Arctic team reports unusual conditions near Pole

[phantom power]

A group of British explorers just back from a 60-day trip to the North Pole said Monday they had encountered unusual conditions, including ice sheets that drifted far faster than they had expected.

...

Expedition leader Ann Daniels said the ice drifted so much that they eventually covered 500 nautical miles (576 miles) rather than the 268 nautical miles initially envisaged.

The first day the team was dropped off the ice moved so quickly to the south that it took the trio 10 days to make it back to their starting point.

...

Martin Hartley, a member of the team, said the condition of the ice was unpleasantly bad.

"We spent a couple of days walking on ice that was three or four inches thick with no other thicker ice around, which was a big surprise to us," he told the news conference.

http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/41335

[AndyA]

1. Meanwhile, BP is burning off natural gas from the leak, discharging it

right into the atmosphere.

Parts of the Gulf oil slick were burned to prevent it from reaching shore.

No harm done to the environment here, folks. Just keep on moving, BP is a good corporate citizen. Ignore the man behind the curtain destroying the habitat in the Gulf, there's nothing to see here.

:eyes: :cry:

[TheMadMonk]

2. Would you prefer they simply vent the may times more powerful,...

...greenhouse gas, methane? It takes a lot of infrastructure to collect, compress and liquify natural gas.

Flaring off gas from the well is one of the few things they are doing unequivally right.

[AndyA]

3. If they were doing things right, none of this would be happening.

There is no defense for their actions. None.

[TheMadMonk]

7. Who's defending their actions. I'm defending one small portion of their REACTION...

...to the situation as it unfortunately (and for whatever reason) is.

[AndyA]

8. You mean the methane gas in the bubble that exploded that started all of this in the first place?

The slushy methane gas that prevented the dome from working? The methane hydrate being created as it continues to escape? They've been releasing methane since day one.

I would have preferred they followed the safety guidelines and not tried to rush the process in the first place, which is what ultimately caused this to happen. Nothing they have done has been right.

But what the hell, I guess the natural gas is a drop in the bucket when you look at the big picture. :eyes:

[hatrack]

4. Current (5/18/10) Sea Ice Extent Readings Approaching 2007 Record Lows

Of course, these graph is of area only - not volume.

[happyslug]

9. Only 95% confidence level??

Standard Deviation is an attempt to rule out chance when you compare two numbers. The higher the confidence the less chance involved. The problem is to get higher confidence you have to accept a wider area that shows areas of no real difference. For example lets assume a test with an average of 100. Two Standard Deviation is a statistical term saying you have 95% confidence that the numbers are really different. One standard deviation is only a 90% confidence level, 99% confidence level is achieved with three standard deviations.

In my example, in any one test (More tests, the higher the Confidence level goes up) if the average score is 100 the standard deviation is the Square root of that "average" i.e 10 points. Thus you can only have a 90% (one chance in ten that you will be WRONG) confidence that anyone who scored less then 90 actually did worse the the people who scored 100 (i.e. for those people who scored 91-99, the difference is as likely to be a product of chance then any actual difference).

If you take that same 100 assumption, two standard deviations cut off is 80, i.e. you have 95% confidence that someone scoring 80 did worse then someone scoring 100, but chances are that someone scoring 81-99 did as well or better then the person scoring 100 (i.e One out of 20 chances of being wrong).

If you want 99% confidence, you have to have a standard deviation of 3, or in the case above 30 points. i.e. you can only have a 99% confidence that a person scoring less then 70 did worse do to a real reason as opposed to chance (i.e. one chance out of 100 of being wrong).

Please note the above chances are for someone who score is BELOW the number of given Confidence level. i.e. a person who scored 95 instead of 100, may have done so do to statistical error (i.e. chance) NOT that the person who scored 100 is smarter then the person who scored 95.

I bring this up for the chart only gives two standard deviation shadow, i.e. a 95% confidence level. I.e. we have a better then 95% chance that 2010 is actually doing better then the average, the difference may be the product of chance. To get the 99% confidence level you almost have to double the area of coverage again (i.e. the chart does NOT show a 99% confidence that this year is, in reality as opposed to chance, worse then the average). 2007 does not appear to be at a level of 99% confidence (Through it is clearly outside the 95% confidence level i.e. you have at least a 19 out of 20 chance that the difference between 2007 and the average is real).

Just comments on the Statistics involved with this chart and to careful if someone with an actual statistical background actually attacks this chart as NOT showing any real difference. It clearly show a 95% confidence between 2007 and the Average, but it also does NOT show a 99% confidence between 2007 and the average.

[XemaSab]

5. .

[kristopher]

6. K&R

[Dead_Parrot]

10. Hmmm

Does "Where's all the fucking ice gone?" still count as unusual? :shrug: