KTOO’s Clarise Larson recently brought us updated news of the new Coast Guard Storis (a gas guzzling, defective icebreaker that has a propulsion system susceptible to failure in ice, waste and discharge systems that weren’t designed to meet polar code, a helicopter pad that is in the wrong place to launch rescue operations and a rear deck that is easily swamped by big waves). The Storis will eventually be home ported in iceless Juneau, for some silly reason that has never been explained, and perhaps even in time to actually break some polar ice, before Global Warming melts it. The Storis was in town recently, so that Juneau’s residents could tour it while it isn’t breaking ice or doing anything practical. We examine this important story in greater detail.
The Coast Guard says that it will eventually move the Storis to Juneau (a non-polar city that does not get ice that needs breaking) in order to bring 190 crewman and their families to Juneau. A Coast Guard spokesman, Lt. Brian Moore, provided us with neither any reliable estimate for when the Storis will actually arrive in Juneau for duty, nor any explanation why it will take years to get this defective icebreaker deployed in Juneau any sooner than that, but he did give us some interesting background:
“The mission of the Storis is a crucial one. Despite the Global Warming crisis, believe it or not, the Arctic still gets pretty cold in the winter, and the seas up there get a lot of ice that needs to be broken, and currently nobody is breaking it,” he said. “Of course, one of the minor, technical problems is that the Storis can only break a bit more than four feet of ice and the ice up there in Arctic usually gets a lot thicker than that, so we probably won’t be able to use it for ice-breaking, but we’re giving it a new paint job, a media room and gender-neutral bathrooms, so it will stand out as the new standard of our ships even when it isn’t really doing anything ice-wise,” Lt. Moore continued.
The Storis has an interesting story. Originally constructed in Lousiana for private use by shipbuilder Edison Chouest for Shell Oil Co., the sale of the icebreaker fell through after its many serious design flaws contributed a near-disaster. Edison Chouest spent more that $7 million in political donations before it was finally able to unload the boat on the Coast Guard.
Some experts we spoke with questioned the need for icebreakers, given the imminent tipping points that doom our planet to capitalist-induced heat death at the hands of Global Warming. “Why are they bringing icebreakers to Alaska, when there will be no ice there just after the next presidential election?” asked Terry Vanderwalen, an Assistant Professor of Forensic Climatology at the University of the Arctic in Drowning Creek. “We don’t need icebreakers… We need icemakers! We need to save the polar bears and the walruses from dying!” he exclaimed. Jim Reeves, Interim Deputy Assistant Director of Media Relations in the State of Alaska’s Region 19-D Office of Climate Forecasting, was a bit more circumspect about the notion of Global Warming tipping points. “The thing is, you have to be really careful using a number when you pick a Global Warming tipping point, because when it turns out you’re wrong, you’ll have to pick a new tipping point, and everybody will be throwing it in your face that you got the first one wrong – just look at what happened to Al Gore,” he noted astutely. “The tricky thing to do is to come up with a really scary tipping point that sounds like it’s right around the corner, but to do it without actually naming a date or a deadline. Only the best climate scientists have the skill to pull that off, usually,” he concluded.
Surprisingly, many uneducated, average, nobody-type people questioned the wisdom in stationing the Storis in Juneau instead of in Nome or even Anchorage, both of which are much closer to actual ice. “Why did they choose to park this boat in Juneau, when we don’t get any ice here?” asked Tim Thomas, a local restaurant owner, who echoed the sentiment of many of the uninformed locals we spoke with. “Now they’re gonna have to haul 2,000 miles to get to the ice! Why didn’t they put the boat in Nome, where the ice is, or at least in Anchorage?” he wondered.
Susie Crews, the Coast Guards Media Liason Director, provided the answer. “This is a political decision, not a practical one,” she said. “Seven million dollars in donations will greatly affect decisions like this,” she finished. She went on to explain that every time the Storis leaves Juneau on an ice-breaking mission, it will release 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide straight into Alaska’s atmosphere, thereby greatly accelerating global warming. “So you see, by contributing to Global Warming, the Storis will be fighting ice all over the world, even when it isn’t actually breaking it anywhere,” she noted.