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Giant Ice Shelf Snaps

Posted by Zonk on from the as-long-as-the-movie-doesn't-feature-sandra-bullock dept.

Popo writes "Sattelite images have revealed that an ancient 66 square-kilometer ice shelf, the size of 11,000 football fields, has snapped off from an island in Canada's arctic. The Ayles Ice Shelf was one of 6 major shelves remaining in Canada's arctic and is estimated to be over 3000 years old. The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 km away picked up tremors. Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor."

42 of 529 comments (clear)

  1. Overlooked by sporkme · · Score: 2, Insightful
    TFAs:
    Using US and Canadian satellite images, as well as data from seismic monitors, Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of August 13, 2005.

    At the longest and widest spans, the remains of the Ayles shelf are about 15 kilometres long and five kilometres wide. The fragment is between 30 and 40 metres thick.
    This makes me wonder what else might have been overlooked.
    --
    FairTax baby!
  2. Won't someone think of the ice caps?! by Das+Auge · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If only we could have stopped global warming 10,000 year ago! Then those of us in the northern US states could've skied year round!

  3. Non Global-Warming Activity by nharmon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously, is there anything happening in the arctic or antarctic regions that IS NOT the cause of Global Warming?

    1. Re:Non Global-Warming Activity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      you say that like your sure that the ice shelf didn't begin to break off 10,00 years ago. The truth is the strain could have been building for a long time; nobody knows it's suspicious but not proof.

  4. Well... by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor."

    So what was the cause 30 years ago?

    It's a fair question, yes? Like when I hear "such and such place recorded the highest temperature in 150 years this week!" I think "What caused the previous high 150 years agp?" My brain has a pesky habit of continually asking questions. All those X-Files episodes, I guess. Trust no one. Ideologues hate me.

    1. Re:Well... by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      that's my thought. a 1300 years ago it was so warm in England that english wine was better than french wine. I am not going to worry about Global warming until that happens again.

      So the ice shelf is 3000 years old. That means 4000 years ago it was so warm that it couldn't form.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Well... by scribblej · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That could just mean they've only been measuring for 30 years; it's more honest than saying 'in recorded history!' -- although if it is the case, they should say both to make it clear.

      While you're asking good questions, add this one on: How is it that this thing is only 3000 years old? In geological timescales, that's nothing. The "blink of an eye." If it only just developed in the first place, why should we care that it's gone away again?

    3. Re:Well... by It'sYerMam · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's their job? With respect to the GP, we would indeed not be bothered, but two things would warrant "pointing the finger." The first is increased frequency, and the second is a mechanism that we know could cause something of this kind. If these are observed, then being curious is probably the correct response.

      --
      im in ur .sig, writin ur memes.
    4. Re:Well... by FhnuZoag · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As for the 150 years thing, it's because they had no thermometers 150 years ago, so their records only go back 150 years.

      And in this case, the 30 years figure is because observations of this kind done with satellites has only been possible for 30 years, and any prior event would be impossible to measure.

    5. Re:Well... by rucs_hack · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm no environmental scientist, but surely there would need to be many such events measured before we could really start saying what caused it.

      Is this a natural cycle? How long has this particular event been brewing? Have there been any other factors involved that can be discovered? These questions need to be answered before causes can be decided.

      I am concerned about global warming, but I am also concerned about political motivations determining hypothesis, or special interest groups leaping on events and trumpeting them as being caused by their particular bugbear.

      Such things do not good science make, and we need good science to get to grips with the causes of these events, lest we wander too far from the truth of it.

    6. Re:Well... by Decaff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So what was the cause 30 years ago?

      It's a fair question, yes? Like when I hear "such and such place recorded the highest temperature in 150 years this week!" I think "What caused the previous high 150 years agp?" My brain has a pesky habit of continually asking questions.

      The problem is, you need to ask the right questions - you are asking the wrong ones. What matters is not what caused an area of ice to break off 30 years ago. The correct question is: "How much faster is the ice breaking off now than then?" Just because it has taken 30 years for an area to exceed the previous record, does not mean that no ice has been breaking off since.... in fact, warming might might mean that smaller pieces break off more often, explaining the long time to break the record!

    7. Re:Well... by Ice+Wewe · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Most of us are familiar with the frog illustration - supposedly if you throw a frog into boiling water, he will jump out, but if you put him in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, you can boil him without him being disturbed.

      We are the frog, and global warming is the means by which we are being boiled. We are the latter.

    8. Re:Well... by Procyon101 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It isn't that fragile. No amount of climate change is going to erase the rotary engine, mathematics, electricity, etc.... away and leave us back in the dark ages. Well, no climate change due to global warming anyway... The people you are most worried about are the ones who still live the same way we did 1300 years ago, so civilization isn't the most solid argument against global warming.

    9. Re:Well... by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      sometime around 800, france was so hot that it's wine wasn't very good, and England was just warm enough to make it's wine better than France's.

      That was my point. apparently I was being too subtle for you. That England has been that warm in the "recent" past. While CO2 emmissions might be speeding up the normal cycle, fact is that weather temperatures go up and down. if the ice shelf is 3000 years old then it's younger than the pyramids and younger than the jewish religion.

      let's put it into perspective shall we.

      So ancient jews weren't civilized? or do you mean technologically advanced? There is a difference. I will assume you meant they weren't technologically advanced.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    10. Re:Well... by Procyon101 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A few meters is a HUGE rise in levels that we see no indications of. That's a massive quantity of water. London, New York, Tokyo could easily compensate through a variety of means (dikes, pylons, fill-dirt, etc...) It's the average coastal homeowner that would take the brunt of the cost, but most of them have the means to absorb it, especially given the drawn out period of time it would occur over. Modern western civilization has little to fear from rising sea levels. The 3rd world is where the problems lie.

    11. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even if it's cyclic warming and cooling, it's still global, so it's still global warming. Though it may be natural and cyclic.

    12. Re:Well... by 4iedBandit · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Not just them. Think of the major cities that would be threatened by even a few metres rise in sea levels. London, New York, Tokyo, just to name a few Things would be a little bit troublesome for our economies if any one of those was seriously damaged by flooding, for example.

      Um, no. The world will not grind to a halt because a few cities experience some flooding. Will it be inconvienient for some of the population? Sure. But to think that it would be some kind of economic catastrophy? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. If humanity has become so inflexible that a little flooding throws everything into chaos, than we are well overdue for evolution to wipe us off the planet.

      Am I failing to see the big picture? Not at all. I just believe the world economy doesn't consist of a few metropolitan centers of which I would guess much less than 10% of the world's population inhabit.

      Climate Change is real. Saying mankind is the cause, or that it will be our doom is nothing more than fear mongering. I'm more affraid of the people who want to try and stop the climate change cycle. The planet is not a static system, nor should it be just for the convienience of mankind.

      As a disclaimer for my calous attitude, I don't own any ocean front property and will not shed a single tear for people who stand to lose it. That however doesn't mean I'm not studying the topography and making educated guesses on where the next beach front paradises are going to be...

      --
      "The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
    13. Re:Well... by Catbeller · · Score: 3, Insightful

      According to core drills, we've the highest CO2 levels in over, I think, 60 million years. And the higher levels map precisely to the amount of CO2 and methane we've been pumping into the air, along with the reduction of the ability of the biospher to convert the CO2 to O2 and carbon, due to, oh, cutting all the damned forests down and killing the phytoplankton in the oceans that do the other half of the recycling. We've jacked the greenhouse gases and are slowly crushing the recycling system. It doesn't take an engineer to see what happens after that. We warm up, and warm up catastrophically. That means a lot of things. The Gulf Stream may move. BAD. Europe freezes. Deserts grow. Water dries up worldwide at an increasing rate. Wind patterns change. Storms change. Food supply goes down, and God ain't even providin' for those we have now, sorry Popes.

      What else does it mean? WARS. Lots and lots of wars. Wars almost always are about resources, and shrinking resources and accelerating ecological catastrophe means mankind goes apeshit. Hell, we've just killed 600 thousand people just to control the oil spigot to Asia. Imagine what people will do for livable land and a water supply. Hell, water holes worldwide are being PURCHASED by American speculator right now -- Enron was big into water supply futures before the bastards went dead, but others took their place. Raw capitalism may ignite war long before real changes occur, because the truly evil men in this world will start charging fortunes to access water supplies around the world. We're gonna need a really big army to keep off all the people who are going to want to kill us.

    14. Re:Well... by Peter+La+Casse · · Score: 2, Insightful
      why should we care that it's gone away again?

      Because it serves someone's political interests.

    15. Re:Well... by Decaff · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Been there. Done that. That's just Japan, but major quakes have caused severe damage in other parts of the world. Tragic? Yes. Severly damaging to the local economies? Yes. However, to say they had major consequences on the economy of the whole world? No.

      Sorry, but that is nonsense. Kobe is not Tokyo.

      Correlation is not causatin. Let me say that again; correlation is NOT causation. Would the world climate be changing if mankind was not here? Yes. This is undisputed. So what makes you so sure that mankind is all of a sudden the cause? If we are the cause then without mankind the climate would not change, yet science has demonstrated that the climate has been changing for quite some time, in cycles of heating and cooling long before mankind could possibly have any effect. Is it likely that mankind has some effect on the climate? Sure. But when you state that mankind is the cause you are making far more assumptions than hard science can support.

      No, only more assumptions than your assumptions support.

      Of course correlation isn't causation. And, of course, climate would be changing if mankind were not here. The issue is how fast things are happening. Climate change is now happening beyond what the normal natural cycles predict.

      Here are some established hard scientific facts:

      1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Increase CO2 concentration and you warm the planet. This is well established, and there is no doubt about it.

      2. Mankind is increasing CO2 at a dramatic rate. Mankind is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate that is way above anything that is happening in Nature - more than decomposition, more than volcanic activity. There is a large turnover of CO2, but the amount we are producing is overwhelming it.

      So, for you to be right, either:

      1. CO2 has ceased in some way to be a greenhouse gas, or

      2. The CO2 mankind has produced is some sort of 'magic' CO2 that has special properties.

      Which of these is true?

    16. Re:Well... by jschoenberg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why is it better that it's a cyclical change? If it's cyclical or not, most humans will die if the climate changes drastically. Are you saying that we should not try to do anything about it and just die like lemmings because its cyclical?

  5. Re:Drinks all around! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think good Tequila and mix will make the margarita better than 3000 yr old ice. Besides, that ice has been outside for a long time with penguins, polar bears and what nots crapping all over it. That is NOT good eats!

  6. Re:A river in Eygpt by mark-t · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Got to wonder at what point the government surrenders and admits to human induced climate change?

    While it would be absolutely foolish to dispute the reality of global warming, many of the arguments for it actually being human induced are somewhat specious, simply because global temperature records do not go back for enough to make a statistically meaningful analysis of the cause.

    I'm not saying that we aren't the cause, but before the last ice-age this planet was a whole lot warmer than it is right now, and it managed to chill eventually. This whole thing could just be part of the normal geological cycle.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  7. Re:A river in Eygpt by vought · · Score: 3, Insightful

    70 million tons of CO2

    Should be 70 million tons of CO2 a day. But I'm sure it's the sun "surging" or something. Let's organize a space mission to toss giant ice cubes into the sun!

  8. How much evidence do we need? by MarkByers · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What percentage of the ice has to melt before you are prepared to say that there is enough evidence to make a conclusion?

    --
    I'll probably be modded down for this...
    1. Re:How much evidence do we need? by rucs_hack · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know, but one event is not enough for a conclusion to be made. I know this is definatelly true.

      This is not the same as saying I approve of global warming. I'm merely saying more data is required. I would be quite happy if the US and other lesser polluters stopped ripping into the ecosystem, but last I checked I'm not a global power, so I am unlikely to be able to stop anything the power hungry are doing.

      Such feeling aside, my point remains.

    2. Re:How much evidence do we need? by rucs_hack · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not an environmental scientist, but I am a scientist, accustomed to developing hypothesis and establishing the correctness or otherwise of same.

      How many vast Ice sheets have cracked recently? I haven't heard of many. This may be a natural event, it's certainly on a scale we are not normally accustomed to envisaging. To definatelly point to a cause for a thing, it must be seen more then once, preferably many times. What if, for instance, Ice sheets crack constantly? Until the 19th century there was little interest in keeping an eye on Ice in the arctic, that's not much time for events on such a large scale to be observed.

      Ice is melting all over the arctic it seems, and there are tentative links to global warming. However no-one has proven that these are not natural events slightly speeded up.

      I'm not interested in getting the facts from whatever group can shout the loudest, or who succeeds in worrying the most people, I'm interested in knowing the precise cause, or combination of causes, before resorting to being scared to voice a variant opinion.

      This is aside from my views on pollution. Even if it weren't allegedly messing with Ice sheets I'd still think pollution was a bad thing. I am very wary of jumping to conclusions though.

    3. Re:How much evidence do we need? by RealGrouchy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I'm interested in knowing the precise cause, or combination of causes,

      Tell you what: let's have one Earth where GHG emissions are eliminated, and a second Earth where GHGs continue to be produced at their current, increasing, pace. Then we can see if it is a precise cause, based on whether or not each Earth becomes uninhabitable.

      You can live on the second one.

      - RG>
      --
      Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
  9. can I take a shot. by Brigadier · · Score: 2, Insightful



    I think I see where your going with this ie. is it a new event or just a re-occuring event. I'm a guess and say the first. You figure 30 years ago the ice shelves/glaciers were as much as twice as big as they are now. It all comes down to proportion. let say 30 years ago ice shelves represented about 500 square miles of area (ficticous number) this number proportionally wasnt' much. now lets reduce the total square footage of ice sheets by half, then break of the same amout. Yes it's the same as 30 years ago but proportionally it is significantly larger than in the past.

  10. Re:I can't wait..... by Jerry · · Score: 1, Insightful

    We're also in the "Third Cycle" of modern Doomsday predictions. It's only "Popular Opinion", driven by an incessant output of articles repeating the party line. There was a time when "Popular Opinion", enforced by the political power of the time, said the world was flat. "Popular Opinion" is rarely right, if ever.

    Prior to "Global Warming" and its bogus Hockey Stick "study" it was Glaciation and/or Nuclear Winter, complimented by the Club of Rome "studies". In the last 25 years Time Magazine has had it both ways, but the solution is always the same: "Progressive" policies (read: Socialism/Communism).

    It's common for the Extreme Left, and their fellow travelers in the Media, to invent disasters from selected data so they can save us all by the application of Socialism, at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.

    --

    Running with Linux for over 20 years!

  11. Re:Because we all know by Ambitwistor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    that in 20-30 years ice this thick must have melted (as a result of global warming)... Puhlease.... It takes more than 20 years for ice this thick to melt to a shelving point... As another poster pointed out, global warming has been going on for longer than 20-30 years, it's closer to 100. And as another article on this event noted, the Canadian ice shelves have decreased in size by 90% over the last century.
  12. Re:I can't wait..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The left is not who I'm worrying about when it comes to curtailing personal liberties.

  13. Re:I can't wait..... by MECC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    at the expense of our personal liberties

    Funny how on the extremes of both ends, personal liberties are what we lose. How do we stay in the middle? Also a good question if you're stranded on a melting ice shelf...

    --
    "We are all geniuses when we dream"
    - E.M. Cioran
  14. Re:I can't wait..... by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's common for the Extreme Right, and their fellow travelers in the Media, to invent disasters from selected data so they can save us all by the application of Fascism, at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.

    Extremists are extremists.. plain and simple.
    The only difference is which liberties they want you to surrender & why.

    To be fair, sometimes they ask you to do it for the common good
    and not because of some boogeyman.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  15. Re:A river in Eygpt by vought · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you're going to lash out with a really big number, at least put it in perspective, yes?

    Well, you didn't bother to. Why should I?

    The point of my post is that we have fewer carbon sequestering plants each day while the rate of CO2 deposition into the atmosphere is growing each day. There's evidence the CO2 deposition into the oceans is causing them to become more acidic, affecting calcium carbonate-dependent sea life - i.e. all of it.

    Yes, oceans and trees absorb CO2 - at a constantly declining rate due to the finite capacity of water to hold dissolved carbon at atmospheric pressure and biological constraints - and in case you hadn't noticed, there are fewer trees globally every year - and usually because they're burned, which puts that C)2 right back into the atmosphere.

    The earth's capacity to self-sequester C02 is declining at an increasing rate while we are depositing CO2 into the atmosphere at a constantly increasing rate. Is that clear enough for you?

  16. Critical thinking = idiocy? by MarkByers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How does asking a sensible question and thinking critically make you an idiot?

    --
    I'll probably be modded down for this...
    1. Re:Critical thinking = idiocy? by andm461c · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you are being unfair.

      If someone tells you: "We haven't got a better football player for 20 years!", you think: "Mkay, so there *was* a better one before that!", no?
      If there were no one better, the time mentioned would be longer.
      It's only logical.

      If you do not know when thermometers were invented, and do not know when satellites were invented... For what reason would you think in another way?
      It's an incorrect way to write a statement in the first place - because it is misleading.
      A more correct way to express this would be: "We have the highest temperature yet measured." or "It is the biggest chunk of ice broken loose we have observed with our satellites."

      Yes, I am aware that the satellite part says "largest event in 30 years", the above is just an example.
      I think that can be forgiven though - don't you?

  17. Re:I can't wait..... by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Prior to "Global Warming" and its bogus Hockey Stick "study" it was Glaciation and/or Nuclear Winter
    Why do you declare it to be bogus? You see, in the 20th century science has grown up. The study of science became scientific too, theories have been developed as to how to do good science, Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Lakatos, etc. told us what is science and how it works. It is a powerful mechanism, not comparable to the middle ages where dissenting opinion was supressed, and science only existed as an underground entity next to religion.

    I would have to mention that realclimate "debunked" the global cooling myth. It was never considered as a mainstream scientific belief, it only existed because of the popular press. The press gets most things wrong, can't distinguish between global dimming and global cooling. As for Nuclear Winter - thats the least of our worries if that many nukes were to be detonated in order to either cause an effect or not cause like that. It is a doomsday scenario, quite unlike global warming.

    It's common for the Extreme Left, and their fellow travelers in the Media, to invent disasters from selected data so they can save us all by the application of Socialism, at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.
    I have for a long time realised that categorizations like left or right don't make sense in the case of 80% of the population, especially across countries. Some of my ideas for an optimal society have socialist touches, but I also believe that personal liberties are not contradictory with them, quite the opposite. Even though the classification is quite flawed, I have to add that most of the civilized world is "extreme left" compared to the USA. Facts have a liberal bias and all that.

    Anyway, back to the topic. Global warming is not the popular opinion. Or if it is, it is irrelevant. It is the peer reviewed mainstream scientific consensus. Science is powerful, and self checking. Many scientists have tried to falsify the conclusion that global warming is happening, but didn't manage to, thus we accept it as our standing theory in relation to the projected temperature change of the planet. That's how science works, by testable theories.
    --
    It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
    Be yourself no matter what they say
  18. Huh? by Brandybuck · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years...

    We had global warming 30 years ago? I thought we were all supposed to fear global cooling back then.

    Seriously, if we had an event of this size a mere thirty years ago, it obviously isn't the one-of-a-kind end-of-the-world-in-twenty-years event the media is portraying it to be. What is the frequency of such events?

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    1. Re:Huh? by Decaff · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We had global warming 30 years ago? I thought we were all supposed to fear global cooling back then.

      No, we weren't. That was simply media misreporting of recent discoveries of the timings of ice ages.

      Seriously, if we had an event of this size a mere thirty years ago, it obviously isn't the one-of-a-kind end-of-the-world-in-twenty-years event the media is portraying it to be. What is the frequency of such events?

      That doesn't matter. What matters is the overall frequency of all events which indicate melting. The frequency is high, and increasing. Within my lifetime (if I have a long life) the Artic will be free of ice in summertime. Will you still be doubting global warming even then?

  19. Where was that? by Holistic+Missile · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ..about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole.

    At the north pole, isn't every direction south?
    --
    When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
  20. This just in: Slashdot taken over by Exxon Mobile by catchblue22 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it just me who is wondering why these GW denier posts are continually being modded up. I'm shocked at the way these skeptics arguments seem to dominate any discussion here. Are we nerds really this stupid?

    --
    This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)