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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!
It seems reasonable and responsible to avoid this being dragged into the AGW/CC debate one way or another if the scientists concerned are pretty sure that CC plays no significant part in this event, because lots of glacier/calving activity *has* been tied to CC, pro or anti.
So, it wouldn't be ignorance that would lead people to wonder. And thus forestalling inappropriate linkage is good.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
"...Intuitively, a block of ice breaking away from a bigger block of ice kinda makes me think there's melting, thus warming, involved..."
Why do you think that? This is the end of a GLACIER. Usually, glaciers move (slowly) downhill, until they reach warmer regions, where they melt. In this case the glacier moved downhill until it met the sea, upon which it floated out. After a fair bit has floated out, it will break off, due to flexing in the waves and tides. That is what has just happened, with a rather big bit...
Actually, if it is cold and snowy up in the mountains, the glaciers will move faster. And more bits will fall off the end of the glacier, more rapidly. This is often shot by journalists at the foot of the glacier, and used as 'confirmation of Global Warming'.....
I am amazed by the amazement of how ignorant people are about how ignorant other people are.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The end of the glacier is much thinner than the average antarctic ice sheet, and it's already floating in the water, still attached to the glacier. If it breaks off, it's not going to raise water levels any more.
Both of those are real things, one of them leads to the other.
No sig today...
When the GW and now CC crowd couldn't get enough money by begging, taxing, and creating tariffs to e.g. stop cutting the forests near the equator, they resorted to taking it in the form of carbon credits. It's all about stealing from future generations and making them serfs. The GW and CC crowd are just pawns and they don't even know it. Maybe they know it and they think they will be rewarded, sadly no.
Along the same lines have you been watching Greece lately? The plan is for the ESM(European Stability Mechanism) treaty to force countries to take out loans which they don't want and can't repay. Did you know the people that run the ESM are immune from prosecution, immune from taxes, immune under any court of law? Did you know the 2 people who are in line to be Prime Minister of Greece are already part of the ESM elites, banksters. With other upcoming elections around Europe, it will be interesting to see who gets put in power. Watch as more than half will be banksters and the ESM will be guaranteed.
You can clean up the world without taxes. Why do that when you can own it? Why do that when you can make everyone a serf?
Global warming, and local climate change. Past winters were actually warmer than usual, even though people remember them as cold. That's because they only look in their back yard, and not at the world as a whole.
Past winter, it was warm in South America, North Africa, the Middle East, and it was exceptionally warm in the Arctic. All averaged out over the whole world, including oceans, it was +0.43 degree Celsius warmer than the 1951-1980 baseline.
The winter of 2009-2010 was even warmer, at +0.68 deg C, even though the US and Europe were below average.
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.
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
you'll also end up with a warm Gin and Tonic, but who said you didn't have to suffer for science?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
You should look up the epic of iceberg B-15, for a time "the largest floating thing on the planet." It was one of the Icebergs that calved from the break up of the Ross Ice Shelf, and 11,000 km^2 – that's the size of Jamaica, Bylot, or Bloshevik Island, and larger than the "big island" of Hawai'i. It broke apart several times, bashed into the Drygalski Ice Tongue, gouging out an 8km^2 piece, and floated on, breaking into smaller pieces, though some of its remains are still wandering around the Antarctic Ocean.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/ESAAQTTHN6D_index_0.html [ESA]
The ESA has a great deal of imagery on it.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz