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Cracks Signal Massive Iceberg Forming In Antarctica
Several readers have submitted news (as covered by an AFP article carried by the Sydney Morning Herald) that a massive iceberg is forming in the Antarctic. The rift in the PIne Island Glacier "is widening at a rate of two metres a day, said NASA project scientist Michael Studinger. When the ice breaks apart, it will produce an iceberg more than 880 square kilometres, said Mr Studinger, who is part of the US space agency's IceBridge project. But the process is not a result of global warming, he said." Also at the BBC.
Global warming isn't shrinking the icebergs, its creating new ones!
Will it move into warmer waters (and melt?)
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Does it bother anyone else that they had to say this? It's like doing a report on spring runoff and pointing out that it's not a result global warming. Are people really that ignorant of how natural processes work?
In recent years, satellite and airborne measurements have recorded a marked thinning of the PIG, which may be related to climate changes.
From The Syndey Morning Herald:
When the ice breaks apart, it will produce an iceberg more than 880 square kilometres, said Mr Studinger, who is part of the US space agency's IceBridge project. But the process is not a result of global warming, he said.
The BBC also conveniently did not include that last sentence from the source. I don't know what this tells you, but to me it appears as if the BBC intentionally wanted to scare its readers with global warming. Seems like the BBC is also illiterate and can't write properly (they write Nasa instead of NASA, yet PIG instead of Pig).
Someone explain it please, how is the Antarctic isolated from the rest of the globe?
3 days after reports in mainstream.
But that's not bad for a massive iceberg - Dennis Ritchie's death was reported 4 days late at /.
Winters are colder, hurricanes are stronger, tornadoes are more frequent, floods are bigger, etc., etc.
And because that's what the _real_ scientists call it.
It drives me crazy when articles have a close up picture but don't show the context of even where something is happening
For the video:
http://media.smh.com.au/news/world-news/antarctic-glacier-to-produce-massive-iceberg-2754850.html
you're welcome
Apparently many people are not aware that snow melts every spring. That was my bad.
On this image of antartic elevation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AntarcticBedrock.jpg you can see alot of what we think of the continent of Antartica would actually be open ocean if the ice wasn't there. (As it's below sea level.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Bipolar antarctica sad about recent news.
yeah, it's the penguins and the polar bears, they've been lighting fires.
As one of the readers who mentioned this in a submission: http://video.stv.tv/bc/ITN_041111_worldICEBERG04/?redirect=no is a good short video story version on this, including some graphics on ice flows and pictures of the crack. Quite well done. Not this isn't a GW/CC event, but it is a chance to see the formation of a crack in progress, which we do not always catch. All icebergs start with this cracking process, and icebergs form in warm and cold periods of history. Understanding the ice dynamics of how flows of build up turn into stress is the ice equivalent of studying plate tectonics: the science of large solid plates bending, cracking, and then failing.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
What would happen if something that size hit a country or continent at say, 1 meter per second? I'm not sure of the magnitude of that kind of catastrophe at all.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
You're an off topic asshole either way.
Shouldn't it be measured in cubic kilometers?
I thought their utopia was owning an unregistered coal mine in China? No regulations and you can call the Army in to drag away any workers that give you trouble.
Da da da da da da ... boom boom boom boom boom boom ... ... "splash". Que the orchestra followed by sceen of crying children then cut to the sceen of towering smokestacks billowing (water vapor) carbon dioxide ... blah blah blah ... ad nauseam.
A new IPCC round is about to begin, this time in South Africa, so the drums are beating at an ever increasingly furious pace to match the pondiferously rising declarations of the Anthrocentrismics as their mystics dance around the center-stage pillor fire of cleansing propganda and spectacle.
Old woman in the balcony turns and asks, "How much we pay for this?" ... a good laugh well payed for indeed.
Old man in the balcony turns and replies, "about one Obama."
The whole peanut gallery then erupts in laughter and delight
))
Now maybe we can get to the bottom of this planet.
I smoke rocks.
There are many regions around the world, particularly in India and Africa that are desperate for fresh water. Why not send a tanker up there with a legion of laborers to harvest these icebergs? Instead of just letting it melt into the ocean.
People may not know this, but before modern refrigeration, workers used to manually harvest big blocks of ice out of lakes with saws. Then your local Ice-guy would walk up to the side of your house, open a little door and stick a smaller block of ice through your wall, and into your icebox. This was how you kept food relatively cool.
Cracks have been seen as far north as central Oklahoma! lol
Fata viam invenient.
nature is fighting back, creating an army of icebergs to sink all our ships!
A Libertarian Utopia on an 880 square kilometer ice sheet?
In theory, it sounds like a great idea -- which works out perfectly for Libertarians as "in theory," they have great ideas as well.
Unfortunately, there is no middle class of Penguins there for Polar Bears to work to death, nor an infrastructure created by intensive "wealth stealing" socialist programs to run into the ground with neglect to cover for the Low Tax theory of progress.
Of course, they've probably got DECADES to go before the iceberg breaks up -- so they've got THAT long not to refreeze ice or invest in a new iceberg, so if their only goal is staying afloat with "FREE MARKET FORCES" -- they can take credit for air pockets in ice, I suppose.
As long as this results in a lot of Libertarian pioneers not using up our air talking bitching about who "earns" stuff while the float away on a block of ice -- It's at least a worthy endeavor.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
You have to PAY the Army somehow to drag away the lazy workers who don't like the money YOU say that they earned. Later, the Military MIGHT say they deserve more money because beating skulls in is hard work.
Only the people who benefit, can actually BE Libertarians in this scenario, so I suppose, it fits in perfectly with a free market dictatorship like China.
but the lack of pollution controls, means that there is nobody down-wind, and you cannot benefit from screwing up the environment -- because it is already screwed.
>> Face it; China LOOKS like a Libertarian utopia, but it's already BEEN a Libertarian utopia and there is nothing left to squeeze. The USA is actually a better Libertarian Utopia, because we still have a few suckers who can lower wages, we still have some clean water supplies that can get privatized, and GE can still can up clean air and sell you that while they fill the rest with smog.
We need to be more grateful for the USA for all the great things it has -- until of course, it is "utopia'd" into the ground.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Now you're getting it - warlords instead of peasants or slaves. Paying one way or another doesn't matter - it would be a wet dream for Koch et al if it was possible to bribe the Army to take action on their behalf just like a Chinese mine owner. Those pushing this form of anarchy think they can end up as the warlords if they think it through at all.
To an extent the USA started as a lot of attempts at Utopia but it universally sucked if you were somebody that didn't fit into a paticular model of Utopia or they needed somebody to do the manual labour. Instead of staying with that something better happened which inspired the democracy in my country and many others - which is one reason I'm pissed off with anti-democratic movements like the anarchists that wrap themselves in a flag and call themselves Libertarians to hide what they really are.
However I should be writing about icebergs instead because they are so unbelievably cool. Snow that dropped around a million or more years ago and thousands of kilometres away is floating out to sea in a huge chunk with enough water in it to supply a small country for a while.
Greetings, pedant anon.
My 'glass of water' actually has water in it.
Orly. Per, well, you:
Ok, got an empty shot glass from the shelf. Put an ice cube in it. Water level is 0. [...] Ice melts [...] There was 0 water, now there is water!
Okay, I'm sorry I have to explain this to you, but it should be rather straightforward. You need to choose one set of semantics or the other if you wish to avoid making a fool of yourself. Unfortunately, you fail no matter which definition you might choose:
1) If you claim that ice is not "water" in this context, then you can't claim you satisfied the experimental conditions of "Put an ice cube in a small glass of water, e.g. a shot glass.". No one is going to agree with you that an empty glass, with "0 water", constitutes the "small glass of water" prescribed as the experimental starting conditions. In other words, this would be your "HAHAHA, experiment doesn't work if I don't follow the directions, look how stupid the OP is. DERP!" play
2) If you claim that ice *is* "water" in this context, then you can't claim the "water level" rose before calculating the equivalent liquid water level of the volume of ice in the glass in order to mark it (I mean, it's water, right? ...you would have to account for it), which would result in the experiment playing out exactly as the OP insinuated. This would be your "I'm attempting to twist semantics but tripped over myself and ended up faceplanting into the ground & pissing my pants in front of everyone." play
In conclusion, you fail at pedantry. Further fail for doubling-down and acting smugly at the same time.
Obligatory XKCD, it's not just for breakfast anymore.
Everything goes South as you get older.
Who will be the first to claim it as their own and tow it to Saudi Arabia and sell it as fresh water?