Slashdot Mirror
Giant Ice Shelf Snaps
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."
Does 3000 year old ice make a good margarita?
FairTax baby!
11,000 football fields. Yeah, there's an easy-to-visualize image. What a helpful comparison.
It lasted a good deal longer than any shelf I've ever put up.
Dang it! I thought we told those Penguins that they couldn't keep dancing like that!
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!
Seriously, is there anything happening in the arctic or antarctic regions that IS NOT the cause of Global Warming?
the size of 11,000 football fields
NFL? Canadian? European kickball?
Besides, this is a nerds site. Don't make athletic references.
Volkswagen Bugs or Libraries of Congress would be more appropriate.
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.
If only all those explorers could have waited a few hundred years...
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
huh?
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Global warming had to be the cause, not the fact that this was *an ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields!*
Laborare Est Orare
The implication is that 30 years ago there was a larger event. So if a smaller sheet of ice broke off now than the one from 30 years back, doesn't that mean the problem is going away?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Anything can look like a "clearly obvious fact" if it supports your own opinion. God forbid that nature should contribute to unexplained and random events involving large lumps of ice, given that it's usually so predictable.
How many hockey rinks is that?
I agree with you that the tequila is what makes a good Margarita, but you are wrong about your crap. Penguins do not frequent the same ice as polar bears. Repeat with me, polar bears are in the North, penguins are in the South. Not, they do not meet at the tropics.
I was hoping to get a quick translation of football fields to Rhode Islands, but Google couldn't help me. Anyone else with a better calculator available?
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Had he just spent a little more time at the pub, he could have waited for events like this to happen, and finally open up that Northwest Passage he was hired to look for. Just got impatient, I guess.
Btw, in more normal units, it's roughly 25 square miles, or 1600 sq furlongs. Thankfully it's ice, so nobody has to mow it, though I feel for the zamboni operator charged with its upkeep. (I presume a sheet is flat ice, and therefore probably covered in hockey players this time of year)
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
I don't have a problem with global warming. The earth has been warming up for the last 10,000 years. Good thing too, else we would not have been here.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
i for one welcome our new polar bear overlords.
"This is the third millennium. Nobody argues anymore that global warming isn't happening. The debate is whether or not it is caused by man or something else."
I guess George W. is not a nobody, not to mention Stephen Harper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harper) as they both have argued that global warming doesn't exist.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Yah know, those cave men must have lit huge bon-fires to warm their caves and bring on the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago... Maybe they all had Hummers...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If you look closely, you can see where explosives were planted near the base. There is no way the self could have collapsed on its own. And isn't it strange how no penguins came to work that day?
Canada should totally start rebuilding that ice shelf just to show those terrorists that NOBODY messes with Canada, eh?
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'
As the movies have taught us, when an ice shelf snaps the entire northern hemisphere freezes solid. All y'all up there in the northlands are f**ked. And where I live in San Diego, housing costs will soar. :)
Why does the government have to "admit" to human induced climate change? We live on this freakin' planet, just like any other plant or animal - of course we're changing the climate. The climate (and environment in general) is there for us to change, to utilize, for our survival. Maybe there are other ways of dealing with the unpleasant effects of global warming on humans than simply preventing it?
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!
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...
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.
Canadian football (not soccer) is still in yards. Like: 4th and 2 (yards) to go. (Yes 4th)
Why do you think that global warming has only been going on for 20 years?
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!
You have to read it with a Rap groove. Then it still doesn't make sense.
Most of the stuff on
People don't forget the Sun. Certainly solar forcing is a major factor in climate models. However, variations in solar output alone can't explain the warming trend we currently see. See, for instance, this review.
I don't have a problem with global warming. The earth has been warming up for the last 10,000 years. Good thing too, else we would not have been here.
So, the rate of warming means nothing to you?
Let's take your assertion as truth. The earth has been warming for 10,000 years. It's warmed X degrees globally in that time.
For the sake of argument, let's say that in the past forty years, the temperature has again increased by X degrees. Do you see the problem now?
The first question is really the focus of things like Al Gore's movie (which has been criticized by better men than me for exaggerating risks and playing up fear, uncertainty and doubt). The second is the focus of debate about, say, the Kyoto Protocol, whether it will actually accomplish anything with developing nations growing their economies, whether the costs are going to cripple anyone... The third is the realm of things like hybrid cars (hardly mainstream yet, but getting closer day by day - because it makes sense, and people will like it) and the electric car (still waiting for the uber-batteries after all these years, and a failure since it doesn't really make sense) and better insulation and more energy-efficent homes and lighting (LED lighting? still not hitting it big, but breaking into the Christmas light market).
Oh, and things like corn-based ethanol, a topic which is very good at demonstrating the power of lobbying and the superficial appearance of "environmental friendliness" and other such fluff to obtain big fat government subsidies for people who are after them ... which is about what you can expect to see if you think the government should spend lots of money on "alternative energy"...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Hard to say. There is no standard size hockey rink: just a minimum size and maximum size.
Canadian football only has 3 downs.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I need to know how much this weighs. In terms of Volkswagens.
So how many Olympic sized swimming pools or libraries of congress is that?
Does this mean the Sea Level will rise?
Bite my shiny metal ass.
Because 11,000 football fields is easier to imagine than 66 square kilometers.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
Hook the ice shelf up to some powerful tugs and drag it down to Australia! They're having a drought y'know and could use the fresh water
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Looks like another Slashdot article was posted to the ADHD Nazis at FreeRepublic again.
Your source for this claim being...?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I'm guessing the write up in Nature will be brief. It may, in fact, be as short as this: OH SHIT.
Got a source for that? Or are you just making shit up?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Clearly the cause is Al Gore and his liberal whiners who are jelaous of the success of the hardworking oil industry... :)
What an inconvenient truth.
Warning: Could be fatal if taken seriously
This global warming this is obviously a hoax put together by the major thermometer companies of the world. 1) Slowly adjust new thermometers to read warmer temperatures. 2) Scientists notice the the temperature is going up. 3) Scientists buy more thermometers. 4) Profit!!!
Hobby Robotics
The left is not who I'm worrying about when it comes to curtailing personal liberties.
While you're jerking off and hitting F5 at DailyKos waiting for it to refresh, why don't you post it there as well?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
If by "we" you mean "people who aren't educated in climatology", then yes.
Otherwise, no.
Yep, they've seriously underestimated the needed capacity for the International Space Station.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I can't wait for the anti global warming types to downplay that CLEARLY OBVIOUS FACT that global warming is the cause.
I don't want to disappoint you, so I'll just say tut tut, this is not at all clearly attributable to global warming.
If it were, then it's clearly obvious that someone would have predicted it. Since no one did, then it can hardly
be attributable to this thing that you seem so sure of.
If you insist on attributing it to the result of carbon dioxide being blasted into the atmosphere at unprecedented
rates, then I'll have no choice but to ask why you have chosen to position yourself as an enemy of freedom and progress.
That's what the ultraconservative lunatics who happen to be politically savvy would do with you on a debate floor.
Seriously though, we're way past having any more "anti global warming types". Anybody who is "anti global warming"
is an absolute crackpot and should be treated as such. Don't even begin to give them their due, or acknowledge that
they can downplay anything. As soon as you see one open their mouth, just start pointing at them and laughing.
There are now enough of us that know what's going on that we'll join in.
Did you even watch al gores movie? He has documented evidence of an ice sheet that scientists claimed would take 20 years (or some large amount I forget exactly) to melt, and it ended up melting between 2002 and 2004. They attributed this to the bottom thawing out turning to water, and breaking up/sliding the whole ice sheet into the sea. So thats two years, for a similarly large area (if not larger I really dont remember the exact numbers.). How do you know how fast glacial ice melts? Were you around the last time large portions of ice melted?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
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
Yeah - and like the time when they invented the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so they could save us all - at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.
Oh wait - it wasn't the LEFT that did that, was it? It's the extremes that are the problems. True liberals and true conservatives both care deeply about personal liberty.
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!
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Maybe he should have worked there longer. Follow this link.
. pdf
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-1-15
In 1984 this study was done in Canada. The first page kind of says it all.
" Between 1959 and 1974 a total of 48sqkm calved off from Milne and Ayles ice shelves. In addition, the Ayles Ice Shelf moved about 5km out into Ayles Ford"
Not quite 66 sqkm but close. And it sounds as if the shelf broke off rather recently within a few decades, and somehow reattached itself. No mention of that in the story, but there is a significant emphasis that the ice is 3000 years old and ancient. Making it seem as if this has been the same for 3000 years. Next at the bottom left of the first page.
"The largest observed ice calving occurred at Ward Hunt Ice Shelf (just north of Ayles) where almost 600SQKM, broke off between 1961 and 1962.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm not sure why the parent was modded insightful, funny would be pushing it... It's logic seems to be on the flawed side, setting up a situation like this:
1. Something of a large magnitude happened thirty years ago when global climate change wasn't really an issue.
2. Something of a large magnitude happened recently.
Therefore, because things of a large magnitude have happen in the past uninfluenced by climate change, climate change is not playing a role in current events of large magnitude.
Now I'm no expert but I don't see how this conclusion actually follows.
To answer the question of what happend thirty years ago; Simply a large chunk of ice fell into the ocean. Why, I don't know. Maybe it grew too large to support itself. The fact is that climate change impacts the frequency and magnitude of natural events. The last time a comparable event occurred was 30 years ago, and who knows when the one before that occurred. But I would be willing to bet money that the next one, and the one after that, are not 30 years away.
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?
How does asking a sensible question and thinking critically make you an idiot?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
It's not older because it's floating. Ice is less dense than water, so it floats. In an ice shelf, snow falls on the top every winter and ice melts in the bottom all the time, unless the sea is shallow and the shelf become so thick and heavy that it hits bottom.
The shelf thickness will be constant when conditions are such that the mass of ice that melts every year from the bottom is equal to the mass of snow that falls on the top. If more ice melts than snow falls, the shelf will become thinner. In this case, perhaps less snow was falling on the top, or perhaps the sea water flowing under it became warmer, so the shelf became too thin to whitstand the stresses caused by currents.
Is there a good phot of this anywhere, with a helpful set of outlines or what? I am seeing the news article photo, and yet somehow I see a bunch of craggy areas, a bunch of brown areas, a bunch of snow.
Oh the horror!!!
Which way is anything here?
Somebody please draw a diagram on this image which indicates 1) the north pole, or the direction it is in, 2) the island, 3) the shelf, and 4) the direction of said shelf's geologically-sudden departure....
~
No wonder Florida has disappeared under the waters.
Oh, cool. I hand't noticed. Now that'll make the next election so much easier.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
We're in the middle of what meteorologists described as a "once in 1,000 years drought", had our hottest December night on record (minimum 27C/81F) and a 4 days later it snowed on xmas day.
Climate change?
That's just a myth put about by people who believe what they see when they look out their window!
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Puhlease... Ice shelves flow by gravity-driven horizontal spreading on the ocean surface. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_shelf
I don't have a problem with global warming.
What if global warming doesn't stop?
As in... We have surface temperatures of 200F?
Would you have a problem then?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
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
I haven't been pedantic in a while, so:
1. Incorrect use of loose.
2. You can't lose Florida coastline, unless it recedes to above Florida's northernmost border.
3. unless #2 happens, the Florida coastline has merely changed.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
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!
Exactly the mentality at least 52% of Americans have.
Did you even watch al gores movie?
No he hasn't of course. Could have opened his mind. Damn commie propaganda.
The way I remember it, though, is that puddles forming on the surface have a lower albedo, hence absorb more heat, which causes the ice shelf to break up quicker than previously thought.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Puhlease.... It takes more than 20 years for ice this thick to melt to a shelving point.
No, it doesn't. All it takes is for some surface meltwater to percolate down through the ice. Below the ice, it can act as a lubricate, allowing fast movement.
...this apparently happened in August, 2005, and we've just realized it now.
The English vineyards bit is a standard contrarian talking point. The problem is that (a) it's not clear that vineyards tell you anything about climate (rather than economics) and (b) at any rate there's far more wine growing in England now than there was in the past.
6 /07/medieval-warmth-and-english-wine/
See the discussion here
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
I have never seen a reference that claimed that English wine was "better" than French wine, so that seems to be new and made up.
"since MiGs go for millions each, even older ones"
No they don't. It took me about two minutes of Googling to find a MiG 21 MF for $60,000, and a two-seat trainer (more in demand) for $88,00, and these prices were for one-offs: if you are willing to buy in lots of ten or more, you can get them from various ex-Eastern bloc countries for a _lot_ less (around $11,000 each, although you'll need to add transport costs).
So your WWII planes (which cost a _lot_ more than $11,000 in flying condition) would actually be facing off against several MiG-21 MFs each, which given the MiG's climb rate of 58,000 ft/min, max. speed of Mach 1.8, on-board RADAR, and twin Vympel K-13 air-to-air missiles, would find your WWII fighters and blow the lot of them away before their pilots knew that there was even a threat.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
you might as well try inserting adsense code into your comment while you're at it.
From what I know of physics, ice sticks out of the water as much as the density of the ice is less than the water around it. (10% or so) So when the ice melts, shouldn't the sea level stay the exact same?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
and biting the bull's balls to hold on.
Though I don't follow the PBR all that closely - that move might be the "ball-peein' hummer" of which you speak.
What kind of person drives a vehicle named after a blowjob?
Actually, the variation in the sun's output is estimated at 0.7% (source) However, this study fails to take into account the experimentally demonstrated effect discovered by Svensmark at the Danish National Science Center.
The "Svensmark Effect" is that cosmic rays penetrate to the troposphere. Here they create ions that help induce cloud formation. The cloud formation directly reflects some radiation back into space cooling the earth. During periods of high solar activity, substantially less cosmic ray radiation penetrates to troposphere, increasing the amount of water vapor in the air. Water vapor is, of course, a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2.
So this is a positive feedback effect. Small variations is solar output create small changes in energy absorption, but they also create larger changes in cloud cover and water vapor. 85% of the warming blamed on industrialization can be explained by small solar variation similar to that measured, in combination with cloud cover changes similar to those observed.
I just saw a Coke commercial at the movie theater with polar bears AND penguins...And the penguins played with the baby polar bear. Coke wouldn't do that if it weren't true, would they?
That is not the point, global warming is a fact, global warming is the cause of melting ice, global warming is the cause of warmer oceans. That is not what is being contested.
What is being contested is the cause of global warming. There are two podiums here, one is for arguing the cause is man made, the other is for arguing that it is a naturally recurring event.
The first has little evidence to support it other than (slightly) higher co2 levels in the atmosphere. The second of which has strong evidence recorded in, what else but the ice itself as well as in fossil records.
You cannot argue that there have been global warming events in the past but you can argue that man couldn't have been the cause then.
So I guess we are in agreement? Global warming is a CLEARLY OBVIOUS FACT.
Let me put that football measurement into something a slashdotter can relate to. It had the area of screen on a 728,000 inch monitor.
Here's an interesting paper (pdf) that goes into more details about ice shelves and their collapse and/or calving significance - http://www.arcticnet-ulaval.ca/pdf/asm04_Mueller.p df
To sum it up, shelf collapse has been an ongoing natural change (we have been on a warming trend, with the 1930s and 40s seeing high global temperatures) quite possibly augmented by human activities.
And you have evidence for this claim?
It seems like an unlikely scenario in any case. Water doesn't exactly make a good lubricant for sub-freezing ice, it has terrible viscosity performance below 32F!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
the OP clearly confused "the period of time since we first suspected that there is global warming" with "the period of time over which global warming is suspected to have been occurred" (i'll use the speculative wording so as not to offend the oil companies and their minions)
It weren't scientists who started bringing political motivations into this subject. It has been known for many years that the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes what has been called the "greenhouse effect". The fact that burning fossil fuels causes climate change had been perfectly well established and was a consensus among climate scientists, until the government of the USA started throwing their weight around.
Good science allows one to predict global warming from fossil fuel burning. Bad science, wandering from the truth, is when politicians start picking at straws and claiming more studies are needed until they find a stooge who is willing to sell his scientific integrity for thirty pieces of silver in the form of federal grants.
For an example of particularly bad "science", check this site. Notice the use of sentences like "Only 13 percent of the scientists responding to a survey..." and "More than 100 noted scientists, including
How would you like to defend your thesis, to be able to present it before a board of scientists, or to have a poll conducted among a number of unspecified people claiming to be scientists? Which method do you think is better science?
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.
Once again, Slashdot evinces its scientific illiteracy by placing scientists in a monolithic block of true believers. Not even climate scientists, either. Just "scientists."
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
And you have evidence for this claim?
7 .shtml
Yes, of course I do, otherwise I would not have posted the claim. Here is an example.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL02138
"Evidence for subglacial water transport in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet through three-dimensional satellite radar interferometry"
I think the appropriate question here is, given that this is a well-documented and understood phenomenon, what are your political motives for questioning it?
It seems like an unlikely scenario in any case. Water doesn't exactly make a good lubricant for sub-freezing ice, it has terrible viscosity performance below 32F!
That is not the point. It has to do is have better viscocity performance than pure ice.
Regarding the breakup of the Antarctic Larsen ice shelf, Wikipedia has the following to say: "The leading ideas involve enhanced ice fracturing due to surface meltwater and enhanced bottom melting due to warmer ocean water circulating under the floating ice."
Are you claiming it snowed in the summer there in Australia? That's like it snowing in the Northern Hemisphere on June 25th. Ergo, I'm assuming you must either live in the mountains and/or very far south. Even if you live in Tasmania that's not as far south as Minnesota is north. I'm not at all familiar with Australian weather, so forgive any ignorance on my part. (Actually, I'm not really familiar with Minnesota weather, either.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Global warming has been going on since the industrial revolution.
There is a lot of real science left to do,
and if our CO2 output is contributing we need to deal with it.
With fanatics making wild claims on both sides of the argument, it is
extremely difficult for anyone to come to a reasonable understanding of the current state of research.
It's (almost) funny how many times the "Hockey Stick" graph has been discredited, credited, repeatedly, but it seems
fairly obvious that 1: World population has exploded, and 2: People generate CO2 gas both directly and through surviving.
So duh, there's more CO2 going into the air from humans than ever before.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
Is it man? Is it cows? Is it volcanos? Is it aliens? Is it something we don't even know about? I'm a "Creationist," but I also believe that the Earth is billions of years old. This rock has survived that long, it's somewhat arrogant to think that we humans are going to be able to destroy it in a relative blink of the eye. What caused the Ice Ages? Was that the lack of people, cows, and volcanos? What caused the Ice Ages to end? A sudden increase in people, cows, and volcanos? What were temperatures like in the days of the dinosaurs? Perhaps we're going back to dinosaur weather. Maybe the reptiles are causing it! They need warmer weather so they can overthrow us silly warm-blooded humans.
Identify the problem *then* apply the fix. In that order.
That's my big problem with the Al Gore crowd. You have yet to prove to that man is causing it and can therefore actually do something about it. You just assume man is the problem. I, for one, am not ready to give up hundreds of years of human advances for a liberal guilt-trip. My conscience is clear.
I'll keep burning my fossil fuels, thank you. I'm not going to pay 10x as much to heat my home or drive my car just because you're feeling bad about maybe being a cause of rising global temperatures. But I also realize that fossil fuels are limited so I fully support alternative energy sources. Build hydro-electric plants. Put up wind farms. I don't even care if they block your precious view of the ocean in Massachusetts. I think wind farms to quite nice to look at. Put solar panels on every rooftop. Pave the roads in solar panels if you can. And until you prove that a coal burning power plant is killing all life on Earth, I'm gonna burn coal too. Or, since I'm an evil capitalist, come up with a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels. Then you don't have to try to legislate your guilt on me, I'll do it because it's cheaper.
Are people really so dumb as to need every size estimate in "football fields?"
I'd add that pools of water on ice ("stripes") makes a runaway process. Water absorbs drastically more heat than ice. I think this effect was featured in the Inconvenient Truth aswell, when large sections of ice melted in a single season because of this process.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Or 1/50th the size of Rhode Island
Which one seems bigger to you?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
It's called "Science". When an asteroid is dead on target to hit the earth, scientists will say that it may hit, and they will not definitely say that it will, but they will not bet you, 'cause they'll be drinking up the bar waiting for the end. A "theory" is not the same in science as it is in your world. A scientist who says "this is so", well, he doesn't exist. He will say the preponderance of evidence is for it. In the absence of any other evidence, he'll bet it is so. Global warming is so.
However, a rightist will have no problems stating God exists and needs to be placated by begging ritualistically and following the writings of genocidal maniacs. Somehow, they don't see themselves as spinning a fantasy.
Wrong. We don't need Victorian thermometer readings to know what the temperature was at any period in the past. We've tree rings, percentage of carbon-14 absorbed during a year, ice cores, shorelines, fossils, yadda yadda. If you want to get a list from someone who has a good memory and has done his homework, rent Albert Gore's (President, real world) "Inconvenient Truth". He's got it all down, including how we know what we know and what's going to happen. For instance, glacial melt is happening a HELL of a lot faster than we knew possible because we've discovered water flows in melted channels under the glaciers, flows which come from the warmup and themselves speed up the warmup. Now we have some idea how the earth got out of it's glacial phases so often and so quickly.
Unfortunately, we're not in an ice age, so we are in big trouble. There may have been a warmup scheduled, but we've put teflon under the skids with our cow herds and petroleum, wood, and coal burning. Not a good idea to pump kerosene into a forest fire...
I tried to convert the area to square smoots but then my calculator collapsed into a horizontal line and I couldn't read the answer.
In Soviet Russia a beowulf cluster of these things imagines you welcoming your new, neural-network overlords.
That should be enough to make us pay some atention to the _real_ global warming.
It would be funny to make some cool drinks, but would be even more funny to see
surfing in Everest....
Serious, it is _very_ sad.
He has bad habits of not taking advice from experts (so he wouldn't know in the first palce) and dishonesty when it is politically expedient.
66 (square kilometers) = 1,630.89552 square furlongs
And you can't have a furlong without 40 rods:
66 (square kilometers) = 2,609,432.83 square rods
Evidence please..? Or are you just making this up on the basis of your own prejudices.
Ah, I think you're answering my question here. Ice shelves don't 'melt to a shelving point.' Meltwater collects at the surface, then migrates rapidly to the base, causing breakup.
Do please try to avoid the trap of your own small-scale assumptions.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Even the machines know it to be true.
wait wait wait... this was in canada, right? NORTHERN canada. I'm in upstate NY and its fscking cold. In the middle of winter. Ice is breaking off, in the middle of winter.
damn. I've just been convinced.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Both of these are nutcases so they don't count, regardless their fame. :-p
Seriously, that a global warming is going on is easy to get evidence of, the hard part is what and who's causing the bulk of it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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.
And here I just thought the melting point of ice was going down.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
What? ®
I find it depressing how each relevant news item causes an almost identical repeat of circular arguing from the standard positions on Global Warming. Nothing as yet has caused a "tipping point" of reconsideration from the average population. I'm just not hearing it from the charismatic speakers of divergent groups that Yes Indeed This Is A Problem.
This doesn't cause me to doubt it exists, or that we've caused it. It causes me to doubt that anything will seriously change. Business As Usual.
This shelf detaching (and then refreezing later) is a potential for Greenland. If we get a sudden few feet in ocean water (unlike an ice shelf, Greenland's ice will move from land to ocean), then an extended European winter, mass fishing industry havoc and the economic ripples everywhere - it may wake everyone up.
Or it may not. History has shown that death itself is the most effective societal teacher.
A Library of Congress is generally believed to be 10 terabytes of printed ASCII text. However, I don't think anybody ever wrote anything on that ice sheet. A better comparison may be how many slurpees can be made from it. So considering that it may be 20m thick and 20 sq km in size, while a slurpee is 500ml, then that would be about 80 million slurpees. Not even enough for everyone in North America...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
A Volkswagen Beetle weighs about 810kg. So a 20sq km ice block, 20m thick, would be about 100,000,000,000 VW Beetles...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
...volkswagons full of backup tapes is that? Does someone have a VWDU (VW-Data Units) to Football Fields conversion charts? Also, are we talking about European football where they kick a ball with the foot, or US Football where they play with a foot shaped ball?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
yeah like New Orleans
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Perhaps it's that the absorption of IR due to CO2 concentration is nearly at saturation and has been for quite a while.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Two can play this game.
Yes, Florida will always have a coastline unless it is completely submerged. There may come a point where its coastline is shorter, but as long as it exists, it will have a coastline.
There are important settlements built on the current Florida coastline, however: fine places like Miami and Fort Lauderdale and Tampa Bay and Daytona Beach and Pensacola. If the ocean level rises sufficiently, all these fine cities will be underwater. People who are literally building houses on beachfront will soon have to take boats to their property....
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Ah, but I did... that 70 bn tons is but a drop in the bucket compared to the overall size of the entire Atmosphere. Compare that to factors which mitigate atmospheric CO2, and while not perfect, it is a perspective. Denial doesn't make that automatically go away, y'know... ;)
"The point of my post is that we have fewer carbon sequestering plants each day..."
Oh? Considering that North America has a growing number of overall plant life (as compared to, say, 1900), it tends to mitigate the ever-holy Amazon (not to mention the actual shrinkage of the Sahara Desert as it surrenders to plant life, coupled with various other places... it's a toss-up, really if one were to guess, given current information). Given all that, your premise (that we're losing plant life at some sort of alarming rate) is rather fallacious.
"...at a constantly declining rate due to the finite capacity of water to hold dissolved carbon at atmospheric pressure and biological constraints..."
IIRC, we're supposed to be losing ice (as in - the premise of this article?)... as it turns into water. Also, the act of evaporation sends largely CO2-free water back into the air (assuming the CO2 was otherwise fixated by soil or plant processes before evaporation). Water absoprtion isn't exactly the zero-sum game you paint it to be.
This all means that the alarmism may not be (I said may not be, not is not, as no model is complete enough to tell for sure) ...warranted.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Ever heard of a planet called Venus? Do you think the 450C temperatures are due to something other than massive amounts of carbon dioxide?
Imagine you could contain the pure water from a fully melted iceberg inside a sphere. In the same way an iceberg floats and sticks out of the sea, the ball of pure water would float in the sea with 2.5% of its volume sticking out above the sea surface. If you let the water out of the sphere, the 2.5% volume of pure water that was above the sea level inside the sphere will spread out across the planet's oceans, raising the global sea level.
The iceberg mentioned in the article was 40metres thick and 66 square kilometres in area, so the ice volume is 2.6 billion cubic metres. Ice is 8.3% less dense than pure water liquid , so when the iceberg melts, the volume of pure water will be 2.4 billion cubic metres and 2.5% of that is 60 million cubic metres. The world has 360 million square kilometers of ocean, so adding 60 million cubic metres of pure water will raise average global sea level by 0.17 microns (thousandths of a millimetre)!
Scroogle
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.
I've read more than a few of these /. debates over whether or not humans might or might not be "responsible" for global warming. What was the human population of the Earth 650,000 years ago? A tiny fraction of what it is today, correct? And were these humans able to do the sort of things that todays humans can do on a global scale, like burning rain forests, pumping huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, hmmm...the short answer is NO!
Going to the wiki, the current population of the world is 6 billion. When I was nine, in 1961, the population was only three billion people - it has doubled in my lifetime.
So it's just a freakin' coincidence that CO2 levels have gone through the roof in the period since the early 1800's?
Yeah. Right.
World Population
1 billion in 1802
2 billion in 1928
3 billion in 1961
4 billion in 1974
5 billion in 1987
6 billion in 1999
6.4 billion NOW
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
Although the source wasn't one Slashbots would likely find credible, I read once that symptoms similar to global warming here had been recorded on a number of other planets in the solar system. If that were true, it would tend to imply that terrestrial global warming was not due to human presence, since we aren't present on the other planets.
The ice shelf collapsed 16 months ago...
It just took a while for the news to reach us....
The two causes you mentioned are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The question is rather if we accelerate the rate of increase in mean temperature anomaly. The Sun is still and will always be the dominant factor for changing the weather on Earth.
Uhh... Is it 11,000 american football fields or standard football fields? Has anyone ever played football on that ice shelf? Do polar bears play football?
so many questions left unanswered....
--- sig moved for great justice.
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)
Barring of course global thermo-nuclear war, asteroid impact, massive volcanic eruption, El niño and La niña... Not necessarily in that order.
(I'll give you those last two.)
Either way, a majority of humans will die, so what is the point of debating the cause of global warming? How about we all concentrate on a solution instead of arguing a theory that we may not be ever able to prove or disprove?
Lets organise a space mission and toss the broken-off ICE SHELF into the Sun!
As another poster mentioned, the third world is going to get hit hard by this. Take Bangladesh for example; through no fault of those people, their country is going to end up underwater all so you can drive your SUV. That's not humanity'f flexibility, that's par the course for the western world.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
African Delegate: Maybe it just collapsed on its own. ...you got seventy-two hours. See ya.
British Delegate: We can't take that chance!
African Delegate: You always say that! I want to take a chance!
Hank: "Collapsed on its own"? You sch... (takes a breath)
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
how relatively minor changes in the already tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is responsible for this?
CO2 is about 0.04% of the earths atmosphere, humans might conceivably changed that value to 0.041%, so what ?
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Same people who spam the site whenever "evolution" or "gun rights" comes up. Guaranteed 800+ posts, all exactly the same as last time the trigger words were uttered. Whenver Taco et al want to spike pageviews, they can just do an article with one of those topics mentioned, however little connection it actually has with the story, and watch the creationists/global warming deniers/gun nuts blurt out their "talking points", getting a similar reflexive response from their opponents.
from the article at the end:
"The researchers suspect climate change may have played a role in the collapse but said they cannot definitively say it is a result of global warming."
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Arctic ice shelf collapse poses risk: expert
Whose English is that ?
Ernest J.W. ter Kuile
I shouldn't respond to a troll, but here goes...
Climate change has always occurred, which has been properly recorded. This is on a geological timescale. Timescales are important. To give you an idea: if one ice-age cylce would take one day, such that the ice-age occurs at night, and the warm intermediate period would occur during the day, then the global warming we are seeing now would take only 45 seconds. Different timescale.
Your statement that CO2 levels are slightly higher is bull. They have risen over 30% and doubling of the CO2-level with respect to pre-industrial levels will likely take place early this century.
I was comparing to historical highs that span hundreds of millennia. The highest being around 300ppm and current levels at 360ppm. I really don't think we'll hit 600ppm this century, but I could be wrong.
When discussing geologic conditions, newspapers should be forced to adopt a geologic timescale. 3-5000 years old is not ancient dammit.
Note that the dates are pretty much precisely 150 years ago.
I stand corrected: it is indeed 110 yards, which is 100.584 meters. As others have said, it is ten yards in three downs.
If I wanted your opinion I'd ask Noam Chomsky.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
And you claim the Bush voters are the ignorant ones? Did it ever occur to you that intelligent and caring people might have different opinions on the matter? I voted for Bush. I care about the environment. I am far from ignorant.
I, for one, do not believe that Kerry or any of the Democrats had the political will to do anything really significant to address global warming. What's more, I do not trust them to do it in a way that is least damaging to the economy. Talking vaguely about hybrid cars and other such pie in the sky technologies won't get us very far. How about really getting behind nuclear energy? Expressing strong support for carbon trading? Supporting significant gasoline taxes (OK, neither party supports this one) instead of trying to push them down when they go up slightly? How about acknowledging that a couple more hybrid cars on the road isn't going to make a real big difference? How about admitting that most Americans overwhelming purchased faster/heavier/less-efficient cars despite cars getting 2x the MPG being offered by industry (instead of just blaming it on the car companies)? How about admitting that maybe there are bigger issues at stake than just the nominal proposals made by the Dems on the environment? How about acknowledging that the science on global warming is far from well understood (especially several years before)? How about admitting that dramatic cuts in carbon output in the short term will require a dramatic changes in lifestyle for most people in the West and that it could potentially have devastating effects on the world economy?
Important facts.
$sig not found
For any article about climate change, I change my threshold to see all the articles. Slashdot seems to have become a major target of global warming denial spam. It also seems the moderation is biased in favor of the denial spam, such that the key denial spam posts are marked as insightful. By viewing all posts, I get a far more realistic idea of the discussion.
So in a sense I am putting up a bit of a white flag to the GW denialist public relations campaign, and so they have achieved part of their objectives. If you want a real discussion, go to realclimate.org . You'll still see the denialist spam there, but it is responded to convincingly by experts knowledgeable in the field of climate science.
I believe it is a strong likelihood that much of the GW denialist spam is connected in some way to oil interests. Oil companies face billions of dollars in losses if their primary product is regulated. Anyone who doubts that such oil interests wouldn't provide a paltry few million dollars to protect their future profits by funding people to post denialist spam to discussion groups such as Slashdot is I believe quite naive. It's just self interest.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Scientists are not arguing that we are going to destroy the world. They are saying that we are going to change it in serious ways that could make human civilization less tenable. I am aware of geological events of the past, and the Earth has gone through much worse events than us. For example, there is evidence that the Earth was at one point covered almost entirely with ice, a state that would have wiped out most life. Comets have hit the Earth, causing mass extinctions, including of that of the dinosaurs. Ice ages have come and gone, wreaking havoc on the lives of many species.
Evidence indicates that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide at current rates, we will change the climate in significant ways. In the Earth's past, the most recent period when carbon dioxide levels reached the predicted levels was likely about 50 to 60 million years ago. During that time, the polar regions had a climate that was almost tropical (as evidenced by tropical plants found in polar sediments). Such a change would significantly modify weather patterns, and would likely make our current agricultural systems difficult to sustain. Imagine what would happen if the yield of global crops dropped by 10% or more. Do you think that this would not have an impact on civilization?
And if you have been taught that man is too small to impact the Earth, that only God can do that, then you should imagine what would happen if the president decided to press the launch button for America's nuclear arsenal. What kind of an impact would that have? The fact is that man can have an impact on the climate. If you believe that God created the Earth, then our current actions could hardly be viewed as good stewardship of His creation.
Enlightened environmentalists are not arguing that we give up our modern technology. Far from it, they are arguing that we should learn to use the gift of energy more efficiently. Believe me, it is possible to reduce our consumption of energy while preserving our standard of living. If you could buy a car that was indistinguishable in most important ways from an older car except for its high efficiency, why would you want the older version?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Here is an example.
As near as I can tell from the abstract, that paper is about "uplift and subsidence", i.e. sinkholes, caused by pockets of water embedded in the glacier moving around. Did you just look for any article about glacial hydrodynamics and think that I wouldn't know what those "big words" meant?
given that this is a well-documented and understood phenomenon
As near as I can tell, this is still only your assertion. I'm not an expert in these fields, you might be, but you are bad at picking citations at least, if this indeed is "well documented and understood".
what are your political motives for questioning it?
Your political motives are obvious. My motives are mainly scientific. I have little vested interest in the current energy cartels and industries. Alternative energy study is even a hobby of mine. I am opposed to using the violent force of the government to accomplish some social goal, but I don't think that's very relevant unless you are claiming that such measures should be put into place. I think we can solve any warming problem through technology. It's very important we have a rational discourse on it in any case, so that we know where to place our development priorities as a society.
Anyway, back to the science:
You've made a tenuous assertion that a) Humans have caused warming, b) This warming has caused increased surface melt, c) This surface melt is accelerating the breakup of glaciers, through a hydrodynamic process that is non-intuitive. Further there is the implication that d) this accelerated breakup even matters, or is bad in some way.
I might even conceed "a" to you, though I don't think there is sufficient evidence to determine the degree of human caused warming (it might be insignificant). "b" follows from "a", but "c" is an extraordinary claim. This leads us to where I called you out.
For "d" I'll invoke the law of unintended consequences and assume that it is bad. It may not be, but with that much volume of stuff moving around, it's probably going to affect *something*.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"Perhaps it's that the absorption of IR due to CO2 concentration is nearly at saturation and has been for quite a while."?
More carbon dioxide = more greenhouse effect. Period.
Thanks for the (relevant) citations. I knew something smelled a little fishy with the original posters assertions (and implications). It is good to know what is actually documented.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.