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Antarctic Ice Bridge Finally Breaks Off
GreennMann writes "An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s. Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place. Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean."
Oh, and a few inches (or feet) of ocean won't bother me. I have no beach property, nor do I intend to. Last I checked, I'm about 950 feet above sea level..
From the FA: "While the break-up will have no direct impact on sea level because the ice is floating"....
Slowing your rate of approach works just as well as speeding up to overtake or bypass an object. Speaking from naval experience here...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
This is it the season that it recedes. Its winter down there and only moving more into winter. Also, this shelf has been there for centuries, and now the whole thing is going to come unhinged.
Not so much. Winter is just starting in the southern hemisphere. The equinox was March 20 so in Antarctica the sun only went down a few weeks ago.
The building of new ports takes years. They aren't something you can just knock up in a day.
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
I am a climate scientist. I've never been in politics and I've never sold anything (professional student here). I also think you're completely wrong. My experiences at the 2008 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union are that most (9/10) of the scientists I met agree with the IPCC report on abrupt climate change.
But you've made an even more fundamental mistake. Science isn't democratic-- it's about evidence. Open up the IPCC reports yourself and focus on what's really important, instead of trying to count how many people are on each side.
For example, Vostok ice core data confirms that for nearly half a million years, the climate has changed cyclically. But in all that time, the maximum CO2 concentration never went above 300 ppm. (It's hit higher levels millions of years ago, but that was a slow and gradual change. Plus the Earth was essentially a different planet back then, with a different solar luminosity and biosphere so comparisons across that much time are tricky.)
You're right to say that natural variations are evident in the data, but the most prominent cycles over geological time are governed by (among other effects) Milankovitch cycles which are caused by periodic variations in the earth's orbit.
But, CO2 concentrations are at 380 ppm today. That's a level it hasn't hit in the last half million years. If we're seeing natural variability alone, it's quite a coincidence that it occurs right when we started excavating fossil fuels to fuel a billion cars.
Plus, the Vostok data is a little difficult to analyze in this manner, but it seems like at Vostok the CO2 always increased 600 years AFTER the temperature started to increase. At least, that's the way it used to work. Right now, the CO2 concentration is at an unprecedented level but the temperature is barely above normal. Again, that suggests that we're not facing natural climate change, we're dealing with anthropogenic abrupt climate change.
Most estimates don't account for melting of continental Ice (Antarctic). That is because most expect the antarctic climate to be stable. The observed melting of Ice is worse than the estimates suggested by climate models.
This causes concern that the antarctic climate could be much more dynamic than we think.
A change in the climate of Antarctica could lead to large amounts of continental ice melting, which would lead to sea level rises much more than a couple of feet.
You laugh, but...
http://www.physorg.com/news5619.html
---linuxrocks123
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Con job and spin are the correct terms for that particular web site.
This is the second time this site has popped up in the last few days. It's run by one J. D'Aleo who is paid to do so by the "Science and Public Policy Institute", they are in turn backed by "Frontiers of Freedom" which is the lobbying brain child of this guy. They have a donate button on their site but their funding is otherwise obscured.
Older readers may recall the "Frontiers of Freedom" also backed the tabacoo industry in their anti-science campaign.
Disclaimer: I don't have anything against lobbyists or politicians until they pretend to be something they are not.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Lowest point in the Netherlands is 6.76m (just over 22 feet) below sea-level, near Nieuwerkerk-aan-de-IJssel.
The Antarctic as a whole is not cooling, but warming with the rest of the world, some data from some places showed it was cooling and of course this was expounded by denialists as proof that warming wasn't global.
see : http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/state-of-antarctica-red-or-blue
The Antarctic's ice is melting much less than the arctic because the antarctic gets a lot of it's coldness from it's altitude (mountains etc), whereas the arctic is just floating ice, and is also adjacent to more land and less water - water stabilises temperature - so this makes the arctic more sensitive to temperature changes. But the edge bits are melting.
I think the ice shelves breaking is more likely to be caused by sea level rise though. Where the sea level cracks the ice off from the land. Which shows the non linear nature of ice melting. We don't just get ice melting linearly with temperature increases, we can get whole chunks breaking off and floating away
(Disclaimer: I'm Australian, now living elsewhere) You don't really know what an SUV is, and I say this not to you in particular, but to the general populous. In Australia you've mostly only ever seen those big arsed SUV's on TV. Sure, you might think the huge 4x4 the MILF next door takes the kids to school in is massive, but really, it's a bitty little Toyota, and it is a fair chunk smaller than the obnoxious Fords, Hummers, and tricked out Escalades you get elsewhere in the world. Australian's never really got in to the whole truck as a car thing, most people still kick around in their limited edition factory mold holden or ford (just like everyone else.)
Other than this, I actually have nothing to add or take away from your post. Sorry.
You say you did research 3 years ago. Was it published or did the peer-review point out you missed the IPCC temprature reconstructions that have been generally accepted for about a decade now?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If an ice cube floating in a glass of water melts, the water will still be at the same level afterwards.
If a floating iceberg melts, it will add water to the oceans, causing the average water level to be the same.
However, there is still more water in motion, so the effect of the tide will probably be larger.
(Also, I was under the impression that the Antarctic ice wasn't floating? Or maybe this section was?)
No, that is the opposite of what I argue, rather. The argument of "Let's fix this climate change because we caused it," is one that is like saying "Let's just bail the water out by hand because we made the hole in the sub, never mind that the thing may start leaking later at a rate we can't bail." My argument is that we instead spend the money on bilge pumps so we can survive the leak.
What I mean is that if we indeed are the cause of this climate shift, and if we indeed can stop it, it still isn't worth it. Why? Because it'll happen at some point anyhow. The climate has never been static. At some point, we are going to have the world get hotter, no matter what we do. So, if that is a major problem, we need to be ready to deal with it, not trying to stop this one.
To keep with your ship idea, you don't avoid sinking on a ship by spending your energy making sure nobody causes a leak. You avoid sinking by making sure the ship can stay afloat, even if it does have a leak, no matter if that leak was caused by someone on the ship or a natural phenomena. You discover that in reality this is precisely the case: Boats have bilge pumps (how many depends on the size) to remove water from the bilge. There is no way to keep the boat 100% free of leaks, so you pump the water out when it accumulates.
Same idea here. Unless you have some suggestion as to how we can lock the climate in it's current state, remembering that it has always been in a state of flux, then we should be worrying about how we can survive the changes, not if we caused the present one.
and the seas will rise faster than the planning permission beuracracy can work its magic?
It isn't called a bureaucracy for nothing.
Just wait until we form a committee to look into the possibility of considering a tendering process for the production of the guidelines for selecting a committee to look into the possibility of constructing a sea port.
Hell, this could take CENTURIES!
I am not stubborn. I am right!
He was responding to a post that logically explored the consequences of a 10 to 20 foot increase in the sea level, if it happened immediately and we did nothing about it.
Sarcasm was appropriate.
Ice extent starts to grow/recede around the time of the equinox. March is always the low point for sea ice in the south, September is always the low point in the north. The high points are also marked by the equinox so that September is the high point in the south, March in the north.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No (obviously), but it would depend on how fast the water rises.
Besides just the pesky problem of the port, there's the infrastructure that goes with it.
For just one example, at 10', Manhattan would start looking like Venice. Tunnels, railways, and 3 major airports would become useless. There's a lot of infrastructure to rebuild elsewhere.
If you look around, a lot of airports and power plants are situated very close to sea level, on the waterfront. Airports use this for noise abatement (the planes can take off over the water to keep from annoying people). Nuclear plants require lots of sea water for cooling.
So, ports, sure they could be rebuilt. But have you ever watched what happens around the planning of new facilities? Years upon years of arguing points. People would argue about the environmental impact of the new facility, and the remains of the old facility.
I don't know what the thresholds are, but I'm sure once you reach a critical point (say 10'), more cities will have problems quicker. Say between 10' and 15', there could be not only one or two, but dozens of major coastal cities that would need to be rebuilt simultaneously.
Don't forget about fresh water reserves too. Water wells would start becoming contaminated with sea water too. You could rebuild the city near by, but can you restore their essential supplies like drinking water?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Total ignorance is rare but you seem to have pulled it off with that 'insightfull' post.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Including the endzones, 2,054,096 football fields. Excluding the endzones, 2,464,915.5 football fields.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Historical records for the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) show that it is particularly prone to rapid climate change--change that occurs in cycles of ~200 years and ~2500 years. By studying major transitions in plankton productivity in the western Antarctic, scientists have shown that "spectacular" ice-cover losses have happened many times in the past. In other words, the "unprecedented rapid loss of ice" from parts of Antarctica that global warming alarmists make so much of are a normal part of nature's cycles. What else would you expect during the peak of an interglacial warming period? This is from a paper titled "Recent Changes in Phytoplankton Communities Associated with Rapid Regional Climate Change Along the Western Antarctic Peninsula," by Martin Montes-Hugo, et al, in Science. For more see http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/melting-antarctic-ice-part-natural-cycle
Well, most gas usage experts show that driving ~65 MPH is the sweet spot for optimal MPG. It's much better then 80 MPH, or 20 MPH in stop and go traffic.
Given that wind resistance goes up as the square of your speed, and that rolling resistance is negligible at highway speeds, I am skeptical. Roughly, it takes 1.3 times the work (and 2.2 times the power) to cover a certain distance at 65mph than at 50mph. If drivetrains can be tuned to the tune of 30% just by fiddling with gearing, then cars would probably have more gears, or maybe CVTs. Also, this number is confirmed by my own very rough measurements in a few cars, when I actually have the discipline to drive 50mph over a long enough stretch of flat highway.
Of course, you stipulated "stop-and-go traffic" in which case a huge portion of your gasoline is used to heat up your brake rotors. Fair enough. But 65mph cannot possibly be a magic number given similar acceleration profiles.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."