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315 Billion-Tonne[*] Iceberg Breaks off Antarctica:
The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years.
The calved block covers 1,636 sq km in area[**] - a little smaller than Scotland's Isle of Skye - and is called D28.
The scale of the berg means it will have to be monitored and tracked because it could in future pose a hazard to shipping.
Not since the early 1960s has Amery calved a bigger iceberg. That was a whopping 9,000 sq km in area.
Amery is the third largest ice shelf in Antarctica, and is a key drainage channel for the east of the continent.
[...] The Scripps researcher [Prof Helen Fricker from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography] stressed that there was no link between this event and climate change. Satellite data since the 1990s has shown that Amery is roughly in balance with its surroundings, despite experiencing strong surface melt in summer.
"While there is much to be concerned about in Antarctica, there is no cause for alarm yet for this particular ice shelf," Prof Fricker added.
[*] Tonne:
The tonne [...] non-SI unit, symbol: t), commonly referred to as the metric ton in the United States and Canada, is a non-SI metric unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms or one megagram (symbol: Mg). It is equivalent to approximately 2,204.6 pounds, 1.102 short tons (US) or 0.984 long tons (UK). Although not part of the SI, the tonne is accepted for use with SI units and prefixes by the International Committee for Weights and Measures.
The tonne is derived from the mass of one cubic metre of pure water; at 4°C one thousand litres of pure water has an absolute mass of one tonne.
[**] 1636 sq. km is approximately 630 sq. miles. By comparison, the District of Columbia is 177 sq. km (68.3 sq. miles) and Rhode Island (the smallest state in the United States) is 4,001 sq. km (1,544 sq. miles). reference
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @10:48AM (1 child)
How DARE you iceberg!!!
The nerve you have breaking off again since the 60s. I'm so angry and upset!
How dare you.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:44PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @10:58AM (11 children)
Seriously, what other "ton" is there?? some fucked up American ton? 1 ton = 1000 kg. It's *about* 1000 liters of water. But yes, of course Americans have to fuck up even the notion of a "ton", like with the gallon?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_ton [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnage [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon#US_liquid_gallon [wikipedia.org]
and don't forget the "dry gallon" that somehow manages to be less! At least the British gallon had some sense to it.
Anyway, non-SI doesn't mean non-metric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-SI_units_mentioned_in_the_SI [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 01 2019, @11:13AM (7 children)
I clarified metric ton using abbr in the Starship story [soylentnews.org]. That would have saved some vertical space here. Last time I didn't inform of what a metric ton was, Runaway1956 freaked out.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 01 2019, @11:48AM (1 child)
So, it has come to this... (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:08PM
So it's 3.15e+17 grams?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:47PM (3 children)
Huh, what?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:12PM (2 children)
I can't find the comment, lol.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 01 2019, @03:10PM (1 child)
I do recall giving someone crap over the kind of ton used, a couple of times. And another conversation about metric butt tons, or some made-up thing. :^)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @06:19PM
How many butts do YOU have??
Metric
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:50PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @11:29AM (1 child)
You're confusing a 'ton' and a 'tonne'/'metric ton'. The former comes from the imperial units system, and was originally defined as "20 hundredweights". It's in the definition of a hundredweight that the U.K. imperial and U.S. systems differ. In the U.S. a hundredweight was 100 lbs. In the U.K. it was defined as 8 stone (1 stone = 14 lbs). The two types of ton are often distinguished as a "short ton" versus a "long ton."
The tonne, or metric tonne, was adopted because it is very close to a long ton (long ton = 1,016.047 kg).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:25PM
Very informative.
Somehow I doubt the person you replied to appreciates you answering his "question."
His ignorance is a never-ending source of pride.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:43PM
In Dutch, a 'ton' can also mean one hundred thousand euros. Because in the previous century one Dutch guilder contained 10 grams of silver. So 1000 kg was equivalent to 100.000 guilders. So, for instance, "how much is that car?", "3 ton."
(Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Tuesday October 01 2019, @01:36PM (1 child)
It might drift north and cool us down a bit. See, I told you the Market would fix global warming all by itself.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @04:43PM
The ice cube does not make you drunk, that would be the volume of alcohol.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @07:09PM (1 child)
someone should fly greta thunberg and her retarded parents to the iceberg and give them some lawn chairs. then film it with a drone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:08AM
What is it like to be so weak, cowardly, and permanently virgin that a teenage girl enrages you to the point of murder? :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 01 2019, @07:34PM (1 child)
It's too bad they can't direct it to SubSaharan Africa and use it for irrigation. If they could get the desert to bloom perhaps it would suck more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and ameliorate the build-up.
Then again, if the polar ice caps are melting then it should lower the albedo of the Earth's surface, which would boost heat capture and thus evaporation, and the clouds will redistribute the water for us. As a skier, that sounds like some epic powder coming our way.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday October 04 2019, @01:38PM
Subsaharan africa has more rain than the U.S. Your comment displays your ignorance.
https://www.eldoradoweather.com/climate/world-maps/images/world-rainfall-map.png [eldoradoweather.com]