Rare black iceberg spotted off Labrador coast could be 100k years old | Hacker News Reader

Rare black iceberg spotted off Labrador coast could be 100k years old

cbc.ca

149 pointspseudolus71 comments

"Fisher Hallur Antoniussen took a photo of it to show crewmates, but it quickly took off after being posted on social media."

I don't blame it, I would have done the same.

The exposed portion of the berg is roughly spherical. The submerged portion must be enormous and approximately symmetrical to hold that sphere in such an upright position.

So the tip of the iceberg is just the tip of the iceberg

Indeed, that tautology is a true statement.

With just one photo we can’t really say if the exposed portion is roughly spherical. However, the guy taking the photo who presumably got a better look seems to think it was “diamond shape.”

Is this just of passing interest, or something that "ists" (scientists, geologists, climatologists etc.) would gain potentially valuable data by taking samples from it?

Check around it for Super Samples!

I wish I didn't think this immediately as well.

Wait until the Democracy Officer hears of this lack of faith!

Wouldn't this melt "quickly" due to solar radiation based on how dark it is? That is to say, I wouldn't it most likely be closer to 100 years old than 100,000 years old?

I'm sure you know more about iceburg ages than the professor of oceanography that dated it.

To be fair, the guy who just dated it likey knows the least about it. It's the guy who broke up with it that knows the most.

I was literally asking about the range that the oceanographer provided. I didn't assert anything

That's for new soot depositing on ordinary, existing glaciers with previously high albedo. That causes a spiraling feedback effect of more forest fires and accelerating glacier melt,

It's probable that these dark glaciers are mostly sludge with only a bit of ice. We won't know until some field researchers go out there and gather data and samples.

This post--which actually engages with the content of the article--is being downvoted, while "Do black Labrador icebergs also have webbed feet, to swim better?" is being upvoted.

Where do we run once the redditification of HN is complete?

Do black Labrador icebergs also have webbed feet, to swim better?

No, but golden Labrador icebergs are the friendliest of all the icebergs and can make a great addition to any family.

The vet bills and cleaning up after them is really ridiculous.

Why would an iceberg be a "he is all black?"

Will the icebergs broken off get older and older?

As long as we keep pushing CO2 into the atmosphere and don't run out of ice, yeah, most likely.

After reading, I'm less interested in a black iceberg as much as now wondering what a fish harvester is as it's not a term I've seen before. Have we changed the term to reflect the vast quantities of fish that fisherman is inadequate?

I think it might be a gender-neutral version of fisherman. Not something like a factory ship.

It's a horrible alternative lol

Wait until you have to deal with the horror of gender specific icebergs!

“It's not only that he is all black. He is almost ... in a diamond shape”

I am guessing that it is a translation artifact.

Newfoundland is predominantly English-speaking, so it's unlikely this reporter used anything else when preparing this story.

>Newfoundland is predominantly English-speaking

That's quite generous of you to say.

For anyone wondering, over 98% of Newfoundland's population speaks only English.

https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/language.php

Yeah, Newfies speak English just like Scottish speak English. Those words might be English, but it's the phrasing that makes no sense.

Newfoundlanders you mean.

Fairly sure Newfie is broadly used as a colloquial term of endearment in the rest of Canada, by Newfoundlanders and non-Newfoundlanders. There's just too many syllables

How about Newfoundland-and-Labradorean? It's funny that the only ones insulted by Newfie are the non-newfies.

I am a Newfoundlander and I don’t appreciate that term.

It is not. It is insulting and derogatory. Don’t use it thanks.

While that's not how it's ever been used in my life, I can accept that it's perfectly valid for you and presumably many others to feel differently.

Having grown up with so much predominantly east coast originating comedy, and around so many Newfoundland diaspora, I guess it never occurred to me that there was any real negative connotation whatsoever, beyond poking a bit of fun at some of the presumably antiquated cultural stereotypical differences via self-deprecating jokes that most people from smaller places have their own versions of and don't take too seriously.

What're you at 'der b'y?

Yes b'y, Newfoundland English is best kind sure.

Can confirm, I've only ever heard a chain of the word "woof" from a newfie.

Curious that.

The English did force the French population out of there and down the Mississippi to become Cajuns.

And the children of the native Abenaki population were sent to English Schools.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians


   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system

Well sure. Lots of shitty things were done that caused the current state of affairs to come into being.

I was just describing the present day, not defending whatbwas done to create it.

Acadians were in Nova Scotia. There were already a bunch of French in New Orleans/Louisiana. Hence "Louis"iana, new "Orleans", "De-troit" etc. It was all new France.

And the residential schools happened well after the formation of Canada, and a lot of happened at the behest of the Catholic Church (ie: French Canadians). see Vital Grandin.

Seems to be in use in primarily English contexts.

https://www.alaskasafetyalliance.org/explore-careers/maritim...

ohhh, I thought it was the boat

There's a union or collective bargaining guild that has trademarked the term Professional Fish Harvester in Canada. #PFHCB

It could be to make fishermen gender neutral, but I think it is to hide the fact that you are essentially killing the fish by the thousands, letting them suffocate. Fish harvesting sounds innocent and PG 13.

Might one say fish harvesters capture "exponentially more fish"? (Sorry, couldn't resist...)

Fisherman: catches fish

Fish harvester: might catch fish, but might also be the one that cleans/processes them and isn't actually involved in pulling the fish out of the water

It’s a local quirk of the Canadian fish industry more than anything. DFO uses the phrase in their fishery notices: https://www.nfl.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/en/node/2377

The history page of the local union, they use the phrase “fish harvesters” rather interchangeably with “fishermen”: https://ffaw.ca/about-us/history/

It makes sense in the context of fish farming. Not sure if that's what this is, though. Harvesting doesn't sound appropriate for catching wild fish.

FWIW, it's a reasonably common euphemism in hunting. Example:

"Deer and elk harvested from certain hunt zones must be tested." https://wildlife.ca.gov/hunting/deer

When are these going on sale in drinks?

> He guesses the ice in the berg is at least 1,000 years old, but could also be exponentially more ancient — even formed as many as 100,000 years ago.

That's not exponentially more (which would be a preposterous 2^1000 or 10^1000 years old). It's just 100 times more. Should I stop being annoyed at how media use the word and just accept their alternative meaning of "a lot" ?

This is how language develops, I’m afraid. But imagine that the age is 10^k where k is something like “age class”. Then indeed the age grows exponentially :)

It still doesn’t grow exponentially, it is just orders of magnitude older.

Possibly, because if I read between the lines, their answer is “huh I dunno”.

Orders of magnitude is an exponential measure.

1*10^n

so then every change can be called exponential

> This chair is 4 years old. Or, maybe 5 years old.

Yeah, exponential growth!!!

Yes, but where is the growth? They just said that the age of iceberg is 1000 years or maybe older 100.000.

There is no exponential growth there, just someone not having any clue about the iceberg wanting to sound knowledgeable about the subject.

10^2 in exponential form...

At least he didn't say logarithmically more

It's two numbers. It's a constant increase, you can fit a line between them, but also a degree 10 polynomial or an exponential curve.

Yes, it just means "a lot".

I agree, you can also say exponential if there's 4 or more numbers.

High variance/confidence interval. Probably needs some C14 / O18 dating to narrow it down by field researchers gathering samples rather than us speculating from afar.

If we want to express ourselves using exponents, consider that 1000 years (1×10^3) and 9000 years (9×10^3) would be of the same "degree" of ancestry, while 100,000 years (1×10^5) would be of completely different (exponential) significance.

any exponential can reasonably be approximated to a linear in the right range

1.01158^1000 ~= 100000

Exponentially more!

1.0116^10000 ≈ 100000

Journalists tend to just think of it as "a lot more", but since they didn't specify the base of the exponential we can at least find a way to make the article technically correct. There are fun classes that admit incomparable values, such as the Surreal games. If they'd said "the game {1 | -1} is exponentially more than { | }" then it'd be impossible to find a base to make the statement true. There's lots of fun to be had with this sort of math, as you know.

1000^(5/3)=100 000

it's not only the media.

it's just a figure of speech, (used like some people (ab)use "literally"), which I am sure you know, considering your profile, or even otherwise.

other people than the media use it too:

e.g. this Rob Pike post about Go (the programming language, not the game you like):

Less is exponentially more

https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...

1000^1⅔=100000

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