Antarcticas Larsen C ice shelf finally breaks, releases giant iceberg

[G_j]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/antarcticas-larsen-c-ice-shelf-finally-breaks-releases-giant-iceberg/

BY NSIKAN AKPAN July 12, 2017 at 8:04 AM EDT

After months of expectation, a gigantic piece of the Larsen C ice shelf broke off Antarctica sometime between Monday and Wednesday, scientists at the Swansea University-led Midas project announced Wednesday. The final split was detected by NASA’s Aqua satellite and freed a trillion ton iceberg into the waters of the Weddell Sea.

“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,” Adrian Luckman, lead investigator of the MIDAS project, said in a statement. “Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters.”

The crack in the Larsen C ice shelf has been growing for years. From 2011 to 2015, it expanded by more than 18 miles, and then last year, increased by another 13 miles. Last month, scientists at the Midas project said the iceberg was “hanging by a thread.”


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[malaise]

1. K & R

Get thee to the greatest page - very important

[ismnotwasm]

2. Jesus this is messed up.

Just a bit more of much needed heat reflection gone.

[Plucketeer]

9. I'm betting you know of Darwin

and his theories of evolution. What alot of folks have trouble with is the idea that we can't set ourselves aside from evolution. We're not mere observers. After the past wave of extinction, some species developed into flyers, others, swimmers - and some that even burrow thru the ground. OUR edge (niche) was a perceptive brain. But there's NO safe house for our species to watch from as the world evolves around us. Maybe we DO posses the ability to plug certain facets of change, but we simply can not hold everything in stasis forever. We just can't.

[ismnotwasm]

15. I think of one of the earths "great die offs" that had to do with runaway global warming

The earth will survive. The hardiest of life will survive. We are not the hardest of life--we have all kinds of protections for our fragility, leading to the illusion of human invincibility. You are absolutely right.

[Big_K]

17. I for one welcome our cockroach overlords, except...

... Me and you will be LONG gone by that point. Sucks to be big stupid hairless apes.

[Plucketeer]

19. Didn't you mean...

"Smart" apes?

[Big_K]

20. Smart before November 2016

now just stoopid, moran apes....

[smirkymonkey]

3. K&R

[Solly Mack]

4. K&R

[DesertRat]

5. k&r

[riderinthestorm]

6. Meanwhile in global news...

This should be the headline on every front page everywhere.

[Botany]

7. A Chinese Hoax

Link to tweet

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. It's amazing the lengths the Chinese will go to perpetuate their hoax. . . nt

[mountain grammy]

8. Listen up!

[CrispyQ]

10. ...

[G_j]

11. The Doomsday Glacier

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-doomsday-glacier-w481260


The Doomsday Glacier

In the farthest reaches of Antarctica, a nightmare scenario of crumbling ice – and rapidly rising seas – could spell disaster for a warming planet.

Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is so remote that only 28 human beings have ever set foot on it.

Knut Christianson, a 33-year-old glaciologist at the University of Washington, has been there twice. A few years ago, Christianson and a team of seven scientists traveled more than 1,000 miles from McMurdo Station, the main research base in Antarctica, to spend six weeks on Thwaites, traversing along the flat, featureless prairie of snow and ice in six snowmobiles and two Tucker Sno-Cats. "You feel very alone out there," Christianson says.
He and his colleagues set up camp at a new spot every few days and drilled holes 300 feet or so into the ice. Then they dropped tubes of nitroglycerin dynamite into these holes and triggered a blast. Sensors tracked vibrations as they shot through the ice and ricocheted off the ground below. By measuring the shape and frequency of these vibrations, Christianson could see the lumps and ridges and even the texture of a crushed continent deeply buried beneath the ice.


But Christianson and his colleagues were not just ice geeks mapping the hidden topography of the planet. They were mapping a future global disaster. As the world warms, determining exactly how quickly ice melts and seas rise may be one of the most important questions of our time. Half the world's population lives within 50 miles of a coastline. Trillions of dollars of real estate is perched on beaches and clustered in low-lying cities like Miami and New York. A long, slow rise of the waters in the coming decades may be manageable. A more abrupt rise would not be. "If there is going to be a climate catastrophe," says Ohio State glaciologist Ian Howat, "it's probably going to start at Thwaites."

The trouble with Thwaites, which is one of the largest glaciers on the planet, is that it's also what scientists call "a threshold system." That means instead of melting slowly like an ice cube on a summer day, it is more like a house of cards: It's stable until it is pushed too far, then it collapses. When a chunk of ice the size of Pennsylvania falls apart, that's a big problem. It won't happen overnight, but if we don't slow the warming of the planet, it could happen within decades. And its loss will destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice, and that will go too. Seas will rise about 10 feet in many parts of the world; in New York and Boston, because of the way gravity pushes water around the planet, the waters will rise even higher, as much as 13 feet. "West Antarctica could do to the coastlines of the world what Hurricane Sandy did in a few hours to New York City," explains Richard Alley, a geologist at Penn State University and arguably the most respected ice scientist in the world. "Except when the water comes in, it doesn't go away in a few hours – it stays."

..more..

[orangecrush]

12. Kick

[yuiyoshida]

13. K&R and Tweeted

n/t

[superpatriotman]

14. How did Hillary's emails affect this?

And why didn't Obama do anything to stop it?!!!11!

[Marcuse]

16. Wow! It finally broke off during WINTER!