Huge iceberg breaks off Antarctica | Hacker News Reader

Huge iceberg breaks off Antarctica

bbc.co.uk

75 pointsyread68 comments

More info here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1241059...

In summary, B9B, a 97-kilometer long iceberg, crashed into the Mertz Glacier Tongue in the Australian Antarctic Territory on Feb. 20, 2010. The collision created a new 78-kilometer long iceberg. Those two are now drifting around, chilling out. Complicated ocean currents will most likely be affected, possibly depriving huge parts of the ocean of oxygen, interrupting millions of biological feedback systems we know nothing about, shifting them to newfound equilibria, making this little ecosystem of ours a lot more livable for obscure branches of bugs, and a lot less livable for us.

tl;dr: We're all going to die.

Couldn't you just pin it in place with hundred steel ropes or something?

"The icebergs, weighing 860 billion tons and 700 billion tons respectively, are located in water over the Antarctic Continental Shelf, Young said."

I think you'd need more than a hundred steel ropes to hold 860 billion tons of ice in place.

Question: Where does an 860 billion ton iceberg go? Answer: Wherever it wants!

Asimov had a short story once in which spacecraft propulsion was dependent on water as fuel, and a colony on Mars (in response to an anti-space-exploration political movement on Earth) started harvesting huge chunks of ice from the outer solar system, wrangling them into Martian orbit with webs of high-strength cabling (and using some of the ice in the process as fuel to move it all around) and letting them crash down in uninhabited areas (where, under Mars' lower gravity and frigid temperatures, they'd hold together enough to be mined for water).

I don't suggest hanging it on strings just pinning it. Hundred was also a symbolic (a lot) rather than real number.

It's MASS is 860 billion tons and 700 billion tons respectively, its weight is 0 tons and 0 tons respectively other wise they would have sunk. They're NEUTRALLY BUOYANT. With no ocean currents and no winds I could move them around with a pocket fan.

All the question here is whether you can anchor the icebergs against the forces applied by ocean currents and the wind. The fact that these icebergs weigh nothing due to their buoyancy is the problem here, no one would have given a shit if they sank.

That sounds like one of those "it's harder in practice" type of things - both from a political (who is going to fund it?) and engineering standpoint.

Steel only has five hundred times the tensile strength of ice.

But, of course, Phil Jones wrote some rude emails and used the words "trick" and "hide", therefore global warming isn't real and poses no threat even if it is. So, nothing to worry about.

You don't understand… I've seen it. I've seen it happening. The ocean is dying, the plankton is dying… It's people! Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Soon, they'll be breeding us like cattle—for food! You gotta tell 'em! Listen to me, Hatcher! You gotta tell 'em—SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!

I'll tell you what you gotta tell 'em! SOYLENT GREEN IS THERMODYNAMICALLY INEFFICIENT!

Yeah, that makes as much sense as machines using humans for energy in the Matrix. For a good time, see this Reddit thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/b5gz7/an_american_p...

What does this have to do with global warming? The new iceberg was dislodged by a collision. Nothing in the article indicates temperature as a factor.

[Edit: scientists are cautious about saying this specific event is caused by warming tempuratures - but overall they are not cautious about linking melting ice shelves to overall warming.]

Can every article related to global climate change site every other article?

Ice caps are getting smaller and breaking up more rapidly over the last 30 years... because the average temperature of the earth is rising.

There is a remote possibility that all climate change science is bad because some climate change science is bad. But the more likely scenario is that most climate change science is good science, and observations like giant icebergs are relevant evidence that is easy for most to understand - so they are used as examples.

http://nsidc.org/quickfacts/icebergs.html http://nsidc.org/news/press/20080325_Wilkins.html

http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/201002/2831331.... ""We don't see any evidence at the moment, we don't have enough information to be able to say any influence of climate change," he said."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/hundreds-of-iceberg...

""Whole ice shelves have broken up," he said, as temperatures have risen in Antarctica, where they are up as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in the past 60 years.

But he cautioned against linking the appearance of the bergs in New Zealand waters to global warming: The phenomenon depends as much on weather patterns and ocean currents as on the rate at which icebergs are calving off Antarctic ice shelves."

>"Ice caps are getting smaller and breaking up more rapidly over the last 30 years"

Actually, I'm pretty sure the south pole ice cap is growing, though this is also thought to be a symptom of rising temperatures.

edit: uh..what? You think I'm making this up?

http://www.slate.com/id/2192730/

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2008/0110/p14s01-sten.h...

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomal...

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom....

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/a_new_record_for_ant...

If global warming is a danger Mr. Jones has made it a little more dangerous with his illegal actions that have discredited climate research.

But anyway, I get the feeling that we're suffering a collective bout of climate hypochondria this century. Haven't icebergs been colliding and breaking apart forever?

I don't really know if we're reacting appropriately, overreacting, or underreacting to climate change; but I think your last sentence is kind of like saying "Volcanoes have been erupting since Earth began, who cares if a supervolcano is about to erupt?".

Is it a supervolcano or is it just supercharged perception of everything that might or might not have to do with climate change?

I can't bring myself to react to very long term potential dangers in the same way I would react to clear and immediate dangers like a volcano that's going to blow up in my face. That's why your analogy doesn't work for me.

Summer ice melts have generally been setting records year after year, both in the northern and southern hemisphere.

So, uncertain, but probably more on the "supervolcano" end of your spectrum there.

Experiment: Fill a glass with ice water. Take the temp. 32 degrees or so. Drop a thimble full of boiling water in, some of the ice will melt. Take the temp. Still 32 degrees. Repeat. What happens when we're out of ice? (Situation is slightly different for a planet as opposed to a glass but the fundamentals still apply)

So are you saying that the temperature up until now should not have been going up since we're not out of ice?

[edit] And my second question would be this. If all of this is so simple that it can be demonstrated with a glass of water and a few ice cubes, why is it that a minority of serious scientists has doubts? The same scientists would probably confirm that your experiment is correct.

Of course I'm not saying that, I even included a parenthetical to make it explicit -- you have higher temperature gradations on a planet than in a glass of water -- it's always hot in the tropics, always cold at the poles. But you still have an average.

The answer to your second question is that no legitimate scientists have doubts about whether the temperature's rising. It's an established fact.

What's uncertain is how much CO2 is related to the rising temperature. They correlate, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it makes intuitive sense, but it's not "proven" and to certain levels of "proof", is impossible to prove because there's billions of confounding factors like sunspots, water vapor etc.

You're probably confusing this with uncertainty over whether the temperature is rising (which is proven), because paid shills and ideologues (who get paid in emotional satisfaction) deliberately conflate the issue. Confusion is on their side -- educating people will probably hurt their argument, even if they're right.

You're trying to refute an argument that I haven't made. The debate about the supervolcano was about our collective perception of the potential consequences of global warming, not whether or not warming takes place.

I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems.

We had the Stern review tell us what the costs of climate change are going to be many decades down the road. It's not possible to make such predictions because it's not possible to know the social and scientific reaction to any change. It's that kind of government sponsored charlatanery that I don't like about this debate.

I am still in favor of reducing CO2 and changing our energy infrastructure in a moderate fashion, because by and large I do believe that we are causing changes in the athmosphere that we should try to minimise (There are other good reasons for doing this as well). I just think we need not have a collective bout of panic and I don't need politicised scientists present things in a way that suggests way more certainty than we could ever possibly have about goings on in complex systems.

> I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems.

Like the Solar System. Or chemistry. Or biology. Or evolution. Or medicine.

We're pretty much flying blind here. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to pay my taxes this year.

If you don't know anything about climate science, maybe you should do the rational thing and listen to the experts and the best scientific consensus of the time.

I find your comment interesting. Let's take a look at your list.

Solar System -- after 500 years of research, multi-body problem still not solved, many features still amaze and baffle, scientists have no idea how common the system might be

Chemistry -- in spite of having a great model with lots of reproducible experiments, issues remain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_chemistry

Biology -- where to start?

Evolution -- big vague term. Hard to critique this one. Do you mean natural selection inside a species? Speciation?

Medicine -- wonderful ability to find and fix many diseases. Lots of things work although we have no idea why. Lots of things that we think should work don't. Lots of medicine is so much of a mystery that only statistical analysis can give us rough correlations to begin to form theories. The reason it is so advanced? Billions of test subjects (as opposed to one climate for Earth)

And let's not even get into physics, quantum or otherwise. Or cosmology. Or the problems with the use of Cellular Automata as a modeling tool. I could go on.

Be careful with grand sweeping statements. Ignorance is a fine position and should be the default. Science is a humble questioning of the cosmos, always willing to correct itself and always looking for reproducibility. Be careful about putting so much trust in scientists that you forget what science is about.

Ignorant people have plenty of tools at their disposal to reason and understand the quality of the underlying science. The science itself may be complicated beyond belief, but the underlying meta-data -- how science is done -- is not.

> I find your comment interesting. Let's take a look at your list.

I find yours interesting as well, because you struck down a straw man. I didn't say these problems were solved, only that we CAN credibly make long term (which is of course relative to the field) predictions about these fields with reasonable success.

And then you proceed to strengthen my point by reminding me—as if I needed a reminder—that the scientific process is ongoing and our body of knowledge increases every day; new evidence overturns old and we revise predictions all the time.

If this is not a credible process, I think we are operating on very different definitions of ”credible”. And I see 0 evidence that the general body of knowledge amassed by the IPCC has been significantly tainted. Some of it will be overturned, and I'm sure much of it will be repeated and audited over time. That's not a black mark or a warning sign, that is the status quo.

poster -> I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems.

You ->(Provide examples, presumably, of complex systems that we can provide long term predictions about. If you don't know anything about climate science, maybe you should do the rational thing and listen to the experts and the best scientific consensus of the time.

Me-> Provide examples about how in each of your examples, we are not able in many cases to predict long-term system state or reaction to stimulus. Trivial example in medicine: tell me how an individual is going to die by examining them as a baby. Original poster was correct to be skeptical. Ignorant people have plenty of tools at their disposal to reason and understand the quality of the underlying science. The science itself may be complicated beyond belief, but the underlying meta-data -- how science is done -- is not.

You-> Straw Man! You're using a straw man!

I think we're done here.

So you're saying we can't make any sort of general long-term predictions about the Solar System? That's the core of your argument?

Maybe we are done here.

I mean, the crux of this absurd argument is that “our long term forecasts might be updated so they are never trustworthy!” Except that nearly every field of science is this way and it hasn't stopped us from using our knowledge to make meaningful predictions and incredible technological breakthroughs.

Basically a double standard has been applied. When it comes to quantum theory or multi-body problems, our best guess is all cool. But when it comes to the weather suddenly everyone gets all philosophy-of-science and asks what we really know. The absurdity is compounded by the suggesting that climate science is basically models and “long term predictions” rather than a huge array of physical evidence showing us what is happening right now, a short-term trend leading up to it, and a long term contrast with multiple lines of evidence.

In case you think your posts were for naught, know that the argument annoyed me enough that I gave $100 to The Climate Project.

It seemed a more worthwhile use of my resources than posting another comment that would have agreed with yours.

I feel awful. I really do. This is so simple yet somehow it's not getting through.

1. We don't really know anything. So let's all get that out there and get over it.

2. Some things we have a lot of examples of. Stuff like atoms, people, animals. Some things we have only one example of, like the climate. Those things that we have a lot of examples of, we can make better guesses about what might happen based on prior outcomes. Those that we don't, we can't.

3. In the past, over hundreds of years, we have examples of two types of science, science that speculates by applying rules about structure and theory to unobserved phenomenon, and science that has no idea how things work but can make lots of measurements and guess what might happen. The second kind of science has done much, much, much better than the first, for lots of reasons (too many to go into here) The structure/rule/extrapolation guys do best when it's only a degree or two of extrapolation (which is not true in climate science to any degree)

There's no double standard, because we're not taking the same thing and looking at it two different ways. We're taking many different things and looking at them many different ways. Which is the way it should be, right?

EDIT: The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that we've been watching the solar system for two thousand years. Plus we have solid observations about all the theory that goes into predicting where Pluto will be. We have observations. We have falsifiable theories. They both agree. That makes orbital dynamics about a zillion times different than, say, psychology. Different kinds of science are not all the same. There are important differences to understand. Medicine is not biology is not physics is not sociology is not climate science. This is NOT about argument from ignorance versus science. It's about the true nature of science, a very important thing to grok. sigh

The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that we've been watching the solar system for two thousand years.

How long do you think people have been watching the weather for?

Widespread watching and recording, like astrologers did with the planets? Maybe 150-300 years or so? And that's with varying degrees of precision.

It's interesting to note that there was a huge gap in time between observing the weather and recording it. There was a further gap before we started predicting the weather. For most of that time, people substituted superstitions about the weather for science. The sky gods were happy, the sun came out. The sky gods were unhappy, it rained. If we would only do the right thing, the sky gods would remain happy. If we want the weather to be agreeable, we must change our behavior.

With the worldwide climate, we are only about 20-50 years into simply observing and recording. It could be quite a long while indeed before global long-term climate predictions is anything at all like the 3-day local weather forecast.

Remember, three stages: abduction, deduction, and induction. Abduction: gathering data and spotting patterns. Deduction: taking patterns and positing relationships. Induction: taking those relationships and extrapolating to future behavior of the system.

Climate science is currently mostly abduction. But folks like to describe it in terms of induction because lots of pieces of the underlying physics are at that stage. But it doesn't work that way.

I don't know if that strikes you as some kind of big hand-waving philosophy bullshit, but it's just the way things are, whether I point it out or not. I'm just the dumb schmuck stuck with trying to explain it.

You have got to be kidding. 150-300 years?

Agriculture dates back to at least ~10,000 BC (the "Neolithic revolution"). Effective farming (i.e., not dying of starvation) requires planning for changing weather conditions. If you think Neolithic farmers didn't have a vested interest in detecting patterns in weather cycles, you're sadly mistaken.

Hell, the term "meteorology" was coined by Aristotle... in a book he wrote... called Meteorology... in 350 BC.

Remember: abduction, gathering of data and spotting patterns.

Got the daily weather report for Athens for the years 150-100 BC?

Neolithic man had a deeply vested interest in the weather, but that doesn't change his advancement of weather science. The gods were useful for many thousands of years.

Sure, the general idea of watching the weather -- long history there. But that just proves my point. There was a huge gap between seeing and naming it, recording it, spotting patterns, making falsifiable theories, and making predictions. We're just at the "seeing and naming it" stage with climate science. The use of computer models hide this fact, sadly.

Oh, ok. So it takes making predictions to quality as real science.

Here's a real prediction, with actual confirming evidence: giving someone with a high MADRS score an SSRI will reduce their score.

That's beyond seeing and naming depression, it's beyond recording patients' reactions to SSRIs, it's beyond spotting patterns in their reactions, it's even beyond making falsifiable theories about its mechanism of action. It's making predictions which are confirmed on a statistically significant basis.

Does this mean you think psychiatry has the same epistemological standing as physics?

Daniel/Kirin - The two of you basically agree with each other, I'm just wondering if you realize it; it's just that Kirin is trying to make a stronger argument about the effectiveness of science regarding complex systems than Daniel

And both of you would probably agree that radically destabilizing the homeostasis that is Earth's environment by pumping increasingly large amounts of CO2 into it is probably foolhardy, regardless of your belief in the ability of science to make predictions about complex systems.

I've read his blog. I think you're being overly generous with his opinion.

I wish I was wrong about that, though.

Seriously. No one jumps all over NASA yelling about how the science "isn't in yet" when they want to send a probe out to where Pluto will be in 9 years.

I know too much about how experts work to believe slavishly in any scientific consensus. Scientific work is based on scientific methods that have limits I do know about and consensus is not truth.

But if you had read my previous post carefully you would have noticed that I do actually listen to the consensus as far as narrow climate science is concerned. I do not believe in the the kind of broad predictions that are coming out of a politicised research establishment and I do not believe in the extent of certainty they try to convey.

Well, if a super volcano erupted, then we wouldn't really need to worry about global warming.

There could be some truth in your hypochondria comparison. Climate concerns developed as good global climate data became available in the 70's and 80's and the range of the data variability became known. It is possible that the fear around observed climate variability comes from the the unclear picture of what is a 'habitable' range of variability. Exactly what the 'habitable' range is seems to be determined mostly be political associations not data.

Also, the article mentions that not all "experts" are concerned,

"Some experts are concerned about the effect of the massive displacement of ice on the ice-free water next to the glacier, which is important for ocean currents, while others are less concerned.

Experts say this type of iceberg calving happens from time to time and these are not record large icebergs."

Finally, the atmosphere-ocean-biosphere system has never been in 'equilibria'. It is a highly nonlinear, nonstationary system whose dynamic are just beginning to be understood.

As we learn more about the ramifications of climate change I think it would be irrational not to worry. I live in a civilized country with modern building standards and easy access to food and clean water so I'm not too concerned about myself. I'm very concerned about the many millions of people who don't have that luxury. If you're already on the razor's edge increased flooding or increased drought could be the difference between life and death. We also have to consider the political ramifications of mass migrations due to people fleeing floods, mudslides, drought, changing animal/insect populations and their impact on agriculture, etc. I think you're right that it's not really anything new, weather patterns have always been subject to change, but we have more humans on the planet contending for ever more scarce resources today.

The problem with the Global Warming debate is the fact that there's so much ignorance on BOTH sides.

For example, One Iceberg in itself doesn't prove anything because the temperature in one isolated area can vary regardless of the overall global temperature. So you insinuating this is proof of AGW is the equivalent of a Conservative saying Global Warming doesn't exist because it's been the coldest winter on record in the north east.

The only thing that can prove or disprove the hypothesis of AGW conclusively is good research and that's why Phil Jones' behavior was so damaging.

Remember, the majority of the debate is about the cause of increase in temperatures, not the existence.

"It has been nuzzling and shifting alongside the Mertz for about 18 years before this month's dislodging" - so we kinda should have seen this coming.

It appears here too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/26/antarctica.... This iceberg has a fresh water enough to supply a third world's population for one year.

Maybe Monty Brewster can hitch a motor to it and float it up to the Middle East, where he'll make millions off the ice cubes!

Harry Broderick and his team already did this one, I know because I saw it on TV :)

[OK, that one will date several of us... but there was once a time when sci-fi on TV was so rare we would watch just about anything...]

The Story also links to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8539198.stm

"I think on larger scales, it's not likely to have a very major impact on the global climate" -British Antartic Survey.

I say, nuke that iceberg! It will melt like a marshmallow :-)

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use nuclear bombs." Now they have two problems.

I'll admit that the first thought I had was "Why not drop some bombs on it?"

Maybe not nukes, but it doesn't seem like such a terrible idea if the giant sheet of ice is going to be so disruptive.

Maybe drop some kind of very low-albedo, non-toxic powder on the top (or as much of it as can covered) to encourage faster melting.

The fresh water will still cause disruptions to currents, though presumably not as much as a solid mass...

very low-albedo, non-toxic powder

Like dirt?

Could be. Sand might not be dark enough, and that'd be a lot of humus to gather, but another sort might work...

My recollection is that the Coast Guard tried quite a few different methods (paint, directed charges, etc) to break up small ice bergs before they entered the shipping lanes in the late 50's early 60's. The ice bergs proved to be exceedingly hardy. Efforts to dissipate them were abandoned in favor of simply detecting them and avoiding them.

Fair enough, but I'm thinking mainly in terms of making it melt faster than it otherwise would, not keeping it out of shipping lanes. As someone else on the thread said, this thing goes where it wants to go. :)

EDIT: Especially as this thing has a lot more exposed surface area relative to its mass than your average small 'berg.

s/nuclear bombs/a regex/

this is NOT worthy of the front page. this has happened before and it will happen again. nothing interesting to see here. moving on...

Stake a claim and sell it.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915637,00.h...

I don't quite understand why it's such a bad thing to worry about, suspect, and try to fight climate change, even if it doesn't exist.

It's like Pascal's Wager, imho.

Because throwing a trillion dollars worth of resources down a black hole is stupid in a world with limited resources and billions of poor people.

Also worth noting: despite the writings of Pascal, you won't find many atheists in church. Most of them decide the cost is not worth the (odds-adjusted) expected benefits.

What keeps me out of church is the fact that the Bible could just as easily have been written by Satan, and that following Jesus would condemn me to hell.

Now, granted, global warming is more likely, to me, than hell, but not nearly as hot, so it's a lot more worth considering the costs involved :)

Funny, I always thought the best ways to fight climate change, if it exists, were to use less and make what is left more efficient. That is why I don't see it as a bad thing- in a world with limited resources and billions of poor people, increased efficiency and decreased consumption seems like a good thing.

OK, sure. So, let's say we develop technology that allows us to lower our emissions by a whopping 80% compared to today. OK, now imagine that India, rural China, the middle east, South America, and Africa develop into first world nations. The world CO2 emissions would end up back where they are today, despite the revolutionary technologies developed and employed.

By which I mean to say that forcefully curbing CO2 emissions is a very, very hard problem. And curbing CO2 emissions without forcing developing nations not to develop is even more difficult.

Personally I think that even if global warming is every bit its cracked up to be the Bangledeshis, for example, will probably be better off with higher sea levels and first world wealth and infrastructure than they would be with existing sea levels and another century of poverty.

I'm not a climatologist, but rising sea levels are not the only problem. They are simply the most commonly selected problem to cite, as 'submerged cities' strikes close to home, and is a classical apocalyptic (and thus greatly feared) event.

There are far more consequences than just that. For example, all the coral of the entire ocean would be dead or dying. Not that I expect you to care about coral; that is just one example.

It's OK, we found the remains. It landed on New York.

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