GOING WITH THE FLOE

On Christmas Eve a ship carrying 52 global warming scientists, among others, got stuck in some heavy duty Antarctic ice. The experts had set sail from New Zealand in a quest to prove the concept of global warming or what we now call climate change. The idea was to record the devastating effects of rising temperatures on icebergs and other frozen stuff through temperature and salinity measurements.

The ship is wedged in a 20 nautical mile-wide ice floe. The 10-foot thickness of the ice, along with 30-knot winds and driving snow have stymied rescue efforts of icebreakers from three countries, France, Australia and China. The current plan is to attempt a helicopter rescue when the weather is more cooperative, which isn’t expected to happen until after New Year’s Day. The chopper, which circles the marooned vessel periodically, is provided by the Chinese. Penguins have also marched across the ice to gawk at the spectacle. They must be wondering what silly humans will do next.

The Lame Spin Award goes to these brainiacs for, as the expedition leader wildly understates it, “getting stuck in our own experiment.” Clearly, their circumstances are much more than merely that. The irony of being stranded in ice that isn’t supposed to exist, at least not in this volume, is not lost on man-made climate change opponents. Critics zero in on the climate change proponents’ use of fossil fuels to get to their destination in the first place. This hypocrisy is exploded exponentially by the rescue vessels’ consumption of much more of the dread pollutants.

What’s even worse, and not yet commented upon, is the fact that the helicopter-flying rescuers – the Chinese – are the biggest polluters in the known Universe. This sorry episode gives “going with the floe” a whole new meaning.