“…you’d have to have a heart as cold and unmovable as Commonwealth Bay ice not to be howling with laughter at the exquisite symbolic perfection of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition ‘stuck in our own experiment’, as they put it. I confess I was hoping it might all drag on a bit longer and the cultists of the ecopalypse would find themselves drawing straws as to which of their number would be first on the roasting spit. On Douglas Mawson’s original voyage, he and his surviving comrade wound up having to eat their dogs. I’m not sure there were any on this expedition, so they’d probably have to make do with the Guardian reporters. Forced to wait a year to be rescued, Sir Douglas later recalled, ‘Several of my toes commenced to blacken and fester near the tips.’ Now there’s a man who’s serious about reducing his footprint.”
And this:
Big Climate is slowly being crushed by a hard, icy reality: if you’re heading off to university this year, there has been no global warming since before you were in kindergarten. That’s to say, the story of the early 21st century is that the climate declined to follow the climate ‘models’. (Full disclosure: I’m currently being sued by Dr Michael Mann, creator of the most famously alarming graph, the ‘hockey stick’.) You would think that might occasion a little circumspection. But instead the cultists up the ante: having evolved from ‘global warming’ to the more flexible ‘climate change’, they’re now moving on to ‘climate collapse’. Total collapse. No climate at all. No sun, no ice. No warm fronts, except for the heaving bosoms in Rajendra Pachauri’s bodice-rippers. Nothing except the graphs and charts of ‘settled science’. In the Antarctic wastes of your mind, it’s easier just to ice yourself in.
Mark Steyn, who, I am glad to see, is back at the Spectator. The whole article is glorious. I must admit when I first read about this group of folk who, no doubt hoping to confirm their AGW warnings, got trapped in the Antarctic ice in that region’s “summer”, I thought of the expression “Ship of Fools”. It has been used quite a lot. Talking of that title, there’s a great article under that title about a trip by Leftists to the Soviet Union by the great P J O’Rourke. Reprinted in his book, Republican Party Reptile.
Personally I thought “Gilligan’s Iceberg” had a better ring to it.
Speaking as one who just had to plow 19″ of ‘global warming’ off my driveway – the largest, longest continuous snowfall in more than 30 years – and had to do it in -17°F temps (that’s -27°C for those of you under French occupation) I am more-firmly-than-ever of the settled opinion that ‘global warming’ is a load of c*ck. You can bleat for as long as you like about how ‘weather is not climate’ but eventually – it is.
llater,
llamas
Gosh! I did at once ken we’d landed in Steynland.
“Ecopalypse”: Wonderful! (Next time, “ecockalypse.”)
This did strike me:
so reminiscent of Messrs. Clarke and Dawe on the issue of whether a certain ship, which had succumbed to assault by a wyve, was now completely outside the Environment. And even more perspicacious.
Of course, to be sued by Mr. Mann is an honor like that of being hauled before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Expensive and a pain, but honor is a pearl beyond price. Not to coin a cliché.
. . .
llamas, what can I say. I, or at least my s-i-l, feel your pain–though not to 19″-worth. Perhaps you could have had some well-located friend send you Mr. Mann tightly bound in a plain brown wrapper, and you could have affixed him to the plow with that epoxy they used to suspend a VW from the Brooklyn Bridge, a hundred years ago.
Hmmm, 19″ what’s that, about 480mm?
Fabulous article, of course. But surely, Surely, SURELY the title should have been “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Stonyground –
Aye – It’s precisely one thumb more than a cubit. :p
Interestingly enough, the Pentagon (that big building designed like a Satanic symbol) is looking into buying more ice-breakers for the Arctic regions- for when the ice disappears! They think that in twelve or more years, the arctic will be ice-free for some of the time, and at others, they’ll need ice-breakers for stranded ships. Do they know something we don’t, or is this just typical military over-kill?
The story is still dragging on, as the rescue ship is still in the antarctic with the ecotourists on board. Their original ship is now back in NZ!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/13/akademic-shokalskiy-makes-it-back-to-port-spirtofmawson-fools-still-stuck-in-antarctica/