February 18, 2009 02:20 PM
Another Huge Piece of Antarctic Ice Shelf Breaks Off
Not much time to turn this around:
Madrid - Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf is rapidly disintegrating, Spanish scientists reported on Tuesday, with potentially ominous implications for climate change.
An ice sheet of 14,000 square kilometres has broken off from the Wilkins Shelf, and has itself broken into several large icebergs, according to a statement from Spain's National Research Council (CSIC).
CSIC scientists aboard the Hesperides maritime research vessel spotted the disintegration, about 1,600 kilometres south of the southern tip of South America.
If their observation is confirmed, only a small tip of the huge 16,000 square kilometre ice shelf would still be attached to Antarctica.
You damn GOP global warming denying bitches!
If you liked the way it worked out for the Eastern Islanders,
you will love what is in store for us.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
You reference Antarctica, and the Wilkins ice shelf, but the video describes melt in the North Pole.
...was about a year old, but could have done a bit more to explain that it wasn't specifically about the event being reported.
underneath the video
I'm not worried about the ice shelves. All this global warming is going to lead to another ice age and the ice shelves will be healthy and beautiful again.
Don't take my word for. Al Gore talks about it in An Inconvenient Truth (which was an awesome discussion of the climate change but it had annoying and irrelevant political anecdotes in it that detracted from the power of the message he was trying to convey) and scientific research has concluded the same.
Bare bones conclusion of the scientific research:
global warming is causing fresh water to be dumped into the ocean.
this change in salinity threatens to disrupt ocean currents
the biggest ocean current in the atlantic=Gulf Stream
gulf stream keeps western europe and north eastern US relatively mild
no gulf stream= ice age for europe and north east US
little things, like Florida being submerged, worsening droughts in arid countries, stuff like that.
Include the extinction of species, like us.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
we as a species are best suited to adapt to changes in our environment. do you have so little faith in homo sapiens?? hell the cave men survived an ice age but you don't think we can today??
These days, society collapses if people's TV remote doesn't work properly.
speak for yourself
A society of one? How does that work, pray tell?
Yes but this was about ice shelves. And you yourself left out a few things.
Like, with increasing drought there comes increasing wars over resources and the resultant issues such as famine, epidemics and genocide. Also there is an increased likelihood of pandemics due to diseases being able to move out of localized climates.
And there are issues we, as a species, need to face once the cool down period starts such as:
increased famine due to the lower crop yields
tensions creaated politically and economically by displaced people (corneredcanuck may be corneredtexan)
disease
a whole new outlook on life.
But as FilthyHarry mentioned nothing is going to do be done to avert it because the evil corporations that provide the majority of jobs and give us our luxuries don't want the change.
"Not much time to turn this around"
I would say no time. 6 billion people (and growing)wake up hungry everyday the vast majority of which never question the false premise that planet is ours to do with what we please. Personally I feel that if the problem is this noticeable then its too late. Even if there is time left, what realistic chance given the grip the global corporations have on our governments to turn it around if there is only a little time left?
I won't pretend to know what could happen but what ever it is, its gonna happen.
and in the face of cynicism nothing positive will ever happen because you will never get off the couch because you think it is a lost cause.
..after you just rationalized away the whole issue of global climate change.
has demonstrated that the climate of Earth has changed hundreds of times thru the millenia - whether humans were here or not??
I have no doubt the climate is changing - I'm not entirely sure it's because of anything we're doing. The dinosaurs didn't burn fossil fuels, yet some anomaly caused all of them to die.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
That anomaly was called a METEOR. A BIG one.
Seriously, you're still questioning whether global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels?
fear volcanos, they are the sleeping ogres that do the real damage.
You call it cynicism, I call it realism. Who is right? I'm inclined to think I am right because you've used your opinion to make assumptions about my behavior.
it was not realism it was cynicism. plain and simple. look up the definitions. If i offended you i apologize. let me rephrase:
and in the face of cynicism, such as that, nothing positive will happen because the cynics won't do anything to promote change because they think it is a lost cause.
Actually, I think we passed the point where it could be turned around...about 50 years ago. If you look at the graphs from Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth lecture, and you know anything about the mathmatics of change, it appears that we passed the inflection point at about, or even before, the point that this started being investigated in the late 50's. The changes we make now won't be seen until long after the consequences have peaked.
this will be the end of something ! i can tell you that!
very little MSM coverage of this.
meanwhile the ice floats north.
then ice melts.
this causes temperature to temporarily drop (by quite a bit).
then MSM and GOP will chuckle at the shitty cold weather and say "hyuk hyuk hyuk stupid liberals and Al Gore, talking about global warming, its FREEZING outside today!!"
Indeed. A sign of true ignorance. Being unable to differentiate between weather and climate.
The Artic ice cap grew by 30% from 2007 to 2008.
“According to collated data from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Illinois, Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. This is a conservative estimate based on the map projection.”–
http://newworldliberty.wordpress.com/2008/08/...
If you would notice, when the earth was getting warmer the sun was very active with solar flares. For the past year, the flares are gone and the earth is cooling again. It's the sun causing the warming/cooling trends, not co2. Another tax wouldn't stop any of it.
I think you forgot to add the word "snark" to your comment
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
mankind is doing nothing to exacerbate the problem, and there's nothing we could ever do to diminish the problem and/or prepare the global populace.
/snark
Sounds like a science student of Sen. James Inhofe.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
....that went to Bob Jones University...
A Saddleback scientist.
mars and earth's ice caps were melting and refreezing at similar rates.
i guess we need to go invade the fuckin sun...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/arti...
when did the dems become as hysterical as the republicans?
*changing political affiliation to independent ASAP*
Oh. You’re serious…
Ok.
What you say may be true – and there’s not a lot we can do at the moment about cyclical Solar flares. But, it’s not an either or saturation, is it? Either the CO2 emissions are creating a Green House effect trapping Solar Radiation and increasing temperatures OR we had a big Sun Year?
It can actually be both, and since we can’t do much about the one, we should probably work on the other, eh?
The Earth’s surface can be very accurately measured. So can our atmosphere surrounding it. Believe it or not, so can our CO2 emissions. We already know the effect those emissions have – they make things HOT.
It makes little since to forgo putting out one fire because there are two more burning, but that is the nature of your argument. Why bother trying to reduce Green House Gas Emissions if we can’t control the Sun anyway? Sure, why put out Grandma’s house fire if Hawaii’s volcanoes are still spewing lava?
Worse than CO2 and easier to do something about. Bring back the electric car!
Agreed. CO2 is just one of the gases that are trapping heat.
but you are not getting rid of the co2 pollution. you are merely transplanting it to the power stations. bringing back the electric car may reduce the co2 emissions but not get rid of them.
Much easier solution: pass a law that requires all Republicans to stop exhaling.
That's too true. Actually, the electric car is a good idea only because of the better power efficiency. The energy still has to be produced somewhere. It is easier to scrub the power emissions from the plant than from the vehicle, however.
True. But reducing is still not eliminating. However, do you know what the biggest green house gas is??
Water Vapor.
We don't need to totally eliminate them. Reducing them would help a lot though.
The solar sunspot cycle only lasts about 11 years, wherupon it repeats itself. This has been going on for a few billion years. Every cycle always includes a period of cooling that lasts a few years. The global warming has been going on more than 11 years and even with the normal cooling that goes on during the cool portion of the cycle, the trend is still for steadily increasing temperature.
FYI, this year the Northwest Passage was ice free and the entire Ice shelf around Ellesmere Island broke off.
the sun changes polarity ever 11 years, 22 years for a complete cycle!
hooray for reason
piece of Bill O'Reilly's enormous ego broke off yesterday and was spotted floating down the Hudson like a 700 pound turd,causing wide spread panic.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
One can make much more productive use of one's time gleaning info directly from its online site rather than say,having said info filtered through something called "New World Liberty" whose main goal appears to be ensuring the continuing hatred of all things Liberal.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
should just link to mainstream articles instead of biased blogs (hey like the one we're on now :D )
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml...
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/1/23/12131...
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAc...
But this blog doesn't willfully and with malice,spread disinformation.Does it hold to any particular ideology?Of course.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
It wouldn't be the end of the world, and it just might do wonders for the ski industry if the gulf stream thing is for real.
This planet has gone through many climate shifts, but humans just so happen to have caused this one. That said, what is coming down the pipe as a result of our actions will be a much needed wake up call for our species in my opinion. Perhaps the earth will succeed in shaking off a few of the ticks that have been sucking it dry.
Believe it or not, I agree with you on this. The projections from the data collected so far regarding the reflective heat are getting more accurate. We're heating up. But what Chris Yoder stated above is also true. We don't know the tipping point for the Salinity Pump in the Atlantic current. It may be that we DO have another ice-age.
Either way, we're in deep doo-doo with our energy supply and usage, and it needs to be fixed quickly. Correcting the gas emissions with more efficient and sustainable energy can in no way hurt either scenario. It just makes sense.
And am in favor of switching to a more green energy infrastructure. It may be too late to do any good but it couldn't hurt either.
when did everyone join the "humans are a disease" cult?
mars' and earth's temperatures are rising and falling at similar rates. look it up.
its sun activity
What bothers me just as much is the assumption that humans are somehow separate from the Earth and we must SAVE IT.
Not so.
The Earth is going to do just fine, with or without us. What we do now or in the distant future won't make much difference to the fate of the Earth.
What we have to do now is SAVE OURSELVES.
And as many plants and animals as we can.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
I watched the series a couple months ago about what the planet would be like after humans. They went into the regrowth of fauna in NYC and how domesticated animals will return to a new feral state.
As interesting as it was, I would rather see us living along side those plants and animals than to have them flourishing without us.
Yes, as many plants and animals as we can, and we may need them to survive. But make no mistake, our destiny at this point is up to us, regardless of what happens.
There are moments when I think the earth and it's flora and fauna would be better off if there were no humans to muck things up
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Careful what you wish for...
I don't wish for it, I just wonder about it.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
How "arrogant" of the vast majority of the world's scientific community to sound the alarm.
What must be done is to save ourselves from people who would prefer to gamble on the statements of a few paid off lackeys rather than do anything concrete to head off impending disaster.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
I wonder if a cancerous tumor, busily chomping its way through its host, muses how there's still plenty of human left, and how the host's loss of weight and strength are simply due to his food being slightly hotter than usual?
are u some kinda eugenicist?
people that think like you scare the shit out of me.
Are you some kind of person on LSD? How does what I typed bear any resemblance to the ideology of eugenics?
How 'bout you start making some kind of sense?
..who cares if the Earth or solar system explodes? If we have "eternal souls" protected by Gawd.. what's the problem? We'll just end up on some other hospitable planet created especially for us and live in Nirvana /.. fore-e-vv-v-er-r. NO??
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
What do you call a life form that reproduces exponentially and uses up all available resources until there is a massive die-off (kill-off?)?
A Republican?
;)
a leach?
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Taarak beat you to it.
Scientifically speaking, a virus
that the mark of HUMAN HABITATION over the surface of the earth LOOKS LIKE A VIRAL INFESTATION... from 30,000 feet?
It's kind of like a crystalized viral infection in a petri dish. A REALLY LARGE petri dish.
George Wills bergs.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
Maybe you could try to tax the sun or pass a resolution declaring it unpatriotic.
My guess is that the US will not stop using 70% of its gasoline transporting cheaply made Chinese goods back and forth, filling up the Wal-Mart and Target, big-box stores.
Just a guess.
I would much rather see a resolution declaring the Sun Patriotic and make an effort to use it more, and more efficiently.
Here. In the middle of the Pacific
What is your conceptual, continuity?
why is it running backwards !?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20080325_wi...
National Snow and Ice Data Center/NASA !!!!!!! do they know what they are doing/saying ?
to enable the GOP flat earthers working for the petro dollar
limbaugh, hannity, savage, and sons, like mother fucking paul reveres in reverse
Its always about the money for the repugs.
Rather than berating them yet again...I'll keep it simple
Here are some links....please find a twelve year old if you have trouble comprehending....
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives...
And this special message goes out to anyone, liberal, libertarian, moderate, independent, con-servative, right wingnut, trolls, etc, etc...if you can't comprehend that there is something very wrong with the fact that Antarctica is experiencing record snowfall & precipitation, than there is no sense in discussing this critical issue with you.
Antarctica is the driest continent on Earth; it's literally a desert of ice with an average of a single inch of precipitation each year. The current conditions due to the warming & much higher levels of moisture (hence, the precipitation) are causing a complete 180* in that environment, if it helps, think of it this way....what is happening down there is akin to standing in the middle of the Sahara during the dry season and getting whacked by a torrential downpour.
Have a nice day :)
We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children - Native American proverb
If being cold means there's no such thing as global warming, does being full mean there's no such thing as world hunger?
I'm going to keep looking forward. You betcha, Palin and Joe The Plumber in 2012. They will fix it.
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