well, it broke off - another chunk of ice gone

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?smp=&lang=eng


Area: Antarctica, , Wilkins Ice Shelf,


An ice bridge which had held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place for hundreds of years at least shattered on Saturday and may herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said. "It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters of a satellite image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. "We've waited a long time to see this." The satellite picture, by the European Space Agency (ESA), showed that a 40-km (25 mile) long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place had snapped at its narrowest point of about 500 meters wide off the Antarctic Peninsula. The break left a jumble of huge flat-topped icebergs in the sea. The loss of the ice bridge, which was almost 100 km wide in 1950 and had been in place for hundreds of years at least, could allow ocean currents to wash away more of the Wilkins. "My feeling is that we will lose more of the ice, but there will be a remnant to the south," Vaughan said. The remaining shelf is about the size of Jamaica or the U.S. state of Connecticut. Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula, the which snakes up toward South America, have risen by up to about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the past 50 years, the fastest rate of warming in the Southern Hemisphere. "We believe the warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is related to global climate change, though the links are not entirely clear," Vaughan said. Antarctica's response to warming will go a long way to deciding the pace of global sea level rise. Nine other shelves have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002 further north, and shrinking maps of the frozen continent. The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels. Vaughan landed on the narrow ice bridge, which jutted about 20 meters above the sea, in January with a group of scientists and two Reuters reporters. He predicted that it would snap this year.
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tick, tick

(I used to do 3 ticks but now we are down to 2 ticks of time)

... "the universe is heating up anyways"

Gotta love deniers who plan on living near the coasts for any considerable amount of time in the future.

Rushbo was telling his listeners that Dems made up El Nino and there won't be any bad weather as a result. Then people started dying. I've often wondered how many people died because they listened to rushie stupid and didn't evacuate.

... borders on the criminal. It's so shocking to talk to seemingly educated people who say "but it's just the sun getting warmer " or "Plutos warming too" when a 20 second search would show you exactly where those bogus-"arguments" are coming from.

I imagine Rush broadcasting off a tanker in downtown Manhattan in the near future, ranting about "liberals" and their "satanic ability to modify the weather" in order to push for a "restoration of america" on traditional arctic-nautical american principles.
What a shame that fat floats on top of water.

his exact quotes. Shoot, I haven't even done my taxes yet.

...Had it not been him, they would have latched on to anyone else who told them what they wanted to hear, to whomever validated their rationalizations. They died because they were predisposed toward the behavior that endangered them.

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going there, whether it's really better or not.

http://www.csmonitor.com/mediaplayer/index.html?file=http://csps.edgeboss.net/download/csps/csm/flash/webmedia/080327antarctica-spotts.flv&height=400&width=500

:scared:

Scientists say the breakup is a harbinger of what's to come if the region continues warming.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

A crumbling ice shelf along the West Antarctic Peninsula has become the latest polar poster child for global warming.

This week, researchers in the United States, Britain, and Taiwan released images of long stretches of ice shearing away from the shelf. What started with the loss of a relatively thin, 26-mile-long iceberg at the end of February cascaded into the loss of 160 square miles of ice by the end of last week.

Its erosion won't affect sea levels. Like an ice cube in a filled cup, it's already in the water. And the handful of glaciers that feed into the shelf, called the Wilkins Ice Shelf, are small. Still, researchers say, the event represents a marker. The region has seen unprecedented rates of warming during the past 50 years. Two of the 10 shelves along the peninsula have vanished within the past 30 years. Another five have lost between 60 percent and 92 percent of their original extent. Of the 10, Wilkins is the southernmost shelf in the area to start buckling under global warming's effects.

"Wilkins is a stepping stone in a larger process," says Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who discovered the breakup in satellite images. "It's really a story of what's yet to come if the mainland of Antarctica begins to warm."

So far, the shelf has lost about 3 percent of its total extent, which covers an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island and is up to 820 feet thick. But all that sits between the shelf's new seaward edge and a vast expanse of much weaker shelf ice is what researchers dub a "thread" of strong ice. And Wilkins's erosion is happening faster than researchers projected.

"In 1993, we predicted that this was going to be a vulnerable ice shelf," says David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. "But we got the time scales completely wrong. We were saying 30 years at that time, and now it's happened within 15."

Glaciologists are concerned about Antarctica's ice shelves because most of them represent brakes of solid ice that slow the glaciers' flow to the sea. Without those brakes, the glaciers would surge, calve into icebergs, and significantly raise the sea level.

The region of greatest concern is West Antarctica, which includes the peninsula. Using satellites, scientists have been tracking snowfall, ice loss, and changes in the region's gravity field to gauge the amount of mass the continent's two large ice sheets are gaining or losing. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is separated from its eastern sibling by a long chain of mountains, so gains or no change in mass for the continent as a whole may still mask significant changes on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p25s10-wogi.html#

from watching that.

..some "theory" eh?

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/general/view/2009_04_02_Study:_Arctic_sea_ice_melting_faster_than_expected


Study: Arctic sea ice melting faster than expected

By Associated Press
Thursday, April 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — Arctic sea ice is melting so fast most of it could be gone in 30 years.

A new analysis of changing conditions in the region, using complex computer models of weather and climate, says conditions that had been forecast by the end of the century could occur much sooner.

A change in the amount of ice is important because the white surface reflects sunlight back into space. When ice is replaced by dark ocean water that sunlight can be absorbed, warming the water and increasing the warming of the planet.


The finding adds to concern about climate change caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, a problem that has begun receiving more attention in the Obama administration and is part of the G20 discussions under way in London.

"Due to the recent loss of sea ice, the 2005-2008 autumn central Arctic surface air temperatures were greater than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above" what would be expected, the new study reports.

That amount of temperature increase had been expected by the year 2070.

more:

:hide:

nt

Sorry. :blush:

omg this is so scary

Kicked and too late to recommend.

I'm exhausted... sorry.... lol