Slashdot Mirror
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."
stupid nigger cant even spell frist psot
Cold Fusion?
Welcome to Iceburg, Drygalski. Population 0.
Not work appropriate!
Roland Emmerich is going to make another movie....
God DAMN IT.
Yet another sign that the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" may be becoming real..........I'm scared...
Is there anything that could possibly have less consequence?
Cool!
Giant sandcastle about to hit oasis, stay tuned.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
That's the day after tommorow...well it almost is.
What's an iceburg?
------- I fumbled my registration and I now must suffer
I'll have one of those Kahoona Iceburgers. Fries with that, please. Easy on the ice, though.
NASA's webserver is on a collision course with... No, actually, I dont think anyone cares about this.
a city in greenland?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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."
That is some of the worst amateur journalism I've ever seen. How about telling us what the consequences are, what's been said about the event, SPELLING ICEBERG CORRECTLY?
MODS!
Things like this dont happen too often. Surely someone can sacrifice a few bucks to set up a camera in the front row. Maybe it could be some inspiration for those CGI effects in Hollywood.
What kind of important work are these people getting paid for when the most exciting news they can come up with is a giant iceberg that could knock of the tip of some other big chunk of ice. How much time does it take to even notice that? I mean, wow. I thought my job was boring....
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
tsumanis, icebergs, mudslides, giant asteroids on a collision course with earth, windows exploits. armegeddon?
...wait for collision, it will create those little ice cubes for your favourite drink. And remember: Everything is under control.
839*929
This collision will cause a huge Tsunami, please, if you are on land, please seek safety on the ISS. Thank you.
IcebUrgs?
So Slashdot has evolved beyond mere typos on the editor's comments and now sports typos on the headlines...
I've always found interesting that, in English, two words that are spelled differently can be pronounced the same.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Why is it they are relying only on satellite imagery? What about placing multiple cameras strategically on the iceburg and glacier itself?
.. even at 1 or 2 meter resolution it sucks .. no depth perception and even worse it's overhead only.
I think I remember reading in an article before that they were only going to have satellite imagery due to cost and logistics issues.
I dont believe satellite imagery will show anything nearly as spectacular as cameras on the ground
I really dont see why the scientists decided not to have cameras transmitting or recording on the iceburg and or glacier itself. Or at minimum from an external vantage point.
Will we finally find out what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object?
News at 11:00.
What if we could tow a 100 mile iceberg to SE Asia to help with water supplies? Wouldn't that be intense!
... ice*BERG*.
Other than the "Ooh, big Tonka truck go boom!" aspect of it all, why is this an article?
Where's Bruce Willis and a nuke when you need them? The poor penguins must be saved from the iceberg!
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
.. environment.
If anything it will make for some great video footage.... thousands of penguins swept away in a tsunami.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Antartica must be liberated
After reading the news post, the article, all the comments, and even watching the video, I tried very hard to imagine the many possible ways something interesting could come of this.
I finally just decided that this story is stupid.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
What could happen if lange amounts of fresh water hit the oceans? Right, the salt level changes. The stream (sush as Gulf stream) start moving, re-designing the climate. We're heading for an ice-age. By the way, when are you stupid americans going to have a look at that Kyoto thing?
-> More Tolerance Is Less Extremism <-
.. long island broke off! If that's not sensational, then i don't know what is.
- quote from Day After Tomorrow.
Is that an Iceburg Lettuce? Damn GM crops!
Man did you guys watch that video? I mean, it was pretty crazy how long island just detached and flew down to antarctica! And this is going to happen when?!
or else!
I claim this solid matter in the name of Troll Kingdom; bring your own tea bags, you Brittish shit-faces.
Think of all that poor lettuce!
link
movie
I, for one, disagree with the findings of those scientists.
It is my belief that the iceberg is stationary and that the rest of Earth (including the glacier) are moving.
The asteroid which caused the "dinosaur extinction" 65 million years ago was only 10 km (6 miles) wide.
Get out of the way! It's floating fast! lOOKOUT Long Island! Swim away!!!!
Garcon ! Un perrier on the rocks s'il vous plaît !
that'll certainly take the edge of penguin power
we don't want THAT to happen, do we? :(
Is it me, or could they not have worked out that there was a possibility of collision earlier? I'm glad they aren't driving cars in my neighbourhood :p
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.
2 47 96.100
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
Iceberg dead ahead!!
This is the sig that says NI (again)
This is a sign of either global warming, End Times, change in the Earth's magnetic poles, or Nature's protest of Republicians plan to remove environmental protections.
Any way you look at it, someone can write a book and make profit from it.
Quick! Contact Bruce Willis!
I wear pants.
Creek, abysmal OS I do, because Who are 1ntersted
(been a long time since i did some math)
From the site:-
"The B-15A iceberg is a 3,000-square-kilometer (1,200-square-mile) behemoth"
Pulling figures from the nether region, i'm assuming the berg to be 100mts high. This would give us:-
Surface area = 3000 sq. km = 3000 x 1000 x 1000 = 3 x 10^9 sq. mt.
Thus, volume of berg = 3 x 10^9 x 100 = 3 x 10^11 cubic mts.
Now, i know that roughly, 1 cubic meter of ice (water) = 1000kg.
Thus, weight of berg = 3 x 10^11 x 1000 = 3 x 10^14 kgs.
That's 3000000,000,00,000kgs. = 3000000,000,00 metric tons = 300000000 kilotons = 300000 million tons!
If my math is correct, then oooh boy, this is going to be one heck of a fender bender.
http://www.nasa.gov.nyud.net:8090/vision/earth/loo kingatearth/ice_berg_ram.html
Accorgin to some reliable information sources, a giant number of users will supposedly hit the slashdot.org. Be ware, this wont happen after 15 Jan 2015
Isn't CNN going to "embed" any journalists and cameramen and going to broadcast the event live?!
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Or use your favorite torrent.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
MOD -1 REDUNDANT
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=67&q=iceb urg
Nothing costs nothing
Quick! Gather up your children and amble away as though your life depends on it.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
This must be the most boring bit of news I ever read in my life. Do I miss some extention in the geek gene that would make this appear to be spectacular to me?
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
Wow.
How much bigger does a 100 mi long iceberg need to be before its classified as a floating glacier?
Snow cones for everyone!
For the best experience, I recommend viewing it with the Jaws theme song.
Now all I need is a martini the size of Poland.
...has a woman driver?
...penguin refugees flee to Chile.
Mother nature never ceases to amaze us !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
As if giant icebergs never calved off glaciers before the first caveman tamed fire.
I swear, the intellectual sophistication of the watermelon Left (green on the outside, red on the inside) is PATHETIC. Lyndon LaRouche groupies and homeopathic quacks can't hold a candle to you guys, with your glib, sweeping, and laughably wrong assertions.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Right on!!!
I have doubts anything spectacular would be seen on shore. Most likely, the bottom of the iceburg, which we are always told is 90% of the volume, would strike the bottom before reaching close to shore. It is probably dragging on the bottom right now.
Not much of a story. Yawn.
What's happening at Antartica?
According to inside Aussie news reports, the US has decided to evacuate its base at McMurdo in the Antartic and has requested the Russians to also send its icebreaker the 'Krasin' to assist evacuation. The Krasin, which I believe is one of their biggest, is reported to be presently south of the equator under full steam to meet a US icebreaker. The story goes that 2 large icebergs are grounded in McMurdo Bay preventing supplies reaching the Base.
There's something wrong with that story.
This time of the year is favorable for all manner of activity at Antartica. The Russian tourist ship the icebreaker 'Kapitan Khlebnikov' is probably at the Antartic with tourists now. Or at least it is capable of cancelling the tourists and rushing from its permanent dock in New Zealand or Tasmania to evacuate staff.
These big icebreakers are probably engaged to remove huge quantities of instruments and people. Why are they rushing to remove instruments, equipment, etc, and people??
It is doubtfull that the grounded 2 icebergs would halt supplies. What is incoming...might be a good question with this story??
I am suspecting, more than anything incoming, is that ice is shearing off the Antartic land mass and the Base is draining out to sea.
http://theboomshelter.com/
So the legendary capital of the Iceland, the nest of the Elves has eventually resurfaced?!!
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
When will NASA admit to the public that their advanced, super-sophisticated, collision-detection-system (that's been working so well for them in recent months)has been foiled again by a NASA employee eating chips carelessly over their satellite maps?
=Cheers! Chris McAllister
Explain frozen soups.
If you want to get really technical, "ice" can only be formed by water, good old H two O. But since we are talking about icebergs here, well, those suckers are made up of frozen seawater.
A giant misspelling assaults the eyes of Slashdot readers everywhere.
Ok everybody. Imagine in your heads two pieces of ice hitting each other. Now imagine this isn't happening for 4 days. Is it something you're looking forward to yet?
What will happen when Iceberg B-15A collides with the Drygalski ice tongue?
A) Tsunami
B) Earthquake
C) Catastrophic rising sea levels
D) Global warming
E) Global cooling
F) A and C
G) C and D
H) C and E
I) Bump and yawn
My money is on 'I'.
It's been on Nasa's site for a week now
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
Giant Icebug to Collide with Slashdot. Orthographical pieces probably will fall in the comment ocean, causing changes in its pH, leaving users with a cold feeling the day after tomorrow.
The Ghost of Long Island has possessed a large iceberg in Antarctica, which is now running amok. Bloody crazy environmentalists.
Is there any chance of a big wave resulting from this ?
I seem to remember seeing a documentary where a 'small' piece of an iceberg resulted in a huge wave about a mile further down near the shore....
Tsunami #2, anyone?
"Tell me something I don't know! Get out of the way!"
k = m * v^2
So size (et mass) DOES matter.
I don't have a sig.
We are not doing the Earth right and it is fighting back for its survival.
There's this bar - and there's a Chinese guy and a Jewish guy who find themselves seated next to each other a couple of nights. Things are going pretty good until one night after a few too many, the Jewish guy hauls off and decks the Chinese guy.
The Chinese guy picks himself up and says "What the hell was that for?!"
The Jewish guy snaps "That was for bombing Pearl Harbor."
"Pearl Harbor? Pearl harbor was bombed by the Japanese!"
The Jewish guy shrugs "Chinese, Japanese, what's the difference?!"
The next night they find themselves at the bar again, and after a snootful, the Chinese guy hauls off and decks the Jewish guy.
He picks himself up and shouts "What the hell was THAT for?"
The Chinese guy says "THAT was for sinking the Titanic!"
"Are you nuts? The Titanic was sunk by an iceberg?!"
"Yeah, well - iceberg, Goldberg - what's the difference?!"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If they can do that, can't they just pick up the Iceberg and move it to prevent this catastrophe?
I'm sure glad they didn't bring the iceberg up here for comparison.
Krusty: "What is the freaking holdup?"
--RJ
How long before those urban survivalist fantasists start believing that a hummer has lost it as the ultimate in urban cool, and start looking for a nuclear powered icebreaker to keep on their moorings. Tsunami proof, oil shortage proof, sea level rise and wandering berg proof,probably a good place to be when an asteroid strikes, and almost as economical as the average SUV. I guess the Russians have a few to sell to raise some foreign currency.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Since this is more on the scale of an SUV or a monster truck, I'd presume it's a guy with an undersized dick driving it.
...$20 on the glacier. I think it can take that little guy.
FLR
I can't remember the last time that /. informed its readers of something _ahead_ of time that isn't measured in decades.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Go to nasa's site (ice_berg_ram.html, there click on the 15A Iceberg Blocks McMurdo Sound link on the end of the page.
Now, in the last paragraph, you can find this: "As a result, many chicks could starve, says Antarctica New Zealand in the Associated Press."
They got chicks in Antartica and they need rescue? I'm so there!
No more I say.
According to NASA, "a collision between the iceberg and the ice tongue could make things easier for both penguins and ships. If the ice tongue collapses, the way may be opened for sea ice to escape the Sound." Well thank God. Those poor, strange, waddling creatures will do ok in the long run.
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.
Did anyone notice Jerry Bruckheimer in the area with a pick axe?
Josh
There's a large section to the upper left of the Long Island shaped piece that breaks away from the main section and appears to have rejoined the main section in a later image. Isn't it possible that the large piece will do this as well?
free online diet tracking.
Don't fear the penguins.. Let them have an easier path to feed.
Its all about the penguins. Thats why the story is hear(sic)..(and not about the spelling)
PRL, Penguin Rescue League needs your $ NOW!
Without your contribution, 100's of thousands of penguins will die.
Contribute now!
$1000(Chilly Willy Club level) donors will be rewarded* with limited edition DVD's of Zelda the penguin girl, IN ACTION!
* CWC donations received after the 15th will be rewarded with a copy our exclusive penguin recipe book PLUS! a frozen bird.
I like the debate your typo generated, I never got -1 offtopic/+1 underrated before :-)
(I like the iceberg collision too, by the way)
allmybasearebelong2u
Somewhere in Antarctica:
Oh, sure, NASA says it's on a collision course, they say it's going to hit no later than Jan 15th... but the odds will keep going up, and up (1:1, 1:1 confirmed by a lot of people, 1:1 confirmed by tons of penguins looking at it...) , and then poof... 1 in a billion.
I'm not falling for that one again!
The last Slashdot post by McFrostyGuy1131.
An honest question- how is this related to aeronautics or space?
Funny how this government article makes absolutely no mention of global warming. And it insinuates that melting ice caps are a wonderful boon, as well.
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...
Ironically, a collision between the iceberg and the ice tongue could make things easier for both penguins and ships. If the ice tongue collapses, the way may be opened for sea ice to escape the Sound.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Hmmm... wouldn't this be a direct indication that NASA has been looking in the wrong direction?
What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
I can already hear the Celine Dion playing in my head.
I believe there is a company in Canada that takes icebergs and melts them down for their "pure" water to make vodka. Iceberg Vodka info
Perhaps we should send them down to pick up this iceberg and prevent the collision.
Imagine the carnage we could have prevented!
Or, in the other case, how many penguins we can save.
Live forever, or die trying.
"Speed 3: Ice berg of doom"
"Oh my god, if this ice berg goes slower than 1 mile a year we're ALL GONNA DIE!!!"
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
There will be no collision. It was proved with scientific fact in the movie "A Christmas Story." When a cold object comes in contact with a tongue, the end result is a call to the fire department.
New data states that there is now less the 1:35,000 chance that the Glaciar will miss the iceburg. New data shows a 1:16,000 chance that a newly discovered meteor will hit earth. REPENT SINNERS!!!
Let's just hope Mahdi comes at the same time. All the nutters gone in one fell swoop!
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
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.
This icebUrg is obviously funded by Microsoft in an attempt to eliminate the Linux Penguin. Shameful..
_______
Huh?
...only one can survive.
(sorry, just had to quote They Might Be Giants!)
What Would Sutekh Do?
the movie was quoting something that actually happened
Using the revised estimate of 1750000million tonnes, and guessing a nice slow drift rate of 0.1ms^-1, how much kinetic energy is involved?
= 0.5 * 1.75*10^15 * (0.1)^2
= 17.5TJ (!)
That's a metric shedload, but it will be released over a few days. Once the thing comes to rest I think we can reasonably expect a new range of ice hills, rather than a billion par-boiled penguins.
Geez, here you've got a gigantic source of relatively clean water, so get a fleet of tugboats and drag it where it'll do some good. First spray it with a reflective overcoating to slow melting, then tow it to the Middle East or Africa. You can put it in a holding pen and slice off huge chunks with lasers. Instant irrigation!!
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Don't worry. You'll be able to order it on pay per view. It will be the next Pride Fighting Championship match.
I can visualize the commercials already. "Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! Will the newcomer Iceberg be able to defeat the monstrous Glacier!? Find out this Saturday, on PPV channel 427! Only $89.99. Call your cable or satellite operator to order today!"
a giant aircraft carrier.
maybe theres something the government is telling us
"He's a real midnight golfer"
Is it just me who was worried about the illustrations? Do Americans really need an illustration to know how big Antarctica is? Couldn't all those NASA scientists, you know, put a scale on the photo instead? Like a small black bar saying "I am 100 km long" or something? Come on, I already accepted people using Texas as a non-SI unit of choice for measuring asteroids, but can't we do better than that with iceberg images? At least on nasa.gov?
And don't get me started with the gratitious use of metaphors, hyperboles and paraboles, not to mention good old cliches. "Largest Demolition Derby", "best seat in the house", "clash of the titans" and "dent their bumpers" - what's up with that? Is NASA writing for rednecks now? Do they feel they have to compete with wrestling for audience?
I thought an interesting science story can be exciting by itself, without using craptastic language like "the enormous piece of ice broke away". In the previous sentence they used perfectly concise "the largest fragment of a much larger iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000", wasn't that enough? Are they afraid that some hillbilly didn't get it the first time? If I can no longer go to nasa.gov for decent science coverage... well, I am out of words then.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
the face on the picture flip through? It is on day 12/23. Freaky.
...
It's a distraction. They're trying to draw our attention away--this is planned for the same time as the next probe slamming into Mars . . .
hawk
...so? Every now and then, these story synopses here on /. don't really make the point of why we should care. This is one of those.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
...is getting calls from Jim Sokolove as we speak...
While the topic started out 'cold', this reply, in response to Simon's post about consequences and Montana has turned 'hot'!.
... In the summer of 2003 there were already signs that the caldera remains wide awake. Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest thermal area in Yellowstone, sprouted new mud pots. Ground temperature on the trail soared to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, too hot to touch. Porkchop Geyser, dormant since 1989, erupted on July 16. Park officials responded by barring access to half of the 2 miles of Norris Geyser trails." [Ibid.] These two "mud pots" are approximately 70 feet high and 2,300 feet long!
Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming) sits on a high plateau supported by a hot mantle plume. This so-called hotspot has been the site of three caldera-forming eruptions in the last two million years. The last eruption, ~630,000 years ago, generated ~1000 km3 of pyroclastic sheet flows and airfall tephra which fell as far away as Louisiana.
In contrast, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 was a volcanic sneeze. Scientists are saying that America will one day again experience another Yellowstone eruption. Sooner or later, geologists warn, the "supervolcano" beneath Yellowstone, will strike. The eruption of pent-up energy will cover half the United States in ash, in some places up to 3 feet (1 meter) deep. Earth will be plunged into a perpetual winter that would last years. Some plant and animal species will disappear forever. Even humans could be pushed to the edge of extinction, and anthropologists suggest it won't be the first time.
Simply put, anyone living within 600 miles of Yellowstone could be sitting in a modern day Pompeii (?Montana?).
In addition, for those living outside this area and West of the Mississippi River, there could be grievous consequences as well, because systemic processes are now building beneath Yellowstone that paint a very clear picture of a major eruption event in its early stages." In 2003 Yellowstone National Park (National Park Service) posted the following notice which is still in effect.
Temporary Closure Notice
Last summer, approximately 4,800 feet of trail was closed. In October 2003, all but 1,000 feet of that closure was lifted. Approximately a 1,000-foot segment of trail in the Back Basin of Norris is still closed. The closure begins at Green Dragon and continues to near Pearl Geyser. The closure is clearly marked. The foot trail itself is at boiling temperatures and the potential for a steam explosion is considered to be very high. While predictions can be made for volcanic explosions, steam explosions cannot be predicted. Steamboat and Echinus Geysers and all of Porcelain Basin remain open to the public.
Just south of Norris basin is a bulge in the earth about 28 miles across and 7 miles deep that has pushed the ground up more than 5 inches since 1996, according to research by Chuck Wicks, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California
Yellowstone's other hibernating danger
Geologists have long known that the 10,000 hot springs and geysers in Yellowstone National Park are evidence of magma, hot molten rock below the surface. And they know that long ago the region experienced colossal eruptions on a scale never seen in recorded history. But an important question has evolved in recent years: Is Yellowstone dying or just hibernating?
In the July 2001 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, University of Wisconsin geologists Ilya Bindeman and John Valley report new evidence indicating "a high probability of a future catastrophic eruption sometime within the next million years, and possibly within the next hundred thousand years." Analyzing minerals that serve as time capsules of past catastrophes, Bindeman and Valley have found support for other studies suggesting Yellowstone goes nuts every few hundred thousand years. They also propose a reason why: An epic hot spot.
Hot magma welling up from below acts like a burner, the researchers
And, yes, the glaciers are moving faster. And, yes, this could - eventually - effect water levels. And, no, there is no possible way that this would happen within 10 years time. There is a mere outside chance that it may happen over the next 200 (two hundred) years.
What we don't know is how much we can effect this change - in either direction.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Uh, the glaciers on Antarctica are continuously moving, and rebuilding. Snow falls year after year, after year, and the glaciers keep moving, and rebuilding.
They are continuously moving, but the sea ice shelf is holding back the glaciers from moving a lot faster, which has allowed so much ice to form on Antarctica. If the sea ice melts, all the glaciers would be able to "dump" their ice (which is currently over land) into the oceans, which would raise the water levels. It is not necesarrily the melting of the ice over Antarctica itself that will cause the sea levels to rise.
And, yes, the glaciers are moving faster. And, yes, this could - eventually - effect water levels. And, no, there is no possible way that this would happen within 10 years time. There is a mere outside chance that it may happen over the next 200 (two hundred) years.
Its not that it will occur in 10 years, but if we don't change the way that we currently use fossil fuels etc... it will be very hard to stop Antarctica melting within that 200 year timeframe, due to positive feedback in out atmosphere. (look to Venus for how positive feedback can occur, and how its atmosphere ended up as a 400 deg C maelstrom, as opposed to Earth, an essentially similar planet)
What we don't know is how much we can effect this change - in either direction.
What we do know is that CO2 levels are the highes they have been since known atmospheric history (420,000 years) and that CO2 levels have had a close correlation to temperature over that period. (Although we dont know that they are causally linked.)
Whilst we don't know how much we can affect this change, we do know that if we carry on as we are, things will certainly not get better, and warmer weather is not necessarily better, ~14,000 excess deaths occurred from heat related problems in France during Summer 2003, which is a lot more than the ~3,000 who died in 9/11. (Although 9/11 showed how bad the USA's homeland security was at the time - all the flights took off from US airports on internal flights.)
I need a new sig...
Hmmm... didn't read the "credible link" bit relating to the 10 years fact (oops...). The guy who said it was James Lovelock (the author of the GAIA hypotheses/theory) when asked about the likelihood / effects of global warming on this years (2004/5) Christmas Lectures on Channel4 in the UK. (another link).
He was referring to the "point of no return", after which there will be nothing we can do to stop global warming from melting the ice caps, not that Antarctica will melt in 10 years time. He was refering to the fact that the current CO2 levels in the Earth are around 370 ppm, and if it gets close to 400 ppm, then global warming will be unstopable. CO2 levels are currently rising at a rate of 2~3 ppm a year (which is where the 10 years fact comes from).
I need a new sig...
I would also point out that the "positive reinforcement" theory is also still actively disputed in scientific circles, in that the correlation exists, but the cyclic cause and effect hasn't been proven (though pointing to a planet that's much closer to the sun is good enough for some folk, I prefer more substance).
Overall, between 1979 and 1997, the mean temperature of the earth dropped slightly. Since 1997, the mean temperature of the earth has gained that back, and then some - all of this still looks like it could be a fairly natural process...
Certainly, the northern parts of Antarctica are, as you point out, a vital regional area to the overall health of the worlds low-coast regions - but a regional warming of parts of that continent (while other regions of the same continent are getting colder) over a relatively short period of time, does not necessarily indicate global warming influences.
The general belief of most environmental types is that, "if this _could_ be having a bad effect, then we should stop". I believe, "since this _could_ be having a bad effect, we should continue to actively study what is happening, until we know more."
(I don't believe you brought this one up, but it's related)... The Kyoto accord, that the US rejected, was unbalanced. It assumed every single country, as of 1996, had zero environmental controls. Then it said, you must improve your current emmissions by 'x' percent over the next 20 years. Well, if India puts cheap scrubbers on half of it's industries (something we already did to _all_ of our industries back in the 80s) they have fully complied with Kyoto, while we are forced to figure out how to produce even less emissions from our already scrubbed output. So - that said - I think it was smart of us to reject it. I'm happy that the rest of the world wants to clean up though.
That said, I am unhappy about the idea that several states, as varied as Florida and Minnesota, have chosen to stop their vehicle emmissions inspections. Great, our city air is a little cleaner than it was 20 years ago. Meanwhile, I know several people who have taken their older cars - that they "were going to get around to fixing" - back out of the garage, knowing that their cars are spewing horrible emmissions.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I can understand your sentiment, I tried not to be misleading, but obviously failed :)
:)
Cheers for the clarification on other stuff
I need a new sig...
So what is the worse case scenario? I have yet to see or hear any informed speculation on that. Should we be rushing to install tsunami warning radar in that area in case large portions calve off into the ocean, or are we just looking toward a slight rise in ocean levels due to melting over a period of time? It seems that not even the experts are sure. The following is an NPR interview with Thomas Wagner, geophysics program manager for the U.S. Antarctic Program. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4285059&sourceCode=RSS