Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice....MOREThe tone of the story is a bit snarkier than is probably necessary but on a pragmatic level...oh good grief.
From our June 4 post "French Cruise Ship Set to Travel to North Pole in 2021"
This does not seem like a good idea.
Not at all....
******....With other types of eco-tourism you can at least make the rationalization that the tourists will spend some money in what are usually pretty poor places. Not on board a boat in the middle of the ice pack though.
And speaking of money, there's the issue of how big a rescue bond should be posted—$10 million might prove to be insufficient depending on the complexity of the rescue.
One positive, with the LNG powertrains they won't be spewing carbon particulates onto the ice, something the Chinese coal-fired power plants do with awful effects on the albedo of the great white north. (Russia burning heavy fuel oil up there doesn't help)
You need the ice.
So the polar bears can walk out to nosh on passengers should the boat get stuck for too long.
Here's Ponant's homepage for Le Commandant Charcot, it does look fascinating.
