Iceberg the Size of Delaware, Among Biggest Ever Recorded, Snaps Off Antarctica (marketwatch.com)

A giant iceberg about the size of Delaware that had been under scientists' watch has broken off from an ice shelf on the Antarctica Peninsula and is now adrift in the Weddell Sea. From a report: The 2,200 square-mile, trillion metric-ton section of the Larsen C ice shelf "calved" off sometime between Monday and Wednesday, a team of researchers at Swansea University's Project MIDAS has reported, citing imaging from NASA's Aqua MODIS satellite instrument. Scientists have tracked the crack for more than a decade and they warned in June that the section was "hanging by a thread." Its break, from Antarctica's fourth-largest ice shelf, changes the border shape of the peninsula forever even though the remaining ice shelf will continue to grow. "The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict," said professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University, lead investigator of the MIDAS project. "It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments. Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters."

Comments

Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

As the claciers melt and sea levels rise, coastal cities around the world will be flooded, and arctic wastelands will spring to life.

Russia is an arctic nation, which will benefit greatly from global sea levels. Most of America's business and culture is near the sea, and will be devastated by sea level rise.

Naturally, Donald Trump is doing every thing that he can to raise sea levels and drown Americans in order to please his master Vladimir Putin.

Veterans who live near a coast - Thank you for your service. Please drown so that Vladimir Putin can make Russia great again.

Re:Good for Russia

[bobbied]

Wow... First post is a global warming, the world is going to die, the sky if falling, Trump is killing us, "WOLF!" post...

Mr. Little, is that you? Chicken?

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a true fucking coward would submit this anonymously with no name on it. Stand up for what you write, coward!

Re:Good for Russia

[Archangel Michael]

The logic is, if it can be tied to AGW, it is and is "Climate Change". If it doesn't fit AGW, it is "weather".

And if it is something we humans haven't seen before in recorded history, it is AGW, but only if it fits the narrative. Record Snow falls, never before seen before ... not so much. And Recorded history being ... about 200 years or so.

This is why it is hard to have rational discussions on the merits of AGW, causes and effects. The Greening Of Africa is another great example ignored. http://news.nationalgeographic...

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about Antarctica - it will become an earthly paradise as global warming takes effect. Of course, we'll probably have to fight a few wars over who gets to control it, but when that's done we can start building condos and strip malls. Bottom line? Global Warming will be GOOD for the human race.

Re:Good for Russia

[Oswald McWeany]

The Greening Of Africa is another great example ignored. http://news.nationalgeographic...

Whereas, if the greening has continued over the decade since that article was published, that is a great thing for people of the Sahara. Redeployment of water resources around the globe is in general a bad thing. Population centers have grown where water is available. To take water from places where people rely on it and redistribute it to areas where population is sparse will result in a net negative impact for humanity.

It would be great if what was happening in the Sahara was completely separate to all the droughts and flooding that have increased worldwide .

Re:Good for Russia

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And this is further evidence of the wisdom of AGW terraforming to push back further the most recent ice age, which actually will kill people, not mildly inconvenience their robots in 100-300 years.

This partial sarcasm awaits inevitable downmod.

Re:Good for Russia

[Archangel Michael]

Guess what, humans move when climate changes. See ... "Great Land Bridge" for example. Because we have built huge cities on coasts to house large populations is OUR human problem. We'll pick up and move when the time comes. And LA and Miami will become great coral reefs teeming with life. You can see bad or good in just about everything ;)

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how many billions of tons of methane hydrate & greenhouse gasses are trapped in that ice?

Better hope those 'benefits' go to Africa too

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, you bad old anonamoose coward

Re:Good for Russia

[mspohr]

Worst drought in Africa since 1945.
http://www.africanews.com/2017...
Worst among the countries are Somalia, South Sudan, and Nigeria in West Africa who are part of the more than 20 million people estimated by the United Nations to be facing severe famine and starvation in the world.

Re:Good for Russia

[Oswald McWeany]

Guess what, humans move when climate changes. See ... "Great Land Bridge" for example. Because we have built huge cities on coasts to house large populations is OUR human problem. We'll pick up and move when the time comes. And LA and Miami will become great coral reefs teeming with life. You can see bad or good in just about everything ;)

I've no doubt humans WILL move. How many die first though before the people move? Stubborn folk stay behind in Eritrea and Ethiopia where there is little food. Places where crops will grow will change too... but how many lost harvests in Nebraska before people realize British Columbia is a better bread basket now

I will concur that LA and Miami becoming reefs will be a step forwards however. Perhaps we can start public works to push them in the ocean now, instead of relying on mother nature?

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

If slashdot was here during the last ice age, I'm sure there would be a post with a thousand comments about how this long treasured and historic path to the Americas has now disappeared due to global warming.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, AC!

Re:Good for Russia

[Archangel Michael]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Good for Russia

[AC-x]

No, it's hard to have a have rational discussions on the merits of AGW when politicians toss snowballs around the senate as proof that climate change isn't happening.

The 5 hottest years on record have all been since 2010. 11 of the 12 hottest years have been since 2000.

Local cold snaps don't disprove that, can you point to any researchers who have claimed that climate change will prevent local cold snaps? The average temperatures speak for themselves, expect to boneheads and oil shills.

Don't want to hear it? Then you'll have to prove the work of a vast number of scientists working for a vast number institutes in a vast number of countries all wrong.

Oh and in case anyone feels the need to claim scientists are just protecting their research grants, the only reason this research is needed is because politicians are pushing back on the findings. If the world had acted on carbon emissions in the 80s like it did on CFCs then there wouldn't be the need for this research would there?

Re:Good for Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

Wow... First post is a global warming, the world is going to die, the sky if falling, Trump is killing us, "WOLF!" post...

Mr. Little, is that you? Chicken?

No, it isn't Mister Whoosh. Nothing more amusing than making your science denying, Trump loving FoxNews points on someone who is being sarcastic and agrees with your worldview. But thanks for playing, tovarish.

Re:Good for Russia

[Gravis Zero]

The logic is, if it can be tied to AGW, it is and is "Climate Change". If it doesn't fit AGW, it is "weather".

The difference between weather and climate is time. What we know is the oceans are getting warmer and that's a change in climate. However, one of the outcomes of climate change is more extreme weather patterns. It's climate change regardless if it's good weather or bad weather because weather is a local phenomenon.

This is why it is hard to have rational discussions on the merits of AGW, causes and effects. The Greening Of Africa is another great example ignored.

Getting particular predictions incorrect does not diminish the point that the climate is changing. What we do know for sure is that the oceans are getting warmer at an alarming rate.

Re:Good for Russia

[rgbatduke]

So, let's tow the iceberg to the Sahara, and use it to irrigate and cool the desert, and in the process bind up much of the water in an extension of water cycle to lots of surface area that currently does not participate. No? Just because it will cost a trillion dollars or so? When did costs become an important part of the climate narrative?

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately we have seen this happen before, so don't get your knickers in a knot. Everywhere, locked ice calfs. From gerrnland to the South Pole. So, an ice shelf calfed? World ended? The seas didn't rise! California didn't submerge, why? It was floating on the southern seas. Now it may present a hazard to shipping, but it should be studied as to now what happens. What does it create? What happens to the now uncovered space, that sounds cooler then inciting fear. Learning.

Re:Good for Russia

[XXongo]

As the glaciers melt and sea levels rise, coastal cities around the world will be flooded, and arctic wastelands will spring to life.Russia is an arctic nation, which will benefit greatly from global sea levels. Most of America's business and culture is near the sea, and will be devastated by sea level rise.

Not sure why this is rated "troll". Actually, global warming probably will be good for Russia. At least, will be good for large parts of Russia.

Global warming isn't bad for everybody. It will be bad for places close to the equator, and places with cities on or near the ocean. But that's not true of most of Russia.

The comment seem rather accurate.

(the second part, sarcasm about Putin and Trump, is not, however.)

Re:Good for Russia

[fyngyrz]

Stubborn folk stay behind in Eritrea and Ethiopia where there is little food.

Poor folk stay behind in Eritrea and Ethiopia where there is little food.

FTFY.

</truth>

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that an episode of the Andy Griffith space junkman series "Salvage 1"?

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

That occurrence was due to natural, and relatively slow processes. Our modern climate change is at a breakneck pace (geologically speaking) and caused by a bunch of mostly hairless apes marveling at their ability to "do stuff" by lighting massive amounts of ancient plant/animal remains on fire in semi-controlled ways.

Re:Good for Russia

[thegarbz]

Guess what, humans move when climate changes

No. Humans will move when wars fought over resource redistribution finally pushes them into moving.

Re:Good for Russia

[Ol Olsoc]

The logic is, if it can be tied to AGW, it is and is "Climate Change". If it doesn't fit AGW, it is "weather".

Well, yeah. Not certain the point that you are trying to make. These scientists you hate have said they can't tie this to global warming.

And if it is something we humans haven't seen before in recorded history, it is AGW, but only if it fits the narrative.

As noted before, the narrative here is a strawman made up in your head, so that you can slay it with your alternate facts.

Here is what a team member spokesman had to say

“Although this is a natural event, and we’re not aware of any link to human-induced climate change, this puts the ice shelf in a very vulnerable position. This is the furthest back that the ice front has been in recorded history. We’re going to be watching very carefully for signs that the rest of the shelf is becoming unstable.”

And that is the narrative directly from the horses mouth. No awareness of any link.

Which in no way shape or form fits with your strawman narrative.

Record Snow falls, never before seen before ... not so much. And Recorded history being ... about 200 years or so.

Snowfalls can be indicative of warming. There is an area in the US known as the "Snow Belt" It egts a lot of snow every year. And it is further south than where I live. Snow requires moisture and freezing temperatures, but not too cold. In the Antarctic there really isn't that much snowfall. Too cold. What falls doesn't melt much, os it seems like a lot. But warm moist air from the gulf heading north and hitting cold air form the arctic can make for some yuge snowstorms. And the Snow Belt has crept northward. Philadelphis and Washington have been hammered in recent years. The idea that many science deniers have that GW is going to be tropical teas everywhere with no snow is simply wrong. Seasons still happen, and most places that got cold and snnow before still will. Thewarmer areas will just move north some - or south some depending on which side of the equator they are on. Moving on - So you believe that we can only make climate and temperature data for about 200 years or so? This is another illustration of exactly why science deniers are not getting the picture, it is possible you are ignorant of all of the dating methods that allow us to develop climate data.

Ice cores, land features, geological records - chemistry comes into play here as well, certain minerals form only under certain conditions. These are correlated with other measurements.

Think of it this way. If you do not believe in the data that shows what climate was like before 200 years ago, you cannot believe in global cooling or warming ever happened either. Many of the situations that determined the climate of ages past is linked to atmospheric composition, solar activity, and mineral composition It is not possible to believe that any ice ages or warm ages ever occurred because you reject the data that also shows that warming happened. You don't get to pick and choose. Back to the iceberg. Icebergs calve all the time. Any one is only linked to itself. It is a function of ice and gravity as snow accumulates and compacts itself into ice, it will move if it can. Downhill, just like an extremely slow motion avalanche. Eventually it will break off after enough of it extends out into the ocean. Trying to tie that to AGW is very difficult.

But that being true, it does not negate the so called energy retention effects of the greenhouse gases, or the energy rejection effects of the anti-greenhouse gases. 800 some Terawatts of energy retention via radiative forcing.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

There were relatively easy alternatives to CFCs. Not so much for carbon emissions. Other than just not existing.

Re:Good for Russia

[angel'o'sphere]

They might need less fuel for heating .... and that was it.
Vegetation, harvest etc. ist mostly bound by the shortness of the summer, not by temperature.
Plenty of roads are perma frost crushed rock roads. In muddy times they are hard to use. So the longer they stay muddy instead of freezing over again, the longer transportation is more difficult/slow.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Z9UnWOJNY

Re:Good for Russia

[Tulsa_Time]

The 5 hottest years on record have all been since 2010. 11 of the 12 hottest years have been since 2000.

Only if you accept adjusted temperature readings..

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

Sea level rise due to climate change is 1-2 ft per century, and there are physical limits to how much faster ice masses can melt. It would take many centuries for cities to get flooded. Of course, advanced and wealthy places like the Netherlands function perfectly fine even below sea level. Fossil fuels will be replaced for economic reasons within a few decades without any government intervention or carbon taxes or Paris accords. So, no risk of flooding.

Re:Good for Russia

[Archangel Michael]

Humans migrate all the time, for reasons other than war. Resources become scarce, humans will war until the demand changes. The rich and powerful will always control the weak and poor, and it doesn't matter what political philosophy you embrace, this is true of all of them.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be great if you are in Chad, but rainfall has fallen in Ethiopia.

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

Somalia's drought doesn't seem unusual: http://blog.chg.ucsb.edu/?p=14...

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't so much being stubborn as not being allowed to move to another country as the residents of the other country don't want them moving in. Talking about a land bridge from a time when population density was incredibly low and villages, let alone nation states, did not exist is nonsensical.

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. The Sahara, for example, started out as mostly fertile and gradually turned to desert, and as it did, populations declined, people became poorer, wars were fought, and people tried to move away. Marginal and poor populations live in marginal and poor areas. And over time, those marginal and poor areas shift around. It seems like hubris to think that all of a sudden, we can stop this from happening.

Re:Good for Russia

[Oswald McWeany]

I'll have to look back, but I think I read somewhere the Iceberg weighs a trillion tons. You're not moving a lump of ice that big. You can perhaps harvest some of the water by breaking it into chunks and transporting it back in tankers, but there's no ship on earth that could tow a lump of ice that big.

Re:Good for Russia

[R3d M3rcury]

However, one of the possible outcomes of climate change is more extreme weather patterns.

I don't mean to come across as pedantic, but the issue with "climate change" is that we don't know what will happen.

Will we see more powerful storms? Will we see storms where we don't normally? Will we see more storms that are less powerful? Will we see fewer storms that are more powerful? Will we see stronger winds? More moisture?

And what does that mean to businesses? I want to build a factory near this river. I build it based on the local building codes which are based on the climate. Now, the snow that used to fall further north now falls as a mixture of snow and rain, meaning that the river is seeing more flood conditions than it used to. Suddenly, my factory is getting flooded every year.

Things that used to be somewhat predictable suddenly aren't. That makes things like insurance companies nervous--If I'm going to paying to clean up your factory after a flood, I'm basing your premiums on how often the area has flooded in the past. Now those numbers don't mean anything.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

No one said it wasn't a hard problem.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

The 5 hottest years on record have all been since 2010. 11 of the 12 hottest years have been since 2000.

Only if you accept adjusted temperature readings..

Temperature readings have to be adjusted.

In my home town, the main weather station originally was built north of the city, in open field. As the city grew, it reached that area, and that old weather station now is surrounded by buildings, including an industrial zone. I.e., it got warmer there because it no longer is outside of the city.

Then, they moved main weather station to an open field south of the city. Temperature readings thus dropped by a few degrees. No, my home town did not suddenly get colder. The weather station was moved.

Re:Good for Russia

[XXongo]

Vegetation, harvest etc. ist mostly bound by the shortness of the summer, not by temperature.

No. The "shortness of summer" is bounded by temperature, not sunlight-- basically, when the thaws occurs, and temperatures are above freezing overnight. This will happen earlier, and it will stay thawed later.

As for sunlight, after the spring equinox Russia gets more sunlight than more equatorial places, not less.

Re:Good for Russia

[kwiecmmm]

This Glacier was over the water so there will not be any water rise from this. Actually there should be a very minute contraction of sea level from this glacier (Greenland and other glacier losses will probably offset this anyways so there will most likely be no noticeable sea level change).

Also next winter and probably the one after that in Antarctica, there will be more sea ice than normal because this amount of water melting will lower the salinity of the water and allow it to freeze at a slightly higher temperature. But of course people will point at this and say that it is proof that there is no global warming.

The next question is how long it will take for the next section of the Larsen ice shelf to fall.

Re:Good for Russia

[rgbatduke]

I WAS kidding, right? Although SF (e.g. Oath of Fealty, Niven and Pournelle) speculates on towing medium sized icebergs for just this purpose (providing fresh water in a water-scarce zone). But yeah, an iceberg the size of Delaware, or whatever metaphor for a 50x40 mile chunk of area many meters thick you would prefer to use, would be rather expensive to move.

What will be interesting will be if it floats north. It's big enough to significantly cool a good sized chunk of sea surface as it melts, at a guess. This, in turn, might affect many things in good and/or bad ways. For example, interrupting or diverting the thermohaline circulation would be "interesting"...

Re:Good for Russia

[qeveren]

People will move, and then they'll discover that where they want to move to already has people, and those people won't make way. Now what?

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't want to hear it? Then you'll have to prove the work of a vast number of scientists working for a vast number institutes in a vast number of countries all wrong.
 
Not really because those people are largely powerless. So the "boneheads and oil shills" can keep moving right along.
 
The problem with the "Meh God! Teh Wayters is RISING!!!!" movement is that it consistently depends on reporting worse case scenarios of bad climate models to push their agenda. What does this, in turn, does is that it leaves Joe Sixpack to scoff because the flood waters that were predicted decades ago still haven't been produced. The leaves the AGW crowd looking like the crazy street preacher who shouts about the end of the world happening this Saturday night.
 
Instead of cleaning up their own back yards and going for the low hanging fruit they instead insist on beating Joe and his family upside the head with his copy of The Inconvenient Truth. Every try to get a 90 year old bible thumping grandmother to go your way on science? It's kind of like that. Totally pointless.
 
People who really believe this must move the world in their green direction by actually buying and living green. Stop breeding, stop eating meat, buy a smaller home. buy local, buy green energy, stop taking cruises and jetting off on family vacations. The businesses that support this model will grow and more people will catch on. Waiting for everyone to get on board is like waiting for everyone to get on the lifeboats of the Titanic.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Human recorded history is statistically meaningless to the climate history of the Earth. Go wave your silly protest signs somewhere else.

Re: Good for Russia

[mspohr]

This fits in with the recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences:
Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...
Humans will be part of this sixth mass extinction. (At least some of them.)

News report here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you say things using logic?!

Climate change denier!

Re:Good for Russia

[sexconker]

Population centers have grown where water is available.

Los Angeles county has a population of 10 million. (Plus all the undocumented residents, since the census merely asks households to report them and no one is dumb enough to report themselves or their family.)

Re:Good for Russia

[sexconker]

How many die first though before the people move?

Who cares? / Not enough.

Re:Good for Russia

[pjt33]

Not just SF: also UAE.

Re:Good for Russia

[thegarbz]

Humans migrate all the time, for reasons other than war. Resources become scarce, humans will war until the demand changes. The rich and powerful will always control the weak and poor, and it doesn't matter what political philosophy you embrace, this is true of all of them.

People migrate in small groups. Humans don't mass migrate without the shit really hitting the fan, and even if they did who would welcome them?

Re:Good for Russia

[Hognoxious]

Guess what, humans move when climate changes.

Guess what, when humans move en masse to places where there are already humans it tends to be a less than harmonious affair.

Re: Good for Russia

[thegarbz]

You're not sure at what I'm getting at and then provided a perfect example of how immobile we actually are in large groups?

Re:Good for Russia

[Hognoxious]

Humans migrate all the time, for reasons other than war.

We aren't talking about the Jones family from Cardiff moving to Australia. We're talking about the entire population of a country upping sticks and walking into another country.

On that sort of scale it generally doesn't end well.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealand is having its coldest winter in 5 years. Greenland just recorded the lowest summertime temperature ever of -33C.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you accept adjusted temperature readings..

I believe in AGW. I believe in science. I understand why dataset corrections need to be done occasionally. Sometimes a location was wooded and is no longer. Sometimes the measuring equipment type was changed decades ago and the data needs to be calibrated.

However, there has been eight major revisions and countless smaller ones. All but one I have studied academically has pushed past temperatures down and current temperatures up. All but one has adjusted the data to match predictions of what the data was and is supposed to be based on math that did not exist before the late 1990's and has been continually refined since.

This gives me pause.

The odds of this happening naturally is incredibly slim. Impossibly so. If we did not have a number of AGW models predicting temperatures to be a certain way those data adjustments would not have happened. No one was doing them broadly before the hockeystick paper and the adjusted data just so happens to fit the current model revision.

Under any other circumstance, would you trust numbers that were adjusted seven out of eight times in a way that matched a theoretical model only after the model was created? Why would anyone believe that?

Re:Good for Russia

[Hognoxious]

For example, interrupting or diverting the thermohaline circulation would be "interesting"...

Happen I'd best put another jumper on, then. Last time it were proper parky.

Re:Good for Russia

[hawkfish]

The 5 hottest years on record have all been since 2010. 11 of the 12 hottest years have been since 2000.

Only if you accept adjusted temperature readings..

That would explain why some skeptics at Berkeley didn't accept them, made their own measurements and got the same results.

Re: Good for Russia

[CrybabiesArePeople]

Lol

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

Where did I say people were "immobile"? My point is exactly the opposite: people are highly mobile. When a neighborhood or region deteriorates, the well-off people move out and the poor people move in. You misinterpret that as "people are immobile, and the deterioration is hurting them", when the correct interpretation is "people are highly mobile, and populations rapidly move to places that correspond to their socioeconomic status".

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

Paul Ehrlich has been predicting doom since the 1960's, based on faulty assumptions, faulty data, and bad science. This is no different. Here, he is starting from faulty assumptions about "mass extinctions". A mass extinction requires an extinction of 75% of all species; even if all vertebrates disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, it wouldn't even be close to a "mass extinction".

Re:Good for Russia

[Gravis Zero]

However, one of the possible outcomes of climate change is more extreme weather patterns.

I don't mean to come across as pedantic, but the issue with "climate change" is that we don't know what will happen.

Regardless of how it changes, what we do know is that a rapid change in the climate will have devastating ecological consequences. These changes are happening over the period of decades instead of thousands of years meaning that organisms have a much lower probability of adapting through evolution. What this means is that mass extinctions are going to take places and it will have a serious impact on humanity.

Will we see more powerful storms? Will we see storms where we don't normally? Will we see more storms that are less powerful? Will we see fewer storms that are more powerful? Will we see stronger winds? More moisture?

Those all sound more extreme to me, so...

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's not true of most of Russia.

Siberia is so warm frozen viruses are thawing and infecting people
Slow-motion wrecks: how thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities

Sure, not many people live up north, but anthrax isn't really something you want to play around with.

Re:Good for Russia

[I'm New Around Here]

Sweden.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone who assumes they will be in the LAST 25% to die/be killed.

Guess what, when the end times come, we won't have rocks and knives vs your rifle. We'll just set fire to the grass and trees when the wind is blowing towards you. Peppers tend to have a lot of canned goods, and those are viable even after the fire.

Oh, and we'll have guns too. And be prepared and able to pick you off as you exit the burning building. Now reply with a good proper "Christian" value of turning the other cheek...

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have rational discussions with idiots who aren't willing to at least consider the idea that the scientific consensus has some basis. Talking quantum computing to a giraffe, might make you feel good, but nothing will come of it.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine big bucket of water. Imagine freezing that bucket. It expands a bit, so the ice is now above the rim. Now pile on a few trays of ice cubes on top of that expanded ice.

We are not worried about the rim breaking off and falling over the edge. We are worried that without the rim, the ice cubes on top of it will go over the edge.

The rim in this case is the glacier over the water, which floats and is neutral to current water depths. If it breaks off, all the other ice on land, not in water, not currently contributing to sea level rise which is currently held behind that glacier, can not fall in to the sea and raise the water levels.

Basically, if you are old, buy that beach house. If you are young, maybe buy inland a bit at about 20' up.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

The south pole gets 24 hours a day of sunlight in summer. We should grow corn, wheat and rice there by your logic.

Re: Good for Russia

[mspohr]

More from the paper:
"The strong focus on species extinctions, a critical aspect of the contemporary pulse of biological extinction, leads to a common misimpression that Earth’s biota is not immediately threatened, just slowly entering an episode of major biodiversity loss. This view overlooks the current trends of population declines and extinctions. Using a sample of 27,600 terrestrial vertebrate species, and a more detailed analysis of 177 mammal species, we show the extremely high degree of population decay in vertebrates, even in common “species of low concern.” Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization. This “biological annihilation” underlines the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event."

"The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction (indicative of population shrinkage and/or population extinctions according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature) using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species. We find that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is extremely high—even in “species of low concern.” In our sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851/27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which we have detailed data, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species have experienced severe population declines (>80% range shrinkage). Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Different numbers but the same results?

No wonder everything is evidence for Global Warming.

It's unfalsifiable.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, when the end times come, we won't have rocks and knives vs your rifle. We'll just set fire to the grass and trees when the wind is blowing towards you. Peppers tend to have a lot of canned goods, and those are viable even after the fire.

Why would I be a prepper? I am saying there is no mass extinction and no problem. You are the Ehrlich-worshiping loony who thinks the world is coming to an end and has violent fantasies about burning people up alive or shooting them.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that another main component of sea level rise is the expansion of the oceans as they get warmer. The water rising makes things like storm surges and periodic flooding much worse, so the economic impact can become relevant sooner than some people may expect.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have reading comprehension problems?

Re:Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Different numbers but the same results?

No. Their own measurements, their own (presumably) methodology, and the same results. Big difference. Doesn't fit your agenda, of course, but there you have it.

No wonder everything is evidence for Global Warming.

Not everything is evidence for Global Warming. Your straw-man is showing.

It's unfalsifiable.

No, it isn't. You, however, appear to be a moron with an agenda.

Re:Good for Russia

[AC-x]

As I said, "Local cold snaps don't disprove that, can you point to any researchers who have claimed that climate change will prevent local cold snaps? The average temperatures speak for themselves, expect to boneheads and oil shills."

Re:Good for Russia

[AC-x]

So different data sets show the same trend, yet somehow that casts doubt on global warming? No evidence that it is false != unfalsifiable.

Re: Good for Russia

[KGIII]

I've actually made a semi-formal study of this subject. I did so mostly because I wanted to understand the models. I modeled traffic. I'm a mathematician and not a climate scientist.

However...

Some of the models put us into a feedback loop and we may already be beyond the tipping point. That point could even be within the next few decades, if not already behind us. I am unqualified to say much more than the science is more rigorous than many claim. It appears sound, given my understanding. I hold no opinions, or offer none, on the quality of the specific model outputs.

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

Reaching a tipping point doesn't make the ice caps melt a lot faster. But given that the world was 15C / 27F warmer at the PETM than today and managed to cool by 20C / 36F all on its own, I find any such talk of tipping points to be implausible. The feedback loops in those models are largely based on hypothetical effects; I trust actual, observed climate history more. Even if there were a tipping point and it would return the world permanently to something like Eocene conditions, obsrved climate history would suggest that there would be far more arable and habitable land than today.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Your very quote days that they looked at vertebrates. You can't say anything about mass extinctions by looking at vertebrates species because vertebrates are such a small fraction of all species. The paper is bogus.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Glaciation cycles are rapid by geologic standards. Or climate warmed by 6C in 10000 years.

The impact of fossil fuels is still minor compared to that. And the maximum possible impact of fossil fuels is no more than to return us to the Eocene, hardly a bad place to be at.

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

So youre offering your children then to be culled to solve the issue?

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

In trying to find an insult suitable, the only thing that comes to mind is: You're a bad person.

Re:Good for Russia

[scrout]

"The 5 hottest years on record" Methinks you need to widen your dataset. Local Tmins are actually dropping. Google some Holocene temperature graphs and enjoy that you live in a warm period, because it ain't going to last.

Re:Good for Russia

[angel'o'sphere]

The "shortness of summer" is bounded by temperature, not sunlight
Wrong.

This will happen earlier, and it will stay thawed later.
How many days? 1or 2? Before there is not enough sun, it won't thaw. Plain and simple. And that is depending on the length of the day, not on a magic temperature that comes from somewhere. (where should it come from? Hu? Polar night is polar night and everything is frozen ... )

Re: Good for Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically you're probably a useless web dev or similar that will the first to go if shit hits the fan.

Re: Good for Russia

[KGIII]

They aare largely hypothetical and I've taken a look at the methods - they appear sound, assuming the hypotheses' are correct. (Which is, I admit, a large assumption.) The idea of a tipping point is that it will mean that the effects are going to happen and that there's no longer anything we can do to stop them. That doesn't, of course, mean that they'll continue forever - not at all. The planet is pretty good at finding an equilibrium, given enough time.

I hold no (or ofter no) opinion on the validity of their output - but their modeling methods appear sound. The science appears very sound. Curiously enough, I also learned that the vast majority of papers aren't projecting anything close to what the doomsayers are claiming. Not long ago, I had someone trying to tel me that the scientific consensus was that the oceans were going to rise 53' by 2050...

No, no they aren't. It's just not gonna happen. I was bemused when they decided that I was a Trump supporter, AGW denier, and were happy that I was retired.To deserve those invectives, I told them they were wrong (politely) and showed them a bunch of citations. I even offered to run models for them, though they're pretty slow here. I don't have access to big iron anymore.

Re: Good for Russia

[doctorvo]

They aare largely hypothetical and I've taken a look at the methods - they appear sound, assuming the hypotheses' are correct. (Which is, I admit, a large assumption.)

There is one hypothesis that is very unlikely to be correct, namely that they have accounted for all positive and negative feedback loops. If they have missed just one significant negative feedback loop, none of their predictions are correct. A second problem with the talk of tipping points is that it depends on time scales. We just might be able to emit enough carbon to take us back to the Pliocene, that is, no polar ice caps, within a few thousand years. That new state might last a few million years before the ice caps reappear and we return to the current climate. Is that a "tipping point"? (To be sure, I consider that unlikely. Also, I suspect that a Pliocene climate would be preferable to our current climate.)

I don't have access to big iron anymore.

You can buy a 10 TFLOP desktop machine for less than a thousand dollars. That's the speed of a top-end supercomputer of 10 years ago, when a lot of that climate modeling was done.

Re:Good for Russia

[Tulsa_Time]

They almost never adjust downward....

Re:Good for Russia

[bobbied]

The 5 hottest years on record have all been since 2010. 11 of the 12 hottest years have been since 2000.

Only if you accept adjusted temperature readings..

The key here is "on record". How log have we actually been keeping good records of temperatures world wide? Not even 100 years. Oh some places we have good records for hundreds of years, but other places we don't have good records going back just 50 years. How can you figure the climate is changing with only 100 years of "recorded" history? We cannot even figure out how fast the climate changes from that record with any assurance, unless the natural cycles are under 50 years (1/2 the time domain) and then it's really an educated guess based on the assumption that the natural cycles don't have components which are more than 1/2 the observed time domain.

Then there is all the "normalization" of the data you must do to factor out observation errors, urban sprawl, equipment changes and station location changes. This involves a pile of statistics, number crunching involving taking averages, looking at standard deviations and a pile of assumptions that are used to "clean up" the data to remove all the various errors that might or might not be there. Finally, once you have combed though the data set and corrected any anomalies you think exist in it, you can do your climate "study", write your report and earn your grant money.

I have two old sayings for you...

Figures never lie, but liars do figure....

Lies, dam lies, and Statistics...

Which do you think applies here?

It's Time...

[TechyImmigrant]

To build a new, unsinkable, super cruise liner ship. At least four chimneys will be required.

Re:It's Time...

[thegreatbob]

Now that's a titanic proposition!

Re:It's Time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well at least three real and one fake chimney. Just like last time.

Re:It's Time...

[Tablizer]

It shall be powered by coal, and defended with horses and bayonets! Bigly jobs for #RealAmericans!

Re:It's Time...

[AC-x]

The Chinese have boats with 4 chimneys, we must not allow a chimney gap!

Re:It's Time...

[kfh227]

Powered by human feces to make it a green ship!

Re:It's Time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes, yes, We can certainly install one to act as a sort of Fox-"News" of the bunch.

Nothin' like a little propaganda to try to keep up appearances, eh?

Re:It's Time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the Titanic only had three, one was just for show. If we upgrade it to four, it should be unsinkable this time.

Captcha: applaud

Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I firstly read about this in a Spanish newspaper claiming that it was bigger than Madrid. Afterwards, I found out in Twitter that it was bigger than London. And now I know that it is as big as Delaware! And the worst part is that I don't even have a reasonably accurate idea about how big it is! LOL.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[freeze128]

The future of Antarctica is mobile.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[thegreatbob]

Does it run Windows phone?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Scarred Intellect]

• Well that's because it's obviously growing!
• Area of Madrid: 233.3 mi
• Area of London: 607 mi
• Area of Delaware: 2,491 mi
• (Source: Google)

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[thegreatbob]

Saw one come through the firehose that described it as twice the size of Luxembourg, and the weight at "trillion-tonne"...

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Tablizer]

I'll clarify it for you: it's 17,242.0571 Libraries of Congress.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[avandesande]

how many library of congresses would fit in it

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[mspohr]

The Guardian said it was the size of Luxembourg so that should clear things up.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[avandesande]

According to phys.org--

It created an iceberg of about 5,800 square kilometres (2,200 square miles), with a volume twice that of Lake Erie, one of the North American Great Lakes.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-...

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Scarred Intellect]

I do believe all of them would fit.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Thanks for the much-clearer-at-least-to-me version.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Anyone can easily understand Luxembourg-based area measurements! Why including in the summary that Delaware gibberish? LOL.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Much clearer. Thanks.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

I firstly read about this in a Spanish newspaper claiming that it was bigger than Madrid. Afterwards, I found out in Twitter that it was bigger than London. And now I know that it is as big as Delaware! And the worst part is that I don't even have a reasonably accurate idea about how big it is! LOL.

Well, according to The Reg online standards converter it's 274.2458 MilliWales. As these researchers are from Swansea University, Wales, you'd think they would know that. It's also 0.1866 the size of Belgium or 1.4 million football pitches.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Muros]

I firstly read about this in a Spanish newspaper claiming that it was bigger than Madrid. Afterwards, I found out in Twitter that it was bigger than London. And now I know that it is as big as Delaware! And the worst part is that I don't even have a reasonably accurate idea about how big it is! LOL.

I too have been introduced to new measurements today. Apparently, 1 Galway + 1 Delaware = 0.5 Wales!

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[pastafazou]

You would be incorrect. This is a solid iceberg, so there's no room to fit any libraries inside it. You could, however, place them on top.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

I firstly read about this in a Spanish newspaper claiming that it was bigger than Madrid. Afterwards, I found out in Twitter that it was bigger than London. And now I know that it is as big as Delaware! And the worst part is that I don't even have a reasonably accurate idea about how big it is! LOL.

Everybody knows that Delaware is the standard unit of comparison for stuff that is 'damn big'. Any bigger and you should use Texas.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

don't even know if they mean trillion as in the european million^3 or as in the american million^2. Makes a bit of a difference.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

"Percentage of maximum velocity of sheep in a vacuum" as unit of velocity. LOL.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The Talking Head on the German news said "seven times the size of Berlin!"

Hmmm . . . I wonder if there is a mathematical limit as to how many descriptions in relation to size to something else can exist. In other words, we could know its size in relation to something else, but we still have no idea how big it actually is . . .

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[sinij]

I know, if only they reported using consistent units - football fields.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Oswald McWeany]

Damn Americans using non-standard "Delaware" units of measure instead of a more civilized "Luxembourg" unit of measure.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Oswald McWeany]

One could hollow out the Iceberg and then be able to place Libraries of Congress inside.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Well that's because it's obviously growing!

No. It looks like it is growing slightly and slowly, but then reverses and shrinks.

It's breathing! It's alive. It inhales fresh air . . . and exhales Greenedhouses Gases.

This is why we need to kill it with Mechani-Kong as soon as he boots up!

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[number6x]

So everything is good.

1. 1) This report says it 2,200 Sq. Miles, roughly the size of Delaware. OK: 2,200 is on the same order as 2,491.

1. 2) OP said they read a report that it is bigger than Madrid. OK: 2,200 is bigger than 233.3.

1. 3) OP said they read a report that it is bigger than London. OK: 2,200 is bigger than 607.

This seems to all agree, and I'm not sure where the confusion is.

Shouldn't we be reporting in acres or square furlongs?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[omnichad]

Read closer. The size of Delaware is bigger than London and bigger than Madrid. The iceberg is the size of Delaware and bigger than London and bigger than Madrid.

The Delaware article at least gave something relatively close in size. The iceberg is also larger than a tube of toothpaste, which also isn't relevant or particularly helpful.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[omnichad]

Luxembourg is the size of Delaware now?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that converted to Volkswagens? I've been one too many NASA press briefings, and that's my primary go-to for measuring things now.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[almitydave]

It's 1.9674e+9 square Smoots

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Oswald McWeany]

No. The old-imperial measurement of "Delaware" is roughly 2 and a half times the size of the more useful internationally recognized metric measurement of "Luxembourg".

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Thud457]

Confusion like this is why we should all standardize on Libraries of Congress for all dimensional units. 1 unit, 47 uses.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I see. Here, we say bigger than the Iberian Peninsula or France rather than 1 Texas.

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[that this is not und]

Indeed, the failed French Revolution that established the Metric system and reset the year count over to zero should be the rule.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

American football or rest of the world football?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I don't think that any serious reporter is allowed to be so inaccurate! Do you mean European, American or Australian football?

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[that this is not und]

Is that original or super beetle?

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Baron_Yam]

> reset the year count over to zero

We should currently count ourselves as in the year 12017... because human civilization is more or less 10K years old (a nice common zero point for all cultures that have moved beyond the hunter-gatherer stage), and tweaking it so the last 4 digits match the Gregorian makes for easy compatibility with most of the world.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8.1. Unless MS decides that its Surface area justifies making 10 available for it.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

How big is 1 Library of Congress in normal units? I mean in football (or soccer for you) stadiums?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Because most of us here are Americans and dammit we don't want none of that commie metric measurements here on this site.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

0.99999999999....c if you apply enough force to the sheep. Virtual Sheep, now, can travel at 1.0c, unless they're quantum sheep in which case they can be entangled with other quantum sheep and move instantly across whatever distance the sheep can be entangled.

Or, since the sheep would die (and possibly explode due to boiling blood) in a vacuum absent the unspecified sheep space suit, it would no longer be a sheep, and the velocity would remain undefined.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[AVryhof]

According to Wolfram Alpha, it's about 1.205 million football fields in size.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/i...

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[bano]

ah yes 2,200 is also bigger than a breadbox. So this iceberg is bigger than a breadbox!

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

How many football fields are we talking?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

FROM THE /. POST> The 2,200 square-mile, trillion metric-ton section

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Relax! I was trying to be understanding with other cultures by supporting an internationally-recognised alternative. In fact, I have no idea what 1 Luxembourg is either. I only recognise as valid area units the bullring and the soccer stadium.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

if you apply enough force to the sheep

As everyone should know (otherwise, HE might come after them), enough force is any number of Norris.

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hollow it out and fill Lake Erie.

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Zero__Kelvin]

Unless it is more than twice the size of 1 Texas, in which case it is about an Alaska :^)

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Talderas]

At 2,200 sqmi it's relatively close to double the size of Rhode Island (1214sqmi). It also makes it about the size of Brunei (2226sqmi). It's larger than 33 countries. It's land mass is equivalent to the 19th smallest nations in area. Vatican City. Monaco. Nauru, Tuvalu, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Maldives, Malta, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Seychelles, Palau, Andorra, Saint Lucia, and the Federated States of Micronesia

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

How big is that in football-fields?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[cayenne8]

American football or rest of the world football?

That's easy...he said "football" not "soccer".

This is a US centric site you know....should be easy to figure out.

;)

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[rgbatduke]

10K years old

...12K years old...

Fixed that for ya. I assume that you mean the end of the Wisconsin glacial epoch, give or take a Younger Dryas. Funny how human civilization rose during a period of intense global warming... (and the melting of an ice layer several kilometers think that covered most of Canada and much of the northern US at the time...).

Archeological studies suggest that there was a serious political conflict back then with the "whites" -- a combined ecological-political movement that opposed the (obviously human induced) climate change -- and the more progressive "greens" who viewed climate change as an obvious opportunity to make a huge profit on suddenly desirable real estate, at least until it was swamped in the 100-odd meter sea level rise associated with the change.

Sadly, throwing entire populations into volcanoes and cutting the hearts out of thousands of slaves proved to be inadequate to prevent the climate change, although the Younger Dryas was evidence that if the population of the world were just a LITTLE larger at the time, mass genocide might have accomplished it, and we'd still have woolly mammoths along with woolly socks.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

> I only recognise as valid area units the bullring and the soccer stadium.

Well, that explains why you're in such a shitty job: you can't handle anything else.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[thegarbz]

I firstly read about this in a Spanish newspaper claiming that it was bigger than Madrid. Afterwards, I found out in Twitter that it was bigger than London. And now I know that it is as big as Delaware! And the worst part is that I don't even have a reasonably accurate idea about how big it is! LOL.

You think you have it hard, this article says it is both twice AND four times the size of the Australian Capital Territory.

At least I know how big the ACT is but I still have no idea about the size of this iceberg.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[thegarbz]

News.com.au said it was both twice AND four times the size of the Australian Capitol Territory ... in the same article.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

It is ICE, no land mass...

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[PsyMan]

It's a quarter the size of Wales, so now its clear :D

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[slew]

How big is that in football-fields?

What do you mean, an American or European football-field?
Auuuugh...

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[WallyL]

No, it's completely frozen.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

The internationally recognised measure of size used to be the Wales. This research is even from Wales..

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I really hope your last comment was tongue in cheek, as mine was.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

?! Sorry for not having included something like LOL or :) or ;) or similar to help "people" like you understand what was going on, but I was joking. Spoiler alert: most of people writing comments about silly units here are joking too.

Additionally, there are various facts which make your arbitrary (and coward) attack even more ridiculous; the context which any non-extremely-stupid person would have got immediately, even in case of misinterpreting the joke: I am a mechanical engineer (= lots of experience in dealing with units of measurement) and I have developed a comprehensive parsing library precisely dealing with units of measurement (UnitParser, originally written in C#, recently converted to Java).

such a shitty job

You mean being self-employed and doing every single second what I want and how I want to do it? Additionally, I am quite tired of dealing with invasive, pushy, stupid, etc. nonsense of "people" like you and am currently taking things extremely my way. Honestly, my current conditions aren't precisely ideal, but this is a small price to pay for the aforementioned doing whatever I want, whenever I want and without having to tolerate anything from anyone.

you can't handle anything else.

You mean that the fact of having two university degrees (in completely different fields) and having been self-employed for quite a few years under quite tough conditions (not anymore :)) with virtually no kind of support doesn't give me experience to "handle anything else"?! I don't know what you mean with that, but don't even remember the last time that "not being able to do it" was the reason for not getting something done.

Do you have serious problems, right? But why are you deciding to compensate those problems by arbitrarily attacking other person from the worst possible position (cowardly and without knowing what you are even talking about)? Does it make feel you better? Are there any people supporting you in these actions? Honestly, I have never met in person "someone" like you and I am kind of curious. Are you up for letting me do some experiments with you? Well... are you allowed to make this kind of decisions by your own? I might convince your carer if required. It will not hurt you, at least not too much and not for too long. Think about it and let me know.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[LS1 Brains]

So it DOES run Windows then.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I was so blind by thinking that I had a problem! Thanks for giving me some context and helping me overcome my pain. LOL.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some more sources and units:
https://qz.com/1027701/two-luxembourgs-10-madrids-one-delaware-how-a-giant-iceberg-in-antarctica-is-described-around-the-world/

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Obfuscant]

It's a quarter the size of Wales, so now its clear :D

And now you're trying to get the Sea Shepherds involved in protecting an iceberg, aren't you? Wouldn't put it past those folks to run to the rescue -- but only if the Japanese were making scientific studies of it.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Sure. How could I react otherwise to a comment including an expression like "commie metric"? I don't think that anyone has ever used an expression like that seriously. Exactly the same than defending the usage of bullrings/soccer stadiums as area units.

Note to myself: better coming back to the previous approach of somehow tagging (adding LOL or something) all my non-completely-serious posts to avoid potential misunderstandings.

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

Reformed to cover the area of an American football field, it would reach 1/3rd of the way to the moon

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Canadian football?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

At that point, are we sure the iceberg even exists?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Come on! We are trying to have a serious conversation here! LOL.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Just in case: I have nothing against Canadian football (something about which I have no knowledge), am simply in joke-mode and the situation called for it.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Hognoxious]

That's the Imperial unit. The metric one is the Belgium.

1 Delaware = 21.13 Centibelgiums

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[aaarrrgggh]

Same size as Lake Erie.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I have had far too many people over the years mistake my posts as serious when they are not and if in doubt will include a /sarcasm and considered it for that one but thought it should be obvious. Although it has been a long few weeks so mentally I am a bit burned out so that may be part of it.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[lifeisshort]

Areas are dimensioned mostly in square miles (when not in square kilometers that is).

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[mspohr]

Yes!!!
And it's growing!

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

many people over the years mistake my posts as serious

This has happened to me quite a lot too and, after having tried different approaches, I think that I will better stick to the undoubted-tag alternative (LOL, :) or what you propose). Sometimes, I think that doing this kind of things defeats the whole purpose of the joke or that I shouldn't mind people misunderstanding my intention. On the other hand, clearly telling your intention avoid lots of unnecessary clarifications and that's why I will better stick to that (or keep it completely serious).

BTW, your signature might not be helping you to avoid people getting offended. After your explanations, I understand that it means that people gets easily offended when you are around, even though this isn't your intention. Before those explanations, I might have misunderstood it as you being actually interested in bothering others.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[StikyPad]

I won't be satisfied until it's described in terms of space stations that are mistaken for moons from a distance.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[fahrbot-bot]

No, it's completely frozen.

Probably because scientists drilled more than 24 core samples in it.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[jwhyche]

What about libraries of congress?

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

If he used good Christian units, maybe fewer people would be offended by his heathen weights.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

No it will run Linux. The year of Linux on Ice is coming! Linux on desktop is dead!

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Olympic swimming pools?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

American football

You mean handegg?

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

I only recognise as valid area units the bullring and the soccer stadium.

I'm sorry but the bullring is not a recognised SI unit ... and the football pitch is, as you say, is an area unit. Surely in the case of an iceberg volume is what we want to describe ... in other words, we need this measured in olympic size swimming pools.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

To convert to metric for you Europeans, it is approximately 2.2 Luxembourgs.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure its land mass is equivalent to a few grains of sand from the beach on Antigua, since ice is water, not land.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd put that down to them plagiarising the Guardian and a US source, and converting Luxembourgs and Delawares to the more widely used Australian units without spotting the inconsistency due to the Guardian missing the "twice the size of" from their plagiarism of other European news sources.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I'm sorry but the bullring is not a recognised SI unit

In the SIUA (Spanish Invented Units Association), we don't recognise the SI either. So and as far as you don't mind, I will continue sticking to my bullrings.

iceberg volume

Everything in the real 3D world we live in is associated with a volume, including bullrings, soccer stadiums, swimming pools and the city/region-based measurements referred in other comments. Usually, when you want to get a proper impression about a big enough size, you focus on the 2D aspect (= area); and this is pretty much the point of using references like Delaware, swimming pools or bullrings: giving a graphical reference of X/Y (width/depth if you prefer) values by not minding the Z component (height).

When you are trying to picture how big is Delaware (or a swimming pool), you don't think about its height (which BTW would be very difficult/impossible to determine: at which point stops being Delaware and starts being national/international air?) and that's why all this is used as area rather than volume units. It is much easier for us to understand 2D concepts and the whole point of these goofy units is precisely to make everything as simple as possible.

Clarification for people with understanding limitations: although some parts are serious (e.g., differences between area/volume, 2D/3D), this post is expected to be eminently understood as a joke.

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Even though I am atheist, I do recognise that there is nothing better than Vaticans to measure big areas. LOL.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

In the SIUA (Spanish Invented Units Association), we don't recognise the SI either. So and as far as you don't mind, I will continue sticking to my bullrings.

Well look I do mind! And I say that there should be action at a European level to eliminate this Spanish heresy! I mean if the Belgians have to accept that English chocolate is actually chocolate (maybe not for much longer) and the Germans have to accept non-Reinheitsgebote Euro-Pils is actually beer, then it's only fair that the bullring (along with all other SIUA measures) be outlawed, to be replaced by the UEFA standard (indeed FIFA standard) football pitch.

... the point of using references like Delaware, swimming pools or bullrings: giving a graphical reference of X/Y (width/depth if you prefer) values by not minding the Z component (height) ...When you are trying to picture how big is Delaware (or a swimming pool), you don't think about its height

Sorry. While I can accept that might be true for the land surface of Delaware, or the bullring (not that either are meaningful measures), the Olympic swimming pool (though not a particularly European standard perhaps) is most assuredly a measure of volume every bit as much as the football (pitch|field) (not the "stadium" per se of course, as this varies from stadium to stadium) is the measure of area (the height of the grass notwithstanding). You are meant to think about the height of a swimming pool (in fact it's difficult not to).

this post is expected to be eminently understood as a joke

I'm afraid this is no laughing matter. Just remember how many people had to die in the Napoleonic Wars to bring us these standards. Before you denigrate them any further, just remember the next World War will be fought with nuclear weapons.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Olympic swimming pool (though not a particularly European standard perhaps) is most assuredly a measure of volume

Sorry to be a bit serious on this part, but none of these wacky units of measurement refers to 3D/volume. It is always 2D/area or even 1D/length. As explained, getting a proper grasp of 3D dimensions is quite counter-intuitive and, as such, completely against all what these references are about (= providing an intuitive understanding for virtually everyone).

this post is expected to be eminently understood as a joke ... I'm afraid this is no laughing matter.

I didn't include that reference for you, but in general. There are lots of extremely lost individuals with very limited understanding capabilities taking each single bit out of context (+ unnecessarily wasting my time with their nonsense). As explained in one of my other comments and after having tried various different approaches, I have preferred to go with the undoubtedly-tagging-each-non-completely-serious-reference method.

I think that we have already extended this joke for long enough. So, I will be stopping it here.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

and the Germans have to accept non-Reinheitsgebote Euro-Pils is actually beer

Who says that? Just because we are forced to let them write "beer" on it doesn't mean we have to accept that as truth.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Well sometimes I do deliberately post to offend someone. Not in the name calling way, more in the challenge their thinking way. Some people really don't like that.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Tablizer]

"Informative" mod? I'm flattered, but the math is Fake News I should point out. It was intended as a joke.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[FuzzMaster]

Thief!
https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

how many of these icebergs would it take to wrap the world end-to-end?

how many dollar bills or euronotes would it hold on top?

Re: Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

Does European football refer to Gaelic football or Association football, the later being of Korean origin as Cuju rather than European.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

prove it

the majority of posters seem to be Russian now days

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's completely frozen.

So let it go!

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

Sorry to be a bit [wrong] on this part, but none of these wacky units of measurement refers to 3D/volume. It is always 2D/area or even 1D/length

Sorry, but no they are not, as the use of Olympic swimming pool demonstrates! A body of water of almost 10 megalitres will be described as being "4 Olympic swimming pools." It is used as a measure of volume, not as a measure of area. Similarly an area of 1 1/2 ha or so will be described as being about "10 football fields."

As explained, getting a proper grasp of 3D dimensions is quite counter-intuitive and, as such, completely against all what these references are about (= providing an intuitive understanding for virtually everyone).

As explained, this reasoning does not apply to a swimming pool. Seriously mate, picture in your head for a moment standing on the edge of an empty swimming pool, are you seriously telling me cannot imagine the sides?! Are you even telling me you can picture a pool without the sides? Even if we fill it with a transparent liquid virtually everyone will imagine a pool in 3 dimensions, in the way the will not for the surface of land or the reach of a city. That is why, on the very reasoning you give, it is used to provide an intuitive understanding of volume.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

Who says that? Just because we are forced to let them write "beer" on it doesn't mean we have to accept that as truth.

It's the money as well: I think as late as the 1990s Germany used to charge an excise on the "beer" imported form other European countries. She was stopped from doing so ... and that despite some German politician's attempt to argue a "public health exemption" on the basis, from memory, that "the average German male derives up to 40% of his daily calorific intake from beer!" :)

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

as the use of Olympic swimming pool demonstrates!

Where? When people say things on these lines, they usually include some kind of external reference, but you are not including any! Your remaining post doesn't seem to make too much sense either: your argument mostly consists in repeating the same mantra over and over without trying to understand/dismiss my points.

I plainly wrote some meant-to-be-funny-and-immediately-understood posts and wasn't expecting to extend any of these conversations further. In fact, I didn't enjoy either the funny or the serious parts of this small chat with you; much less this extension whose point I don't get (extending further a discussion about the exact usage of stupid units by not being even willing/able to reach a proper understanding?!). I will stop it here. Bye.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

CustomSolvers2: There are no female movie starts because all movies stars are men, because, [some theory]
Capsaicin: Well Elizabeth was an movie star and she was woman.
CustomSolvers2: No Elizabeth Taylor was a man. Sorry to be a bit serious on this part, but all movie starts are men, as explained [some theory]
&tc.

FFS mate!

Your remaining post doesn't seem to make too much sense either:

I assure you: There has been no fault in my written English. If it does not "make sense" you need to exercise more effort in comprehending it.

your argument mostly consists in repeating the same mantra over and over

Oh dear God the IRONY!

... without trying to understand/dismiss my points.

I understand (and dismiss) your point.

The problem is your theory about all of these whacky measurements being about 1D or 2D is falsified by the use, ad nauseum, of the Olympic Swimming Pool --certainly by the media here in Australia --as a measure for volume as opposed to area. Do you get that simple fact, or will you force me to repeat myself yet again? Which is the very reason I introduced it, because unlike "bigger than Madrid, as big as Delaware, soccer stadiums" all of which speak of area, we ought to consider the volume of an iceberg, which the common use of the Olympic Swimming pool does. Sheesh!

As to your point is that a proper grasp of 3D dimensions is counter-intuitive, I addressed that by asking you to imagine standing on the edge of an empty swimming pool without being aware of the sides of the pool, something which you will find you cannot in all honesty do. It will not be a pool you are imagining, but a carpet. I put it to you the a grasp of a box as a 3D container is not counter-intuitive.

I didn't enjoy either the funny or the serious parts of this small chat with you

Well you shouldn't have contradicted me in the first place about the actual use of one of these made up units about which you plainly have no knowledge. Yeah? You really didn't need, in all ignorance as the the facts, to go down the "serious part" ... your choice. But look, I'm so sorry that the facts don't agree with your pet theory about "stupid units" that must really hurt.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

Fairer analog argument:

Capsaicin: Instead of measuring the length (in metres) of an iceberg, or the area (in hectares) we should be measuring its volume in litres.
CustomSolvers2: Everything in the real 3D world we live in is associated with a volume, but all these measure metres, hectares and litres are meant to give people an X/Y view by not minding the Z component (height). It is much easier for us to understand 2D concepts
Capsaicin: No that is not true for litres which is a measure of volume.
CustomSolvers2: Sorry to be a bit serious on this part, but none of these units of measurement refers to 3D/volume. It is always 2D/area or even 1D/length. As explained, getting a proper grasp of 3D dimensions is quite counter-intuitive
Capsaicin: No litres are used to measure volume
CustomSolvers2: Your argument mostly consists in repeating the same mantra over and over without trying to understand/dismiss my points.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

And since you refuse to believe me try this: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lis...

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

This wasn't exactly the kind of external reference which I was expecting (as far as this article might have been written by a person like you, eminently concerned about blindly defending whatever without caring too much about anything else), but at least it is somehow relevant to this discussion. I was expecting samples of actual usage in the kind of informal contexts where these units are meant to be used; for example, a non-technical article in a newspaper providing a graphical idea about a big volume by actually relying on swimming pools.

Anyway, writing this last comment has already represented a relevant effort for me, as far as I don't see the point of a conversation, which you seem to be mostly having with yourself (BTW, thanks for quoting me on things which I never said/thought), since a while ago. Bye again.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

This wasn't exactly the kind of external reference which I was expecting (as far as this article might have been written by a person like you ...

A simple "thank you, I didn't know about the use of all these measures", or "sorry my bad, you were right all along" would have sufficed there. In ignoring a site of that "kind" you run the risk of appearing not merely to be ignorant about the subject matter, but of being willfully so. [Pro tip: Whenever you have clearly been shown to be wrong, a fortiori on a matter of fact, be big enough immediately and gracefully to admit your error and move on.]

I was expecting samples of actual usage in the kind of informal contexts where these units are meant to be used; for example, a non-technical article in a newspaper providing a graphical idea about a big volume by actually relying on swimming pools.

You mean like this article ? Or like Melbourne Water's fact sheet on the Thomson Reservoir which gives the reservoir's capacity not only as "1,068 billion litres", but also as "2x Sydney Harbours," "628 x MCGs" and "427,000 x Olympic-sized swimming pools?" [Just to reference some other measures of volume listed on that very informative page.] Do you need any more? You could always use Google yourself, you know.

And this "expectation" of yours? It was reasonably founded, no doubt, on the pertinence and quality of the external references you provided, yes?

BTW, thanks for quoting me on things which I never said/thought

Don't be disingenuous! I never "quoted" anything you didn't say, the analogous arguments which no reasonable reader could take to constitute a direct quoting notwithstanding. And I already conceded the second, in which one party (you), was insisting on the basis of some cognitive theory that a well-known measure of volume (litres in place of Olympic swimming pools per analogy) could not be a measure of volume, was the fairer. And indeed, not only it was a fair and accurate account of what you were doing, it was based largely, without any implication that those were direct quotes, on the actual words used.

Anyway, writing this last comment ...

Not apparently being a man of your word, you've promised me twice your comment was the last. Maybe it will be a case of "third time lucky?"

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

A simple "thank you, I didn't know about the use of all these measures", or "sorry my bad, you were right all along"

I am honestly not trying to insult you, but am genuinely curious: have you any kind of (serious) problem? Do you understand that we are talking about JOKISH UNITS?! That this whole thread was a joke! That nobody will ever take any of the referred units seriously? That almost nobody will ever spend so much as you have done in discussion about so extremely irrelevant issues and, additionally, not even getting anything right? Pfff... Note that I have stopped reading your new nonsense after that line I am quoting. Please, stop bothering me with sadly pointless behaviour.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

Other curious thing which I have seen this morning, in parallel with this not-understanding-too-well-what-is-wrong-with-some-people incident, is that another random person in internet has reverted a correction which I recently performed in Wikipedia for no other reason than deciding to do so?! So, I make an effort to share something (have some laughs/nice conversations or generously fixing an error I discovered at my work to avoid others make the same mistake I did) and, as a reward, some random not-sure-even-how-to-call-them individuals have aggressive, censoring, not-properly-understanding, invasive, etc. reactions! Why?!

What has to be wrong with you to react aggressively to a generous contribution on any front from someone?! Why not plainly avoiding to enjoy what you don't like/understand/need? Why do you have to bother, invade, attack people not minding you and all what you represent? How can you feel that an acceptable behaviour to reward a generous gesture is to somehow attack/feel attacked by it? How can anyone seriously think that they can step in any conversation/activity and impose what they want (and much worse: by being taking seriously and/or without bearing any consequences)?! Pfff... I have seriously accepted all this sadness, but eventually feel like sharing some thoughts about so much stupidity.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I realised about my mistake now. The correction about which I complained in my previous message made sense. This was a quite curious situation where I didn't even test the algorithm (something extremely weird with me), this curious output was mostly provoked by the over-confidence deriving from my initial (very) evident correction + the performance problems on that algorithm in various scenarios. No excuse anyway. I had a horrible behaviour and a completely-unjustified reaction; I will apologise right now. Why am I explaining all this you might wonder? To comply with what I expect from everyone else: do whatever you want, but always take responsibility for your mistakes :).

This is the article I meant. BTW, I will be uploading in brief an optimised version of that algorithm in C to my GitHub account.

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[Capsaicin]

I will apologise right now. Why am I explaining all this you might wonder? To comply with what I expect from everyone else: do whatever you want, but always take responsibility for your mistakes

If that be so Alvaro, I will await with anticipation your apology for the mistake of correcting me as to the fact that Olympic swimming pools is a popular measure of volume. (and not of area).

Re:Three different sources, three different units

[CustomSolvers2]

I will try to be as clear and non-offensive as I can at this point: let's better focus on dealing with other people; I cannot appreciate your let's say... peculiarities and, apparently, you cannot appreciate mine either.

I will not answer/read anything else in this thread and/or deal with you again for as long as you continue having the same attitude (likely to be a quite long time because you seem to think that your behaviour makes sense at all). I will not spend a single bit of over-clarification energy with you anymore. If you have any complaint, please write it here such that I can ignore it. BYE.

PS: are you seriously believing that I (or any other person with a bit of knowledge) will be accepting swimming pools as a valid unit of measurement?! I, a person who, additionally to having a university degree in the engineering speciality caring about metrology (industrial/mechanical engineering), has relatively-recently developed a comprehensive unit parsing library (UnitParser, part of FlexibleParser; its code is public and the part with all the basic units, classifications, conversions factors, etc. is quite reader friendly), will be accepting such a nonsense?!

The science

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't settled.

You know what else is the biggest ever recorded?

[Anonymous Coward]

MY BALLS!!! Suck 'em, nerds!

TRUMP FAKE NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

TRUMP travelled to this very same ice nothing burger just yesterday and said it all was fine to him - china is a hoax and the birds are flying! #FAKENNNEWSTRUMPZ!

now's Saudi Arabia's chance

[turkeydance]

they've always wanted one.

Re:now's Saudi Arabia's chance

[Oswald McWeany]

they've always wanted one.

There is an awful lot of water in that iceburg. That could make a big impact on their water needs. (or any other country that were able to harvest it).

Re:now's Saudi Arabia's chance

[Anonymous Coward]

"Iceburg" - the city in Disney's "Frozen?"

Re:now's Saudi Arabia's chance

[Anonymous Coward]

The volume of the iceberg could cover Saudi Arabia in ice to a depth of about 200 metres.

That would definitely solve their "everything's too hot and dry" problem.

Wouldn't solve all their other problems though.

I'd do the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't really blame it. It is awefully cold down there. I'd be looking for a place with better weather, too.

it would be awesome if

[FudRucker]

it could be towed to a location where water is scarce and just start hauling truck sized hunks of ice to where people can use it

Re:it would be awesome if

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't happen because... physics.

Re:it would be awesome if

[Anonymous Coward]

Now now, it looks like about 12.5 Billion tugboats should be enough. I leave finding 12.5 billion tugboats, paying for fuel and crew, and figuring out how to attach them to the iceburg as an exercise to the reader. But it is totally possible.

Re: it would be awesome if

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not launch it into space then, so you don't have to tow it? Then you can yank pieces off with a long rope.
Jeez, you science people are dumb, always waiting for other people to come up with easy solutions.

The Liar In Chief

[JimSadler]

But the most honest Trump claims there is no global warming. Here we are with a major emergency and a total idiot at the helm.

Re:The Liar In Chief

[Anonymous Coward]

But the most honest Trump claims there is no global warming. Here we are with a major emergency and a total idiot at the helm.

What's the emergency? Is it heading straight for Guam? If it hits Guam, it'll tip over and kill everyone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7XXVLKWd3Q

Re:The Liar In Chief

[Obfuscant]

But the most honest Trump claims there is no global warming. Here we are with a major emergency and a total idiot at the helm.

This is a major emergency in your view? And Trump's the total idiot? Not to mention, ice breaks off of Antarctica all the time. This may be the biggest recorded break, but that doesn't mean it is the biggest of all time. Our records of Antarctica are relatively short.

Re: The Liar In Chief

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to call Pence an idiot just because he preaches 1850s values. He was smart enough to accept a shitty job with the expectation of a promotion just for keeping his head down a year. Maybe two if you include the campaign.

Nothing to see here ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Nothing to see here folks.. Move along. Don't pay any attention to weeds and bugs that are moving north... Move along. Just another stupid ice thing broke in some god forsaken land. Just pay not attention.

Hey look! The latest outrageous tweet. Keep chasing that like a dog chases the laser pointer dot.

Re:Nothing to see here ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't believe this until Fox News reports some hazy assertion that it's all Hillary's fault which Trump will then tweet causing Fox to report it as an established fact because the President said it!

Re:Nothing to see here ...

[citylivin]

"Nothing to see here folks.. Move along."

Actually in this case, its more emblematic than anything. From the BBC article:

"What is the significance of the calving?

In and of itself, probably very little. The Larsen C shelf is a mass of floating ice formed by glaciers that have flowed down off the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula into the ocean. On entering the water, their buoyant fronts lift up and join together to make a single protrusion.

The calving of bergs at the forward edge of the shelf is a very natural behaviour. The shelf likes to maintain an equilibrium and the ejection of bergs is one way it balances the accumulation of mass from snowfall and the input of more ice from the feeding glaciers on land. ...

But Larsen C today does not look like its siblings. Prof Helen Fricker, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told BBC News: "The signs we saw at Larsen A and B - we're not seeing yet. The thinning we saw for Larsen A and B - we're not seeing. And we're not seeing any evidence for large volumes of surface meltwater on the order of what you would need to hydro-fracture the ice shelf.

"Most glaciologists are not particularly alarmed by what's going on at Larsen C, yet. It's business as usual.""

http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

Obviously its great to have massive events like this to draw attention to the cause, and keep climate change at the front of peoples minds, but it seems like this isnt that big a deal. It isnt raising sea levels or single handidly causing giant problems by its calving alone.

Just part of the program these days.

LOL here we go

[p51d007]

The "Algores" of the world will be telling us that we are doomed, sea levels will rise, people will die dogs & cats will be living together in sin! We're doomed! Big whoop! So an iceberg the size of delaware broke off. About the only impact it will have is all the nut job photo hunters wanting to go take a photo of it, screwing up the sea lanes when it reaches a more moderate temperature zone, and, getting to close to it as chunks the size of buildings fall off and smack their boats. Stuff like this has been going on since the ice age, it's just that "humans" are here to witness it.

Re:LOL here we go

[downright]

No but the US military will tell you that.

Re:LOL here we go

[CrimsonAvenger]

Stuff like this has been going on since the ice age

Technically, we're still in "the Ice Age". There's still a continent on top of the South Pole, and continents surrounding the North Pole.

What you probably meant was "since the last (previous) glaciation".

Note that is possible that the "next glaciation" started with the Year Without a Summer (1815), but was aborted by the increased use of coal since then. Apparently, glaciations start, not with extremely cold winters, but with summers that are cold enough to prevent the previous winter's snowfall from entirely melting....

Now say that

[future assassin]

with a Britannic accent.

New country for libertarians!

[GameboyRMH]

Libertarians should go to this iceberg and plant a flag on it as their own country! Sure it'll melt eventually, but they would've turned the place into a corpse-strewn hellscape by then anyhow.

Re:New country for libertarians!

[Anonymous Coward]

corpse-strewn hellscape

AKA every major American sanctuary city run by Democrats for decades.

(and now we can add the State of Illinois to that list)

Re:New country for libertarians!

[tbannist]

Libertarians should go to this iceberg and plant a flag on it as their own country! Sure it'll melt eventually, but they would've turned the place into a corpse-strewn hellscape by then anyhow.

And isn't that really the Libertarian dream? A corpse-strewn hellscape to call their own, with no rules and complete freedom for every survivor!

Re:New country for libertarians!

[GLMDesigns]

So Libertarians are more violent than socialists?

For example

Stalin,
Mao
Pol Pot

and those nice itty-bitty tin pot dictators in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Venezuela

Re:New country for libertarians!

[moeinvt]

The corpses piled up in a society based on libertarian ideals would be infinitesimal compared to the mass slaughters perpetrated by governments. Even if you exclude wars, the governments of the 20th century murdered 170 million people, mostly their own citizens.

If there is no institutional power structure in place to confiscate wealth and coerce behavior, it's extremely difficult to fight a large scale war, engage in mass murder or even mass incarceration. Can you imagine a war of aggression in which all of the soldiers were unpaid volunteers furnishing their own weapons and equipment? How far would they be willing to travel and how long would they be willing to be away from their homes? Without a government, you wouldn't get people to travel from North America to Iraq or Vietnam to fight a war. Most people would rather maintain a peaceful existence and fight only in self defense.

Libertarianism does not mean "no rules", it just means "no ruleRs".

Re:New country for libertarians!

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahah

oh you're serious

HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Re:New country for libertarians!

[Anonymous Coward]

So Libertarians are more violent than socialists?

On average no, Libertarians are pretty peaceful people.
That's what makes the majority of them easy prey for the minority who are quite violent. They won't see it coming because they wouldn't think of it themselves and they've been spoiled by the safety afforded them by the restrictions they want to remove from people's behavior.

Re:New country for libertarians!

[Anonymous Coward]

What libertarians wants is a power vacuum. You know, the situation that gives us cuddly things like ISIS instead.

The reason most civilized nations are partly socialist is because it works.
Anyone who have tried to give that up for idealism have perished.

Go libertarian if you want, but don't expect anyone to come help you when the next crazy person with an army kills you.

Re:New country for libertarians!

[dargndorp]

So Libertarians are more violent than socialists?

For example

Stalin,
Mao
Pol Pot

All of which were communist, not socialist.

Re:New country for libertarians!

[GLMDesigns]

Libertarians do not want a power vacuum. What we don't want is a continued usurpation of individual rights by governments.

If you decide whether or not to have relations with a person of the same gender does that lead to a power vacuum?
How about if you decide whether or not to ingest an intoxicating substance?
Or how about it you decide whether or not wear seat belts?

Re:New country for libertarians!

[tbannist]

If there is no institutional power structure in place to confiscate wealth and coerce behavior, it's extremely difficult to fight a large scale war, engage in mass murder or even mass incarceration.

It's cute that you believe that. You should go tell ISIS that it doesn't have the power to wage war, murder, enslave, or imprison people since it's not a legitimate government. Then maybe you could travel through some African nations and tell the vigilante gangs there that orchestrated ethnic cleansing campaigns that they really didn't kill anyone at all, because they weren't the government and thus incapable of mass murder.

Can you imagine a war of aggression in which all of the soldiers were unpaid volunteers furnishing their own weapons and equipment?

Yes. I take it you've never heard of militias?

How far would they be willing to travel and how long would they be willing to be away from their homes?

That depends on what they expect to get from their expedition.

Without a government, you wouldn't get people to travel from North America to Iraq or Vietnam to fight a war. Most people would rather maintain a peaceful existence and fight only in self defense.

And yet there are people who are travelling to Syria to fight without any support or direction from their home government. In Africa (and other places), groups which are not the government frequently kidnap young boys are force them to serve as soldiers and they go where ever their captors send them.

Libertarianism does not mean "no rules", it just means "no ruleRs".

Since he who makes the rules, is by definition, the ruler, "no rulers" means "no rules". The problem is as soon as anyone or any group can enforce a set of rules, they become the government. The only way to have no rulers is to have no rules. And, of course, "no rules" is a situation that never lasts longer than the first person who survives being wronged because as soon as that happens, then they start with the "there aughta be rules against that" and then you either get a government or a lot of dead people and then a government.

Not everything that libertarians say is wrong, but their philosophies work about as well as communism does. Which is to say they have never once worked at any reasonable scale in the entire history of humanity.

Of course they use Delaware for comparisons...

[MiniMike]

Why use Delaware? It's less taxing than other states!

(add your own rimshot noise)

Re:Of course they use Delaware for comparisons...

[blindseer]

Why use Delaware? It's less taxing than other states!

(add your own rimshot noise)

http://instantrimshot.com/inde...

Re:Of course they use Delaware for comparisons...

[Anonymous Coward]

True, especially since the average american can't point to Delaware on a map.

Re: You know what else is the biggest ever recorde

[that this is not und]

I'll fetch my scissors.

Strange measurement units

[SlithyMagister]

"The 2,200 square-mile trillion metric-ton section".

Please post these things in units that can be universally understood.

How big is it in football fields?

Re:Strange measurement units

[fropenn]

How many Olympic-sized swimming pools would it fill?

Re:Strange measurement units

[Obfuscant]

Please post these things in units that can be universally understood.

They did.

For the imperialists, "2200 square mile" is a relevant unit.

For everyone else, "trillion metric-ton" is relevant. A metric ton is 1000 kg. At about 1kg per 1000 cc, that's 1e6 cc. A trillion (1e12) of those would be 1e18 cubic centimeters. About. Every metric user should immediately identify that kind of volume.

The only problem in combining the imperial with metric is that one is a volume and the other is an area. But let's play. 2200 square miles is about 5.7e9 square meters, if my math is right. (A square 47 miles on a side, or 76000m, ballpark.) A square meter is 1e6 square cm, so a surface area of about 5.7e15 sq cm. To make the appropriate volume, that would require a depth of 1.75e2 cm, or only 1.75m thick. Uhhh, huh?

Re:Strange measurement units

[Anonymous Coward]

You are out by a factor of one hundred. Put this search into WolframAlpha.com

"1e12 cubic metres / 2200 square miles"

You get an answer of 175 metres.

Your mistake is that 1 square metre is actually 100x100 = 1E4 square centremetres. You said it was 1E6 (one million).

Re:Strange measurement units

[Anonymous Coward]

You are out by factor of 100... 1 sq metre is 10000 sq cm.
(Just stay in metres, by the way, especially for large objects. It isn't 1960 anymore, when the CGS was in vogue.)

If you check your calculations it should be 175m deep if using density of water, but is scrually around 400m average depth because it is ice. Apparently icebergs are made of ice.

Re:Strange measurement units

[Obfuscant]

Ok. I see the factor of 100. Thanks. 175m makes more sense.

Re:Strange measurement units

[Anonymous Coward]

400 Million

1 Trillion metric tons / 2500 metric tons

This might come as a shock...

[Anonymous Coward]

But ice actually takes up LESS space when it melts. Mind. Blown.

Re:This might come as a shock...

[Anonymous Coward]

No danger of damaging explosion when your mind is that small.

Hey, guess what? Not all of the iceberg is in the water. The amount of space used in the water will be the same when it's melted.

Tiny mind blown up again?

Re:You know what else is the biggest ever recorded

[Anonymous Coward]

http://maddox.xmission.com/clu... relevant. probably.

ICE PIRATES!

[downright]

This is good news for ice miners! :-)

Brilliant. Only arseholes and dicks.

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of posts are either comments about how the units should be different, because memes, or denier trolidiots screaming at there DARING to be something about the climate and possibly AGW on slashdot or just the internets, 'cos WHERE ARE THEIR SAFE SPACES!!!!

Just arseholes and dicks. Fucking each other because they prefer that over actually trying (and failing, because trying is the first step on the path to failure) anything themselves.

Delaware or POS?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is that Delaware...or did Pennsylvania take a shit?" ~Jon Stewart

Next ice age-- not soon

[XXongo]

Best models suggest that the forcing due to greenhouse gasses that we have already injected into the atmosphere is larger than the forcing due to the Milankovitch variations that cause the ice age glaciations.

But the periodicity for glacial advance and retreat is 100,000 years-- the hundred year time scale you mention is a bit fast. A new glaciation isn't coming that soon.

Re:Next ice age-- not soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Next? The current one isn't even over yet. Both poles are still covered in ice. More than sufficient to satisfy the condition given by the definition of ice age.

Don't buy land in Antarctica yet...

[XXongo]

Don't forget about Antarctica - it will become an earthly paradise as global warming takes effect.

Probably not. Average temperature of Antarctica is -70F. Average high is -49.

It will take more than the few degrees of warming we can produce with greenhouse effect gasses to make that "an earthly paradise."

Re: Don't buy land in Antarctica yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as that shit hits -47, these sleeves are going in the bin. Sun's out, guns out.

Re: Don't buy land in Antarctica yet...

[doctorvo]

In fact, climate change leads to little warming in areas that are already warm, and big warming in areas that are cold. So, if we really were to substantially raise global average temperatures, that is exactly what would happen: a milder, wetter, more uniform climate across the globe, with tundras and arctic deserts turning into warm, habitable, arable regions. How do we know? We know because that's not only what our models say, we know because that's what happened the last few times CO2 levels were close to 1000ppm.

Re:Don't buy land in Antarctica yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

> It will take more than the few degrees of warming we can produce with greenhouse effect gasses to make that "an earthly paradise."

The rate of moss growing on parts of Antartica is already increased, indicating that for them at least, it is becoming more like an earthly paradise.

Re: Don't buy land in Antarctica yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that isn't what scientists have been saying for the last 30 years. It certainly isn't what non-scientists who believe those scientists have been saying for that time. They have all been saying the earth is going to turn into a fucking desert everywhere.

Now you come along and want to pretend that that isn't what we've been hearing for three decades. FUCK OFF you moron. We're not buying your bullshit any more.

Units of the land explained for all

[thegarbz]

For all those people wondering what we're comparing the iceberg to. Apparently it's bigger than:

Madrid: 604km^2
London: 1572km^2
Luxembourg: 2586km^2
Twice the size of the Australian Capitol Territory: 4716km^2
*
Delaware: 6452km^2
Four times** the size of the Australian Capitol Territory: 9432km^2

* Size of iceberg actually slots in here.
** The twice the size and four times the size were both in the same article.

If I had the Capital...

[sycodon]

...I would send ships to that Iceberg and mine ice cube sized chunks and sell them as novelty items.

Host a party with Million Year Old Ice!

Re:If I had the Capital...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Dubai will just annex it and build a city on top of it, because they'll need to replace their artificial sea level islands with something that is resistant to changes in sea level. It only makes sense that they build it on top of something that floats, even if it will only last as long as their existing artificial islands.

Captcha: sustain

Re:If I had the Capital...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that already a thing? I swear I heard of that...

More for Democrats

[SuperKendall]

Democrats greatly enjoy staking out territory on an issue that utterly melts from underneath them when meeting the ocean of reality, so I'm sure they would enjoy an iceberg as their next platform...

Certainly more stable and heart-warming than Hillary, and longer lasting than Trump-Russia connections.

Re:More for Democrats

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats greatly enjoy staking out territory on an issue that utterly melts from underneath them when meeting the ocean of reality, so I'm sure they would enjoy an iceberg as their next platform...

Certainly more stable and heart-warming than Hillary, and longer lasting than Trump-Russia connections.

You pugs are the ones who actually sold the country to Putin, just look at Jr.'s meeting with the Russian spy.

I wonder how many other agents Putin has at the top of the RNC?

And with half a billion dollars, and 20 years of investigating you pugs couldn't even give Hillary a jaywalking ticket. That makes your leadership completely incompetent, fuckers couldn't even frame her. Hell, they're not even qualified to shovel pig shit.

It did *NOT* just "snap" off

[Anonymous Coward]

The fissure took several years to reach from water to water and break off the iceberg.

Forever? Really?

[strikethree]

Its break, from Antarctica's fourth-largest ice shelf, changes the border shape of the peninsula forever even though the remaining ice shelf will continue to grow.

It is the use of words like this that make me wonder about the sanity of the people writing this shit.

The headline should be: Unfathomably large chunk of ice just broke off of an ice shelf in Antarctica.

Why would anyone care if the fucking coastline has changed? Forever. The universe is not a static place, coasts even less static than most. Why is the coastline changing forever even a part of this story?

I am sure such insanity is being promulgated for a reason. I have no idea if it is to drive me away from, or to, whatever mouthbreathing thing they are trying to push but I am weary of it.

Just provide facts. A VERY light touch of speculation of what it could mean is okay as long the writer specifically mentions it is speculation. It is almost as if we can't think for ourselves or something... or actively being prevented from thinking?

Re:Forever? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. One mildly hyperbolic statement is "insanity" in your world. Triggered much?

Easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Duct tape it back on

Remember, to convert to metric...

[qeveren]

Double it and add thirty. So that's thirty-two metric Delawares.

more to it

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously they need 2 C5 Galaxy to evcuate 86 scientists ? talk about leg room perk here , and it still doesnt explain why US Army special ops are required , penguins are laying IED ? , and then there's the rusian baltic battle group on their way to antartica also , the one that's been kept in combat mode since the '50 ...... nah its just a crack in the ic e

Global Warming from a scientist perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

1950's: Humanity is having its first true global impact: we might double the C02 content in the atmosphere. We are starting to completely conquer nature!

1960's: What will the extra C02 have? It will probably get warmer due to C02, but not for many years. In the meantime, Nuclear will solve all of our energy problems, so we won't have to burn coal anyway. We don't have to worry so much.

1970s: We now know more about the greenhouse effect, and the extremes possible for instance with Venus. Know what is cool? We could probably terraform Mars if we really tried to get greenhouse gases working there. Science is awesome!

1980s: The C02 keeps rising. After looking at the possible changes higher global temperatures would have, we're starting to worry here. Maybe we should do something. The ozone layer and acid rain might be more pressing things though.

1990s: Ozone Layer, Acid Rain, and Species Extinction: we've left it too long! Greenhouse gases can wait.

2000s: Time to tackle C02 levels.... What? Vested interests have spent $10M on promoting misinformation and corrupting scientists, and the "BOTH SIDES!" media have given an average of an hour of media time per denier for every minute per climate scientist? We're scientists not media experts, dammit, how are we to compete with that? (Al Gore?)

2010s: Why are we still debating climate change? Didn't everybody know about greenhouse gases 40 years ago? We can finally measure actual warming trends consistently and concretely now, and don't have to rely on greenhouse gas theory, yet more people than ever are denying science. Did half the planet suddenly become stupid? When did it become so exhausting to be a scientist?

Re:Global Warming from a scientist perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the part where climate scientists were screaming about the coming ice age and the only solution was total hysteria and spending huge sums of money to enrich a few scam artists in the middle of your timeline.

Not unlike what is happening today really.

Size of US states is relevant only in US

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop measuring area size in US state "units". Try international units, you know, square kilometers and such.

missed opportunity

[bonedonut]

so why isn't it being harvested for drinking water?

The problem with global warming

[jopsen]

is that global warming will never cause a single sensational news story that will cause people to wake up.


At least not until it's far too late...

Not caused by global warrming

[schwit1]

http://time.com/4854428/iceber...

At the end of the video we get "It was a natural event that had been anticipated for months and was not directly caused by climate change."

Putting this 'insignificant' piece of information at the end speaks volumes as to why people are tuning out MSM.

Water temp and salinity changes?

[dlingman]

Let's say Mr. Frosty heads north, and bumps into, say South Jamaica and grounds there. What type of environmental impact will there be, temperature wise say, from a trillion tons of ice slowly melting there, and what impact to the aquatic wildlife from a trillion tons of fresh water slowly being added to the ocean...

Wherever this thing goes, it's going to melt. How many fish are ready to deal with changes in the water as a result?

Permafrost

[Tenebrousedge]

Do you happen to be aware of the issues regarding permafrost in the Arctic?

Re:Permafrost

[XXongo]

Do you happen to be aware of the issues regarding permafrost in the Arctic?

There are so many issues regarding permafrost that you'll have to be more specific here. Which of the many, many issues are you referring to?

Re:Permafrost

[Tenebrousedge]

Oh, generally aware that it's an issue that significantly detracts from the idea of global warming being particularly good for Russia. I happen to be from Alaska, and many people's idea of how suitable the Arctic is for farming is grievously misinformed.

The cube in my glass just split!

[geowash01]

OMG, OMG, we're going to boil to death.... Except that Antarctica has been cooling since 1998/9. OMG, OMG, we're going to freeze to death....!

Growing season [Re:Good for Russia]

[XXongo]

The "shortness of summer" is bounded by temperature, not sunlight
Wrong.
This will happen earlier, and it will stay thawed later.
How many days? 1or 2?

The northern hemisphere spring thaw has been advancing by about one day per year since 1988:
- https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqne...
- http://www.foodnutritionscienc...
- http://climatechange.lta.org/c...
- http://flatheadcore.org/featur...
- https://earthobservatory.nasa....
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Before there is not enough sun, it won't thaw. Plain and simple. And that is depending on the length of the day, not on a magic temperature that comes from somewhere. (where should it come from? Hu? Polar night is polar night and everything is frozen ... )

Tell you what, why don't you do some research here and get back to me when you've learned enough to form an opinion

Re:Growing season [Re:Good for Russia]

[angel'o'sphere]

Perhaps you should read the links you post.
Spring thaw of 'snow' and 'ice' in mountains or far south of the arctic circle are completely irrelevant for what is going north of the arctic circle.
Are you really such an idiot?
None of you links has on the first glance ANYTHING to do with what we where talking about before.

Who cars that land that already is farmland is thawing a week or two more early?

You claimed that climate change would create new farmland in Russia, which it won't.

Obligatory

[blibbo]

... conversion for non USians:
As big as Delaware (5,061 sq km): Brunei, Cyprus, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, West Bank
[http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/2015/02/20/put-size-countries-perspective-comparing-us-states/]

Specifically, 2200 square miles = 5700 square km (a bit bigger than Delaware).

Obligatory

[blibbo]

... conversion for non USians:
As big as Delaware (5,061 sq km): Brunei, Cyprus, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, West Bank

http://www.decisionsciencenews...

Specifically, 2200 square miles = 5700 square km (a bit bigger than Delaware).

Boreal Forest and tundra growing season

[XXongo]

The northern hemisphere spring thaw has been advancing by about one day per year since 1988:
- https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqne...
- http://www.foodnutritionscienc...
- http://climatechange.lta.org/c...
- http://flatheadcore.org/featur...
- https://earthobservatory.nasa....
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Perhaps you should read the links you post. Spring thaw of 'snow' and 'ice' in mountains or far south of the arctic circle are completely irrelevant for what is going north of the arctic circle.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. The first link I posted, for example was not about "snow and ice in mountains," it was about "boreal forests and tundra". ("Boreal" means "northern", but in context it's almost always used to mean the far north, Arctic and subarctic. By the way, your post says "north of the arctic circle," but I was talking about Russia. Much of Russia is subarctic, but very little is "north of the Arctic circle".)

Here is a quote from that first link, saying specifically what it was covering:

"Research scientists have been studying freeze/thaw dynamics in North America and Eurasia's boreal forests and tundra to decipher effects on the timing and length of the growing season. These regions encompass almost 30 percent of global land area. ... Large expanses of boreal forest and tundra are underlain by permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen soil found underneath the active, seasonally thawed soil.

Are you really such an idiot? None of you links has on the first glance ANYTHING to do with what we where talking about before. Who cars that land that already is farmland is thawing a week or two more early? You claimed that climate change would create new farmland in Russia, which it won't.

Are we talking about the same thing?

Re:Boreal Forest and tundra growing season

[angel'o'sphere]

Anyway, the changes in climate don't make Russia the next european corn chamber.

Yes, we are talking about the same thing. Why do you think that the longer growth period in the "boreal forests and tundra" has any benefit is still beyond me. You never will be able to harvest grains or other interesting food there.

Saudia Arabia needs fresh water

[eric_harris_76]

Isn't someone in Saudi Arabia supposed to lasso a suitably-sized iceberg and drag it home, to be melted for its fresh water?

He's probably waiting for it to break up into more manageable chunks, and tow one of them.

You don't take responsibility after all

[Capsaicin]

That's not much an apology Alvaro. Have you no honour?

PS: are you seriously believing that I (or any other person with a bit of knowledge) will be accepting swimming pools as a valid unit of measurement?!

I'm not askling you to accept it as a "valid" unit of measurement. I'm asking you to admit it is commonly used by the media to describe volume, and I'm asking you to accept your theory that "none of these wacky units of measurement refers to 3D/volume" because 3D is too difficult for ordinary people to grasp, is demonstrably false.

Re:You don't take responsibility after all

[CustomSolvers2]

That's not much an apology Alvaro. Have you no honour?

Are you trying to insult me? OK. From now one, whoever you are (because you know my name and family names; but, from my perspective, you are a slightly-upgraded version of a random anonymous coward), I will try to ignore whatever you will write here or anywhere else, mostly to avoid getting involved in all this nonsense. I will not apologise because there is nothing to apologise about; but, as a farewell, I will try to adequately address your

I'm asking you to admit it is commonly used by the media to describe volume

This statement is extremely ambiguous and with many different potential meanings. There is no absolute authority (e.g., standardisation association) undoubtedly defining its essence. You have to look at the number of occurrences by logically relying on relative terms: number of valid occurrences (= using it to descriptive a big enough volume) with respect to total number of occurrences (= references to high enough volumes) and compare to the other alternative (= using it to describe a big enough area) again with respect to the total number of occurrences. Logically, you would also have to account for multiple relevant issues like different countries, cultures, target audience, media formats, etc. As far as it is extremely unlikely to get equivalent results for all the relevant sub-categories, the most logical outcome would be having multiple results (e.g., commonly used as X under Y and Z conditions).

So much effort, so high unreliability and so biased conclusions make this whole problem completely ridiculous. People in their right minds don't waste so much time to prove what, by definition, cannot be proven; and, what is even more important, it wouldn't make any difference anyway as far as these are just kind-of-humorous/informal references, precisely assumed to be taken in a relaxed and over-understanding way. I think that there has to be something wrong with people unable to adequately understand context and, more importantly, humour. All these comments are a monument to absolute nonsense; a good sample of what is completely wasting time/effort for accomplishing plainly nothing; an excellent reference to help understand why I try to avoid dealing with certain issues/people.

Additionally to have honour (I guess, because I rarely use that expression. It sounds to me like descriptive of old kind-of-fanatic behaviours I see in movies about kamikazes or Spanish mostly-wrong-or-brought-of-historical-context references), I am tolerant, understanding and can easily concede almost whatever when seeing someone needing it much more than I do; what doesn’t mean that I am willing to lie or to accept what I don’t think that is right. I have heard references to both volume and area; not too many references to volume in general because of the already-referred counter-intuitiveness of this idea. I don't keep track of all these references because I don't even listen too carefully to this kind of reports; I personally find proper units much more descriptive than these weird references.

I have done a quick research in internet right now and most of the first results which I found weren't referring to volume (or size, but later clarified as volume/capacity). Most of these article rely on a concept which does seem intuitively easy: using the given liquid to fill X number of swimming pools; this sounds like an excellent way to simplify the referred 3D-understanding difficulties and makes much more sense than what I originally interpreted (thinking about a 3D space and locating swimming pools one on top of the other). As per this short research, I can say that it might (= I have no relevant knowledge on something which, as explained, cannot even be technically proven) be possible that swimming pools are commonly used as informal way to describe volumes. Is this enough for you? This is all what you wanted? Enjoy it and please try to avoid wasting my time in the future. Bye.

Re:You don't take responsibility after all

[CustomSolvers2]

Sorry, a typo. I meant "I have done a quick research in internet right now and most of the first results which I found were referring to volume".

Re:You don't take responsibility after all

[Capsaicin]

Are you trying to insult me?

Not at all Alvaro (you can call me Capsaicin ;). I'm trying to encourage the better you to show himself, the one who wrote "I will apologise ... To comply with what I expect from everyone else: do whatever you want, but always take responsibility for your mistakes."

This statement is extremely ambiguous and with many different potential ...

No need to overthink it (you run the risk of appearing to weasle), it's really quite straightforward. The google search I gave you above "(olympic OR olympic-sized) swimming pools of" (quotation marks obviously necessary), throws up about 35,300 results. I've gone 5 pages deep and, at least on my localised version have seen not one instance of it referring to area. Each and every example I encountered describe volume. Honestly, we need hardly have recourse to statistics here.

You are correct it is mainly liquid capacity: water, sewage, oil, low-level nuclear waste and even semen, however also sand, gold, the "space" taken up by mattresses, and even fish make an appearance.

... most of the first results which I found were referring to volume

"Most?" Is the the better and honest Alvaro writing?

I can say that it might ... be possible that swimming pools are commonly used as informal way to describe volumes.

It might be possible? Come now.

This is all what you wanted?

What I wanted you not to contradict me when I was correct and you were wrong. This really should have ended, after you first corrected me, when I wrote "[w]hile I can accept that might be true for the land surface of Delaware, or the bullring ... the Olympic swimming pool ... is most assuredly a measure of volume. [new emphasis]" And if not then, certainly when I gave you that first link (and as an aside I think it was researched not by "someone like [me]," but rather by someone like you, i.e. a metrologist)

Really you wasted a lot of time by not accepting much earlier, that a) OSP is commonly used as a measure of volume and b) the idea that all "whacky" measures are necessarily about 1 or 2, but never 3 dimensions, was wrong-minded. I take it, however begruddingly and hedged in possibility, you do now.

Perhaps this was an English usage issue, (though your English appears faultless), but the next time I "assure" you of a fact, have your evidence to prove me wrong marshalled before contradicting me. I do take very well to being proven wrong ... it being such a rare pleasure.

Cheers.