Climate Change Alarmist Blames Frostbite on Global Warming

Researchers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen have called off what was supposed to be a 530 mile trip across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes. The extremely cold temperatures also drained the batteries on their electronic equipment, which gave the pair no choice, according to one of the trip's organizers.

"Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood.

The pair of explorers was waiting at Canada's Ward Hunt Island on Monday, biding their time until a plane could return them to Resolute, Canada, and then to Minneapolis.

The two women have experience with cold and snow. Bancroft is the first woman to cross the North Pole in 1986, and together the two women were the first women to ski across Antarctica six years ago.

Before canceling the trip, the women had planned to provide regular updates to schools by satellite phone, and had planned to post pictures on the Internet they hoped would provide evidence of global warming. But the trip never got off the ground.

The day the women originally began the trip from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landed close to the women's gear and damaged Bancroft's sled and one of Arnesen's snowshoes. The snowshoe was easily repaired, but in such a way that led to blisters and then frostbite.

And then there was the cold. It was freezing, actually, according to Atwood. Much colder than Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. At night inside their tent the temperature reached 58 degrees below zero, while outside the thermometer dipped to more than 100 degrees below zero.

According to trip planner Atwood, her "first reaction when they called to say they were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold."

Although the women applied hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, it eventually got to be too much because the bottles would freeze in the sub-zero temperatures.