Via a Euerekalert press release
Past climate of the northern Antarctic Peninsular informs global warming debate
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  IMAGE: The American icebreaker RV/IB Nathanial B. Palmer is shown off the South Shetland Islands. The drilling rig is clearly seen on the rear deck.Click here for more information. |
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The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented.
“At no time during the last 14 thousand years was there a period of climate warming and loss of ice as large and regionally synchronous as that we are now witnessing in the Antarctic Peninsula,” says team member Dr Steve Bohaty of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), home of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES).”
The findings are based on a detailed analysis of the thickest Holocene sediment core yet drilled in the Antarctic Peninsula. “By studying the climate history of the past and identifying causes of these changes, we are better placed to evaluate current climate change and its impacts in the Antarctic,” says Dr Bohaty.
As part of a 2005 research cruise aboard the American icebreaker RV/IB Nathanial B. Palmer, the scientists drilled down through the sediments at Maxwell Bay, a fjord at the northwest tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. They drilled down as far as the bedrock, obtaining a nearly complete 108.3-metre sediment core.
Back in the lab, they performed a battery of detailed sedimentological and geochemical analyses on the core. Radiocarbon dating showed that the oldest sediments at the bottom of the core were deposited between 14.1 and 14.8 thousand years ago, and sedimentation rates at the site varied from 0.7 to around 30 milimetres a year through the Holocene; that is, the geological period that began around 11,700 years ago, continuing to the present.
They conclude that ice was grounded in the fjord during the Last Glacial Maximum – the height of the last ice age – and eroded older sediments from the fjord. Later, the grounded ice retreated, leaving a permanent floating ice canopy.
The evidence points to a period of rapid glacial retreat from 10.1 to 8.2 thousand years ago, followed by a period of reduced sea-ice cover and warm water conditions occurring between 8.2 and 5.9 thousand years ago. An important finding of the study is that the mid-Holocene warming interval does not appear to have occurred synchronously throughout the region, and its timing and duration was most likely influenced at different sites by local oceanographic controls, as well as physical geography.
Following the mid-Holocene warming interval, the climate gradually cooled over the next three thousand years or so, resulting in more extensive sea-ice cover in the bay. But the researchers find no evidence that the ice advanced in Maxwell Bay during the so-called Little Ice Age in the sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century.
The Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed 3 °C in the past five decades, with increased rainfall and a widespread retreat of glaciers. “Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
The study was supported by the US National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs.
The authors are: K. T. Milliken and J. B. Anderson (Rice University), J.S. Wellner (University of Houston), S.M. Bohaty (NOCS/SOES) and P.L. Manley (Middlebury College, Vermont).
Publication:
Milliken, K. T., et al. High-resolution Holocene climate record from Maxwell Bay, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. Geological Society of America Bulletin 121, 1711-1725 (2009).
http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/121/11-12/1711
“Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
“Alarmist climate hysteria linked to research funding are an obvious culprit for the observed ridiculous statements in this research,” says everyone with an iota of common sense.
“the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented”
I am sick and tired of it.
Let’s send those scientist a letter of resignation.
What they are doing is all in support of the hockey stick graph.
Pathetic is it not?
Sheesh. Where to begin?
I don’t know if this relevant,but it’s interesting.I would have liked to see some photos.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/iceberg-a-big-surprise-for-aussie-scientist/story-e6freuzr-1225795243959
A HUGE iceberg has been spotted off Macquarie Island, halfway between Antarctica and Australia.
The iceberg, estimated to be 500m long and 50m high, was spotted about 8km north-west of the island by Australian Antarctic Division expeditioners this week.
Fur seal biologist Dean Miller was the first to see the iceberg while on his way to visit a seal colony at the island’s North Head.
“I’ve never seen anything like it – we looked out to the horizon and just saw this huge floating island of ice,” Dr Miller said on the AAD website.
“It was a monumental moment for me as it was the first iceberg I have seen.”
Glaciologist Neal Young said icebergs were a rare sight at Macquarie Island.
“This is the first I can recall being sighted from Macquarie Island for many, many years,” Dr Young said.
When all the stimulus funding for bogus AGW research ends, then these folks can say “It is worse then we thought” and they can turn into economists.
Jeremy (17:49:31) :
“Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
“Alarmist climate hysteria linked to research funding are an obvious culprit for the observed ridiculous statements in this research,” says everyone with an iota of common sense.
NOM !
Strange there’s no mention of the rest of the Antarctic……
Never mind that the Antarctic Peninsula only makes up a small percentage of the continent. I guess the extent of the build up of ice elswhere in Antarctica just gets in the way of a good story.
Sorry for the second post,but I found a photo
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/11/07/108371_tasmania-news.html
I remember reading somewhere that due to its unique position- jutting out so far north into the Antarctic Ocean as it does. That the climate of the peninsula goes its own way and data from this small area of land cannot be extrapolated as representative of the climate of the rest (90%?) of Antarctica as a whole.
Also, this “science” sounds quite like the whole tree ring debacle in the way it was excecuted.
So, in conclusion, the Little Ice Age may not have affected the peninsula as much as the main body of Antarctica, therefore, this work cannot disprove the existence of the Little Ice Age.
More evidence of unprecedented warming from a single core… this sounds strangely familiar. Perhaps a few more cores from areas of the Antarctic further from the Starbucks at the peninsular bases would be useful. Maybe the Chinese expedition can increase the sample size. They seem willing to trek much further than the peninsular (relative) comfort zone.
http://english.sina.com/technology/p/2009/1010/276621.html
Noelene (18:01:15) :
Re: HUGE iceburg – Kewl!
Re: Is it unusual/Monumental/Never Before? No.
Huge Icebergs are common for a gigantic frozen continent with ice pinned to outlying islands….
“Sorry for the second post,but I found a photo
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/11/07/108371_tasmania-news.html”
Talk about looking out of place! Great photo…
“‘Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,’ say the researchers.”
Isn’t this a roundabout way of conceding that there is no data or evidence to support the causal connection?
If that iceberg melts will the ocean swallow up the Maldieves?
Perhaps it needs to be towed to colder waters so it doesn’t melt.
Anyone who has ethically & competently looked into the details of Antarctic patterns knows the Antarctic Peninsula is not representative of the Antarctic as a whole, which appears to often be in anti-phase with much of the world with regard to temperatures on decadal timescales. Each study that is conducted ethically & competently contributes to an overall picture.
They must be getting desperate…surprised it took them this long to go for that one. Wouldn’t take much to considering how flat the trends have been in Antarctica.
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=Vostok-2.jpg
I think there biggest disappointment must have been the Greenland ice cores…not something you’d generally want to compare today’s temperatures with (which is you don’t see it anywhere)…
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=GISP2-Zoom.jpg
I believe today’s temp is <1°C greater than the last datapoint in the dataset.
I wonder where the temperature should be going? Assuming the last three cycles would be followed by a fourth…ending ~200yrs from now (or is it done now)? We'll see…
So, they’ve managed to deal a death blow to the Roman Optimum, The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and have determined that ” An important finding of the study is that the mid-Holocene warming interval does not appear to have occurred synchronously throughout the region” …. all with one core!
The wonders of modern science.
That would be a nice place for a tent and a grill. Cookout time!
I think this may be a measure of the desperation to get Copenhagen passed. To this observer, there has been an exponential increase in the junk science supporting the AGW meme this year, starting with Steig in January. My observations do not constitute a scientific study, just my gut feeling.
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How deep was the water at the drill sites? If it were not extremely deep ice berg keels could have disturbed and plowed the sediment in unpredictable ways.
How many different conditions would cause the glaciers to recede? Warming, and perhaps long periods of low precipitation, or perhaps volcanic activity.
How are they determining the age, seasonal layer deposits? Shifting tides will lay down separate distinctive layers.
Sometimes near shore sediment cores are about as reliable as tree rings in recording climate conditions.
I could not glean enough reliable data from this article to gain any confidence in their conclusions. It would appear they knew the answers and were looking for evidence in the cherry tree.
The Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed 3 °C in the past five decades, with increased rainfall and a widespread retreat of glaciers. “Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
‘An obvious culprit’ means we are speculating without any evidence to support the speculation.
‘Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change’ is the new science so successfully pioneered by climate scientists where cause and effect have been dispensed with. Now everything is ‘linked’ by mysterious, undefined and un-named mechanisms.
They talk vaguely of a 3C temperature increase on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is 120 kilometers away from the South Shetland Islands. I’d be interested to see if temperature changes on the islands are anywhere close to that. I doubt it.
Where did they conclude from evidence in the sediment that the last century was unprecedented when the Holocene Optimum was shown as warmer than now???
“Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
Interesting. Gone from their conclusion is the phrase “man-made greenhouse gasses” or “anthropogenic”.
Now it is just “global climate change.”
DUH. Get used to it!
Just as your ice cores show: Climate CHANGES…..that’s what it does.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes.”
Climate change is responsible for climate change. The sentence is a tautology, but notice how he slips in the otherwise meaningless modifier “atmospheric” (when the earth’s heat content is actually contained in the oceans). This is an obvious signal for what he lacks the evidence to actually say: that warming is caused by CO2. So the dirtbag insinuates.
Far from home, a massive ice slab implies global cooling — how else could it last such a long distance floating in the ocean?
Must be one of these:
http://nsidc.org/data/iceshelves_images/ross_w_loc.html
The image shows many lesser and several greater pieces of the Ross Ice Shelf. Dated January 2003
What is a sheet of brittle ice supposed to do when the water it is floating on lifts and falls? This is not complicated nor a trick question.
Did your CSS die for some reason? The WUWT website template is broken….
REPLY: no problems I’m aware of. – A
SO what if these studies had to also post the grant application and the conditions of the grant as part of their study results? If all corporate funded studies are invalid because of the source of funding, does not the same logic apply to all government funded studies?
You’ve got to be kidding. It never ends.
It really is worse than we thought.
Mike L. and Anthony
An hour or so ago I had a strange rendering of one of the threads but switched to another and back again and it was fine. Has been fine since.
Noelene (17:58:31) :
The seas haven’t been this cold to support Icebergs that far away from the Poles in a very long time. Yes, it’s worse than they thought. Trouble is, nobody taught them how to think it through. I’ve a bit of advice for them: When in a dim room, remove your sunglasses before you stumble over the furniture and suffer needless injury.
“Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
We are supposed to take their word for it. Yet none have demonstrated the link between the weather alteration observed in the Peninsula and the greenhouse effect and its CO2. What is known though is the renewed strength of MPHs coming from Antarctica and the correlative increase of warm air advection along the mountain ranges of the Peninsula, with increased snow and warming associated to this advection of warmer air.
Indeed this is linked to a global phenomenon but unfortunately for these researchers, this on the contrary demonstrates the effects of a rapid mode of circulation linked to cooling not warming. But the meteorological ignorance of these people knows no bound and is at the root of their so called “obvious culprit”.
That such ad hoc conclusions would be thrown to the face of science shows the utter opportunism and how these people despise and insult the intelligence of their readership. Shame indeed!
John F. Hultquist (20:23:24) :
Mike Lorrey (19:51:35) :
Did your CSS die for some reason? The WUWT website template is broken….
REPLY: no problems I’m aware of. – A
I’ve also noticed this kind of thing a few times over the years- but not only on this site. It just seems to be one of those things that happens in web land from time to time.
Ed,
The Vostok CO2 concentrations shown in your link are interesting:
http://s852.photobucket.com/albums/ab89/etregembo/?action=view¤t=Vostok-2.jpg
The graph shows a range of up to 2 ppm over the past 10,000 years. I assume there’s an error here ?
In the abstract they say, “There is no evidence for an early Holocene climatic reversal, as recorded farther south at the Palmer Deep drill site.” So what was found at the nearby site?
A little google search on the Palmer Deep Drill site found:
http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/178_SR/chap_34/chap_34.htm
“All studies performed to date are in agreement in recognizing the Little Ice Age as a prominent episode in the latest Holocene from 0.7 to 0.2 ka”
So much for a single core in one unusual location. And we now know without a doubt that it is an unusual site because it did not show the little ice age. Therefore none of their conclusions are valid.
Dr A Burns (21:01:26) :
The graph shows a range of up to 2 ppm over the past 10,000 years. I assume there’s an error here ?
Doh! Yeah that’s temp, thanks for pointing that out!
Ed
Dr A Burns (21:01:26) :
I wish the CO2 contained that high of a resolution!
Ed
Gary P (21:23:24) :
Wow. They actually found the source of the Yamal tree. Now, that’s significant. All you have to do to restore the Garden of Eden is to take the Yamal tree and plug it into Palmer deep drill site hole.
Antarctica lights up, hydraulic cyclinders active, and underneath the ice canopy is the city of Atlantis, where they greet us with “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting 14,500 years to be rescued”.
“the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented”.
Wow, look at all the scientific disaster reports over the last few years — what the hell were these so called scientists doing for the previous 50 years?
Google for World Climate Report for 30 January 2009 ‘Antarctica Again’. This review shows that most of Antarctica has not warmed since the early 1970s.
The exception is a small atypical region, the narrow Antarctic Peninsula which juts far out from the continent, and may contact a warm current as a result, according to Duncan Wingham. Google for ‘Polar Scientists On Thin Ice’, National Post Canada, 2 February 2007.
“‘Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,’ say the researchers.”
It’s just lazy and lame.
OT but Roman Warm Period has been deleted from Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period
1984, anyone?
Noelene,
thanks for the heads-up on the Macquarie iceberg. There is a verygood possibility that it could pass off the south east coast of New Zealand just as a bunch of them did three years ago at this time of year. If you check out the SST anomalies for most of this year there has been a lerge pool of cold water off our (N.Z.) south east coast, even colder than the water that was there in 2006.
Apart from the mad so and so’s who will want to copy the couple who went out by helicopter and got married on one of the bergs, I will predict now that we will also see a repeat pronouncement from the local greens that this is more evidence of global warming. Once again they will completely miss the point that if it weren’t for the cold water below and to the S.E. of us then the bergs wouldn’t survive this far north.
I suppose while they are listening to this fable of the Antarctic Peninsula being the Antarctic they will also miss the fact that the sea ice extent around the Antarctic has greatly increased over recent years. Correct me if I am wrong but this must add to the chances of bergs making it to lower latitudes than normal.
The greens and other simple minded folk will also miss the fact that this was not an infrequent event as recorded from the 1890’s through to the beginning of the 1930’s. Therefore by their logic if global warming is the cause of icebergs making it to latitude 43 south as happened in 2006, then there must have been stronger global warming at the beginning of the 20th century!
Anyway, the helicopter pilots of the east coast South Island will be rubbing their hands, not just because it has been very cold down there this year, but at the prospects of more adventures on floating ice islands, no matter how dangerous it may be.
Cheers
Coops
It is funny that they drilled in the one area that ice levels are worried most while everywhere else is ok
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/travel/news/ice-cap-could-be-widening/story-e6frezi0-1225700056004
“Atmospheric warming trends linked to global climate change are an obvious culprit for the observed regional climate changes,” say the researchers.
…So climate change is caused by climate change. Brilliant. Is this from the University of Mickey Mouse?
“Now everything is ‘linked’ by mysterious, undefined and un-named mechanisms”.
…Well, global warming has now been defined as a religion.
Dear UK government,
We at The National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), home of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES} have traveled a long way to the northern Antarctic Peninsular and taken an ice core sample. From this single sample we have managed to delete from the Earth’s climate history some inconvenient facts such as the Little Ice Age, the mid-Holocene global warming interval and the Medieval Warm Period.
Can we have our next research grant now?
Surely this is the volcanic part of Antarctica. Is this the reason for temperature increase?
“We are supposed to take their word for it. Yet none have demonstrated the link between the weather alteration observed in the Peninsula and the greenhouse effect and its CO2.”
Good point Antonio San
In published articles, the authors usually provide details of some work they have done and their deductions. If there is space, they wiill often add some discussion.
It is usually the case that the discussion doesn’t follow their analysis, but seeks to give some broader context. As such, the discussion is no more than personal opinion. It doesn’t follow from observation or data, and therefore cannot be elevated to “science”.
However, the discussion is frequently sympathetic to the AGW hypothesis. So the inclusion of discussion points gives the false impression that there is more evidence for the AGW hypothesis.
Further, the non-scientific discussion has a contaminating influence, as the article may then be added to the “count-me-in” list when seeking to measure the relative weight of scientific evidence (as per Oreskes).
Here is an example of discussion in the Caillon et al (2003), the paper which reported a 800 +/- 200 year lag at Termination III, and often cited on both sides of the debate:
“This confirms that CO2 is not the forcing that initially drives the climatic
system during a deglaciation. Rather, deglaciation is probably initiated by some insolation forcing (1, 31, 32), which influences first the temperature change in Antarctica (and possibly in part of the Southern Hemisphere) and then the CO2. This sequence of events is still in full agreement with the idea that CO2 plays, through its greenhouse effect, a key role in amplifying the initial orbital forcing.”
The first point (CO2 is not the inital forcing) does not follow from the analysis being reported. It is fair to say that CO2 following temperature gives some direction to causality arguments, but it looks like Caillon et al do not want to leave the matter at that.
The second point (warming probably initiated by insolation) is clearly speculative and certainly doesn’t come from their analysis.
The conclusion of this paragraph (this sequence is in agreement with the idea the CO2 plays a key role in amplifying the initial forcing) is both speculative AND it doesn’t follow from the data and analysis.
Maybe this would be useful?
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/s-orkney.gif
Probably not relevant for this article but : does ice have a viscosity, by which I mean, do some layers flow faster than others? If that is the case, then how is that taken into account when analysing a sample taken by drilling vertically?
“the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented”
So what! Where’s the evidence that man’s activities have caused it bar a coincidental rise in C02, of which barely 4% is attribuatable to mankind?
Interesting full page article in the UK’s regional paper the WEestern Morning News, serving Devon & Cornwall & parts of Somerset. It is by a former BBC weatherman in which he debuncks that whole AGW theory. I will try to get a link for it asap but I am the one who can just about switch one of these puter thingies on!
If my deep freeze had been operating at minus 20 deg C fifty years ago, and now was working at minus 17C, and I noted the ice was starting to melt, I do not believe I would declare that as being the reason. You see, I know the melting temperature of ice. In fact, if it emerged during my study of the situation that I had observed that my downstairs neighbour had, since way back, had a great fire burning immediately under the concrete slab on which my deep freeze stands, I might scratch my head and wonder aloud: “Could that possibly have anything to do with this most irritating melting phenomenon?”
Geoff Alder
Antarctic sea ice is increasing, East Antarctica ice sheet is increasing, West Antarctica sheet is decreasing. By cherry-picking indicators, you may “prove” almost whatever you like, but here is, at least, a fairly recent assessment:
Citation: Velicogna, I. (2009), Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19503, doi:10.1029/2009GL040222.
Received 28 July 2009; accepted 3 September 2009; published 13 October 2009.
“We use monthly measurements of time-variable gravity from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravity mission to determine the ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets during the period between April 2002 and February 2009. We find that during this time period the mass loss of the ice sheets is not a constant, but accelerating with time, i.e., that the GRACE observations are better represented by a quadratic trend than by a linear one, implying that the ice sheets contribution to sea level becomes larger with time. In Greenland, the mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −30 ± 11 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. In Antarctica the mass loss increased from 104 Gt/yr in 2002–2006 to 246 Gt/yr in 2006–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −26 ± 14 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. The observed acceleration in ice sheet mass loss helps reconcile GRACE ice mass estimates obtained for different time periods.”
No matter what day of the year you pick, there is always a place on Planet Earth that is very warm, and a place that is very cold. Why would Antarctica be any different? It’s still a frozen wasteland, uninhabitable, and it makes no difference whether one place there is 2 degrees warmer than the rest of it anomalously. You still can’t live there. And it makes no difference whether you freeze to death at -40 or -100, you’re still a goner.
Maybe in 10 million years hence, when Antarctica had drifted somewhat away from the South Pole, things could be different. The place is so far gone in deep cold that not even 10,000 years of Al Gore’s firey sermons is going to make it livable. The place is dead. Only buried volcanoes and ice live in it’s desolate interior.
Doesn’t look like the place is melting to me:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.color.000.png
And speaking of the polar opposite:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
Who wants to write the new book “Late Interglacials for Dummies”?
Just to avoid assertions that the work cited has been “refuted”:
“Our work suggests that while West Antarctica is still losing significant amounts of ice, the loss appears to be slightly slower than some recent estimates,” said Ian Dalziel, lead principal investigator for WAGN. “So the take home message is that Antarctica is contributing to rising sea levels. It is the rate that is unclear.”
Geodetic measurements of vertical crustal velocity in West Antarctica and the implications for ice mass balance
Received 20 May 2009; accepted 28 August 2009; published 13 October 2009.
Citation: Bevis, M., et al. (2009), Geodetic measurements of vertical crustal velocity in West Antarctica and the implications for ice mass balance, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 10, Q10005, doi:10.1029/2009GC002642.
“We present preliminary geodetic estimates for vertical bedrock velocity at twelve survey GPS stations in the West Antarctic GPS Network, an additional survey station in the northern Antarctic Peninsula, and eleven continuous GPS stations distributed across the continent. The spatial pattern of these velocities is not consistent with any postglacial rebound (PGR) model known to us. Four leading PGR models appear to be overpredicting uplift rates in the Transantarctic Mountains and West Antarctica and underpredicting them in the peninsula north of 65°. This discrepancy cannot be explained in terms of an elastic response to modern ice loss (except, perhaps, in part of the peninsula). Therefore, our initial geodetic results suggest that most GRACE ice mass rate estimates, which are critically dependent on a PGR correction, are systematically biased and are overpredicting ice loss for the continent as a whole.”
And, observational periods of less than 10 years is of course too little to reach any firm conclusions.
Let me be perfectly clear:
When the ice block melts we see floating, it will displace no more water.
When you compare it to the largest ice bergs from the Antarctic that is a trivial sliver of ice, and of absolutely no consequence.
The largest ice berg ever observed (there may have been much larger in the past but we simply have no reports) in the Antarctic was observed in 1955 by the U.S.S. Glacier, 150 miles west of Scott Island inside the Antarctic Circle. It measured 60 miles wide by 208 miles long, or about 12,000 square miles (31,000 square kilometers).
The B-15 ice berg that calved from Antarctic’s Ross Ice Shelf around March 20, 2000, measured 183 miles long (295 kilometers) and about 25 miles wide (37 kilometers). It extended about 900 feet below the surface and rises about 120 feet (30 meters) above the ocean.
If the media put these sort of events into historical perspective two things would happen. First they would realize it was a non-event and not bother to report it, and if they did need to use it as a filler article, the readers would have a clue that an antarctic ice berg of that size is not all that interesting, except for the locals who have not seen one of the large slab icebergs before.
Larry
Here is a link about the large ice bergs, and mentions that these large slab icebergs such as B-15 are a normal part of the shelf ice.
http://ecology.com/featuresarchive/largesticeberg/
Larry
Noelene (18:01:15) :
Sorry for the second post,but I found a photo
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/11/07/108371_tasmania-news.html
Wow! The visible part of the iceberg is a rectangular prism. Can anybody explain how that happens?
Jeff Id (20:06:32) “It never ends. It really is worse than we thought.”
Perhaps it is unwise to underestimate the resilience of determined religion?
30 years from now new disciples, guided by old “sages” who kept the myths alive, will be “rediscovering” the “classics” [from the era when checks & balances were conveniently out-of-order].
This could be a war of attrition that drags on for generations. I hope powerful key players are planning the investments properly, rather than foolishly thinking this battle will blow-over in a favorable manner by some fluke without the need for strategic investment in troops, equipment, & information. It is time for less mouthing and more investment if the resistance is to become more intently serious about succeeding. Support our troops [with more than lip service].
And so we hear from another ‘Cherry Plucker’ even after Yamal was such a dissapointment. Maintaining altitude is difficult when your on the back side of the power curve. My condolences.
“UNPRECEDENTED” NONSENSE
Go here and scroll down to the section “Earth’s Icehouse History.”
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/global_warming.html
Note the gif of the last 18,000 years of glacier loss in North America.
14,000 years ago, Canada was a solid block of ice. And these clowns want us to believe that when an icecube melts today, it’s unprecedented?! It may be premature to say that science is dead, but it’s far from healthy.
yonason (22:36:28) “It may be premature to say that science is dead, but it’s far from healthy.”
The system has been corrupted by the “shortage” of funding.
I put “shortage” in quotes because in my experience most of the money goes to fat union wages for unproductive university employees. For every one person who has a job at a university, there could easily be 3 if we did not tolerate such outrageous waste (which is rapidly destroying our society). It’s ridiculous – you get people making $25/hour or more to do tasks that you could easily get people to do for $10/hour.
If careful planning starts now, it will take 4 decades or more to fix the system …and a lot can happen in 40 years that might complicate things further.
Clarification: I’m not calling for radical change. Radical change leads to instability.
I am now an AGWer. I just found out that if the Arctic melts, the blob will come back to get us. Steve McQueen said so in 1958!
Paul Vaughan (01:28:42) :
“Radical change leads to instability.”
And that’s the biggest problem with the AGW crowd, they want radical change. They think that they will profit from it, but the golden goose is the free market, and when it’s dead, all their fantasies will come crumbling down around them, and us.
yonason (15:27:17) “And that’s the biggest problem with the AGW crowd, they want radical change.”
Agreed. Radical change is the single biggest threat to nature.
Sensible minds advocating balance will prevail.
Didn’t they drop it in the Antarctic?