Two Greenpeace environmental activists who had spent over 2 years planning a summer trip across the Arctic Ocean to publicize the dangers of global warning had to terminate their trip because of an impassable blizzard:

It took 2-1/2 years for polar explorers Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen to plan their trek across the Arctic Ocean.

But once launched, it took only three weeks for it to fall apart.

Amid a stretch of extraordinarily heavy snowfall, strong winds and broken and shifting ice, the two men from Grand Marais, Minn., who had hoped to become the first adventurers to cross the Arctic Ocean in summer, abandoned their expedition Thursday after advancing only 45 miles in 24 days.

Conditions were so treacherous, in fact, that the men, who had hoped to make the crossing to call attention to global warming and the receding polar ice cap, couldn’t be picked up and airlifted out by helicopter until Friday.

(Via Rand Simberg.)