking, he understands what his ship can do and the limitations."
One of the rules of thumb is how many feet of ice could it break at a given speed. The U.S. has two of the most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers in the world, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star. They can break over 6 feet [1.8 meters] of ice continuously at [a speed of] three knots. [One of Russia's largest nuclear-powered icebreakers, considered the strongest in the world, could break] probably upwards of ten feet [three meters].
On June 30, 2006, the USCG placed the Polar Star in "Commission-Special" status in Seattle, WA. This caretaker status required a reduced crew of 34 to keep the ship ready for a possible return to the ice. In 2009, the NSF announced that they would end funding for maintaining the Polar Star[5]
In March 2010, United States Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen announced that the Polar Star would receive a $62 million, to be complete by December 2012.[6] On 14 December 2012, The United States Coast Guard announced the reactivation of the Polar Star. The overhaul of the Polar Star, completed by Seattle's Vigor Industrial shipyard (formerly Todd Pacific shipyard), cost US$57 million. The Polar Star will undergo testing in 2013 prior to returning to service.[7][8] The Polar Star was back in operation in late 2013, and assigned to Antarctic operations as part of Operation Deep Freeze in early 2014.[9] She was dispatched on January 4 to attempt a rescue of the Russian research ship Akademik Shokalskiy and Chinese icebreaker MV Xue Long (雪龙, literally "MV Snow Dragon") trapped at that time in Antarctic ice, the former since December 24, 2013.[10]
One of the aims of the expedition was to track how quickly the Antarctic’s sea ice was supposedly disappearing.
Tam said:One of the aims of the expedition was to track how quickly the Antarctic’s sea ice was supposedly disappearing.
Can we all agree their mission was a big success as they found the "DISAPPEARING ICE". :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:
hypocritexposer said:Tam said:One of the aims of the expedition was to track how quickly the Antarctic’s sea ice was supposedly disappearing.
Can we all agree their mission was a big success as they found the "DISAPPEARING ICE". :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:
And why is Calgary getting more snow than normal???? "Climate Change" is supposed to create more moisture, yet Global Warming should make that additional moisture fall as rain, should it not?
Liberals and their desire to tax are not known to use common sense...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.htmlForget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)
29 January 2012
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.
ccording to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.
However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.
‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’
Meanwhile, since the end of last year, world temperatures have fallen by more than half a degree, as the cold ‘La Nina’ effect has re-emerged in the South Pacific.
‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’
‘Nature is about to carry out a very interesting experiment,’ he said. ‘Ten or 15 years from now, we will be able to determine much better whether the warming of the late 20th Century really was caused by man-made CO2, or by natural variability.’