People with CCAD (Climate Change Anxiety Disorder) should have been reassured to hear that Arctic climate explorers have had to give up their sailing mission to the ‘melting’ North Pole because – yes, my dear sceptics, you have it – there was too much ice!
The BBC’s Science Editor and climate change enthusiast David Shukman had made much of this expedition led by the ‘renowned explorer’, Pen Hadow.
Sailing there, the grinning pair triumphantly told us, was not the mad idea you might have thought. Sadly for them, it was. The story of the flop is here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/31/arctic-climate-explorers-give-up-sailing-to-the-north-pole-because-theres-too-much-ice/
Hadow insisted that despite being totally thwarted they didn’t fail, and Shukman continues to say the ice is melting. So there! Trying to salvage a shred of victory from defeat, they claimed to have sailed further north than any vessel unassisted by ice-breakers, reaching 80 degrees 10 minutes North.
Except they didn’t. The great BBC Science Ed failed to check. In 1922 a vessel reached 81° 29′ in open water. Another BBC climate change project blown off course.
