Posted on 11/22/2006 11:30:53 AM PST by Brian Allen
Fishing boats are reporting icebergs off the Timaru coast.
Two fishing boats - the Nidaro and the Amber Wave - have reported seeing icebergs heading north.
Nidaro skipper Blendon Laurie did more than report sightings of icebergs - he got up close enough to take a piece home to show the kids.
An iceberg appeared on the horizon while the boat was about 60 kilometres out from the Timaru coast.
"We saw it on the horizon, and weren't sure what it was, but then we saw it was an iceberg."
Mr Laurie estimated the iceberg was about 30 to 45 metres high and a good 45m across.
"It's not something you'd like to hit."
AdvertisementAdvertisementThirty to 40 smaller icebergs - some as big as the 20m Nidaro, were floating along behind the main iceberg.
"We got half a mile away from one, we went right in for a look."
The icebergs are moving in a north to north-west direction, heading toward the peninsula, and travelling at about one nautical mile (1.85km) an hour.
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research oceanographer Mike Williams said that the biggest iceberg sighted off the Timaru coastline was estimated at 45m high, 61m wide and 30m long.
"They're not going to be as spectacular as the ones off Dunedin, but having said that, it is close. It's unprecedented to have them this far up."
The last time icebergs were reported off New Zealand's coast was in the 1930s.
Dr Williams said it was likely those reported off the Dunedin coastline also made their way north to Timaru.
This week's sightings were estimated to be at least 30km to 40km from the coast, but Dr Williams said some of the smaller icebergs might come in closer.
During the last period of "global warming," no doubt?
Better watch it down there, shaggs. Them thar melt 'round your parts 'n you're likely to be swummin' to work!
Whoops.
Better watch it down there, shaggs. Them thar melt 'round your parts 'n you're likely to be swummin' to work!
It snowed in central Florida last night. Next thing we know, cats and dogs will be sleeping together.
Does anyone know what George W. Bush and Karl Rove were up to back then?
Too many icebergs? Global Warming.
Too few icebergs? Global Warming.
We better get serious about global warming and melt those buggers before there's another Titanic.
Not to worry:
High-resolution studies of North Atlantic deep sea cores demonstrate that prominent increases in iceberg calving recurred at intervals of 2000 to 3000 years, much more frequently than the 7000-to 10,000-year pacing of massive ice discharges associated with Heinrich events. The calving cycles correlate with warm-cold oscillations, called Dansgaard-Oeschger events, in Greenland ice cores. Each cycle records synchronous discharges of ice from different sources, and the cycles are decoupled from sea-surface temperatures. These findings point to a mechanism operating within the atmosphere that caused rapid oscillations in air temperatures above Greenland and in calving from more than one ice sheet.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/267/5200/1005
Global Warming is clever that way.
No no. This is global cooling heading north.
It's just about summertime down under, eh?
Just think of the money you could make selling all that melted iceberg to the yuppies. Gourmet water.
I'm sure the Dems have an explanation of why this is attributable to global warming... Probably along the lines of "The icecap in Antarctica is breaking up" or something like that.
"Fishing boats are reporting icebergs..."
That seems like a bigger story than the icebergs. I did not even know that a fishing boat could talk.
ping
They were obviously playing with their weather/time machine.
Of course!
ICE BERGS?
I wonder if the Titanic passengers were the first victims of Global Warming?
In the end, it was poetic justice I guess. Imagine the CO footprint of the Titanic. I shudder to think! Thank god it went down!
LOL!
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