(for the record, I have never seen any more than about 15 total minutes of that insipid show)
Posted on 02/01/2012 8:44:41 PM PST by Paul Pierett
A massive crack in a huge sheet of Antarctic ice discovered in mid-October last year is steadily growing, as seen in recently released satellite images...
The recent discovery that the glacier has markedly sped up over the last decade has provoked a flurry of research interest in Pine Island Glacier and its ice shelf, whose sudden changes are almost undoubtedly caused by climate change and warming oceans in the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
MSNBC tends to be in the Gore Camp. I wonder if they noticed it?
I would recommend MSNBC bring in a Glacier Expert before they throw in a possible prejudice.
I really hate it when journalists don’t answer basic questions.
They say something is big, but they don’t say how big it is.
They say it’s tall, but they don’t quantify as to how tall it is.
Is it too much to answer the questions they pose?
Fixed.
Didn’t they have another one of these a few years ago the size of Florida they claimed was caused by Gorebull warming, then it grew back the next year?
Yep, it could be almost, or not.
Unless the process of a glacier moving slowly but continuously into the ocean will inevitably break off at some point. Let's be realistic; if it didn't it would one day encircle the globe. What a pack of morons.
A massive crack in a huge sheet of Antarctic ice was caused by a guy stealing 5 tonnes of ice from a Chilean glacier to sell to restaurants as ice cubes.
It's mine. Thank you for finding it. Please send it to me; I'll pm my address.
The planet has a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.
The ice has to calve at some point. Otherwise it would eventually extend to the equator. I’ve mentioned that to a few who have hyperventilated over big chunks of ice breaking off either from around Greenland or Antarctica.
When I ask them if they expect it to grow to the equator, they always get a stupefied expression on their face.
Seems like a golden opportunity to offer free one way trips to druggies. They are often both stupid and useless. THOSE would be tax dollars well spent.
Would you prefer FedEx, UPS, or the USPS?
Sending such a thing via the USPS might just finally tip them over the edge into bankruptcy.
I think it’s Scrat’s fault. (Ice Age movies)
(for the record, I have never seen any more than about 15 total minutes of that insipid show)
Well, lemme see now - - - . The ice is solid and the Ocean is liquid. Think, think, think! Oh yeah, both are different States of Matter of H2O! Yeah, and the liquid is warmer than the solid, and the solid is less dense than the liquid. Therefore, the solid floats on the liquid - - - . Lost my train of thought.
BTW, what was the problem in the first place?
Any glacier that meets the ocean is going to calve regularly. This isn’t evidence of global warming.
The fissure in the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf marks the beginning stages of the birth of a 350-square-mile (900 square kilometers) iceberg, part of a natural process known as calving.
The image was snapped on Nov. 13, 2011, when the rift was roughly 19 miles (30 km) long, 260 feet (80 meters) wide for most of its length, and 195 feet (60 m) deep. When researchers first spotted the crack in mid-October, it was roughly 18 miles (28 km) long.
I think that tells us how big it is.
The location of the crack is near where past rifts have appeared in the ice shelf, according to Bindschadler. He estimated that a new, rather large iceberg will probably form in the coming months, if not weeks.
“I hope that our field team will have enough time to get onto the ice shelf and set up GPS receivers before the calving event,” Bindschadler said. “We’d like to measure if the ice shelf notices the loss.”
Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the Boulder, Colo.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, agreed that it’s likely that the crack is part of a natural cycle.
“These are cyclical, occurring every few years, very similar in size and even shape,” said Scambos via e-mail. “As a cyclical process, they are not part of the real climate-change/ice-shelf disintegration story.”
In 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated in spectacular fashion, losing about 3,250 square kilometers of ice in a single season. More recently, the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the western side of the peninsula has started to collapse. Scientists believe both events are linked to climate change, though some researchers have suggested that wave action from distant storms could have helped break up the Wilkins Ice Shelf.
“If something different happened this time; for example, the pace of calvings changed, or this one was farther upstream from the past ones, then it might signal some major change in the Pine Island system,” said Scambos, adding that the area is changing in other ways, but the rate of calving has been steady over the last few decades.
Wow, so glad he (?) qualified that with "...almost undoubtedly..." which, if I can go off on tangent here for a moment... WTF does that mean? Undoubtedly means without a doubt. Qualifying it with almost puts it back into what, the realm of well, maybe, possibly, could-be... But this {expletive} is no-doubt counting on people to read over that quickly and just remember that big word, undoubtedly. Well, it isn't, there is a lot of doubt, even from the very statements he's making.
Ok, the glacier "...has markedly sped up..." Hmm, seems to me that means more ice coming down, increased flow. Gee, to do that you'd need more snow & ice at the source... Doesn't sound like a warming trend but rather a cooling trend.
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