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Chain Reaction Shattered Antarctica's Larson B Ice Shelf
New submitter Jim McNicholas writes "At the end of the summer of 2002, all 3000 lakes on the Larsen B ice shelf drained away in the space of a week. And then the 2,700-square-kilometre ice shelf, which was some 220 metres thick and might have existed for some 12,000 years, rapidly disintegrated into small icebergs. The draining of one lake on an ice shelf changes the stress field in nearby areas, causing a fracture circle to form around the lake."
if we decided to take action BEFORE we turn ourselves into Easter Island.
Ok, this happened some years ago. Is useful to predict what will happen maybe soon if there are big ice shelves in similar conditions? Are we walking in thin ice, and could happen from a week to the next that a very huge amount of water is added to the oceans? I don't think nothing of this scale will be enough to make the ocean level rise in a noticeable way, but if we are in that scenario will be pretty bad, maybe we can adapt to the oceans rising a meter in a whole century, but no that that kind of change is so fast.
Hey, 11 is better than 10 ... because it's 11.
If they report it immediately, then there are complaints that we don't have all the facts in. If it's reported after the facts are in, someone will point to an unsubstantiated guess that happened to be right, but beat Slashdot by years. The best is when Slashdot does both, and gets bashed for the initial report, the "delayed" report and the dupe.
Learn to love Alaska
Yes, eleven years ago we knew that it had collapsed, but we didn't know why it had collapsed. This new model might both explain why, and perhaps predict future ice shelf collapse.
13,000 years ago was the peak of the Holocene Optimum, when the Earth was warmer, glaciers smaller and the seas higher than today.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I agree. Statistics are lies and science is the enemy.
We need to fight this anti-capitalist socialist encroachment by eliminating all traces of science from our nation. We must ban science from the classroom from tomorrow. It's nothing less than child-abuse to expose innocent young minds to science. Next all military and other government funding of any projects in any way science related must be cut off immediately! Finally we should impose an additional tax burden on any company spending share-holders money on science related R&D. Make them see sense!
Only in this way can we stop icebergs from melting and save the world from communism. Listen to common sense, you know it's RIGHT!
No, it wasn't "the same so-called scientists," it was a couple of guys who were out of the mainstream, although it got some sensationalist play in the mainstream media. Even back then, the consensus favored warming due to CO2 release, although there was a lot more uncertainty about how much. Anybody who cares about facts rather than propaganda can easily verify this for themselves--the original scientific literature of the time is available in any major university library and much of it, or at least the abstracts, is available online.
They probably did notice it was a volcano
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-CO2-levels-from-the-volcano-at-Mauna-Loa.html
>But how about gas from the volcano? It is true that volcanoes blow out CO2 from time to time and that this can interfere with the readings. Most of the time, though, the prevailing winds blow the volcanic gasses away from the observatory. But when the winds do sometimes blow from active vents towards the observatory, the influence from the volcano is obvious on the normally consistent records and any dubious readings can be easily spotted and edited out (Ryan, 1995).
or this one
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/
>Most of the time, the observatory experiences “baseline” conditions and measures clean air which has been over the Pacific Ocean for days or weeks. We know this because the CO2 analyzer usually gives a very steady reading which varies by less than 3/10 of a part per million (ppm) from hour to hour. These are the conditions we use to calculate the monthly averages that go into the famous 50-year graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
We only detect volcanic CO2 from the Mauna Loa summit late at night at times when the regional winds are light and southerly. Under these conditions, a temperature inversion forms above the ground, and the volcanic emissions are trapped near the surface and travel down our side of the mountain slope. When the volcanic emissions arrive at the observatory, the CO2 analyzer readings increase by several parts per million, and the measured amounts become highly variable for periods of several minutes to a few hours. In the last decade, this has occurred on about 15% of nights between midnight and 6 a.m.
If you follow either link there is a graph showing data from other sites and Mauna Loa's readings perfectly align with them.
Think about this another way... if the results were skewed by the volcano it could be fairly easily proven and that scientist would get a lot of publicity. It is not for want of trying. But the fact is that the effects are known and accounted for and in the second link you can see someone actually studying the CO2 outgassing of the volcano.
There are many thousands of scientist around the world studying this topic. If there were big holes in the theory then the denier community would make sure that people knew about it. But there is not, their responses are mostly wrapped in ignorance of the science.
And the science is not all built on one single data point (eg atmospheric temperatures) but instead a wealth of data, all of which supports that CO2 is rising, that human activity is the major contributor and that there are effects on the climate.
They're not reporting the fact that Larsen B broke up because it was well reported at the time. I saw pictures. This post is reporting the results of a just published study of why it broke up as it did.
Yea science, seems slashdot comments are far too concerned with opinions and politics instead of science, facts, and, well evidence. Which, btw, this is actually big chunk of.
Oh good God! Is that all you've got? It's not like CO2 hasn't been measured at 1000's of other sites around the world including land sites, ships, balloons and aircraft and they all show the same thing as Mauna Loa, that CO2 is increasing. There may be some that still peak out below 400 this year but at the rate of increase in 2 or 3 years they will all be reading above 400 permanently.
there is no such thing as man made "climate change" (they had to change the name since the warming wasn't happening).
No, "climate change" has been around since at least 1970 as shown in an October 1970 paper by George Benton titled "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change"
Here we go again. Tell me then, what's your own personal definition of science that's better than the one the scientists and the dictionary uses?
There was a major report on the topic sent to President Johnson.
OK, somebody fill me in, here...
3,000 "lakes" on an ice shelf that they state was 2700km^2?
That's a little over a thousand square miles. That's about the land area of Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is.
3,000 "lakes?" Lolwut? You mean "ponds?" Perhaps "puddles?"
Somebody convince me that I should be runnin' to the hills, because I'm just not feelin' it, here...
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
OK. It doesn't sound like you're trolling, so I'll give a more useful post this time:
Check out this site. It has some really good material and references about the science behind this stuff.
You might also find this interview with one of the key scientists interesting.
I don't profess to be a climate change guru, but this stuff looks reasonably legit to me.
No confusion. Antarctic sea ice is growing, due to increased calving. There is some increase in land ice due to increased moisture. Normally the centre of Antarctica is a very dry place. The increased moisture is from the warming of the oceans, the same process which is increasing the calving. Of course, denier sites focus on the increase sea ice, saying that is a good thing, and the increase in snowing, also saying that is a good thing. They conveniently ignore the fact that these are bad things, not good and that overall the antarctic is losing ice. A triumph of spin over science.
Almost everyone here says that Slashdot was so much better ten years ago. Now, the editors listened.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Conclusory, political, non-factual statements included in this article. I have lost all respect for Nature.
>. Then they DELETE THOSE RECORDS. If they wanted to get evidence of increased CO2, according to your model they would leave those in.
They chose to delete 15% of the readings.
They could have used to same explanation to delete 12% or 18% and ended up with any result they wanted. That is, from what they said, they chose to delete only the ones that were WAY over the top, but leave in the ones that were "only" 30% higher than average. That doesn't inspire confidence.
> Their readings are consistent with other monitoring stations.
I've seen the Mauna Lua estimate cited many times. I've never seen a consistent reading from any other station cited. Do you have a citation for that? Preferably a sensor that's not inside the smokestack of a Chinese foundry?
Hey professor, did you know that for any curve you can always find a section short enough to approximate a straight line? In the 1600's some maths geniuses built a whole branch of maths from that 'trick' and called it calculus.
Also did you know the best estimates for sea level rise come with rather large error bars which IIRC range from about 20cm to 800cm by the year 2100. The reason for the large error bars is that people who have spent their lives studying this have much less certainty about the shape of the curve than you do. That cautious approach by the "experts" is genuine skeptcisim, fought out in the journals as it should be. Picking a figure at either end of the range and representing it as the "most likely scenario" is simply dishonest.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Using the term denier in a scientific debate demonstrates you have no understanding whatsoever how science works.
This is not a scientific debate. This is slashdot.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Who needs facts when we can engage in massive hyperbole? Obama's nothing special. He ain't great. He's failed to change things that needed to change since Bush. A lot of the stuff you're complaining about is simply a continuation of existing policies or slight expansion. I'm not happy about it, but let's not pretend that he's some sort of Hitler, seizing power and single-handedly changing the shape and function of our government. Hardly. Get over yourself.
The Democrats passed the ACA bill without any Republican help or input.
Really, then why was it practically a carbon copy of prior Republican plans, and functionally identical to the infamous Romneycare?
They rammed it through congress with Nancy Pelosi famously stating, " we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."
Your misrepresentation here discredits you. Perhaps you should learn what she really said, which was about how so many lies and misrepresentations had been told about the bill that the only way America would find out what was actually in it would be for it to be passed.
Oh wait, that narrative isn't the one you want to put forward, is it?
There was absolutely no compromise for the Republicans to accept. The Democrats passed the exact bill they wanted because they had control of both houses of congress and the White House.
Really? Then where's the public option Democrats wanted? Sorry, but they passed the exact bill Republicans wanted, Republicans just didn't want to admit it, so they pretended to oppose it, and still make big shows of worthless repeal votes.
the watered it down and then refused to vote on that they agreed to. It only goes to show that you should not bother negotiating with people like you, since you are inherently dishonest.
That's because Republicans are just like Lucy with her football. Don't know why Democrats keep playing that game. They keep expecting a different outcome, just like Charlie Brown.
They discarded 15% of the days because they clearly didn't fit. Why would they include some clearly anomalous readings, or exclude some clearly normal readings? And what would happen even if they included them? The graph would get noisier, but the trend would be the same. (*)
Look at the graphs:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-co2-record/
It's pretty easy to see which days are affected by volcanic CO2 increases.
These periods of elevated and variable CO2 levels are so different from the typical measurements that is easy to remove them from the final data set using a simple mathematical “filter.”
But you think there is an amazing conspiracy. This tells us more about what's going on in your head than what's going on in the atmosphere.
((*) Note that the readings are only discarded in the sense that they are not included in this series, they don't actualy throw the readings away - the "discarded" readings have been used for other research, for example into how volcanic C02 mixes with the atmosphere).
Watch this Heartland Institute video