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City-Sized Ice Shelf Breaks Free Of Antarctica
LeadSongDog writes "Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite is showing that the Antarctic's Pine Island ice shelf has calved a 'berg of 720 square kilometres, 'the size of Hamburg.' Angelika Humbert says 'The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level. Its "bed" tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable and will start to slide.' The article extrapolates that 'If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 meters.' Goodbye Florida.
I knew those 569 acres of land on the Arizona/California border would gain some value. Just didn't think it would happen so soon. Anyone want to buy my new ocean-front property?
sudo make me a sandwich
Dooomed we are all doooom.
Dooooooomed!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
>> The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level.
Umm.. isn't it impossible to have land that isn't deeper than sea level?
...hello beach front property in Alabama!
I live 40m above sea level. Bite my sweaty, chapped ###.
Good old Walt might finally get his due... I can't wait.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture
The ice we skate is getting pretty thin
The water's getting warm so you might as well swim
My world's on fire how about yours
That's the way I like it and I never get bored
Could somebody translate that into Chicago-units? Here in the US we're having trouble visualizing this.
Now isn't this how Sitchin theorized the Great Flood occurred? Well I guess in his books it was the pull of visiting planet that caused the ice sheet to slide into the Atlantic--but same result...
Darn metric system! How many Libraries of Congress is that equivalent to?
I propose we swiftly adopt the "Hamburg" as a new unit of measurement.
The Swedish people that make the ice hotel can turn this into a vacation resort!
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
A 3m rise in sea level is significant, but will hardly wipe out Florida or California. Check your map before you start building that new condo.
the land ice's land water is deeper than....wait...above or not as deep....fuck.
Quick! Everyone! Go buy a hybrid car! THEY WILL SAVE US ALL!
Either Jesus will come back and end everything before climate change makes a difference, or God will never let us hose His perfect creation.
The trouble is, there are folks in Congress who believe this and set policy based on it...
When he said "the size of Hamburg" he might've meant "the size of hamburger" for example.
Maybe that's what happened here?
Was there a bloop or a train?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Every year we get at least one or two pieces of ice breaking from the main shield. Happens at both poles. It's normal.
And every year the article ends with some kind of fatalistic "IF blah blah blah we are DOOOMED!"
Puhlease... We have worse things to worry about than fantasy threats.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
...on my lovely home at the base of the Farralon hills, my farmland on the banks of the Sacramento river in what you now call San Pablo Bay, and my Kangaroo hunting grounds that are all covered with fish. 15,000 years it's been. I'm beginning to think they won't pay.
Thankfully the fine folks over at xkcd pointed the way to the solution yesterday: http://what-if.xkcd.com/53/
All we need is a portal to... anywhere not in Earths gravitational influence I guess, and we'll be set!
Where the hell is the *west* antarctic ??? Well, west of east antarctic obviously. Stil...
Quick! Don't change a thing! Since no one thing will save us all, don't do anything!!!
Wahoo, the ocean temperatures will surely cool off ;) Ahhh balance...
The oppressive regime of Antarctica has long been opressing its constituents.
The world celebrates the ice shelf's newly found freedom, and hopes this will pave the way to democracy in the entire region. When asked about what the ice shelf plans to do with its newly found freedom, it humbly replied "just going to drift a few kms that way, hopefully leading the way for many others to follow."
When asked for comment, the visibly agitated Penguin Brotherhood declined to comment beyond blaming the west-sponsored Carbon Revolution.
Let me guess, Democrat.
A tiny chunk of ice (relative to the size of the world) breaks off Antarctica and we're all doomed!
It's not as though tiny chunks of ice have been breaking off Antarctica ever since it first froze, or that most of Antarctica is cooling.
which is they they renamed it 'climate change'.
Does this convince any of you cretins that there is no such thing as 'global warming' and that CO2 has nothing to do with it anyway?
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/07/macquarie-university-sabotages-exiles-blackbans-strands-and-abandons-murry-salby/
A piece of ice breaks off, it flows to a warmer area. 10% of the ice is above the water surface, 90% is below. It dissolves. This makes it's volume _smaller_ -- by the 10% that was above the water surface. So why say goodbye to Florida?
Goodbye Florida.
if you're trying to imply some sort of value by comparing an ice shelf to florida, you may be mistaken to find the ice shelf greatly outvalues florida in the opinion of quite a number of americans.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Why are you making fun of NASA?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
its been pretty dry there the last decade, except for this year
the lake is full and lots of water in the reservoir for drinking water from the spring snow melts
They don't measure things in meters in Florida. Therefore, they should be safe!
lots of games being rained out this year
more water in the atmosphere will play havoc with their crazy 162 game schedule
How many Detroits is that equal to?
1. Tell everyone in Florida that 3.3 meters of water is coming
2. Allow the person who understands what 3.3 meters of water means to move to wherever they want
3. Celebrate
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
nothing to see or get worried about! Earth has been doing this types of things off and on for the last 4 billion years. Pay not attention to our little 200 years of industrial productions!
The snow birds are particularly dumb. Almost Mass dumb. Like you say they make the rednecks look like Einsteins.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
he predicted sea levels would rise around the turn of the 21st century and that the coastal areas of the southeast US would be underwater etc
Always wanted water front property
Jaxinabox
of either the iceberg, or the city of Hamburg, and could you add a banana for scale?
Nothing of value would be lost if Florida suddenly was underwater permanetly. Other then a bunch of old folks who were probably near death anyway, brain dead party people aka animals, and just a bunch of ignorant and stupid people that make the rednecks in the southern usa look like einstein's in comparison.
My irony meter pegged at 11 with "einstein's."
Either Jesus will come back and end everything before climate change makes a difference, or God will never let us hose His perfect creation.
The trouble is, there are folks in Congress who believe this and set policy based on it...
Maybe it's just time to build Noah's Ark II.
Also known as the /b/ Ark.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Smells like fearmongering.
Posting to undo a bad mod.
You are not the customer.
You say that like it's a bad thing
It was short for Exxon-Mobile... hence all the oil washing up on shore. :)
What we really need is some barges to tow the iceberg to our parched deserts. Where is Brewster when we need him?
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/the-many-failures-and-few-successes-of-zany-iceberg-towing-schemes/243364/
Of course, they would probably blame it on Obama's weather machines. And not their own hot air.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
And if all the natural gas in the earth were to spontaneously combust, we would all be incinerated.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
There's 4 billion+ years of Earth's history and continental shelf movement.
So you are saying the ice shelves are speeding and melting more ice into the ocean than before the last 4 billion years+ ?
This is the whole point of parent and "Fantasy Threats". Just because the ego of humanity needs to be nourished and make us feel we are special, we as a species that we know about are a drop in the bucket compared to the overall picture of "normal" in the geological makeup and movement and environment of the earth. This kind of 100-200 year thinking is very dangerous.
And yet you were modded insightful...
I used to live in Sea Bright NJ, which is a barrier peninsula community consisting of a bunch of sand, a sea wall, and some bridges and roads connecting it to the mainland. 200 years ago, the Sandy Hook end of it was an island, and it seems to want to become an island again, though the Army Corps of Engineers periodically pours another $10m of cement onto the sea wall to tell the tides to stop.
I knew I was renting the place I lived; some of my neighbors thought that they actually owned something. I lived on what passed for high ground, about 3 feet above river level. Downtown would occasionally flood during the winter. If the sea level rises much at all, the place is doomed.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Here is what Florida (and the rest of the World) would look like if the sea level rose:
http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml
Who's worked out the relative energy costs of towing an ice shelf vs. doing desalinization?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And nothing of value would be lost. Except perhaps the Florida Fark tag.
Weird physics at play here.
Ice floats because it is less dense than water. I ice melts and becomes water. A floating object displaces it's mass in water.
Are any of the above statements not true?
So if a floating ice shelf floats off and melts turning into water, it will only become the volume of water it was displacing.
Only if it was not floating and slid into the sea would it have added volume to the sea. There is no sea rise unless ice that is NOT floating goes into the sea displacing additional water. Ice already displacing water by floating will not rise sea levels by melting.
Home experiment. Fill a glass with ice to the rim. Fill with water to the rim so the ice floats above the rim. Many who do not know the above principals will swear the melting ice will overflow the glass. In reality the ice melts and turns to water so melted ice of the same weight as the floating ice now occupies the space in the glass that used to contain ice. The level does not rise except for some thermal expansion of warming water and condensed water from the air if the humidity is at a higher dewpoint than the melting temperature of water.
The truth shall set you free!
Home experiment:
Take an 10 ice cubes 1 inch thick and place them on a sloped board 1/2" under the surface of the water. Now push them into the water and notice the level rise.
The article is talking about how this sheet is resting on the bottom, hence it's not floating and isn't yet fully accounted for in the current sea level.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
...have beach-front properties in many (till now) desirable places around the world. When the water starts coming up under their back fences it will certainly get their attention, more so than when some third world country floods and thousands die.
Ice has a density of only 9/10 of the water. That is why ice floats on water. You might know the expression: "only the tip if the iceberg". It means that there is 9 times more iceberg under the water level than above. When ice becomes water its volume increases by 10%. Hence the sea level rises.
What if we could somehow pick this gigantic iceberg up and dump it in the middle of the sahara?
How long would it take to melt?
What effect would it have on the local climate and wildlife?
Would it create a new river or lake? How long would that river / lake last before it all evaporated? Would the changes to the local climate and flora be enough to renew the water supply indefinitely?
Quick, someone call xkcd.
Hey, if as an American I have to hide my wang, it's only fair that America does too.
The NSA, which knows all and sees all, saw this coming.
using some of the stats on Wikipedia - Volume of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet = 2.2E12 m^3 - Rough equivalent volume as fresh water = 2E12 m^3 - Global Oceanic surface area = 3.6E14 m^2 - Rise in sea level if the water volume of WAIS were evenly distributed across the world's seas = 6 mm Yes, millimeters