Who is behind the ship of fools?

As Chris Turney and his colleagues make their way home from their failed adventure, the next question is: who is going to be paying for their folly?  It certainly isn’t the general public. The efforts by Turney and his co-leader Chris Fogwill to crowd-fund money have been an embarrassing failure. They were seeking to raise $49,000 in this way – a small fraction of the $1.5 million overall costs – but they managed to raise a mere $1,000 from 22 people. Not even the promise of a signed copy of Turney’s book, 1912: the year the World Discovered Antarctica was enough to tempt donors into action: not a single one chose to receive the book.

British taxpayers, needless to say, have dipped in their toes. One of the sponsors is the University of Exeter, Professor Turney’s previous employer. The university is fast on its way to taking over from the University of East Anglia as the global warming lobby’s chief mouthpiece.