Posted on 03/27/2008 1:34:39 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit
"Block after block of ice is just tumbling and crumbling into the ocean," Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a telephone interview.
"The shelf is not just cracking off and a piece goes drifting away, but totally shattering. These kinds of events, we don't see them very often. But we want to understand them better because these are the things that lead to a complete loss of the ice shelf," Scambos added.
Scambos said a large part of the ice shelf is now supported by only a thin strip of ice. This last "ice buttress" could collapse and about half the total ice shelf area could be lost in the next few years, Scambos added.
British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan said in a statement: "This shelf is hanging by a thread."
"One corner of it that's exposed to the ocean is shattering in a pattern that we've seen in a few places over the past 10 or 15 years. In every case, we've eventually concluded that it's a result of climate warming," Scambos added.
Satellite images showing the collapse began on February 28, as a large iceberg measuring 25.5 by 1.5 miles fell away from the ice shelf's southwestern front leading to a runaway disintegration of the shelf interior, Scambos said.
A plane also was sent over the area to get photographs of the shelf as it was disintegrating, he added.
Scambos said this ice shelf has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a breakup. In the past half century, the Antarctic Peninsula has witnessed a warming as fast as anywhere on the planet, according to scientists.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images show that a large hunk of Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf has started to collapse in a fast-warming region of the continent, scientists said on Tuesday.
The area of collapse measured about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, according to satellite imagery from the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad sheet of permanent floating ice that spans about 5,000 square miles (13,000 square km) and is located on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula about 1,000 miles south of South America.
"The warming that's going on in the peninsula is pretty clearly tied to greenhouse gas increases and the change that they have in the atmospheric circulation around the Antarctic," Scambos said.
With Antarctica's summer melt season coming to an end, the he said he does not expect the ice shelf to disintegrate further immediately, but come January scientists will be watching to see if it continues to fall apart.
No doubt something is happening here. What it is, isn't exactly clear.
All three POTUS candidates have said they will do something about CO2 emissions.
Freepers think anthropengenic climate change is a cult. But sometimes cults win. The smart move is to promote market-based solutions and not wealth-redistribution schemes. Of course, I have been writing this for years.
Can't wait to hear about the weather now (for those of you who don't understand that comment, there is nothing I can do for you).
I lived in Chile and you used to pay Big Bucks to watch the Ice Mountains Collapse and that was 20 years ago...
If an ice shelf grows too heavy it will break off at it’s weakest point.
These LIARS ought to be sued for LYING to the public and CNN ought to be thrown in with them for their lack of research prior to sensationalizing the issue and carrying water for people who simply make claims with very little evidence to support their GLOBAL claim.
I resent the living hell out of these people.
The smart move is to destroy the cult. Failing that, focus on limiting the damage they do, as you suggest.
But the notion that we should all pretend there is valid science behind AGW (using grossly overparameterized, feedback models fit to limited data in the linear portion of their predictive range, then projecting into the future using the non-linear portion of their range is NOT valid science) and urge market solutions to the problem is both unprincipled and gives up our best argument.
I do modeling for a living. I would go out of business if I tried to market models that are validated as poorly as AGW is validated. They are crap and do not even approach decent-quality commercial models. I'm not buying the give up and be assimiliated argument, which you come close to making.
Kinda like when the ice falls from the skyscrapers in Chicago.
prisoner6
Was there ever a time when this kind of thing wasn’t happening? They talk like ice never broke off the ice shelf before the last couple of years.
But I am not convinced GW is for real or, if real, man-made...look at this statement alone, from the article:
...Scambos said this ice shelf has been in place for at least a few hundred years...
In the expanse of history, a few hundred years is a friggin' blip. So a few hundred years ago, it DIDN'T exist, eh? Ice breaking off of Antarctica is nothing new, I'll wager. Except this piece is bigger than one we've seen recently, so it is automatically due to GW?
Nice weed they've got. How much does it go for on the street.
Don’t the global warming folks have to introduce a lot of fudge factors into their computer models to get their results?
Well with the center of Antarctica getting thicker what did they think the edges would do form a city in the sky ?
“”The warming that’s going on in the peninsula is pretty clearly tied to greenhouse gas increases and the change that they have in the atmospheric circulation around the Antarctic,” Scambos said.”
Absolutely true.
Changes in Water Vapor, the major component of ‘greenhouse’ gases, is almost 100% of the cause of warming and cooling, in the Antarctic, and everywhere else.
C02 is a minute component of greenhouse gases and has abolutely no effect on the weather. Although it would make the plants grow, if they could grow on an iceberg.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. As I think I implied in what I wrote, I am not a card-carrying member of the cult. For me it is more like Constantine. Maybe the same for many politicians. You see a sign. There is a battle to be fought. You claim that if you win, you will convert knowing that if you lose it is irrelevant . You win the battle. You join the cult, but adapt it to your own ideology. Center of the cult moves to Rome and it helps perpetuate power. Maybe even becomes a good thing.
Sorry for mixing these things up, but for me the analogy works.
If the cult helps the US to achieve energy independence and maintain a technology lead while concurrently restraining Chinese growth maybe it isn't so bad even if it is wrong.
If it leads to a massive, socialist wealth-redistribution weakening the West and Western values that is bad.
So I say if the cult is going to win, at least make sure it's future doctrine is shaped from the right('s) perspective.
The US won by the current rules of the game. All it needs to do is make up new rules that favor its strengths which are innovation and creativity - not wasteful use of energy. To me, at this point, it is a no brainer.
When Freepers claim the US can't do it, they are being unpatriotic. When they worry about not helping all those poor Asians and Africans by constraining the carbon usage they are either being bleeding hearts or disingenuous.
“The article is fairly neutral (accept for some alarmist adjectives)”
except for a whole lot of alarmist adjectives, and outright lies.
“I resent the living hell out of these people.”
Thanks for the info. I’ll help you resent them.
May I help resent them also?
Meanwhile it sounds like a bad year to make one of those boat cruises up there, falling ice shelves and all.
“If the cult helps the US to achieve energy independence and maintain a technology lead while concurrently restraining Chinese growth maybe it isn’t so bad even if it is wrong.”
I can’t recall a time in history when that policy has worked out well.
And yet you don't even give examples. Debunk away my FRiend, Debunk.
Just type, don't copy and paste from outside the article, it is annoying.
“May I help resent them also?”
It’s ICE-FLYER’S party, but as far as I’m concerned, the more the scornier.
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