Global Warming Publicity Stunt Canceled Due To Frostbite
You know, we try really hard around here to come up with the occasional bit of humor. It helps, we think, take a little edge off the political rages that are swirling these days. But we have our limits of what we can reasonably dream up or link to. Because it has to be believable, at least on some level. But we could not begin to make up this one: A trek across the Arctic designed to draw attention to global warming had to be canceled when one of the participants got frostbite.
Due to extremely – very, very extremely – cold temperatures. Like more than 100° F below zero extreme.
Bancroft, 51, became the first woman to cross the North Pole on a 1986 expedition. She and Arnesen, 53, of Oslo, Norway, were the first women to ski across Antarctica in 2001.
But the latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.
They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.
Then there was the cold – quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.
"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.
She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze. (Emphasis added)
We could not have made that one up. People would have thought we were crazy. Well, more crazy than TC's friend already considers us. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard would really like to know exactly where AlGore was when all this was happening. And if he was in the vicinity, why didn't he have an extension cord to loan the poor, frozen global warming activists? They could have plugged in to Al's gargantuan electric supply and gotten a little heat.
Oh, never mind. That electricity is all for him. Our bad.
UPDATE: Ace: It's called "weather". Small Dead Animals: As you were. Right Wing News: Colder equals warmer! Misha: Bloody Weather. Cafe Hayek: Everything – all of it – has now been explained!
Energy, Environment, Humor | Gaius March 12, 2007
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Taking Al To The Woodshed — March 12, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
By crosspatch, March 12, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
That article must be false. Everyone knows that there is no more polar ice at the North Pole and the poor polar bears are stranded on the tiny floes that remain adrift in the vast expanse of the now thawed Arctic Ocean. Sheesh.
By John Tiller, March 15, 2007 @ 1:05 am
They were going to go swimming at the North Pole in minus 100 degree temperatures. They were really trying to prove something to the innocent 2nd graders kids following their progress on the Weather Network. And ABC ran their vidiolog catching all the inconvenient truth that they discovered on disk.
I just can’t get over it. They packed swimsuits for a trip to the North Pole in wintertime. You wouldn’t do that for Florida. You are only allowed one that stupid in a lifetime. That goes for the Weather Network too.