Ayles Ice Shelf In Arctic Broke Up 16 Months Ago, Scientists Discover - Impact Noted On Seismographs

[hatrack]

An ancient ice shelf has cracked off northern Ellesmere Island, creating an enormous 66-square-kilometre ice island and leaving a trail of icy blocks in its wake. "It really is incredible," said Warwick Vincent of Universite Laval, one of the few people to have laid eyes on the scene. "It's like a cruise missile has come down and hit the ice shelf."

The breakup was so powerful, earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up the tremors as the 3,000- to 4,500-year-old shelf tore away from its fjord on Ellesmere. It broke up 16 months ago, but no one was present to see it. The scientists say they are only now making public details after piecing together what occurred using seismic monitors and Canadian and U.S. satellites. They say the ice shelf collapse, suspected to have been caused by global warming, is the biggest in Canada in 30 years and is indicative of the transformation under way on Ellesmere, Canada's most northern land mass.

"We are seeing incredible changes," said Vincent, whose group is studying the island's disappearing ice shelves and their unique ecosystems. "People talk of endangered animals - well, these are endangered landscape features and we're losing them." The Ayles ice shelf was one of six ice shelves left in Canada, remnants of a vast icy fringe that used to cover the top end of Ellesmere. Scientists consider the Canadian shelves, located about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole, sentinels that reflect the accelerating change in the Arctic. In 2002, one of Vincent's graduate students, Derek Mueller, discovered that Ellesmere's Ward Hunt ice shelf had cracked in half. The researchers have also seen the sudden collapse of ice dams and the draining of 30-kilometre-long lakes into the sea.

The shelves are 90 per cent smaller than they were when Arctic explorer Robert Peary crossed them in 1906. And the Ayles ice shelf can be erased from Canada's maps. "It no longer exists," Vincent said.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=e4c99314-a71a-4418-a246-eea457e8b873&k=82636

[xchrom]

1. if global warming doesn't get the attention of conservatives

the snap back back surely will.

[InvisibleTouch]

2. I'm getting tired of the cautiously pussyfooting language:

"...suspected to have been caused by global warming..." (emphasis mine)

I know that's a characteristic of scientific writing, because I used to engage in it myself; never could you say, "This is our conclusion," but instead had to say something like "Our research strongly suggests support for this conclusion." Bah. Yes, there are good reasons for wording things this way in some areas, because new research can always potentially shed new light and lead to new conclusions - but in this case, it's time they stopped softening the blow by using such terms as "suspected," "allegedly," "in theory," etc., and simply told it straight out. It's not like there's any doubt about the facts anymore. Language is power. Time to use it for greatest effect.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Another casuality of an anti-intellectual, anti-science administration...

... and one that I'm sure wouldn't hesistate to cut off funds for critical science programs if said scientists don't couch their findings in a manner that leaves some manuvering room for the "Left Behind" crowd.

[YankeyMCC]

3. What a missed opportunity

Instead of that Norwegian plan of bringing some US people to see the affects there if only we had Bush, Cheney, Inhofe and their like standing on the edge of this shelf 16 months ago. ;)

Ah well.

[tom_paine]

21. Do you really think those monsters could be moved by some broken ice?

Maybe if they were oil cubes instead of ice cubes, or perhaps cubes of gold or diamonds.

Understand this: One million people could be shredded in front of the eyes of Bush, Cheney (maybe not Inhofe, he's a wacky fundy but I don't know if he is genuinely evil like BushCheney) and as long as there weren't any of their friends or the select group they consider to be "real people", they wouldn't give a flying fuck.

"Is that pig blood or peasant blood, Uncle Dick?"

"I dunno, Dubya, but it amounts to the same thing."

[al bupp]

4. Iceshelves, the proverbial canary in the artic coal mine

The shelves are 90 per cent smaller than they were when Arctic explorer Robert Peary crossed them in 1906. And the Ayles ice shelf can be erased from Canada's maps.

I wonder how global climate change doubters wave-off this sort of evidence.

[hatrack]

5. That's easy - they'll cite an imaginary liberal media conspiracy!!

You know, the one involving that giant cabal of sinister scientists intent on fattening their incredibly lucrative research grants!!

Besides, their facts are just as good as your facts, and they know in their hearts that Supply-Side Jesus would never let anything bad happen to the Yeew-Nighted States of 'Murica.

:eyes:

[n2doc]

7. They just say it is part of a "natural cycle"

Climate change doubters always point to the middle ages warm period and say "look, it was warm back then too- must be natural. Nosiree bob, CO2 don't cause no warming.." Thus ignoring that this ice shelf was thousands of years old and survived that period just fine...

[al bupp]

9. Right, denial, as they say, isn't just a river in Egypt

So my next question is how do we utterly marginalize these kinds of hand-wavings in the arena of public opinion?

[The2ndWheel]

8. It is the intended goal, is it not?

We turn the living(life), into the dead(money).

We either efficiently produce the hell out of this planet, or we live. One or the other, we can't have both. Sorry.

[Mabus]

10. Incredible

We need to press our congressional leaders to take initiative and do something about America's pollution. We need to recycle and get off the addiction to oil.

[leftchick]

11. photos of Ellesmere Island here...

"before"... :cry:

[Gloria]

12. Al Gore is going to have a hard time keeping up with updates to

An Inconvenient Truth at the rate things are going....going.....gone....

[leftchick]

13. my Hair is On FIRE!

and my son asked me tonight if Global Warming would happen in his lifetime. All I could say was, I hope not. I lied.

:cry: :cry: :cry:

[theHandpuppet]

15. Just for curiosity's sake -- why did you lie to him?

Is he too young for that kind of discussion? If he's a young child I could see not wanting to unduly scare him. Still, I don't envy you the day when you WILL have to have that discussion with your son. What a world we're leaving to the next generation. <sigh>

[leftchick]

16. it was a white lie I suppose

I don't really think there is hope it will not, yet I can not tell him positively yes. It was a chicken (motherly?) way out because, DAMN he is only 11 years old. :cry:

I can not give him all of the awful truth yet. I just can't. He needs to be a kid for a couple of more years. :(

[Boomer]

14. K&R

Okay, not as important as the current state of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's romance, but at least of passing interest....

[G_j]

17. thanks for posting

truly serious news :-(

[hatrack]

19. Thank you - while not on the same scale as Tara Connor or Tom & Katie . . .

. . . still, there's something interesting going on here, I think.

[EstimatedProphet]

18. The worst thing is, the fuckwits that won't listen will just shrug it off

When half the coastal cities are flooded and climate change has ruined our food production, and thousands upon millions of refugees are pouring into the country desperate to just be able to live, the freepsubhumans will just say "Well, guess i was wrong" and expect that to make it all right.

When that comes about, if any of them say anything of the sort to me, I'm going to kill them with a baseball bat. Starting at the knees and working up.

[alfredo]

20. We are threatened by our own inability to get out

of our own way.

Wait until the CO2 starts being released from the thawing permafrost. You think warming is scary now. Just wait.

We are fucked.