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5800sq km iceberg breaks off Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf
- ndh2 9y ago> There is enough ice in Antarctica that if it all melted, or even just flowed into the ocean, sea levels [would] rise by 60 metres Is this true? Wikipedia says "About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 km in thickness". But is all of that above sea level?
- rukittenme 9y agoAbove sea level is poor phrasing. The ice is land based which is what's important. Sea ice doesn't increase sea levels. I wouldn't worry about Antarctica melting. It's ice is growing at the moment.
- Oletros 9y agoThis year, sea ice extension in the Antarctica has reached a low record > https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/sea-ice-extent-sinks-to-record-lows-at-both-poles/ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/sea-ice-extent-sin...
- wklauss 9y agoWhat will be the most likely scenario now? will we see this piece drift away and melt? stay relatively close to the current area? and if it will start drifting, how far can it go with such an impressive amount of ice?
- r721 9y ago>The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict. 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. http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/ http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/
- coldcode 9y agoMany of these get hung up since there are many areas they have to drift through that are not deep enough, so they get stuck and just melt in place. This chunk is about 2/3 the size of Big Island in Hawaii. There have been other bigger ones. I think there is one relatively large sized (or whats left of it) one near New Zealand. You have to realize the oceans are really huge and hitting one of these is highly unlikely. The bigger question is how the remaining shelf breaks apart; people are not sure if its more stable or more unstable after this calving; with huge ice areas its not always easy to predict.
- mino 9y agoOn wiki there's this good illustration of what happened over time to iceberg B-15, which calved in 2002 and it is the largest recorded iceberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_B-15#/media/File:B15a_a4.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_B-15#/media/File:B15a_...
- wl 9y agoNon-media-viewer link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B15a_a4.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B15a_a4.jpg
- Glamhoth 9y agoWill it have C++ shell now?
- spodek 9y ago> And while climate change is accepted to have played a role in the wholesale disintegration of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves, Luckman emphasised that there is no evidence that the calving of the giant iceberg is linked to such processes. > Twila Moon, a glacier expert at the US National Ice and Snow Data Center agrees but, she said, climate change could have made the situation more likely. And yet will a single person who reads about yet more evidence that humans are contributing to global warming change his or her behavior significantly to reduce his or her contribution? Will you, reading these words, actually do something you wouldn't have as a result of learning about this? Most people will blame someone else, maybe the president or the system, or say solar power is growing or population growth isn't as fast as it used to be or ask what difference does my contribution make... and then go back to what they would have done otherwise, without meaningful change. Which is how we got here.
- kingkawn 9y agoBlanket generalized condemnations that serve no end but satisfaction of the speaker's own sense of tragic moral certainty are also how we got here
- spodek 9y agoYour post ironically describes itself better than mine I didn't condemn or bring up morality. Satisfaction? I'm sad. I wish someone would write something like that they turned off their air conditioner, decided to take public transit instead of driving today, decided to avoid meat for a day, or something like that. Instead, edgy comments and no personal change, at least not so far.
- rubyn00bie 9y agoHow about instead of writing posts that talk about what others could be doing or presumably aren't you talk about what YOU are doing. Going around condemning people and complaining is far less inspiring and doesn't lead to change. It just makes you seem judgemental and hollow to the "sins" you commit. Honey not vinegar. I find it very odd you post on leadership according to your bio but approach issues like you have here.
- mino 9y agoGood images from ESA's Sentinel-1 and CryoSat here: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-sentinel-satellite-captures-birth-behemoth.html https://phys.org/news/2017-07-sentinel-satellite-captures-bi...
- ianaphysicist 9y agoA bit larger than the US state of Delaware. (5800 sq km is 2239 sq mi. The land area of Delaware is 1949 sq mi per Wikipedia)
- nonbel 9y agoI see this thread is already filling with people who just know better than the experts that this event was some ominous sign of climate change. That is something totally made up by the media and internet: >“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.” http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/ http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/
- nonbel 9y agoHere is more from tfa: >'Andrew Shepherd, professor of Earth Observation at the University of Leeds, agreed. “Everyone loves a good iceberg, and this one is a corker,” he said. “But despite keeping us waiting for so long, I’m pretty sure that Antarctica won’t be shedding a tear when it’s gone because the continent loses plenty of its ice this way each year, and so it’s really just business as usual!”' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/giant-antarctic-iceberg-breaks-free-of-larsen-c-ice-shelf https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/giant-antarcti...
- liberte82 9y agoScientists will ALWAYS say this about single events. It's impossible to tie a single event to a long term process like climate change. Although I'm not surprised to see this kind of defense from the party that brought a snowball into Congress as proof that climate change isn't occurring.
- nonbel 9y agoThis seems to be a talking point that people are mindlessly repeating that is wrong in multiple ways. I won't bother with all, but here is the exact same person making a link to a single event regarding the exact same ice shelf: >"And while climate change is accepted to have played a role in the wholesale disintegration of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves, Luckman emphasised that there is no evidence that the calving of the giant iceberg is linked to such processes." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/giant-antarctic-iceberg-breaks-free-of-larsen-c-ice-shelf https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/giant-antarcti... This story is somewhat interesting on its own, but it is clear the media and ignorant people on the internet have blown it up into fake news.
- TaylorAlexander 9y agoI recently watched a Carl Sagan keynote from 1990 on climate change. You can skip the old guy introducing him, but I found Carl's parables and discussion of the options interesting given how little we ended up doing. https://youtu.be/9Xz3ZjOSMRU https://youtu.be/9Xz3ZjOSMRU The scientific community was so wrong. Begging the government to solve it wasn't going to happen. I'm still at a loss for what to do.
- harshreality 9y ago> The scientific community was so wrong. Begging the government to solve it wasn't going to happen. Which government? Rewind to 1990. Suppose the U.S. government takes the hard-line position that climate change risks being a civilization-ending nightmare and has to be stopped ASAP. Other countries are going to know that going into negotiations. What exactly is the proposition to other countries to get them to dramatically decrease emissions? If we even got them to agree to it, they'd stripmine the U.S. economy in return, and wouldn't even leave us with our shirts. That's on top of the severe short-term self-imposed economic hardship of cutting hydrocarbon usage. Granted, I don't believe for a moment that most conservative politicians have the appropriate level of concern for global warming, or the broader environment, or the wide variety of failure modes of capitalism in the realms of non-excludable and "club" (excludable but non-rival) goods in general. But assume for the sake of argument that they did have sufficient concern, or better yet, let's say the Green Party controls the House, Senate, and Executive. I don't understand what strategy the environmental left would have the U.S. use in international relations 10, 20, 30 years ago to try to mitigate environmental damage.
- nthcolumn 9y agoThe US government obviously. I suppose as the biggest polluter by far you are bound to lose out most but how is that everyone else's problem? And what an argument - 'oh yeah I would have but I knew nobody else would so I just did even worse'. Plenty of other governments signed up for Kyoto in 1990 and pushed for higher levels. Anyways, what sort of economy were you planning to have without a habitable planet? The strategy, and potentially a highly lucrative one given US lead in required green tech, would have been less denying the uncomfortable truth, less pandering to big oil lobby and more educating the willfully ignorant and more investment in renewables and a bit of using your market influence to push the agenda. Hardly ever going to be likely though with GWB et al in charge although he did correctly say that there needed to be a technological solution. Trump omgwtf - they should call that thing the Bigly Berg in his dishonour. I have 100ha trees btw. Used to be veggie but as that means GM and worse soya i.e. bad and very, very bad, eat and fly fewer miles now.
- chronic6a5 9y agoIs climate change happening now? Yes. Are humans accelerating the process? Yes. Will this have a negative impact on my kids and future generations? Yes. Does this mean I'm going to drive an electric vehicle, bring a reusable plastic bag to grocery shopping, or compost my food? Absolutely not. Not caring about climate change is just too damn convenient. It's cheaper and faster to not care. I, and hundreds of millions of others in the world, simply don't care about climate change. If you want to fix it, give us an incentive to care. Make it even easier than it is now to help. But as it stands, I'll let other countries pay for it, such as Norway. Unless you address this, no amount regulation or education will change this. Source: am an engineering manager at Google in Mountain View.
- Mankhool 9y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
- nachexnachex 9y ago> Undefined behavior by Larsen C shelf Should have rewritten it in Rust