World’s biggest iceberg heads for disaster | Hacker News Reader

World’s biggest iceberg heads for disaster

graphics.reuters.com

South Georgia Island is where Shackleton and his small crew landed, intentionally, in a storm using only dead reckoning in a lashed together boat, then did a never-before attempted 36 hour wintertime crossing over the island from the remote side to the populated side in the dead of winter.

They had to do this because their exploration ship, the Endurance, got crushed and sank as they attempted (again) to trek to the south pole.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackleton/1914/timeline.html

One of the most amazing things about it is there are a lot of photographs from the ordeal. Despite barely getting off the ice floes and having a low chance of living, they carried with them hundreds of pounds of glass photographic exposures. Why? Because if they lived, publication rights of their stories and the photographs were necessary to pay off the debt they incurred in undertaking the mission.

I recommend this book if anyone wants an "anti-gravitational" read about it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Vo...

“South!”, Shackleton’s own book about this expedition is worth reading, and available for free at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5199.

I know this can potentially sound very stupid given the actual size, but can't we bomb it (target specific parts with a lot of firepower) in an attempt to break it up if it poses such a danger to actual wildlife if it collides/approaches the island? The ocean then potentially will carry some of the pieces away and miss the island?

There have been tests to accelerate the breakup or melting of icebergs with bombs, and it has been found to be ineffective and expensive even for much smaller icebergs: https://navcen.uscg.gov/?pageName=iipIsItPracticalToDestroyI...

That's unfortunate. I liked the elegance of such a brutish potential solution.

I know this definitely sounds dumb and juvenile, but I genuinely wish more problems could be solved with bombs.

Surely you’re familiar with the exploding whale story, but if not:

https://youtu.be/V6CLumsir34

Or Project Plowshare

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

This thing is the size of Jamaica with a draft of 200m (and so a height of more than that). It would take multiple nuclear weapons to do it any real kind of damage.

I didn't want to mention nukes as to the potential fallout that close to this precious wildlife will probably do way more harm than the actual iceberg.

Presumably same issues as nuking hurricanes :) https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd-faq/#hurricane-mitigation

I know the article makes the Jamaica comparison. But the iceberg is 4200km sq and Jamaica is 10000km sq.

Why do people always feel the need to interfere with nature? Looking at their diagram of penguin colonies it looks like at most 40% could be blocked from the sea by this iceburg. Yes it will suck for the half of the island that gets wiped out but in 10 years when this thing is melted and gone the penguins from the other side will reestablish colonies and life will go on.

Because we can, and we are nature too.

We are nature. We did this. We did global warming. Without global warming this probably would not have happenned. So we try to solve it ( or not)

"I see an iceberg and I want it painted black"

                                  The Melting Tones

zoom.earth has some great images if you want to track the progress of the iceberg for yourself.

Today's images are pretty clear as there's not much cloud cover

https://zoom.earth/#view=-55.0722,-38.1789,8z/date=2020-12-1...

Beautiful page, but I still don't get why it's a big deal? Iceberg gets stuck next to an island - surely it won't completely envelop it. The map shows the island is dotted with penguins breeding grounds so not all are going to be blocked, probably way less than half even. In the area where it will drag on the seabed some of the life will be probably destroyed, but this area can't be very large compared to the size of the island.

I mean it would be better if it doesn't happen but compared to the other climate catastrophes we're facing this doesn't seem very serious. Surely, penguins can deal with some floating ice?

The article explains several other effects to wildlife that you are skipping over. Namely, disruption to coastal food chain by melting freshwater, and the longer round trip for penguins feeding their chicks.

> Surely, penguins can deal with some floating ice?

some floating ice ?? The "beautiful page" has plenty of diagrams explaining the extent of this ice. It is the size of Jamaica. The largest floating ice object in recorded history.

More like an ice country than an iceberg

>The largest floating ice object in recorded history.

from the article: there have been only five larger than A68a in the last 34 years. The biggest, B-15, measured 11,000 square kilometers when it broke from Antarctica’s Ross ice shelf in March 2000.

And 34 years is a blink of an eye in geological time.

The iceberg is very large, so even if it doesn't envelop the island it could create a detour of up to 140km between a penguin and its feeding waters, a 280km addition to every trip - and that's only if it has access to satellite images to plan its route. On the surface, that penguin would only see a huge wall of ice with no indication which way would be shorter.

The mass is now moving straight toward a remote south Atlantic island populated by penguins and seals. Scientists say a collision could cause an environmental catastrophe

It's just the last few weeks of 2020. Expect some zombies somewhere too.

It's just a damn ice sheet. I don't see how this is a disaster.

Did you read the article. This isn't "just a damn ice sheet", its frickin huge.

It's the size of Jamaica and could plow through the near shore sea bed, and block off access to feeding grounds for the penguins on the island. Basically everything below the water will be crushed, and everything on land will starve.

How dare you!?

> "What we’re particularly worried about is that this iceberg doesn’t have a very deep keel,” Tarling said. “So the amount of iceberg under the water isn’t as much as you would normally expect for an iceberg like this.”

If this thing is a massive ice cube floating in the sea then surely they know how much of it is under the water?

A bunch of hair driers would do the job. The issue is that we need a lots of those, and sockets...

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