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Icebergs Sailing Past New Zealand
An anonymous reader writes "A fleet of icebergs is heading north from Antarctica and at least one has reached New Zealand, an event that has not occurred in decades. While not necessarily a consequence of global warming it is very cool!"
The same thing happened last year.
The article doesn't mention global warming at all! I'll agree with the "very cool" part, but mentioning global warming seems unnecessary.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
The fleet IS heading north. It is a singular entity.
A fleet of icebergs ARE heading north from Antarctica.
Goodness, the Nazi's may have been evil, and they may have had terrible aim (as per the Stormtrooper Effect), but they weren't incompetent.
"Fleet" is singular, thus a fleet of icebergs IS heading north. You wouldn't say that the same fleet 'are' heading north, would you?
Icebergs are natural, icebergs so far up north aren't. The chief reason why this indicates global warming is to sail this far up north, the sea surrounding the iceberg must have been cooler than usual. This can only happen if more and more ice is melting from the iceberg, which reduces the temperature of the ocean current, enabling the iceberg to move further north without melting.
This may sound counterintuitive, global warming reducing ocean temperature, but it actually isn't. Global warming means increase of the average temperature of the earth, not that of a particular region.
Oh gees. You do realise that the word kiwi comes from here, right? We have this bird, right? It's called the Kiwi. Nocturnal, rather cute, can't fly, most species are endangered. We're rather proud of it. Anyway, from the name, we get all things "new zealandish" but since that's an awful word, we use kiwi as an adjective for all things relating to New Zealand. (The New Zealand Dollar is known as the kiwi in some contexts, Earnest Ruderford a famous kiwi scientist, just to name two. Wikipedia has some more things that kiwi is often used to refer to.)
In the 1960s or so, we were growing a fruit called a 'chinese goosebury' remarkably well. At the time, there was quite a bit of a red scare, so calling anything 'chinese' didn't really sell all that well. So, some people at Turners and Growers, a fruit auctioneering and resale company, came up with the name 'kiwifruit' to sell these things as. Yep, it's all marketing, but there you go.
Ironically enough, kiwifruit is one thing that the word 'kiwi' *never* refers to in its native country. A New Zealander will look at you very strangely if say you're going to eat a 'kiwi', as we think you're trying to eat our, rather endangered, bird.
And in case you haven't guessed, yes, I am a kiwi.
With certain theories, depending on the cause. Really, those theories need to use terms like "climate change" instead to avoid confusion.
Those situations would actually be worse than global warming. With warming, we can just move towards the poles. Maybe things get real bad and Canada is the new Mexico. But with other theories the temperature just gets more extreme, with areas around the equator becoming unlivably hot, areas closer to the poles becoming unlivably cold, and the transition areas becoming more full of violent weather due to the drastic differences in temperature. Decide how likely that is for yourself.
And these icebergs wouldn't have anything to do with any of these theories.
Freedom is assumed. Then they try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
Oh, for God's sake. It's a verifiable fact that significant amounts of Antarctic ice that have never been thawed in recorded human history are now gone. See for example this article:
Though if you seriously think every person complaining about global warming is too stupid to know when it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere, then I don't think it's worth expending much effort talking to you.
The outside, melting part of an iceberg is 0C; the core is considerably colder, about -15C to -20C.