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A Crack in an Antarctic Ice Shelf Grew 17 Miles in the Last Two Months
Jugal K Patel, writing for the NYTimes: A rapidly advancing crack in Antarctica's fourth-largest ice shelf has scientists concerned that it is getting close to a full break. The rift has accelerated this year in an area already vulnerable to warming temperatures. Since December, the crack has grown by the length of about five football fields each day (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). The crack in Larsen C now reaches over 100 miles in length, and some parts of it are as wide as two miles. The tip of the rift is currently only about 20 miles from reaching the other end of the ice shelf. Once the crack reaches all the way across the ice shelf, the break will create one of the largest icebergs ever recorded, according to Project Midas, a research team that has been monitoring the rift since 2014. Because of the amount of stress the crack is placing on the remaining 20 miles of the shelf, the team expects the break soon.
Climate change is a fake invented by the chinese to hurt american workers. This report is fake news!
Trump is great!
It's a good thing that climate change is a load of bollocks according to the Trump administration. I'm sure a group of people as competent as the ones that are around Trump know what they're talking about. I mean, otherwise, we might have to be worried.
(THIS IS SARCASM)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Obligatory XKCD
Nobody gives a crap about some crack in the ice.
It's all just filming for a commercial guys, nothing to worry about.
So a chunk of ice falls into the ocean. It'll cool the ocean a bit. I though you wanted it to be colder. Make up your damned minds!
This is the best news I've read all day.
only 1442 days left before Trump leaves office
Tell your mother to pull her pants back up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
Scientists actually don't believe this particular instance to be caused by climate change. So, if people could read up a bit and post something thoughtful instead of having a knee jerk anti-Trump comment, that would be awesome.
We're gonna have to move our f***** research base.
I wonder how epic of a splash that's gonna make? I'll have to invest in a surfboard so that I can travel the world. Assuming, of course, that this doesn't cause a ginormous tsunami that wipes out all the coastal areas in the southern hemisphere.
Tell me, please, what is so concerning about it? Is there an imminent threat to life? Is a break going to kill a bunch of people? I mean, ice sheets form, and then they break. Snow falls, and then it melts. Rain falls, and then it runs down the watershed into a body of water. The sun rises, and then it sets.
We don't hear a lot of concern from scientists about these other things that are similarly natural events.
Get the facts right. This was a storey 3 weeks ago and 3 weeks ago the crack had 20Km to go, now this Slashdot storey is effectly tells us that the crack now has 20miles to go, so in theroy then the crack has healed.
Crack kills
It was 18 degrees in Georgia this month, 18 degrees! global warming LOL
Everyone is always so down on Global Warming. Why doesn't anyone ever look on the bright side of things? After all, once the icecaps and glaciers all melt, think of how much better the world will be:
1) Florida will be completely underwater. Not just Miami, but the "Florida Man" parts too.
2) So will large chunks of the Middle East (though admittedly they'll probably be a bit more worried about the heat than that).
3) Lots of currently undervalued inland property will become valuable beachfront areas. And without having to fire nuclear missiles at the San Andreas a la Superman!
4) Huge swathes of inhospitably cold Canadian land will be sunny, warm, and liveable, which will be good news for those of us fleeing the future American hellscape.
5) Make the Great Lakes Great Again - there will be a new Great Lake, right about where Montreal currently is. (French Canadians underwater? Bonus!)
Sure, there will be some downsides. The Netherlands will wind up completely underwater, though I'm sure they can build a wall to keep the North Sea out, since they've been doing it for decades already. Install some tidal power generation, and they can even make the North Sea pay for it, too!
OMG Gumbermints! Help us!
Why is there always global warming crap on slashdot? The debate should be on the weather channel.
Why the hell is this a problem or a concern and who gives a shit? Millions of years ago continents broke apart, volcanoes erupted, shit fell from the sky and killed everyone. It's a fucking planet that does it's planet shit. Shut the fuck up with your bullshit fear mongering already.
Scientists actually don't believe this particular instance to be caused by climate change. So, if people could read up a bit and post something thoughtful instead of having a knee jerk anti-Trump comment, that would be awesome.
Yes, the world is divided into 256m3 chunks and z-indexed into a quadtree... at the largest chunk size no interaction occurs with adjacent chunks, this is believed to be a bug introduced by an intersection test optimisation implemented by the creator. A nice side effect is that global warming doesn't affect other things around the world.
If we don't observe it, maybe it won't happen
Phil McCracken!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Interesting how Tornado Alley is comprised mostly of Red States.
Let's turn this bitch up to 11!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If the ice falls into the ocean and there's only Hellen Keller around, does it make a sound?
If the ice falls on Hellen Keller, does she make a sound?
I've figured out the real deal behind climate change, what they don't know you to know about it. Older civilizations knew about it. They worshiped Mother Earth. They knew she was alive. Global warming is just Mother Earth getting a little embarrassed as shes pulls down her pants to moon a comet that will soon be coming around again. Earth and the comet are good old buddies from long ago.
I fell in the shower this morning and now I have a crack in my butt.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
... north to flood the desert. It's something that has been talked about for decades. Now there's a opportunity!
"Earth changes, sometimes these charges are not great for the seething mass of 7 billion hairless apes that think they're all that. News at 11."
-Styopa
Time to invest in that soon to be beach front property...
You may have an ocean view, but it will still be Nevada.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's a normal yearly event. In fact it often grows larger than that.
Looks like a lot of volcanoes are there
Everyone knows real scientists use metric, not that fake Miles stuff that fake news uses.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I spend a lot of time in the ocean and this summer it has been following the trend started in 2010 of being really cold when outside temps are 42C.
I know people are about to say that it's because I'm getting older and more sensitive however I spend an average 2 hours body surfing which means, apart from my head, I am fully immersed, treading water the whole time. I've surfed the same break for years usually about 3-5 metres deep and that has always been the same for the last 20 years. I've been in the water during winter too when it is so cold it feels like your skin is burning, so I can tolerate really cold water. My entire body tells me it is wrong for the ocean to feel the way it does now.
Second thing is bushfires. I few years ago we had bushfires go through *rainforest* and burn the roots of the trees down to about a metre below the soil line. These rainforests have been unburnt for thousands of years and are not adapted to fire as opposed to normal bush, which is adapted to fire. This has nothing to do with my personal experience because soil strata core extracts tell us that is how the rainforest has behaved for a lot longer than we have been around for.
Some people out there like to use their personal experiences as a way to falsify and invalidate the work being done to warn us that our civilization has to mend it's way.
My personal experiences tell me something quite different. They tell me the world is changing in a profound way, the work of the climate scientists explain the experiences I've had and news like this makes me wonder what is coming next.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Have we officially moved on from Bush to blaming Trump for this stuff now? I can't keep up.
let the shit sorm begin
Let the Mad Max world begin! I have the chains and collars ready
"traditional" $100-$200 million? Traditional since when? Traditional since the 19th Century when CO2 was first recognized as a potential problem, or traditional since 1959 when it became clear that there was a global issue with rising CO2 levels? Or would that have been any time in the past two centuries when the fundamentals of atmospheric physics were being worked out?
You're arguing against AGW, by using a political argument. If you want to argue that AGW is not a serious concern then you need to do it in the language of science, not allege some sort of cabal. Roy Spencer is still getting up and delivering contrarian screeds to Congress and being lead author on the sections of the IPCC report related to his specialty -- it's not like the opposing voices aren't being heard. It's that they're not persuasive in the face of the evidence. If you don't like what the science says, do better science. This is, really and truly, a meritocracy, where reproducible results are all that matter. We can prove it, because the consensus was *against* CO2-induced warming until the 1950s, and then everyone changed their mind and no one was fired. Because we didn't have jackasses like you trying to inject politics into a scientific topic by insisting that the entire field is comprised of avaricious liars. Honestly, this is just you being intellectually lazy. Go and look up the evidence for AGW. Go read about radiative transfer equations, the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the atmospheric window, carbon 14 ratios, and all the rest. When you do, come back and tell us what you think is wrong with *that*, not some irrelevant horseshit about some conspiracy of white-haired professors. The basics of AGW were worked out in 1896, and they have been supported since then by thousands and thousands of people working in cooperation around the globe since that time. We respect your right to disagree with the science; the whole point of science is to argue about models of reality. The rules of this game are mandatory and not up for debate: if you arguing against science with something other than empirical evidence, you are fighting reality itself, and you will lose. Now, do you have some novel observations on the nature of CO2 that you would like to share with us?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
This is the best post I have read in the new year. Thank you for taking the time to write it. I'm afraid it will fall on the deaf ears and closed minds of the willfully ignorant. I've always wanted for those who screed against the science of climate change to have to post their financial stake in the status quo. The poster you responded to made a claim that scientists are financially vested in global warming science, but what are _his_ financial interests?
Problem solved!
If I'm a liar, prove it. It should be as obvious as 1+1, and I will not only admit my faults with good grace, but thank you honestly from my heart. I would shed every drop of blood I have for any small comfort about the fate of my homeland. Go ahead, comfort me. Tell me how despite seventy five billion tons of ice loss per year for the last thirty years, is a good thing. Tell me how happy I should be about the tundra melting. I want to believe. In all seriousness, I would be ecstatic if there was even the slightest bit of evidence that AGW might even be on the low end of the temperature projections. But go ahead and insult me. That's not evidence, but it's some kind of argument, right? I'll take your insults. You're welcome. Go ahead and destroy the place I grew up in too, and tell me exactly how bad it is. Fine. Okay. Neither of us really has control over that, and you may have sufficient hybris to have an opinion on how bad things are in the Arctic. But if you are going to venture into empiricism enough to suggest that the science of AGW is in any way inadequate, inaccurate, or exaggerated, prove it. Show any empirical evidence you think is remotely related. Your opinion that the world secretly works another way is not particularly interesting without observational evidence. For me, either I'm right, or I learn something and my homeland is saved. If you think there's some partisan leanings here, let me be the first to assure you that we almost certainly hold environmental activists in equal contempt. You are, however, alleging a distortion of science, and it's not like you're suggesting that there's a problem with using one error distribution model over another, you're suggesting that whatever part of this theory that you don't like is simply wrong. It may well be wrong, but the burden of proof is on you. So far you have supplied insults. I think that you should definitely continue to argue in such a way; I doubt anyone reading will be misinformed as to the relative merits of our positions.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Miles... Football fields...
The USA uses football fields to measure stuff, the rest of the world uses meter / kilometer. Who are you trying to reach by using miles, a few old people in the UK and Australia who still haven't gotten used to SI units?
We have glacier overlooks that were built in the latter half of the 20th Century, where the glaciers are no longer visible, having retreated over the horizon. The glacier nearest my house lost 20 cubic miles of ice in ten years. I have a difficult time imagining 20 cubic miles of ice, but it seems that both of us are left without an alternative. Across the state we've lost 75 billion tons of ice per year for the last thirty years. Winter temperature anomalies regularly exceed 10 degrees C, pretty much every year now. An average 10 degree C temperature change during the winter is a very different climatic zone, especially in Southcentral Alaska (Prince William Sound) where the temperatures would typically stay close to freezing for most of the winter. Some exceptional weather patterns in recent years (including this one) have seen temperature anomalies reaching 20 degrees C. Glaciers that survived the last Ice Age and the Holocene Optimum are gone. Fairbanks has doubled its frost-free days per year since 1900. The ice loss is primarily in the tidewater and lower alpine glaciers, in other words, the most visible and accessible glaciers. And do I really need to mention the ice caps? Alaska is, very obviously, melting like gangbusters. The temperature anomaly is mind-blowing. Also, generally speaking I believe the effects on the various forests in the state has not been good, with aggravated issues of spruce beetles and wildfires. And since it seems to be only a matter of time, we are also going to see widespread melting of permafrost, which is going to be Very Bad in many, many ways. Will that do to start?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Well, it's funny how you said that Congress needs to not spend as much money on climate science, and again, whatever reasoning you have for this continues to be elusive. I think I'm becoming less interested in it though.
Alaska has the fifth-smallest GSP in the United States (gross), and sixth-smallest per capita GSP. Sweden has 10x the GDP and much better GDP per capita. Wages are high, but expenses are even higher. In Anchorage, the cost of living is about a third higher than the median US, and rural Alaska is much more expensive. Like $10 for a gallon of milk expensive. I'm from rural Alaska, about 300 miles from Anchorage. I can't think of any reason to be more specific than that, but maybe you can think of something. Most people in Anchorage are pretty well off, but the smaller communities tend to be pretty dire. So that comparison is hard to sustain, and using it to draw inferences about me sounds dubious, and I don't see what a discussion of my qualities has to do with anything. But, of course, I am usually pretty happy to talk about myself.
Okay so let's wrap this up and score things. I think I scored higher on style and virtue signaling and won some popularity points, but most of my posts probably represent a near-total failure to engage any opposing viewpoint. Your precise viewpoint is still unclear, but the vague ad hominem drew some harsh responses. Also, if you do have a nuanced view of the world, you might want to be a bit more explicit about what that is, or stupid people may draw incorrect conclusions from the context of your argument. Trying to make any sort of argument about my character was, well, this seems to be a bit of a trap for you, and the insults aren't going to be kindly read by anyone. Overall, I think we both have some things to work on. I won't be offended if you don't share that opinion, however :) I do appreciate your responses, and I am sure that I will be interested to read more of your opinions in the future.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
That's over half a centimetre per second. That's pretty insane, and very scary.