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posted by martyb on Friday July 14 2017, @10:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the breaking-up-is-hard-to-do dept.

It's finally adrift. When the Larsen C Ice Shelf calved yesterday [Wednesday], it sent one of the largest icebergs ever recorded slipping into a sea frosted with smaller chunks of ice. It marked the end of a decades-long splintering first seen by satellites in the 1960s. The crack stayed small for years until, in 2014, it began racing across the Antarctic ice.

The massive iceberg holds twice as much water used in the United States every year, according to calculations by Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute. It weighs about 1.1 trillion tons and measures 2,200 square miles. Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie.

"The iceberg is one of the largest recorded, and its future progress is difficult to predict," said Adrian Luckman of Wales' Swansea University, who led a project tracking the crack since 2015. "It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments. Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters."

By mass, the iceberg accounts for 12 percent of the Larsen C Ice Shelf. It's large enough that maps will have to be redrawn. Larsen C was the fourth-largest ice shelf in the world. Now it's the fifth.

In this particular political moment, the calving of a major iceberg has made headlines around the world. Environmental groups connected the event to climate change and the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Paris climate accords. But scientists have cautioned that the story of the iceberg, which will be known as A68, is more nuanced. Climate signals are not clear enough to attribute the event to rising levels of carbon dioxide, but human activity may have contributed to its calving nonetheless.

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060057298

Previously:
Larsen C Calves Trillion Ton Iceberg
Larsen C Rift Branches as it Comes Within 5 km of Calving
Delaware-Sized Iceberg Could Break Off of Antarctica at Any Moment


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by ledow on Friday July 14 2017, @11:33AM (10 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Friday July 14 2017, @11:33AM (#539068) Homepage

    I read the BBC News article instead.

    Where it says that people who deal in icebergs say they aren't concerned at all.

    It happens all the time. It's not the biggest recorded. It could be related to global warming but the bigger concern is the overall picture (i.e. loss of a shelf), not calving of a shelf that's been calving for millennia and will still be calving for as long as it's around.

    Pretty much, this is people looking at an iceberg and going OH MY GOD IT'S SEPARATING AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

    While the proper climatologist are saying "That happens literally every few weeks/month/years... we're much more concerned about the overall trend over the last few decades of the whole ice shelf shrinking back, not a bit of ice that's under immense pressure all the time breaking off".

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @11:40AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @11:40AM (#539071)

    The more "liberal" the source the more frantic and ignorant the reporting on this rift/iceberg gets. It's crazy:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-worlds-largest-iceberg-is-about-to-break-off-antarctica_us_594643e5e4b0940f84fe2f78 [huffingtonpost.com]
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/07/10/exxonknew-iceberg-name-it-after-climate-criminals-says-group [commondreams.org]

    • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by VLM on Friday July 14 2017, @01:53PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 14 2017, @01:53PM (#539109)

      Its the left wing version of immigration. One immigrant vs invasion scenarios.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 14 2017, @02:32PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday July 14 2017, @02:32PM (#539123) Homepage
      > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-worlds-largest-iceberg-is-...

      OK, well that's a cunty URL. Once you've got to the page the headline is the more restrained "One Of The World’s Largest Icebergs Is ...", but still, there's no excuse for a flat out lie in the URL.

      However what's crazy about the commondreams one? It is accurately reporting that there's a group campaigning for shame-laden iceberg naming - that's a fact. It also carries quotes from real relevant scientists (i.e. glaciologists, not just random me-too climate bandw^H^H^H^H^Hscientists) with such scare-mongery sensationalism as "Large calving events such as this are normal processes of a healthy ice sheet, ..."
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 14 2017, @05:31PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday July 14 2017, @05:31PM (#539214) Journal

      If you need to dredge up HuffPo opinion pieces to argue against then you might as well create actual straw-men.

      From now on, instead of replying to comments posted on Sylent, I'm going to respond to trash on Breitbart that nobody posted. Much eaiser that way!

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 14 2017, @03:17PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday July 14 2017, @03:17PM (#539144) Journal

    Oooh, "people" are saying something?

    There are five stories linked to this summary and every single one of them says this is a fairly normal occurrence that's simply interesting due to it's size.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday July 14 2017, @04:57PM (1 child)

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday July 14 2017, @04:57PM (#539200)

      They also often mention that similar calving events have recently led to the eventual collapse of Larsen A and Larsen B.
      So the calving itself is only unusual by its size, but the trend can't be ignored.

      • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:35PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @05:35PM (#539221)

        You *still* believe it no matter what the experts say. Interesting.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @04:47PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @04:47PM (#539193)

    You: "Pretty much, this is people looking at an iceberg and going OH MY GOD IT'S SEPARATING AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE."

    TFA: "It will not likely pose any threat to ships navigating the area"

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday July 14 2017, @04:54PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday July 14 2017, @04:54PM (#539198)

      > TFA: "It will not likely pose any threat to ships navigating the area"

      USS Fitzgerald: Challenge accepted !