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It was a great idea. Take a shipload of climate-change scientists, retrace Douglas Mawson’s trip of a century ago, and measure and compare water temperatures, ice flows, etc., to show the world that man-made global warming exists, even in the coldest part of the earth.

This voyage came to a screaming halt when the ship, and two rescue ships, became lodged in ice.

“We’re stuck in our own experiment,” the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said. “We came to Antarctica to study how one of the biggest icebergs in the world has altered the system by trapping ice. We ... are now ourselves trapped by ice surrounding our ship.”

Fortunately, The New Zealand Herald reports the scientists will plant 800 trees to compensate for the carbon dioxide produced by the expedition, so we are all safe.

Next they need to compute the number of trees needed to offset the carbon footprint of the 77 eruptions of Mount Sinabung in Indonesia last week.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S. we recorded thousands of record lows last year, dwarfing the number of record highs. The average temperature nationwide Jan. 7 was 17 degrees.