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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."
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!
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.
I mean the result of, RESULT OF! Oh good lord.
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
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.
Actually, a real good margarita consists of good tequila, fresh lime juice and triple sec - not a mix.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
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?
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!
Rhode Island is 1214 square miles or 33844377600 square feet.
A football field is 58000 square feet x 11000 = 638000000 square feet for the iceberg.
Rhode Island is about 584524 football fields.
So the iceberg is about 1/53rd of the size of Rhode Island.
The increase in radiation is caused by the hole in the ozone layer, but I think everything else is pretty much due to global warming.
Clearly the cause is Al Gore and his liberal whiners who are jelaous of the success of the hardworking oil industry... :)
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!
You and you are both right. Feedback loop, and all that...
Haida Manga
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.
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 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
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.
How many vast Ice sheets have cracked recently?
I believe that the Larson A and B ice sheets, in Antarctica, broke up within the past decade.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
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.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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?
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
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?