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COMMENTARY
September 16, 2009
At sea
There's a thunderstorm going on like nothing you've ever seen. The storm system is 3,000 kilometres across, in a part of the planet where thunderstorm activity has never been noticed before. It has been raging for at least eight months now, with thunderbolts 10,000 times more thrilling than any previously recorded.Did I mention the planet is Saturn? No? How silly of me. Well, now you know -- if you didn't already, from a Drudge link to AFP yesterday morning. Because I do not trust media reporting from Saturn, I checked the story with the Jet Propulsion Lab at NASA. (But why trust them?) It checked out: the storm is being followed by the orbiting Cassini spacecraft, the crackles and pops first detected last January, by an instrument that is the equivalent of an AM radio. Other interesting radio and plasma waves are being monitored by the Cassini-Huygens mission. For instance, Saturn would seem to have auroras, and by recording their kilometric radiation at high resolution, then shifting the frequencies down to audio range, you get this very eerie music. I'd love to go there -- to Saturn -- but not this morning, when my purpose is limited to demonstrating the importance of context in reporting. A great deal of excitement can be generated, in an industry that requires excitement to survive, simply by omitting some qualifying fact. More often than not the omission is unintentional. Take the historic opening of the North-East Passage -- along the Arctic shores of Russia connecting Europe and the Far East. According to the London Independent, the BBC, Reuters, and many other media sources copying each other, two German ships have completed "the first commercial navigation of the fabled North-East Passage." You can write the rest of this story in your sleep, the way the journalists did. Thanks to global warming, and Arctic melting, the "impossible dream" of commercial shipping through high latitudes has become a reality! Online journalist Andrew Orlowski traced the story to its source: a sloppily-worded press release from the German shipping firm, Beluga, that no one bothered to check. It announced the first Arctic voyages -- by that shipping firm. The well-travelled route has been open for three-quarters of a century, and serves many large ports on Siberia's northern coasts. Its existence has nothing to do with Arctic melt. It depends instead on ships with thick hulls and powerful engines designed to shunt big ice, and on an infrastructure to report ice conditions accurately. It is the same story in our Canadian Arctic, though our own northern development has been paltry in comparison to what Josef Stalin achieved. Much similar nonsense is published on Arctic melting. By removing basic context, it is possible to generate considerable alarm. And when public money is flowing for "climate change" research, we get what we pay for. The truth is, Arctic seawater ice comes and goes with surprising rapidity, season to season, and week to week. There are longer-term trends, but the overall shrinking that began in the 1970s ended several years ago, and ice cover has since been, overall, growing. I happen to be reading, out of a vulgar fascination with yachting expeditions, the book North-West Passage by the late Dutchman, Willy de Roos. He made the journey east to west, mostly single-handed, back in 1977. It is a good read not only for tips on Arctic navigation, but because the author likes to drop hints of his contempt for the modern Nanny State. It was a remarkable achievement, but also pure luck. Ice conditions favoured him that year; had he tried it the year before or after, he would not have made it. Even in ideal conditions, it was touch and go in the wee yacht Williwaw, a well-designed steel ketch, but of only 18 tons. There are more interesting things than global warming. Take for instance the pigeon Willy acquired as a passenger on his outward journey. He was already far past Ireland, when he found the wind-bedraggled bird, with a racing ring around one leg, trying to sleep through a near-gale, on his quarterdeck railing. It had been flying earnestly westward across the Atlantic, having apparently mistaken its homing signals a few hundred kilometres back. Being soft-hearted, Willy finds some nuts and grain. Soon the pigeon is living in the cabin, spreading grain everywhere because it only likes the nuts, and creating new Atlantic islands with its droppings on Willy's charts. Also, squawking whenever its territory is constricted, and refusing to go out unless the weather is very fine. The pigeon does take some flying exercise, however, and spots Greenland before Willy can, immediately winging off towards it. This leaves the solo sailor, abused and mocked for weeks by this stupid greedy unthankful bird, at whom he had himself been constantly cussing, heartbroken at the loss of his companion. Oh, the world can be a sad little place. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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