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Large Ice Shelf Expected To Break From Antarctica
MollyB sends this excerpt from CNN:
"A large ice shelf is 'imminently' close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said Friday. Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula. The cracks are quickly expanding, the ESA said. ... The Wilkins Ice Shelf — a large mass of floating ice — would still be connected to Latady Island, which is also part of the peninsula, and Alexander Island, which is not, said professor David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey. ... If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say. Some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse."
Will the ocean level rise, fall, or remain the same?
I'm betting it will rise a little bit because the salt concentration is different in the ice than in the ocean.
Displacement. Go back to high school.
Well, this ice is already floating, according to the article. Just because it's floating by itself doesn't mean the sea level's going to rise around it.
ice that is floating is already displacing an amount of water equivalent to it's mass which has... the same volume as the volume of the ice once it's melted (remember that frozen water has a larger volume, lower density, than liquid water). Thus, melting ice that is already floating has zero effect on sea levels.
man, I feel like mold.
indeed. That aside, climate change can be thought of as a diffuse property rights issue. Power plant produces CO2, CO2 warms planet and melts ice, sea levels rise, higher sea levels erode my property, who is responsible for the property damage?
that is indeed true if the rate of diversification and adaptation are high enough or the rate of change is slow enough. However, there are several instances in biological history where this planet was made uninhabitable for 3/4 of all life or more including human beings had we existed then. There is a limit to how quickly an ecosystem can adapt to a change before permanent damage occurs. This certainly may not be a "fatal" event for humanity but in so far as destroying someone else's resource I don't see how any of that can possibly be justified ethically. You talk about the cost of doing something and you have a point- the current plans for dealing with climate change often involve costly measures but it certainly doesn't need to be the case. knocking out subsidies to inefficient, polluting industries would help the environment and save the government money. relying on a market based approach to solving the problem would be more efficient than a more planned economy could ever achieve. Don't be so quick to jump on the bandwagon that claims environmental protection can't coexist with sound economic policy- it's often the case that the waste caused in planned economies is even worse for the environment.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The catch is that the ice shelves slow down the ice behind them which is pushing into the sea.
That ice is on land and WILL affect sea levels when it starts moving forward into the sea a LOT faster.
Even worse, glacier motion is lubricated by water - so if there's already a lot more meltwater under the glaciers --- whoooooshhhhh (in slow motion anyway)
it's often the case that the waste caused in planned economies is even worse for the environment.
Good point, nobody ever seems to mention the environmental horrors that existed/still exist in those failed planned economies you refer to.
Fresh water from ice and salt water in the oceans have different densities. The volume of salt water displaced by 1000 kg of frozen fresh water will be less than the volume that those same 1000 kg of ice occupy when melted, since the salt water is denser.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I believe that if done correctly, cap and trade is a valid temporary solution however I think that the ultimate solution to the problem is to knock out any regulatory restrictions preventing a viable market based on the trade of carbon dioxide as a resource. It may be possible to start with a cap and trade system and ween the economy off of it and on to a market that stands completely on its own. The big problem as is being seen to an extent in Europe is that it is somewhat difficult to quantify CO2 offsets in many cases. Too many permits in the wild can also cause the system not to work as efficiently as it should however auctioning the credits may solve that problem. A green shift in taxation may also improve conditions. Shifting away from our current very complicated tax system toward one that both functions to discourage wasteful consumption and simplifies the tax code [eliminating many tax loopoles in the process] may actually offer an overall economic benefit outside of the environment its self.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
That's a pretty cool job.
ah, that's better.
Task Mangler
Because, to the general public, global warming is confusing. "They're saying we're making the world warmer, so how come I just saw on TV that we're having the coldest winter on record?"
Climate Change more accurately reflects that it's going out of whack in both directions.
Global Warming due to industry and emissions is a hoax...
The truth is the planet keeps getting warmer the closer we get to Hell.
Fortunately, Antarctica is too big to fail - rest assured our representatives are hard at work on crafting a bailout.
"Are there some countries that are exempt from the global regulations? Is CO2 actually a "pollutant", and how do we define pollution? Has relatively recent human activity actually been proven to be the cause of something we can't even measure properly? What percentage of the atmosphere does CO2 actually occupy and what is it's molecular weight?"
No, Yes, A resourse out of place, Two incorrect assumptions in the question render it meaningless, Very small, Irrelevant.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Additionally ice has a high albedo so it tends to keep itself and the surrounding areas cool. Dark blue ocean absorbs more heat from the sun and stays warmer.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Some plants and animals may have to adapt". Yeah? Many plants in Antarctica?
Apparently not a lot, but still some...
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Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Why is it now called "Climate Change" and no longer "(Man Made) Global Warming"? [emphasis mine]
It hasn't been called "Global Warming" by anyone doing real research in a VERY long time. The mainstream continued to say "Global Warming" for a long time after researchers had stopped using the term, and unfortunately the mainstream didn't catch on until after it became as political as it has, making a lot of the people sceptical of it think that calling it "Climate Change" is a weasel attempt at making it more popular - this couldn't be further from the truth.
As the other replier pointed out, "Climate Change" is simply a more accurate and less confusing name. It DOES amount to the same thing in the long term and when you look at global scales, but to avoid people saying "it's colder where I am right now, so Global Warming is a myth", "Climate Change" is more sensible.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Natural processes are not really news.
Regardless of your opinions about the cause of it, I beg to differ that natural processes are not news. Hurricanes in south-eastern US, flooding in India, bushfires in Australia, large rocks hurtling through space that might hit us and wipe out all life on earth - all of these are things are "natural processes", but always make the news every time, and quite rightly so.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
So you mean like: wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooo OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ooooooooooooooooooooo ssssssssssssssssssssssss hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
It is hard to get a sense for the scale and the magnitude from the article's pictures. So, I looked it up on Google Earth.
That "ice bridge" protecting the Wilkins Ice shelf is narrow, only about 2 km wide, or slightly more than mile. And it is that which is breaking up. The floating ice area behind it (i.e. to the east) is huge, about 100x100 km!
Once that bridge is broken, sea currents may more easily flush that ice into the high seas. And, what the effects will be then, we don't know I guess.
.
I remeasured it, the ice bridge is about 60 km long and 3 km wide at its waist.
Never mind the article, it's right there in the summary: "it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating, scientists say"
Because the mean temperature of the entire globe is rising, it used to be called Global Warming. As more study was thrown at it, side effects that a mean rise in global temperature was found to create were a bigger spread between maxima and minima, effects on ocean currents, and possibly effects on hurricane formation and migration patterns. So Global Warming as a description just didn't cover the entire range of phenomena anymore.
And as pointed out by others, this change in actual scientific terminology is not recent.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
You can beg all you like but I won't answer your troll except to warn you that looking at my other posts will make your head explode.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"our committee does not believe that the climate is warming".
Or, if it is warming, we should adapt to the changes instead of addressing economic activity. That's when they show their true colours.
Basically all this noise is just a big psychotic roadblock to change.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Scientists have called used the term climate change for decades (I found papers going back to at least the 1960s last time I checked, and that's just from what's available online).
The term "global warming" is a relatively recent, which was popularized in the media. It came to real public prominence after Jim Hansen's 1988 testimony to Congress, in which he used the phrase. The media as well as environmental groups embraced the term "global warming". The phrase had been used occasionally by scientists as early as 1975, but it has never been a common substitute for "climate change" in peer reviewed climate journals. In 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (not "Global Warming") was commissioned.
In 2002, U.S. Republican strategist Frank Luntz wrote a memo to President Bush advocating he revert to the term "climate change", because "while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds like a more controllable and less emotional challenge".
Climate scientists have also traditionally preferred the term "climate change" (and have been using it both before and after "global warming" ever cropped up), since it encompasses all the changes to the climate which may occur and not just global warming.
In an example of having their cake and eating it too, some Republicans, after their party itself advocated the term "climate change", now claim the term was recently invented as some kind of liberal conspiracy to hide the "fact" that the globe warming has stopped.
Seriously, the only reason we hear about these icebergs is due to people using fear to scare mankind into making costly measures to prevent some mythical disaster. Mankind has a remarkable ability to adapt to change. The creatures of this earth also adapt to change. If the conditions are not favorable, they die. Why after all these years of living on this planet do we think we have the ability to stop it? I have seen figures saying more will be spent to ATTEMPT to stop warming than will be spent adapting to the change. It is a SHAM we are trying to stop natural change and are AFRAID to adapt.
Get your Kicks on Route 66
Parent post is the first complete and succinct answer to "why sea level is not going to change" that I've seen. It looks like a good place to hang my question.
Background: As these 1,000+ year old ice shelves break away, the amount of icebergs calving from them is increasing as well. With the increase in icebergs comes an increase in high albedo reflective surface on the ocean. On first look, it would seem that this increase in surface area is quite a bit: break off a 10 meter wide by 100 meter long berg from an ice shelf that is 250 meter thick, and the berg that floats away is 100 meter wide by 250 meter long by 10 meter thick. The white surface area has increased 25 times. So a significant increase in reflective area. It seems possible that a free floating ice shelf the size of Connecticut could become a reflective surface the size of Pennsylvania before it melts away completely.
Has anyone done any modeling of the increasing density of Antarctic ice bergs, and whether the increase in albedo is sufficient to affect climate?
Because, to the general public, global warming is confusing. "They're saying we're making the world warmer, so how come I just saw on TV that we're having the coldest winter on record?"
Climate Change more accurately reflects that it's going out of whack in both directions.
This is largely false: things are not going out of whack in both directions, but rather just in one direction -- things are getting warmer. The IPCC clearly states that they expect an increase in the number of extreme warm events and a decrease in the number and severity of extreme cold events. The reality is that climate is still variable, with both warm and cold extremes, especially on a regional scale. A decrease in extreme cold events doesn't mean they won't happen, nor that they won't be very cold, just that they will be less frequent, and less likely to be as extremely cold. Also some rare regional issues (such as the theoretical potential for the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation sutting down bringing colder weather to Europe) may provide other sources of cold spells.
In general however, global warming is not expected to cause more cold spells, or colder extremes, but rather to descrease them.
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The weather is still the weather. What we're talking about is climate. You should've learned the difference before you left elementary school.
if we replant the forests, what are the terrible, terrible consequences?
While I support stopping deforestation and support planting more trees, science is all over the park as to whether planting trees will actually absorb more CO2 than what is emitted do to their planting. Some research shows more CO2 is emitted from planting trees than the trees will absorb. I think more research should be done.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?