Healing the planet: Team of 130 junk scientists travels more than 12,000 miles in a 387-foot icebreaker that burns more than $50,000 worth of diesel fuel per day; they then claim that *your* activities are making the ice weaker

Global warming: Arctic sea ice getting thinner

Old, thick sea ice that helps sustain a long-term ice cover in the Arctic is disappearing, according to researchers with the Alfred Wegener Institute who recently sailed more than 12,000 miles through Arctic seas aboard the Polarstern to investigate ice loss and related issues. In the central Arctic, the ice cover now largely consists of thin, one-year-old floes.

As part of their research, the team of 130 scientists aboard the research ship wanted to determine whether the Arctic sea ice melted to a greater or lesser extent than in previous years.

“The ice has not recovered. This summer it appears to have melted to exactly the same degree as in 2007 … it is exactly as thin as in the record year,” said Stefan Hendricks.

Measuring the extent of the sea ice is relatively simple using satellite images, but gaining a clear picture of ice thickness and total mass is more challenging. During this summer’s research, the scientists used a helicopter to deploy a probe that measured ice thickness by electromagnetic induction.

2008: Oil cost hits ship studies : Nature News

“We have reached a point where the collapse of some of our activities is looming on the horizon,” says Karin Lochte, director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany, which operates the research icebreaker Polarstern, Europe's largest scientific vessel.

Icebreakers are usually fuelled by marine diesel oil (MDO), a cleaner and more expensive fuel than the heavy oil used by normal cargo ships. The average price for MDO has increased fivefold since 2003, from $250 to $1,300 per metric tonne (equivalent to around 1,200 litres of diesel). Since January, the price has increased by almost $550 per tonne (see graph).

Operating the Polarstern, which is usually at sea for around 320 days per year, currently costs around $100,000 per day, with fuel now accounting for half of that cost.

RV Polarstern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ship has a length of 118 metres (387 feet).
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Polarstern is a double-hulled icebreaker. It is operational at temperatures as low as -50°C. (-58°F) Polarstern can break through ice 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) thick at a speed of 5 knots. Thicker ice must be broken by ramming.