Slashdot Mirror
100-Sq.-Mile Ice Island Breaks Off Greenland Glacier
suraj.sun sends word of a 100-sq.-mile (260-sq.-km) ice island that broke off of a Greenland glacier on Thursday. "The block of ice separated from the Petermann Glacier, on the north-west coast of Greenland. It is the largest Arctic iceberg to calve since 1962... The ice could become frozen in place over winter or escape into the waters between Greenland and Canada. ... [NASA satellite] images showed that Petermann Glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70-km-long (43-mile) floating ice shelf. There was enough fresh water locked up in the ice island to 'keep all US public tap water flowing for 120 days,' said Prof Muenchow." The Montreal Gazette has more details and implications for Canadian shipping and oil exploration, along with this telling detail: "the ice island’s thickness [is] more than 200 metres in some places... [or] half the height of the Empire State Building." The NY Times has a good satellite photo of the situation.
1. How can tiny amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere affect the global temperature ?
There is only 0.039% CO2. CO2 must then have some enormous heating mechanism.
Has this heating been confirmed in the lab and/or is there a physical explanation ?
2. The weather-forecasters doesn't seem to be able to predict how much rain there
will be in, say, 2 days, with high accuracy. Yet, they claim there will be 30% more rain in
30 years. Why is the accuracy higher for long-term forecasts ? The same goes for
temperature.
copy paste much?