For the fourth straight year the Barneo base on the Arctic Sea has been cancelled. It was fairly obvious that it would have to be cancelled, with Russia at war with Ukraine, and cooperation between Russia and Ukraine such a big part of what made that unique base work. As with all war, much that it is good is destroyed, and I am prompted to look back briefly at the good that was lost.
The Barneo base served three functions: Military, scientific, and tourist.
It was a military exercise in rapidly setting up an airstrip on the Arctic Sea, and deploying arctic troops on skis. Though always created on the Russian side of the Pole, it is quite obvious how advantageous such a base would be in wartime circumstances if set up, for example, off the coast of Alaska.
It was a scientific base, with boreholes drilled in the ice and various experiments set up on, in and under the ice, some of which were short term, but some of which drifted with the ice even after the base was closed in warmer weather. The “North Pole Camera” was for many years set up from the Barneo base, and sent weather reports, a GPS location, and visual pictures from April until it was retrieved by an Icebreaker down in Fram Strait, usually in September. This is how I came to first be acquainted with the Barneo base.
Lastly it was a lucrative tourist trap. Weathy individuals were willing to pay $10,000 to $40,000 for the unique experience of standing at the North Pole, or running in a marathon on the Arctic Sea, or in one case sky-diving to the ice in a wet suit and then water-diving under the ice. The base alone made roughly 60 million dollars a year in tourism, and hotels and airlines in Svalbard and Norway made more.
I always enjoyed covering the doings at the Barneo base because there was something delightfully in-your-face about jets landing on the sea-ice, when compared to the Alarmist narrative that the sea-ice was melting away. The Alarmists tended to use every crack in the sea-ice as proof the ice was thinner and more “rotten” than ever before, (and was going to melt away completely that summer, as early as 2012), and if a lead formed on the blue-ice air strip they took that as evidence as well, (for example in 2011), yet Alexander Orlov, who managed the production year after year, was never discouraged, and seemed to have an uncanny ability to handle all the problems with sea-ice shifting, logistics, and political squabbles. His death before the start of the 2018 season seemed to mark the beginning of the end.
With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight many of the squabbles were ominous hints that the current war was on the horizon, though in those happier times few people felt other people could take such petty differences to the lengths they have reached. For one thing, with 60 million dollars to be made in a mere month, few felt such money would be cast aside, but it was cast aside, even before nonsense got out of hand, and even before the difficulties created by the coronavirus appeared.
Outside of the 60 million made at Barneo, considerable money was made on Svalbard by having the rich tourists pass through on their way to the Pole, but some in Norway felt outrage about how Russians behaved in Chechnya, and this created an unwillingness to support the Barneo base, which meant Russia had to create a new support route through Franz Josef Land, and all the hotels in Svalbard lost out. How Alexander Orlov handled such squabbles must have been fascinating, but as soon as he was gone, they spiraled out of control.
Another difference which seemed almost comical at the time was the squabbles between Greenpeace and Russia. Greenpeace had the strong belief the Arctic Sea should be a pristine National Park, or perhaps World Park. while Russia felt its northern lands should be developed and that a Northeast Passage to China be made feasible by launching a fabulously expensive fleet of enormous icebreakers, some of which were nuclear powered.
The humor entered in because Russians would not, when discussing its north coast waters, use the word “development”, seeming to prefer the word “exploitation” simply because, over at Greenpeace, the word “exploitation” made heads explode. At that time some of Greenpeace’s actions were borderline-militant, as they blocked the passage of large ships with smaller boats, and even boarded ships as part of their protests. The Russian response was to simply throw the protesters in jail and serve them non-organic food. This caused problems for our State Department, but after ninety days in a Russian Prison the protesters were in no hurry to protest again.
Five years ago this did not seem likely to ever be anything other than fringe-politics, yet now things look different, and we are in a situation which we should have seen coming. The simple fact the USA is midst an energy crisis, when only 16 months ago we were energy independent, seems largely due to Greenpeace-thinking, and the simple fact Russia is making boatloads of money with its oil despite sanctions, seems largely due to its anti-Greenpeace-thinking.
Here’s a bit a good bit of detective work I did, concerning an uproar Russia generated when a Ukrainian jet crashed at Barneo, “polluting” the arctic.
And here is another post from that year, hinting at the problems Alexander Orlov had to deal with,
Much more can be discovered simply by searching this site using the word “Barneo”, but my conclusion is that the entire situation is very sad, and that I side with neither side.
What is my side? Well, I’ve been doing a lot of serious thinking about that subject. I will likely devote a long and tedious future-post to my thoughts. In essence it is that Truth should never be denied for the sake of an “agenda”, and an “agenda” should never hide its true aims. (If you worry about over population and your agenda includes reducing the world population by eight and a half billion, you should just say so, just in case someone has an alternative idea which is better, which it might do you good to hear.)
Also, I shall soon write a post about the sea-ice maximum, which is currently occurring, or has already occurred.
However, my main reason for this post is to express my sadness about what war costs us, not merely in terms of the physical destruction of life and property (which the sensationalist media smears all over the screen), but also in humbler terms, terms involving the quality of our lives, and our ability to study simple truths, and enjoy simple things.
Sunrise's Swansong 
Truth. Such a hard thing to find these days. Worse, if you find it, it is almost impossible to actually verify it. I have argued – no stated – here as well as other places that if CO2 was “king,” that if it trapped vast quantities of heat, causing the temperature to rise, then why does the Arctic “warm more” when the sun doesn’t shine than it does when the sun does? The temperatures go up in the winter, but somehow don’t in the summer, when the sun shines 24 hours a day. You would think that, just like daytime in the desert versus night time in the desert, it gets HOT during the day, and can get cold during the night, thus the temperatures in the Arctic would do the same thing. Nope, just the opposite.
Bastardi always claimed it was humidity, and I do believe he was right. In the past, you have often talked about the storms bringing warmth and moisture north, but what if the real problem WAS the loss of Arctic ice pack? And since the currents are going to move loose ice out of the Arctic, if you are breaking ice with monster icebreakers constantly so as to keep the shipping lanes clear, don’t you think that ice breaking might actually be the reason for more moisture in the air and since the open water is warmer than the air, isn’t it reasonable that it might well be the source of the extra heat in the Arctic air during the winter? Might the broken ice NOT show up on the electronic scans of the ice sheets since there would be so much water and thin ice that wouldn’t show up as ice?
Just about each year Russia puts another ice breaker into use, some are the monsters that generate so much power that they could nearly drive through the thickest part of the icecap, while others are to keep ports and local sea lanes open year round, thus don’t need to pound through 5 meters or more of ice. But they are out there daily breaking ice so that it can’t get thick along the shore lanes any more. Wouldn’t that reduce the surface area showing up as ice at least 18 inches or more thick, thus show up on the scans? Seems logical to me, just like the fact that that open water below the ice is definitely warmer than the general air temperature above the ice that just got busted. but that’s the ice issue, not the other issue that is causing troubles.
I do not know if it is true, for instance, but I have read that Ukraine never formerly established it’s borders. That, as Putin stated, Lenin created Ukraine out of Russian land, not as a nation, but as an administrative district. That the debt that was created by the USSR, was accepted and paid off by the Russian Federation, including the debt of the Ukrainian administrative district. That at the break up of the USSR, Ukraine declared itself a nation, but as stated earlier, did not establish its national borders by signing agreements with the nations that surrounded it. If all that is true, then the war in Ukraine is a war completely within the Russian Federation, because those borders WERE established for the USSR and the Russian Federation is the legal successor to that nation, and thus is a civil war, and no outside nations should be involved. If the truth were to be known, that is, and if its true. And even in 2013, when the US instigated the coup in Ukraine, and the insurrection in the eastern provinces of the Donbas started up, the Secretary-General of the UN stated that Ukraine had not established its borders, which is one way of saying that there was no way of knowing if the Donbas belonged to the Ukraine or not. Same with Crimea.
So truth is a beautiful thing, but to a man that cannot see the difference between green and blue, or red and orange, what are the true colors of the American Flag? Sadly, truth isn’t a simple thing, it is a personal thing, and frequently ugly things happen when two people see the same thing differently since to each the truth is different. You are wise not to take sides in what is happening in Russia – or the Ukraine, which ever that space is. It was once part of the Khazarian Empire, I am told. But is that truth?
I’m somewhat older than you are. I remember a lot of things about my childhood days and say “Where did that world go? How did we get here? How did I end up in a nation that is more like what I was told the USSR was like?” You may well remember the line – “It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack.”
Sorry to see you basically have given up on your site. I can see it isn’t drawing a lot of comments, but then again, when comments pretty much directed to you aren’t responded to by you, people most likely get the impression you don’t care about anything beyond what you say. Nothing truly wrong with that.
So, before I once again give up, I will leave a comment that I would prefer to have sent in email, but you have no email to direct offline comments to, do you. So here is my 2 pennies worth of critique, and that is that high in value only because of Bidinflation.
You write extremely entertaining material, when you choose to. In many ways, you could compete with Willis E at Skating Under The Ice for sheer entertaining value. The difference between you and him is that you are prolific when you post whereas he controls the length of his posts. There in was the biggest problem I had with your site – back when I was working, a few years back. Great information, but so much to wade through.
I’m a slow reader, so I would log into your site when I was on break or at lunch, but even though I had a 30 minute lunch, there were many times I could not get through a post. Between their length and my slow reading rate, it wasn’t possible. When I retired due to covid and how it affected my workplace, well, there were lots of bookmarks I had a work that wasn’t on my home computer, Until I retired, there were those sites I looked at while at work, and then there were other sites that I looked at from home.
I saw – still see – so much value in what you wrote, but 5000 word posts were beyond what I could handle easily. No, they weren’t that long, just seemed that long. There is so much to see and learn on the internet, most of us just don’t have the time to read a 4 page essay while researching climate – or covid, or war, or whatever. There is just so much time in the day, even after I retired. People that I email with will send me articles to comment on or ask my opinion about them, and sadly, my typing isn’t any faster than my reading. I can blow through 3 hours and seemingly get nothing accomplished.
So if you want to invigorate your site, and maybe draw and keep people logging in and participating, my first recommendation is “word economy.” That’s something that I can’t practice either, by the way. I am always afraid that if I don’t explain something to death, it will be misinterpreted.
I’m also old fashioned. I was brought up in the 50s and 60s, and I still prefer those days to what I live in now. I remember my English courses and the poetry that I had to read. I used to write poetry when I was young – I think that is something a lot of right brained people do. I loved expressing things in rhyme and meter. It was such a challenge to say what you wanted to say that way. And then along came “open verse” and to me, poetry ceased to exist. Anyone can write a mini story and “shape” the printing so it looks like a poem. Too easy to say anything you want to say that way. I read some of your early poetry that you put up on this site back years ago, and to my mind, it was head and shoulders about the open verse style you prefer now. Personal opinion, and one I would have preferred to leave offline. But there is no way to write to you offline, as I said, you have my email address, but there is none for you.
I’ll be checking back from time to time to see if you decide to start reviving the Caleb that wrote for the rest of us, not just for yourself, because that seems to be where you have gone when you don’t bother to respond to a comment. I’ll assume this comment will be gone the next time I come back – assuming, of course you have even noticed it.
I always notice your comments. Thanks for being such a fascinating thinker, over the years.
I’ve been working on one of my long and rambling posts, and also am somewhat overwhelmed by work. I’ll post again soon.
I can see what I said actually was a wasted effort. Rod Stewart sang ” Every picture tells a story, doesn’t it.” Or words pretty much to that effect. When you get that long, rambling post written, and I can find an hour of free time, I’ll try to get back to read it. Too bad you never considered what your followers time constraints might be. You most assuredly would have more of them – followers, that is – if you had. 3 separate but loosely connected posts are better than one long one that no one has enough time to read – unless it is just the self satisfaction of writing that you’re after. Take care, and above all else, be true to yourself, which, I am reasonably sure, you will.
Please don’t think it was wasted. I’ll take it to heart, and consider abbreviating. But the rambling is how the ideas initially appear. It is sort of like growing a cauliflower, and serving the entire plant with its roots, leaves and stem, along with the flower. I need a good editor to come along and chop-chop-chop. Unfortunately whenever anyone says I should “cut it out” I tend to clout them in the snoot. I’m terribly sensitive, you see. Also editors tend to want money, whereas I figure I should get paid. Sigh. But fortunately I enjoy writing even if nobody reads it, besides you.