Giant Ice Shelf Snaps 529
Popo writes "Sattelite images have revealed that an ancient 66 square-kilometer ice shelf, the size of 11,000 football fields, has snapped off from an island in Canada's arctic. The Ayles Ice Shelf was one of 6 major shelves remaining in Canada's arctic and is estimated to be over 3000 years old. The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 km away picked up tremors. Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor."
Drinks all around! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Geography lesson (Score:5, Funny)
I agree with you that the tequila is what makes a good Margarita, but you are wrong about your crap. Penguins do not frequent the same ice as polar bears. Repeat with me, polar bears are in the North, penguins are in the South. Not, they do not meet at the tropics.
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Re:Drinks all around! (Score:5, Informative)
Overlooked (Score:3, Insightful)
How much is that in square furlongs? (Score:5, Funny)
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We really should be using hides instead--what's the tax value for an ice shelf?
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66 (square kilometers) = 630.89552 square furlongs
Re:How much is that in square furlongs? (Score:5, Informative)
About half the size of San Francisco
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Re:How much is that in square furlongs? (Score:5, Informative)
So a bit bigger than Bermuda [antor.org] (zoom out) [worldatlas.com] but a bit smaller than San Marino [aboutromania.com] (zoom out) [worldatlas.com]
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Ungrateful scientists (Score:5, Funny)
Happy Feet... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Happy Feet... (Score:5, Funny)
Non Global-Warming Activity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Non Global-Warming Activity (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Non Global-Warming Activity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Non Global-Warming Activity (Score:5, Informative)
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They, however, are in the antarctic.
less ambiguous units please! (Score:5, Funny)
NFL? Canadian? European kickball?
Besides, this is a nerds site. Don't make athletic references.
Volkswagen Bugs or Libraries of Congress would be more appropriate.
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Ok, imagine 11,000 of thoose fields the Jocks chased you across trying to give you a wedgie.
Is that better ?
A 728,000 inch monitor (Score:5, Funny)
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A better "island" for comparison would be Manhattan [wikipedia.org], which is 51 km^2 (making the broken ice shelf around 25-30% larger than Manhattan Island). Not only is it a unit which is quite close to the area in question, it is also a place where many people actually might have a decent feel for how big that is.
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Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists say it is the largest event of its kind in 30 years and point their fingers at climate change as a major contributing factor."
So what was the cause 30 years ago?
It's a fair question, yes? Like when I hear "such and such place recorded the highest temperature in 150 years this week!" I think "What caused the previous high 150 years agp?" My brain has a pesky habit of continually asking questions. All those X-Files episodes, I guess. Trust no one. Ideologues hate me.
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So the ice shelf is 3000 years old. That means 4000 years ago it was so warm that it couldn't form.
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The thing is, we do not *want* to return to the situation of over 3000 years ago, because it is not a situation in which modern civilisation has arisen.
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That was my point. apparently I was being too subtle for you. That England has been that warm in the "recent" past. While CO2 emmissions might be speeding up the normal cycle, fact is that weather temperatures go up and down. if the ice shelf is 3000 years old then it's younger than the pyramids and younger than the jewish religion.
let's put it into perspective
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This is a very naive view. The problem is that most of our current civilization and infrastructure has been developed in the past few centuries during which the climate was not that warm. This infrastructure is fragile - it would not take much sea rise or change in rainfall patterns to cause major problems for a significant propo
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Um, no. The world will not grind to a halt because a few cities experience some flooding. Will it be inconvienient for some of the population? Sure. But to think that it would be some kind of economic catastrophy? Sorry, but I'm
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Sorry, but that is nonsense. Kobe is not Tokyo.
Correlation is not causatin. Let me say that again; correlation is NOT causation. Would the world climate be changing if mankind was not here? Yes. This is undisputed. So what makes you so sure that mankind is
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While you're asking good questions, add this one on: How is it that this thing is only 3000 years old? In geological timescales, that's nothing. The "blink of an eye." If it only just developed in the first place, why should we care that it's gone away again?
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Because it serves someone's political interests.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
And in this case, the 30 years figure is because observations of this kind done with satellites has only been possible for 30 years, and any prior event would be impossible to measure.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Critical thinking = idiocy? (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone tells you: "We haven't got a better football player for 20 years!", you think: "Mkay, so there *was* a better one before that!", no?
If there were no one better, the time mentioned would be longer.
It's only logical.
If you do not know when thermometers were invented, and do not know when satellites were invented... For what reason would you think in another way?
It's an incorrect way to write a statement in the first place - because it is misleading.
A more correct way to express this would be: "We have the highest temperature yet measured." or "It is the biggest chunk of ice broken loose we have observed with our satellites."
Yes, I am aware that the satellite part says "largest event in 30 years", the above is just an example.
I think that can be forgiven though - don't you?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a natural cycle? How long has this particular event been brewing? Have there been any other factors involved that can be discovered? These questions need to be answered before causes can be decided.
I am concerned about global warming, but I am also concerned about political motivations determining hypothesis, or special interest groups leaping on events and trumpeting them as being caused by their particular bugbear.
Such things do not good science make, and we need good science to get to grips with the causes of these events, lest we wander too far from the truth of it.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
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This is not the same as saying I approve of global warming. I'm merely saying more data is required. I would be quite happy if the US and other lesser polluters stopped ripping into the ecosystem, but last I checked I'm not a global power, so I am unlikely to be able to stop anything the power hungry are doing.
Such feeling aside, my point remains.
Re:How much evidence do we need? (Score:4, Insightful)
How many vast Ice sheets have cracked recently? I haven't heard of many. This may be a natural event, it's certainly on a scale we are not normally accustomed to envisaging. To definatelly point to a cause for a thing, it must be seen more then once, preferably many times. What if, for instance, Ice sheets crack constantly? Until the 19th century there was little interest in keeping an eye on Ice in the arctic, that's not much time for events on such a large scale to be observed.
Ice is melting all over the arctic it seems, and there are tentative links to global warming. However no-one has proven that these are not natural events slightly speeded up.
I'm not interested in getting the facts from whatever group can shout the loudest, or who succeeds in worrying the most people, I'm interested in knowing the precise cause, or combination of causes, before resorting to being scared to voice a variant opinion.
This is aside from my views on pollution. Even if it weren't allegedly messing with Ice sheets I'd still think pollution was a bad thing. I am very wary of jumping to conclusions though.
Re:How much evidence do we need? (Score:5, Informative)
How many vast Ice sheets have cracked recently?
I believe that the Larson A and B ice sheets, in Antarctica, broke up within the past decade.
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Actually, you're about 50 years behind the research. Global warming has been documented for over a century, and 50 years ago there was a lot of scientific debate over the causes. But two significant things have happened over the past several decades: The warming has accelerated rapidly, and scientific evidence has accumulated to the
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So what was the cause 30 years ago?
Probably a set of major contributing factors that did not include climate change, as can be inferred from the quote.
can I take a shot. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I see where your going with this ie. is it a new event or just a re-occuring event. I'm a guess and say the first. You figure 30 years ago the ice shelves/glaciers were as much as twice as big as they are now. It all comes down to proportion. let say 30 years ago ice shelves represented about 500 square miles of area (ficticous number) this number proportionally wasnt' much. now lets reduce the total square footage of ice sheets by half, then break of the same amout. Yes it's the same as 30 years a
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Maybe it was a climate change? The climate changes all the time for various reasons, some of which we know, and most of which we don't.
I get the feeling that when you see "climate change", you assume that somebody is trying to push an ideology(specifically, Global Warming). I don't think this is the case. It's a fact that there is climate change, and it's a fact that the current climate change includes a increase in temperature, but not everybody claims that this i
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fair question, yes? Like when I hear "such and such place recorded the highest temperature in 150 years this week!" I think "What caused the previous high 150 years agp?" My brain has a pesky habit of continually asking questions.
The problem is, you need to ask the right questions - you are asking the wrong ones. What matters is not what caused an area of ice to break off 30 years ago. The correct question is: "How much faster is the ice breaking off now than then?" Just because it has taken 30 years for an area to exceed the previous record, does not mean that no ice has been breaking off since.... in fact, warming might might mean that smaller pieces break off more often, explaining the long time to break the record!
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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Holocene_T emperature_Variations.png [wikimedia.org]
or, if you prefer a larger timescale:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:65_Myr_Climate_ Change.png [wikipedia.org]
Oh wait, that question is so so hurtful. I must be paid by the oil firms or something.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
What else does it mean? WARS. Lots and lots of wars. Wars almost always are about resources, and shrinking resources and accelerating ecological catastrophe means mankind goes apeshit. Hell, we've just killed 600 thousand people just to control the oil spigot to Asia. Imagine what people will do for livable land and a water supply. Hell, water holes worldwide are being PURCHASED by American speculator right now -- Enron was big into water supply futures before the bastards went dead, but others took their place. Raw capitalism may ignite war long before real changes occur, because the truly evil men in this world will start charging fortunes to access water supplies around the world. We're gonna need a really big army to keep off all the people who are going to want to kill us.
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365 days per year, 150 years of temperature records, and a wild-ass assumption that a 10 degree variation is "normal" for a given day of the year.
Given those numbers, how many record high temperatures would this predict for 2007?
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No. You are misinterpreting scientific honesty. "Cannot definitively say" does not mean "don't know".
Northwest Passage (Score:2)
Why I should be a highly paid spin consultant. (Score:5, Funny)
The implication is that 30 years ago there was a larger event. So if a smaller sheet of ice broke off now than the one from 30 years back, doesn't that mean the problem is going away?
11,000 football fields? (Score:5, Funny)
11,000 Football field (Score:3, Funny)
Re:11,000 Football field (Score:4, Informative)
A football field is 58000 square feet x 11000 = 638000000 square feet for the iceberg.
Rhode Island is about 584524 football fields.
So the iceberg is about 1/53rd of the size of Rhode Island.
TERRORORRISTSS (Score:5, Funny)
Canada should totally start rebuilding that ice shelf just to show those terrorists that NOBODY messes with Canada, eh?
Oh shit (Score:2)
How many elephants does it weigh? (Score:3, Funny)
Al Gore (Score:4, Funny)
3000 years old... (Score:5, Funny)
Been There Done That (Score:5, Informative)
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-1-15
In 1984 this study was done in Canada. The first page kind of says it all.
" Between 1959 and 1974 a total of 48sqkm calved off from Milne and Ayles ice shelves. In addition, the Ayles Ice Shelf moved about 5km out into Ayles Ford"
Not quite 66 sqkm but close. And it sounds as if the shelf broke off rather recently within a few decades, and somehow reattached itself. No mention of that in the story, but there is a significant emphasis that the ice is 3000 years old and ancient. Making it seem as if this has been the same for 3000 years. Next at the bottom left of the first page.
"The largest observed ice calving occurred at Ward Hunt Ice Shelf (just north of Ayles) where almost 600SQKM, broke off between 1961 and 1962.
Re:Been There Done That (Score:4, Informative)
Those historical figures are for small bits or simple melting. They aren't for large blocks the size of this one popping off.
" Between 1959 and 1974 a total of 48sqkm calved off from Milne and Ayles ice shelves. In addition, the Ayles Ice Shelf moved about 5km out into Ayles Ford"
"The largest observed ice calving occurred at Ward Hunt Ice Shelf (just north of Ayles) where almost 600SQKM, broke off between 1961 and 1962".
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Where was that? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the north pole, isn't every direction south?
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At the north pole, isn't every direction south?
Its all about perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Or 1/50th the size of Rhode Island
Which one seems bigger to you?
Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
This doesn't cause me to doubt it exists, or that we've caused it. It causes me to doubt that anything will seriously change. Business As Usual.
This shelf detaching (and then refreezing later) is a potential for Greenland. If we get a sudden few feet in ocean water (unlike an ice shelf, Greenland's ice will move from land to ocean), then an extended European winter, mass fishing industry havoc and the economic ripples everywhere - it may wake everyone up.
Or it may not. History has shown that death itself is the most effective societal teacher.
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Re:I can't wait..... (Score:4, Informative)
That is not the point, global warming is a fact, global warming is the cause of melting ice, global warming is the cause of warmer oceans. That is not what is being contested.
What is being contested is the cause of global warming. There are two podiums here, one is for arguing the cause is man made, the other is for arguing that it is a naturally recurring event.
The first has little evidence to support it other than (slightly) higher co2 levels in the atmosphere. The second of which has strong evidence recorded in, what else but the ice itself as well as in fossil records.
You cannot argue that there have been global warming events in the past but you can argue that man couldn't have been the cause then.
So I guess we are in agreement? Global warming is a CLEARLY OBVIOUS FACT.
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I guess George W. is not a nobody, not to mention Stephen Harper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Harper) as they both have argued that global warming doesn't exist.
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Funny how on the extremes of both ends, personal liberties are what we lose. How do we stay in the middle? Also a good question if you're stranded on a melting ice shelf...
Re:I can't wait..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh wait - it wasn't the LEFT that did that, was it? It's the extremes that are the problems. True liberals and true conservatives both care deeply about personal liberty.
Re:I can't wait..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Extremists are extremists.. plain and simple.
The only difference is which liberties they want you to surrender & why.
To be fair, sometimes they ask you to do it for the common good
and not because of some boogeyman.
Re:I can't wait..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have to mention that realclimate "debunked" the global cooling myth. It was never considered as a mainstream scientific belief, it only existed because of the popular press. The press gets most things wrong, can't distinguish between global dimming and global cooling. As for Nuclear Winter - thats the least of our worries if that many nukes were to be detonated in order to either cause an effect or not cause like that. It is a doomsday scenario, quite unlike global warming.
I have for a long time realised that categorizations like left or right don't make sense in the case of 80% of the population, especially across countries. Some of my ideas for an optimal society have socialist touches, but I also believe that personal liberties are not contradictory with them, quite the opposite. Even though the classification is quite flawed, I have to add that most of the civilized world is "extreme left" compared to the USA. Facts have a liberal bias and all that.
Anyway, back to the topic. Global warming is not the popular opinion. Or if it is, it is irrelevant. It is the peer reviewed mainstream scientific consensus. Science is powerful, and self checking. Many scientists have tried to falsify the conclusion that global warming is happening, but didn't manage to, thus we accept it as our standing theory in relation to the projected temperature change of the planet. That's how science works, by testable theories.
Cavemen had Hummers? (Score:2)
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While it would be absolutely foolish to dispute the reality of global warming, many of the arguments for it actually being human induced are somewhat specious, simply because global temperature records do not go back for enough to make a statistically meaningful analysis of the cause.
I'm not saying that we aren't the cause, but before the last ice-age this planet was a whole lot warmer than it is right no
Re:A river in Eygpt (Score:4, Insightful)
Should be 70 million tons of CO2 a day. But I'm sure it's the sun "surging" or something. Let's organize a space mission to toss giant ice cubes into the sun!
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Well, you didn't bother to. Why should I?
The point of my post is that we have fewer carbon sequestering plants each day while the rate of CO2 deposition into the atmosphere is growing each day. There's evidence the CO2 deposition into the oceans is causing them to become more acidic, affecting calcium carbonate-dependent sea life - i.e. all of it.
Yes, oceans and trees absorb CO2 - at a constantly declining rate due to
Re:Because we all know (Score:4, Insightful)
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Otherwise, no.
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No, it doesn't. All it takes is for some surface meltwater to percolate down through the ice. Below the ice, it can act as a lubricate, allowing fast movement.
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Yes, of course I do, otherwise I would not have posted the claim. Here is an example.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021387
"Evidence for subglacial water transport in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet through three-dimensional satellite radar interferometry"
I think the appropriate question here is, given that this is a well-documented and understood phenomenon, what are your political motives for questioning it?
It seems like an unlikely scenario in any cas
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Not to mea
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Say goodbye to Miami, most of southern Florida, a lot of Manhattan, and whatever is left of New Orleans.
Why do melting icebergs raise sea level? (Score:3, Informative)
Imagine you could contain the pure water from a fully melted iceberg inside a sphere. In the same way an iceberg floats and sticks out of the sea, the ball of pure water would float in the sea with 2.5% of its volume sticking out above the sea surface. If you let the water o
Do you live in the mountains or something? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we weren't. That was simply media misreporting of recent discoveries of the timings of ice ages.
Seriously, if we had an event of this size a mere thirty years ago, it obviously isn't the one-of-a-kind end-of-the-world-in-twenty-years event the media is portraying it to be. What is the frequency of such events?
That doesn't matter. What matters is the overall frequency of all events which indicate melting. The frequency is high, and increasing. Within my lifetime (if I have a long life) the Artic will be free of ice in summertime. Will you still be doubting global warming even then?