What is wrong with this logic?
WHY WE’RE HERE
The Mainstream Last First adventure began earlier this month, when Paul Gleeson, Frank Wolf, Denis Barnett and I set out on our attempt to become the first people to cross the 3,000-km Northwest Passage in a single season using human power.
Not going to happen.
We are rowing a purposebuilt, 25-foot rowboat on a journey to highlight issues of climate change and arctic sovereignty, as well as the historical significance of the route to Canada.
Yes, the Arctic climate is much colder than it was 70 years ago.
Our destination is Pond Inlet, Nunavut, on the east coast of Baffin Island, and we are hoping to make it there by early fall after 90 days along a route that is only recently navigable because of the Arctic’s melting ice.
That ice crushing your boat doesn’t look melted. The route is historically navigated, but is only recently navigable. Pass the choom, please.
.
The boats that sailed this route in the past don’t count in their muddle, climate change altered minds. What is even stranger is that they seem to believe they will make Pond Inlet (this year) … perhaps Reggie hired a Russian icebreaker to tow them the rest of the way.
They wouldn’t even be safe in the flotsam behind an ice breaker… 🙂
There’s a very good reason that traditional sea faring vessels in the arctic are light, low profile and easily carried….You have to cary them a lot and the wind is a bitch.
“We try to release our anchor but it’s stuck as this multi-ton piece of ice some 30-40ft thick has positioned itself above it and is making it impossible to retrieve.”
That would be the thin rotten ice that is all that is left in the arctic.
this multi-ton piece of ice some 30-40ft thick…
I thought all the MYI was gone…and it never got that thick in the first place…..snark/
They might have been better off with a floating dog sled
“it’s stuck as this multi-ton piece of ice, some 30 to 40 feet thick”
Is that that rotten decaying ice they talk about?
Wonder what the Vikings were thinking when they were, in fact, the first people to row around the Arctic every summer for hundreds of years many hundreds of years ago?
The chances of these guys going viral and getting 3 minutes on Oprah are fading away faster than their credibility.
When did they ever have any?
Just wait until they lie about it..
.. If they can, they will.
Arctic sovereignty?
I know. I wondered about that too…. sounds like eco-psycho speak for “Don’t touch it!”
That is exactly what I was thinking about .. my comment was going to be ” WTF is arctic sovereignty? ”
This is some of the dumbest shit I have seen in a very long time. I am hoping these people set a glaring example of why not to engage in stupid stunts like this. Please pass them the Darwin award…
But I was specifically told there would be no ice on this route…
Ok, that kind of stupidity I can understand. They believed what they were told, and being young jock types did no research of any type whatsoever. Got it. Forgivable to a degree if it weren’t the Artic we’re dealing with.
However what is unforgivable is the stupidity of being actually confronted with a mini-iceberg and ignoring the possibility that it may have any implications for the success of their proposed journey. I mean, do they really believe that August is going to suddenly get so hot that 30 foot chunks of ice like that are going to vanish? Really? Can they actually have any illusion of success or even a ‘ yeah but we got darn close’ good try?
Well, there were some fantasies floating about that the Mackenzie river would become this massive Brawndo fueled ice-melting, hot-tub warm, Arctic blowtorch that would clear the northwest passage of all the little bits of left-over first-year, rotten, slushy ice ahead of the rowers.
Sadly, the Brawndo Blowhard Blowtorch seems to have been the result of a climate model run for 390 ppm CO2. The “climate scientists” are all extremely puzzled by the massive disconnect between reality vs. their model runs. Of course they never question the adjustments made to their input data sets, and thus are at a complete loss to explain reality.
The saps, I mean rowers meanwhile are reduced to staring at the fair sized chunks reality floating all around them…
For the rowers out there, is 90% concentration ice hard to get through? There’s a window of maybe clear waters. Though they can not hug the southern shore and would have to cross maybe 150km of open water with the wind working against them.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS39CT/20130730180000_WIS39CT_0007186934.gif
But if they make it and the next 700km or so, what’s the chance that the 90% ice concentration blocking their way will fall apart by then?
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS38CT/20130730180000_WIS38CT_0007186946.gif
Logic? 😆
Only one GPS position today and it looks like they’ve made no progress. Will they miraculously turn out to have made tens of miles with the GPS off and not remark at all on the accomplishment (again)?
The ice map in Darwin Alert . . .
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/screenhunter_06-jul-30-15-28.jpg
. . . shows ice south and southeast of their position, blocking their path to Paulatuk. It would seem their only option is to go open water, bypassing Damley Bay entirely. They have eschewed open water, so maybe they are stuck til something changes.
Gaia is kicking them in the ass, but good, just for being the arrogant and brainless pieces of shit that they are.
“It’s not nice to fool with Mother nature”.