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Giant Iceberg to Collide with Glacier
OECD writes "NASA reports that a massive 100-mile-long iceberg is on a collision course (movie) with a floating glacier near the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA scientists expect a collision to occur no later than January 15, 2005."
Aside from looking cool and being important to penguins (the two things that the article seems to focus on) this can affect things that are actually important.
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The ice tongue that the iceberg is going to hit is the ocean end of a glacier. If that is knocked off by the collision that could be like pulling the cork from a bottle. It may cause the glacier to discharge into the more rapidly than it otherwise would, raising sea levels.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg184
Not armageddon, Global Warming.
Which, IIRC threatens to bring at least a couple of the horsemen of the Apocolypse. Famine and Death being the two I immediately think of. Not to worry about Armageddon itself, though. That battle will occur seven years after the believers are taken away.
So, no, this is not Armageddon. However, it may be a sign of the Apocolypse (the non-Larry Wall kind). Get to know some Christians, if they are all missing at once, prepare for 3.5 years of good times, then 3.5 years of hell on earth.
You're thinking of something like this.
Fresh water entering the antarctic isn't a problem, but in the arctic it could switch off the gulf stream and mess up the weather all over the atlantic.
http://www.nasa.gov.nyud.net:8090/vision/earth/loo kingatearth/ice_berg_ram.html
According to this, b15 was 200 to 350 metres thick at calving time.
It was estimated to be 70% of the annual 2500 giga-tonne ice output from the Ross shelf. That's 1750000 million tonnes!
(note that a metric tonne is spelled differently than an imperial ton.)
The B-15A iceberg is a 3,000-square-kilometer (1,200-square-mile) behemoth that has a history of causing problems. It is the largest fragment of a much larger iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. Scientists believe that the enormous piece of ice broke away as part of a long-term natural cycle (every 50-to-100 years, or so) in which the shelf, which is roughly the size of Texas, sheds pieces much as human fingernails grow and break off.> :P
Part of the natural cycle for this. Yes, things are melting. Yes, things are breaking off. But not all that melts or breaks off is a sign of the end of the world. See, what happens is that ice expands, and...well, if you can't read an article, then I doubt you'd understand.
Nope. It can't possibly be hotter than 444.6 C. See this for proof.
Actually, IIRC, scientists have already measured a drop in both the salinity of the atlantic ocean, and a drop in the volume of water moving in the gulf stream. Where people disagree is the effect that this would have on the climate. Most scientists seem to think that the temperature drops will be counteracted by increases in temperature due to global warming, leading to worse winters in the UK and northern europe but leaving them inhabitable. Some scientists are worried that the gulf stream might change direction towards the ice caps so increasing the rate of ice melting. Others are worried that if the gulf stream stops, it would reduce the temperature in northern europe enough to cause a new ice age, something that would have major effects on a global scale. No one actually knows. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/science_natu re/the_day_after_tomorrow.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/impact/gulf_stream.sh tml
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
The critical temperature of sulfur is 1041 C, which is the highest temperature sulfur could be in a truly liquid state.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
Yes, the center of Antarctica has gotten colder because of tightening circulation of the Antarctic polar vortex (wind patterns). This is mostly due to another man-made phenomena: the ozone hole. Without ozone you drive up the thermal boundary layer which leads to more intense circulation.
As far as I know this is only clearly significant for the interior of Antartica. I'm not sure what is happening on average around the edges of Antartica, but I know in at least some areas (e.g. Ross Ice Shelf) they see clear warming and diminishing ice.