Thread: Antarctic ice shelf falling apart Global warming dibeleivers proven wrong we all DEAD

Big chunk of Antarctic ice shelf falling apart - Breaking News - World - Breaking News
A section of Antarctica's massive Wilkins Ice Shelf has begun disintegrating under the effects of global warming, satellite images by the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center showed.
The collapse of a substantial section of the ice shelf was triggered on February 28 when an iceberg measuring 41 by 2.4 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles) broke off its southwestern front.
That movement led to disintegration of the shelf's interior, of which 414 square kilometers (160 square miles) has already disappeared.
As a result, a large part of the 12,950 square kilometer (5,000 square mile) Wilkins Ice Shelf -- Antarctica's largest ---- is now supported by a 5.6 kilometer (3.5 mile) strip of ice between two islands, NSIDC lead scientist Ted Scambos said in a statement.
"If there is a little bit more retreat, this last 'ice buttress' could collapse and we'd likely lose about half the total ice shelf area in the next few years," he said.
Over the past half century, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 Farenheit) per decade.
"We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a breakup," said Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March.
With the Antarctic summer drawing to a close, scientist do not expect the ice shelf to further disintegrate in the next several months.
"This unusual show is over for this season," said Scambos. "But come January, we'll be watching to see if the Wilkins continues to fall apart."
Ice shelf breakup in the Antarctic -- more than 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) have been lost over the past 50 years -- could significantly increase ocean levels around the world.
According to some calculations based on present sea level rise of three milimeters per year (0.11 inches), ocean levels could rise by 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) by the end of the century.

I'm going to vote for less farts

I've got my ten bucks, where is my blow-job?

Nice third option - but i had to opt for option number 1

Well for all the idiots out there doing nothing about saving the environment can sit back safe and secure in the knowledge that re-fuse is the bigeest idiot

Originally Posted by Papa

The Antartica, in general, has not been warming.

Originally Posted by josh_ingu

Hmm. Cough. Think Archimedes would beg to differ.

But Archimedes hopped in the water.

I don't mind being the biggest idiot but ...Cream ??? what's wrong with saving the gay lesbian whales ? They only want land rights

The Sydney Morning Herald: national, world, business, entertainment, sport and technology news from Australia's leading newspaper.

Ice sheet hangs by thread

2008-03-27 08:17:31

To view the entire video, click on:
http://media.smh.com.au/?rid=36612&category=World%20News


A MASSIVE ice shelf bigger than Greater Sydney has begun to collapse in Antarctica under the pressure of climate change, new satellite images reveal.
The disintegration of the 13,680-square-kilometre Wilkins Ice Shelf began on February 28 when a large iceberg fell away. This triggered a runaway impact this month, according to scientists from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, when 570 square kilometres of the shelf crumbled.
The most recent satellite images taken by the centre on Easter Sunday show the ice shelf is hanging on by a single strip of ice, six kilometres wide, strung between two islands on the south-west Antarctic Peninsula.
The centre's lead scientist, Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration this month, said the ice shelf collapse was taking place in one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth.
In the past 50 years, the temperature in the western Antarctic Peninsula has risen almost three degrees, or 0.5 degrees each decade.
"The collapse underscores that the Wilkins region has experienced an intense melt season," Dr Scambos said. "Regional sea


ice has all but vanished, leaving the ice shelf exposed to the action of the waves."
The scientific team that charted the Wilkins collapse included members of the British Antarctic Survey who organised flights over the shelf after being alerted.
"The ice shelf is hanging by a thread," David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, said.
One of Australia's leading Antarctic scientists, Dr Ian Allison, who examined the new data yesterday, said the collapse was an indication of how quickly change can happen in the polar regions when a critical point is reached.
"This area is showing extreme warming," Dr Allison said, "The climate models all predict that with anthropogenic [human induced] warming the biggest increases are going to occur in the polar regions. And the biggest warmings we are seeing are in the Arctic and the Antarctic peninsula area."
Dr Allison said it was likely the Wilkins Ice Shelf would hold on now because winter was approaching but it would continue its collapse next January. "I expect about one-third of the ice shelf to go fairly quickly next season," he said.
This would make the collapse the largest since the Larsen B shelf disappeared over 30 days in 2002.
The rapid warming of the polar regions is causing concern among snow and ice scientists because of fears that large ice sheet and glacier melts will trigger a rise in the global sea level.
Dr Allison said while there would be no immediate threat of sea level rise caused by the disintegration of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, it was a disturbing sign that bigger collapses might come in the colder regions of Antarctica.
"It is concerning because we don't fully understand the mechanisms occurring and we don't fully understand the implications of what's going to happen to the grounded ice if some of the really big ice shelves go," Dr Allison said.
Dr Allison said it was significant that the warmer temperatures were now having an effect closer to the main ice mass of the frozen continent.
If larger ice shelves start disappearing and melting starts accelerating, he said, there could be significant sea level rise over the next century.
Five more degrees further south is the start of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, much of which lies on rock below sea level. The director of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, said if this were to disintegrate, it would raise global sea level by about five metres. He has already described the West Antarctic sheet as an "awakened giant".
Scientists have calculated that the sheet is losing about 132 billion tonnes of ice a year.

Originally Posted by Lor Ling

Maybe we need to fill a million rockets full of water and shoot them into space?

Mind you, I reckon they'd weigh a fair bit, so wouldn't get off the ground.

Anyway this shit's f***ed up. We're undertaking a massive and potentially deadly experiment letting all that ice melt.

Simple dehydrate the water