If by tragedy, you mean yet another example of how global warming is all a giant scam, and people who keep doing stuff like this, and end up making idiots out of themselves, only to prove their own theory wrong.

These are not the first people to try and prove that global warming is true by hiking through the Arctic, where the polar ice is supposedly melting.

The result, however, is the same (emphasis mine):

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite. The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

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

But the latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.

They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.

Then there was the cold _ quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.

Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

See, one of the things that comes with global warming is unpredictability -- now I get it! Extreme cold = global warming. Lots of hurricanes = global warming. No hurricanes = global warming. Blizzards = global warming. Any kind of weather, anywhere, is caused by global warming!

What I can't help but wonder about is how these out-to-prove-global-warming-true-explorers (and these two are definitely not the first ones, and probably won't be the last) ever thought anything different would happen. I mean, when they sat around thinking about swimming through the arctic circle, did they really believe their own propaganda, and think they wouldn't freeze? And even if they did believe their own propaganda, why did they not realize the game was up when their gear froze?

Maybe then they just sat around and started praying to the Goracle. Instead of facing Mecca, they face Malibu. Global warming and environmentalism is the religion of choice for moonbats, after all.

A good quote from American Thinker:

I hope the two recover fully and come to realize that it can still be really, really cold in the arctic, no matter what Al Gore tells them.

...

I hope they are now letting those school groups know that it is foolish to plan to swim in the Arctic beacuse it gets really, really cold there.

Hat Tip: Moonbattery.