Antarctic Ice Bridge Finally Breaks Off 505
GreennMann writes "An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s. Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place. Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean."
Re:Somewhere in the USA... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:the main concern... (Score:4, Insightful)
You presume that the ice will not float northwards into the shipping lanes. All that ice can travel a long ways before melting.
Re:the main concern... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but that still requires you to go around them, boosting costs as they need to burn more fuel.
Whew, no problem then (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank god we have the average mook on Slashdot or I might have thought this were cause for concern. I guess all of the scientists who have agreed that there are man-made effects on climate are completely incorrect, but this website is the last bastion of sanity?
Re:As I've Said Before (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW: This particular environmentalist doesn't care if you drive an SUV, a sherman tank, or a skateboard.
Re:Not that it matters ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to argue the point, because it's always a holy war with folks, but there's some logistics to that, which you failed to see.
If the seas rise by 10 to 20 feet at the coastlines, coastal areas will flood. That means the ports will be under water, and nothing will come in by sea. International imports will be severely hampered. Pretty much, if you can't bring it in by plane, it won't happen.
If coastal areas flood, major highways, bridges, and train tracks will become unusable.
People will migrate from the flooded areas to higher ground (like, your 900 feet up), but food supplies will be very limited, and transportation will be very difficult without oil coming into the country.
So, even people living on high ground that won't be flooded will be affected.
Re:Not that it matters ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As I've Said Before (Score:2, Insightful)
The argument of "it's natural" is stupid. If it's natural, modify nature. We are constantly doing it.
Why? Because this change does NOT benefit us.
So, nature doesn't want to change (or we don't know how to coerce her)?
Well, at least don't help the change!
Re:Not that it matters ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"See doc, there's a natural progression to blood pressure. High low high low. It's going up,BFD.
Now, I'm gunna eat this bag of potato chips and get a big mac and feel okay about it."
You have to love it how some people cling to the first rationalization that allows them to keep doing what they want, from the time they're kids right up to when they die.
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:5, Insightful)
All those scientists that disagree? Sure, there's some disagreement, but we're talking about a very small percentage of scientists here.
The fact that a lot of people are happy to selectively discount a clear majority of scientific opinion worldwide because it doesn't fit in with their world view or political standpoint never ceases to amaze me.
That might be true, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone once brought this home to me quite nicely - he said if 9 out of 10 doctors said your child had appendicitis, and only 1 said it was trapped gas, would you go home and 'wait and see'?
Even if you were nervous about the risks of an operation, the risks of ignoring it are much worse - if it turns out to be appendicitis.
Sure, it might be nothing, just like global warming might not be our fault, but would you take the chance?
Mark
And I would say (Score:4, Insightful)
That if global warming really will be a very bad thing, then our energy should be spent trying to deal with it when it happens, not prevent it. Why? Well because we are pretty sure that the Earth has been much hotter (and cooler) in the past than it is now. We are about as certain as we can be that there has been a long history of climate fluctuations. Thus it doesn't matter if the current one is natural or man made, because we are going to have to deal with one like it at some point. So that means the real focus should be how to deal with the eventuality, not how to prevent this particular one, if it is in fact preventable.
Unless we can get the ability to control the climate such that fluctuations like that won't happen again (and I seriously doubt that) then preparation is what we need. If we spend a great deal of effort preventing this shift, only to get screwed over by another one, then no good is done. Likewise if it turns out this shift is natural and nothing we can do will prevent it, again no good is done.
Now this all assume you accept the idea that a slightly warmer average temperature will lead to disastrous conditions. However that does seem to be what is claimed in general. Well, if that is in fact what you believe, then you really should be advocating focusing on how to deal with it, not how to prevent it unless you believe you can prevent it when it isn't a human caused phenomena.
The Article Makes a good point (Score:5, Insightful)
It mentions that a lot of the dynamics of this situation are poorly understood. Whether or not you believe in global warming or what you think is causing it we don't know what the results are going to be.
There are so many possibilities with some scientific basis and the whole environment as a system is so complex that we can't predict details. We can paint broad strokes of the future but saying the sea level is going to raise 2.37 feet and believing that the sea will raise exactly 2.37 feet put blinders on you just like believing that a Divine Being created the universe in 6 days.
We have an idea of what MAY happen but there is so much complexity that we don't know what WILL happen. Right now it looks like shit is going to get warmer, ice is going to melt, sea levels will get higher and who knows the Gulf Stream may stop flowing causing Europe to get cold.
Some of you seriously need to stop beating the Global Warming Manifesto like it is a Bible.
Re:As I've Said Before (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And I would say (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I've seen those bizarre claims as well. I don't think any physicist seriously doubts the warming properties of CO2. The spectrum of the sun, absorption lines of CO2 and their relevant thermodynamic relationships are simply too well established. They're freshman-level homework problems, not cutting edge research areas.
I brought that up because I'm concerned about the fact that current warming is highly atypical in that regard. What happens when the natural positive feedback of CO2 adds to what we've already dumped into the atmosphere?
Re:And I would say (Score:3, Insightful)
So let me get this straight, your suggesting we ignore the leak in the hull and keep bailing?
I don't exactly agree with GP either, but I think he's suggesting we invest in powerful bilge pumps (to continue your analogy). At least he didn't suggest the other landlubber approach to a leaky vessel: "If water's flowing in through this hole, then let's make a bigger hole lower down so it can flow back out..."
So-called clean coal comes to mind, along with all of the arguments why less-developed countries should be allowed to increase their greenhouse emissions.
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:3, Insightful)
We also KNOW that abdominal pain can be caused by trapped gas or appendicitis. Sorry, it's you that fails.
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:3, Insightful)
- Oh jeez, if you want to be taken seriously then stop using cheeseball terms that I'd expect from a Scientologist. Giving people who disagree with you some derogatory label lowers your credibility and reeks of cult behavior.
"I think the ice shelves breaking is more likely to be caused by sea level rise though."
- Data please? I'm sorry to be such a stickler on this, but since the pro-AGW crowd always expounds on the merits of science and data then I would expect they would provide some when a claim like this is made.
Re:Not that it matters ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a scientist too, and I judge theories based on merit, not popular opinion.
As a rule, scientific theories are not accepted by the scientific community until they have done two things: (1) explained known observations in a more simple or fundamental way than alternative theories, and (2) made a prediction about something that is currently unknown and that other theories don't predict, which is then confirmed by observation.
Global Warming theory has met neither of those requirements. The main statement of Global Warming is something like this: "small changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere cause large changes in global temperature". Despite this theory, there is absolutely no evidence that a change in CO2 has ever caused the temperature to change, over the entire billions-years history of the planet. So GW theory doesn't explain past observations.
It doesn't explain current observations either: CO2 concentration has steadily increased over the past 100 years, while temperatures have gone up, then down, then up again, then down again (as they are currently). There is no dramatic warming trend as predicted by GW theory.
Finally, GW has not made any unique predictions that have later been confirmed as true. It predicted more and bigger hurricanes; that hasn't happened. It predicted significant temperature increases; that hasn't happened. In fact, the theory seems totally based on computer models that have failed to make a single correct prediction about the climate ever since I first started following the issue, in 1998.
To summarize, GW theory does not meet the standards of scientific acceptance, not by a long shot.
Re:As I've Said Before (Score:3, Insightful)
Carbon needs an internationaly agreed and enforced CAP on total emmissions in order to create an economically and environmentally sound market to TRADE it.
That will not produce a shortest path solution to the problem. The fastest, least expensive and most humane solution is to quickly get the developing world past the high-pollution stage of industrialization. There are essentially two ways to make cleaner energy sources cost-competitive with dirtier ones: make the dirty ones more expensive or make the cleaner ones less expensive. The latter will ruin fewer lives in the long run.
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:4, Insightful)
This is contradicted by:
Look at the data again. There is most assuredly a dramatic warming trend, despite the slight decrease in global mean temperature over the past few years. Run a regression on the data, it's quite clear.
Furthermore, once periodic solar activity is factored in as an ameliorating effect due to lower output over the past few years, it becomes quite clear that the warming trend continues.
If you're such a logic scientist, how could you have missed the bare facts of the data of the past 100 years? And how could you have dismissed the impact of solar activity on temperature?
Seems to me like you don't WANT to believe in GCC, and so you don't bother reading all the evidence and theory.
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:4, Insightful)
A more accurate analogy would be:
a) quit your job to live in a clinic indefinitely with a poor quality of life, spending $100,000 on experimental treatments before it bursts in the hope of delaying the problem that will inevitably come anyway, or
b) keep your job and save up money, wait until the appendix bursts, and spend $10,000 to have the operation to fix the problem, and get on with your life.
I'm on the fence as to whether AGW is real or not. Even if it is, the climate scientists say it is inevitable over the next century. So why spend trillions of dollars and criple the world's economy when the problem can't be reversed anyway. Better to strive for thriving economies around the world that have that have enough prosperity and wealth to deal with the consequences, and in 100 years or so internal combustion engines and coal power will be obsolete anyway.
Re:Not that it matters ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I was thinking more like better designed population centers away from the coastline, with more of an aim towards self sufficiency. With encouragement for people to move to the better nicer places, which could operate cleaner than our existing cities, we'd not only have a chance to fix a lot of broken things, but we'd be able to reduce our pollution output, so the ocean side problem wouldn't be one. But once the coastal areas are properly cleaned, they'd be a beautiful place to visit. :)
Re:Whew, no problem then (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a scientist myself, but my wife is an Earth scientist. We've been following the climate change story now for twenty five years or more in Eos and other journals.
As an interested outsider, I think one of the reasons that scientists took so long to get off the dime when it came to sounding the alarm was that most of them were waiting for the other shoe to drop. There has not been another scientific story like climate change in generations. Not since evolution.
One of the things my wife often said over the years was, "the evidence is too good." And I'm sure she's not the only one. It goes against scientific training to get behind a theory until it's been given a serious beating, and nobody has been able to lay a glove on this one.
What people who don't have a real live Earth scientist available for observation need to understand is that even proponents of the theory would love to see the skeptical position put up a decent fight. Data this unambiguous doesn't seem scientific. It's spooky. They'd rather see the theory knocked down onto the mat, then get up to fight another round and win by decision.
People waited around for the skeptics to give this theory a solid hit, and in over twenty five years the skeptics have failed, over and over and over. First they argued that climate wasn't changing, and although they did manage to discredit some data sets, that position failed. Next they tried to explain the data in terms of non-anthropogenic causes; at best they've forced some changes in models and in the predicted ranges of change. So far as I know, no attempt to explain the changes in climate data over the last fifty years in terms of natural cycles or statistical artifacts has held up to scrutiny.
I understand that science is not a democracy; but it's not driven by individual data sets either. You have to look at how robust an hypothesis is, how it stands up under stress. Thus far, nobody has been able to seriously set the theory back. Who wouldn't want to do this, if they could? Discrediting anthropogenic climate change would be Nobel caliber work. It would be an immense service to humanity, comparable in importance if not greater than the discovery of the vaccine for polio, or penicillin was in medicine.
Re:Not that it matters ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but what he and Lex Luthor stupidly failed to realize, is that whether you set-off nukes to trigger the San Andreas fault to drop California into the ocean, or if you drive your SUV to crank up global warming; one undeniable fact remains:
You have just drowned all the people who even WANTED to live near the ocean. Your property values will NOT go up!!!