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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."
Cold Fusion?
Welcome to Iceburg, Drygalski. Population 0.
Roland Emmerich is going to make another movie....
God DAMN IT.
That's the day after tommorow...well it almost is.
What's an iceburg?
------- I fumbled my registration and I now must suffer
Its one thing to be scared its another to do something about it.
a city in greenland?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
tsumanis, icebergs, mudslides, giant asteroids on a collision course with earth, windows exploits. armegeddon?
Of course it's cool. If it weren't, it would be just liquid water, or even steam.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
well when all the penguins down there cluster themselves into a giant beowulf penguin named guido to push the giant iceburg away from the family home of dave the tv repair penguin, then maybe you'll see the significance.
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
You know, you'd think that Slashdotters would be more interested in seeing one gigantic thing ramming into another gigantic thing.
Oh, wait, there won't be any fire and explosions. Never mind.
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
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.
(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
Not much, if you live in Montana.
But if you live in Texas, or Louisiana, or Florida, it's got quite a lot of consequence. Ice melts on its exposed edges. So break it up into smaller pieces and it melts faster, decreasing the salinity of the ocean, and thus affecting circulation, which leads to changes in storm patterns. Had any hurricanes lately?
Melting of floating ice, of course, doesn't change the sea level. But the floating glacier provides back-pressure which holds back the much larger glacier on shore. If you break off the floating part of the glacier and release the back-pressure, more of the non-floating part slides down into the sea and starts to float, and that does change the sea level. How high do you want your tide today?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Quick! Gather up your children and amble away as though your life depends on it.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Global warming is a fact, whether you like it or not. Some still argue as to what caused it (humans or it's a natural phenomenon) but, in my opnion, it does not matter. We all will have to deal with the effects and theres no reason to deny it.
Now all I need is a martini the size of Poland.
...has a woman driver?
...penguin refugees flee to Chile.
Flashback to junior high physics class:
Q: "What happens when an unstoppable
mass hits an unmovable object?
A: "Something spectacular?"
There's probably a penguin on the iceberg pumping its foot and yelling "Waaaa! No brakes, no brakes!"
Or in this case, a Dutch word (berg) like a German (burg).
I'm not sure just how fresh the water in Icebergs is but increased amounts of fresh water in the Ocean can cause problems.
I remember watching a program a while back which said that due to global warming huge russian rivers were dumping much more than the usual amount of fresh water in the North Atlantic.
The North Atlantic contains one end of the Gulf Stream where the warm water sinks down and flows back to the Gulf Of Mexico to be reheated. Apparently if the salinity of the water reduces by any more the warm water might not sink down and in effect turn off the Gulf Stream at which point we in the UK would be pretty f#cked.
How many other scientist agree with this idea though I am not sure.
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."
I've seen this stated in exactly one TV documentary. A documentary, which claimed that each and every other study on global warming is based on false data. Has this new study been peer-reviewed? Does anyone have any more info?
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
...$20 on the glacier. I think it can take that little guy.
FLR
Me, I can't usually eat 'em 'cause my girlfriend's a vegetarian. Which more or less makes me a vegetarian, but I sure love the taste of a good burger.
You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in France?
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
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.
Cheese Royal. It's the metric system, dude.
Check out the big brain on liangzai!
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.
"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!
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.
Mod this down! Slashdot is not the place to be talking about penguins... wait, nevermind.
I'm going to go create my own technology news site, with blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the news site.
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"
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.