US Coast Guard Ship To Attempt Rescue of 2 Icebreakers In Antarctica 382
PolygamousRanchKid writes "A U.S. Coast Guard heavy icebreaker left Australia for Antarctica on Sunday to rescue more than 120 crew members aboard two icebreakers trapped in pack ice near the frozen continent's eastern edge, officials said. The 399-foot cutter, the Polar Star, is responding to a Jan. 3 request from Australia, Russia and China to assist the Russian and Chinese ships because 'there is sufficient concern that the vessels may not be able to free themselves from the ice,' the Coast Guard said in a statement. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Centre, which oversaw the rescue, said the Polar Star, the Coast Guard's only active heavy polar icebreaker, would take about seven days to reach Commonwealth Bay, depending on weather. Under international conventions observed by most countries, ships' crews are obliged to take part in such rescues and the owners carry the costs."
"near the frozen continent's eastern edge" (Score:5, Insightful)
In one week... (Score:5, Insightful)
In one week will we be reading about how country X is sending an icebreaker to free the three stuck icebreakers?
Good thing it's summer down there. Wouldn't want to be stuck all winter [amazon.com]. That would be a pain.
Semper Paratus (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In the middle of summer (Score:5, Insightful)
How's that global warming thing working out for you?
You mean, for us? Not so well. Chaotic weather, not even, gradual warming over the entire globe, is what we can expect for quite a number of years.
Don't say that like you're not in the same boat as the rest of us.
International Cooperation and a Happy New Year. (Score:5, Insightful)
Epic fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for yours.
Re:This whole incident... (Score:2, Insightful)
This bit here is pretty popular on the internet these days. Taking a single incident of global warming researchers stuck in ice and using the (rather remarkable) irony of that to debunk global warming as a whole.
My reply to that thus far has been something along the lines of me, using that same logic, being able to prove global warming is occurring by pointing out the 19% of normal snow pack in the California Sierra right now.
I am no environmental scientist, but I do know it's going to take just a bit more critical thinking than either of these two thought processes to figure the thing out.
Re:This whole incident... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, the hole in the ozone layer only stopped growing because we actually succeeded in not pumping out CFCs.
Re:This whole incident... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, I remember when I was in grade school in the '90s, and we were constantly told of the horrors of the hole on the ozone layer that was going to burn us to death, and the rain forests that would be 100% destroyed by 1995
They didn't happen because people took measures to mitigate them. The ozone layer was disappearing because of CFCs. Now that we don't use them in spray cans and air conditioners any more the hole is shrinking and should be gone in another 100 years.
You're like the people who scoff at the Y2K Armageddon that didn't happen. It didn't happen because a lot of folks did a lot of hard work to keep it from happening.
Had everyone shrugged and done nothing like you propose with global warming the ozone would still be disappearing and the Y2K meltdown would have been serious.
Re: In the middle of summer (Score:4, Insightful)
We are too dumb to understand climate. Any one who calls themselves a climate expert is a huge liar, unless they put it in the context of being relative to the rest of mankind. That lack of relativity has lead to arrogance and away from science. We've seen that the climate scientists are afraid of being wrong. This is an area where our system of academia is a weakness not a strength. People are too invested in not being wrong and finding new truths. In the climate sciences it should be about being wrong and being able to better understand that. Bad predictions should be more celebrated then correct ones, because it's easier to learn from something that went wrong.
skeptics and supporters are opposite sides of the same coin of wrong headedness. There is learning to be done, and a future that is uncertain. Those are things we should be concentrating on.
Re:Isn't it ironic? (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes, it is, two-point-four million boy.
Now STFU and allow the grown-ups their time to themselves.
Re:This whole incident... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that there are quite a bit of instances, most poignant of which is that southern ice has been increasing for decades, /.
I don't get why people still repeat such nonsense on
The ice is retreating since decades, however in winter it grows and in summer it shrinks.
What counts is the long term trend. Long term: every winter it is a bit less than the (or a few) winter(s) before.
If it is not important that Antarctic ice melt is this year the lowest ever recorded,
Never heard about that claim. Any proof? NASA and ESA photos don't confirm this.
The thing about science is that its supposed to be falsifiable. No it is not. It is supposed to be "investigate able" by experiments. That means it is "provable" ... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable". Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?
Or, how do you "falsify" the theory of gravity?
Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: In the middle of summer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This whole incident... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why simply err on the side of caution, when you can scuttle the entire world economy with superstitious ignorance?
They are ridiculing you (Score:2, Insightful)
They are making fun of people like you who every time a piece of ice falls off a glacier anywhere you point out that as proof of global warming. Go ahead and claim you don't, but every time I hear of a tornado in the US, the hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and on and on, each of those instances people are trotted out on the news as climate experts claiming that this shows AGW is real and we need to do something.
The person making the statement you replied to doesn't believe this single incident proves AGW is false. They are making fun off all the people on your side that use every single instance as proof. The rest of us can look at how far off IPCC predictions are here [blogspot.com], or Al Gore's expert opinion about how the arctic would be ice free by 2013 here [thenewamerican.com], or any other time a climate scientists made a prediction that could actually be tested.
They are making fun of you and you are so dumb you don't even realize it and think you can "debate" your way out of the actual truth. The frozen ice in the antarctic isn't listening to your debate no matter how much you try.
Re:In the middle of summer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: In the middle of summer (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop making things up. It may make you feel smart, but you have no clue what you're talking about.
Yeah, the climate is really complicated. So is the human body, but we can now 3D print working organs and implant them into patients. So is rocket science, but we now have robotic rovers driving around on Mars. If a problem is hard, that doesn't mean we can't solve it. That just means we have to work really hard. And we've been working really hard at understanding the climate for half a century. You have no clue what amazing progress has been made and how deep an understanding we now have of some really complex processes.
So if you want to know what's going on with the climate, what do you do?
1. Learn all about it, recognizing that's a big task and it will take you years of study if you really want to become an expert.
2. Listen to the people who have spent years studying it and are experts on it.
3. Don't do either of the above. Just say, "No one understands this because it's too complicated." After all, if you don't understand it then obviously no one else does either.
Yeah. That's what I thought.
Re: In the middle of summer (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have some other explanation for the observed warming that I haven't heard of?
The point being debated is that this "observed warming" is actually occurring. As for "other explanation", isn't that what models are supposed to provide?
It seems to me that the most persuasive climate models would be those that account for temperature patterns from prehistoric records all the way to today. Anything less can only be based on an incomplete understanding. Unfortunately, the livelihood of manmade global warming scientists depends on manmade global warming actually existing. For a researcher thus employed to admit that the evidence is untenable not only jeopardises his career, but those of thousands of fellow researchers as well. Given *this* reality, if I were a climate change scientist I would never put my name on a study that promoted a contrarian view.
Automatically my foot (Score:4, Insightful)
"Oh let the Moorlocks sort it out while we play in the garden, doing nothing more useful than contributing to the food chain."