Compare the thickness of the ice with that in the Arctic and then wonder why even some first-year ice survives summer–otherwise where would second-year ice come from.

There is no comparison, there are very few large, 200m thick, pinned ice sheets extending over the ocean in the Arctic. Those that there are have been fragmenting and disappearing like the ones in the peninsula.
The thin floating ice is always breaking up, moving around and reforming it’s a totally different phenomenon.

Current Arctic ice islands which are ‘babies’ compared with the Antarctic:

Peterman: http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?Lang=eng&lnid=7&ScndLvl=no&ID=11925

Ayles, this one broke off in 2005 and the remainder is still drifting around:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=11835&Lang=eng

Most recent images from ESA shows the continued fragmentation of the Wilkins, as predicted a few years age the key to the stability of the remaining shelf was the ice ‘bridge’ to Charcot. Once that went earlier this month a large part of the shelf started to break up. Note that the Wilkins is not an advancing ice sheet fed by a glacier with continual calving at its terminus.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMRAVANJTF_index_0.html

They’re called the Gori, and they require that we submit to the book of Anthropogenic Global Warming, or else they’ll destroy us.

Adolfo: yes, parts of the peninsula are abov 0 cent. What we see is exactly what was predicted by mercer: the 0C isocline, ie the line above which temperatures are equal or superior to zero, is going south from year to year. As a predicted effect of warming.

(-97) degrees Fahrenheit = -71.6666667 degrees Celsius

7C below the April average you posted.
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/gjma/vostok.temps.html

http://tinyurl.com/cm63lb

With ad revenues plunging and subscribers leaving in droves – you would think these businessmen would consider it might be their content no one’s interested in. Funny how WUWT has soaring hits, and the MSM is tanking faster than glacial calving. Now, experimentally, what if NBC or (!) CNN, ran a daily segment on AGW skepticism? What would the numbers tell us after 120 days?

There are new ones every year, and there will always be, provided there is a continuos production of ice behind(kind of an automatic ice cube’s machine, as somebody said here). The antarctica peninsula temperatures (being closer to the equator), during summer, are currently above zero at noon (up to 2°C), as the temperatures in the Florida peninsula (in the USA,and, also, being closer to the equator) are by far higher than in the rest of the USA.
Check also the currents of the pacific sea: warm waters go south to “refresh” there, and then go up along the southamerican coasts, already refreshed, as the cold humboldt’s current . Did you get it?

Moreover, the max temperature today has been -50 centigrades (from weatherunderground) while the average for April is -60.3 centigrades
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/gjma/vostok.temps.html
So we’re actually 10 degrees above average… Any comment?

“dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica”

Yes we see that at Vostok. Averaging -97F this week
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/89606/2009/4/27/WeeklyHistory.html

“One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica, will be a breakup of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula just south of the January 0C isotherm; the ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel, and the Wordie Ice Shelf; the ice shelf in George VI Sound, and the ice shelf in Wilkins Sound.”
Mercer, Nature, 1978, v271 pp.321-325

They’re all gone now… These ones, and not other ones… Why? Coincidences?

Maybe you will keep reading my posts then :0)

One can only conclude that the growing sea ice extent in Antartica is seen as a great threat to AGW philosophy by it’s deciples !

First, we have the manipulated temperature anomoly data presented in an attempt to hide the real cooling trend. Now we have pictures of ice shelf cracking to distract the public from the rapidly growing sea ice extent.

As to the root cause of the Wilkins ice shelf crack…? It’s obviously not melting. A more plausible theory is that Al Gore visited there recently and tried walking on the shelf !

“melting from below thins the ice”

Compare the thickness of the ice with that in the Arctic and then wonder why even some first-year ice survives summer–otherwise where would second-year ice come from.

I think Antarctic shelf ice is simply too big to not fail.

There’s more than one way to melt, melting from below thins the ice thus making it more prone to fracture, especially if it detaches from subsurface pinning points.

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_762511425/iceberg.html

The largest iceberg ever sighted was 335 km (208 mi) long and 97 km (60 mi) wide, (32495 km^2) about the size of Belgium. It was sighted in November 1956 by the crew of a United States Coast Guard icebreaker in the Ross Sea, off Antarctica.

Iceberg B-9 (1987) 154 km by 35 km (5390 km ^2) calved away from Antarctica

Iceberg B-15 (March 2000), The Ross ice shelf calved off iceberg B-15 which broke up into several pieces in 2000, 2002 and 2003, the largest of which, B-15A, was the world’s largest free floating object at 27 x 122 km (17 x 76 mi) with an area of 3,100 km^2V (1,200 mi², approximately the size of Luxembourg). In November 2003, after the separation from B-15J iceberg, B-15A drifted away from Ross Island on the open waters of the Ross Sea.

Note the biggest “observed” on record dates from 53 years ago!
This berg was an order of magnitude larger in surface extent than B15 in March 2000, and it calved off during an acknowledged cooling period.

When viewed in context of the Nov 1956 berg recent events are pretty ho-hum all things considered. Even more important is that the 1956 berg is simply the largest ever observed (prior to satellite data) we have no clue how often these large events occur in a historical sense, given the lack of travel and observation into this area prior to modern times.

Larry