A few days ago, your humble correspondent noted the story of a trio of British “explorers” who were on a “global warming” icepack survey in the Arctic – and who had become marooned by (surprise) frigid Arctic weather conditions. The story was too hard to pass up, since it had been given the deadpan-irony headline of:

Global Warming Team Stranded by Cold Weather

In some sense it was good fun to mock them for their foolishness. But on the other hand, they were clearly in very deep trouble – marooned by the cold and bad weather, and nearly out of food.

Fortunately, they were rescued in the nick of time by a (carbon-belching) Twin Otter, and are now safe.

But one really does have to wonder about the bone-headedness (and sanity) of people who do silly things like this and nearly get themselves killed.

More below the fold….

When dealing with the AGW-apocalypse types, one wonders which branch of the “church” is goofier.

On the one hand, there are a lot of them who insist that we’re in runaway warming and the world is burning to a crisp – but they never seen to schedule outdoor events in January to take advantage of this change of circumstances.

On the other hand, there is apparently a collection of them (as has been noted occasionally) who actually do buy into the “epic warming” notion and thus quite happily go wandering off into the Arctic in winter, expecting conditions to be tepid.

Um…. one really does have to wonder about the sanity of these people, particularly in this day and age of the Interweb Tubes – anyone can quickly look at the temperatures in the cold regions – e.g., with just a few mouse clicks, I can see that right now the temperature at Resolute, the Canadian outpost high in the Arctic Archipelago, is -36F.

Thus…. why was any of this a big surprise to them?

With perfect timing, the setting out from Britain of the “Global Warming Three” last month was hampered by “an unusually heavy snowfall”. When they were airlifted to the start of their trek by a twin-engine Otter (one hopes a whole forest has been planted to offset its “carbon footprint”), they were startled to find how cold it was. The BBC dutifully reported how, in temperatures of minus 40 degrees, they were “battered by wind, bitten by frost and bruised by falls on the ice”.

Umm, folks…. YOU…. WERE…. IN…. THE…. ARCTIC…. in the middle of March, when it’s still actually WINTER….

Meanwhile, they found that the cutie polar bears are far from extinct; in fact, they are in very good appetite….

Thanks to the ice constantly shifting, it was “disheartening”, reported Hadow, to find that “when you’ve slogged for a day”, you can wake up next morning to find you have “drifted back to where you started’’. Last week, down to their last scraps of food, they were only saved in the nick of time by the faithful Otter. They were disconcerted to see one of those polar bears, threatened with extinction by global warming, wandering around, doubtless eyeing them for its dinner.

It’s good to hear that they were safely rescued. But honestly – how dense can you be? This is really getting to be too much; these greenie types seem to be candidates for Darwin Awards….

One other thing though – it’s time for this foolishness to stop. In younger days, your humble correspondent actually accumulated a fair amount of big-mountain mountaineering experience. One piece of the code of conduct has always been that you have to be responsible far beyond “doing whatever you want.” If you do something foolish and then call for help, you are putting your would-be rescuers in danger. Mindlessly getting in trouble and then getting on the radio and screaming for help is dragging better people into your trouble with you. (Listening to someone melt down on the radio screaming for help is a numbing experience.)

Dear greenies – please cease these vainglorious tiltings at (frozen) windmills. You’re just putting innocent bystanders (such as that Twin Otter crew) in danger.