Posted on 07/10/2008 2:13:29 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
PARIS (AFP) - New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.
Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.
"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.
Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.
Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.
The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.
Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added.
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Duct tape. That’s what you need when your massive ice shelf is breaking up.
OMG! We’re all gonna die!
Man the Rafts!! Don’t forget your rubber Duckies.
Annotated image of Wilkins Ice Shelf acquired on 9 July 2008 by Envisat's ASAR instrument, showing the ice bridge connecting to Charcot Island and Latady Island (bottom left). A new fracture that could open the ice bridge is visible at the bottom of the ice bridge.
HI-RES JPEG (Size: 1280 kb)
more pics here at http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM2U5THKHF_index_1.html#subhead1
Woohoo! Cheap beach front property!
A lot of what we’re seeing from the standpoint of panic and and the daily appearance of apparently conflicting evidence support both sides is simply what happens when you have a system that runs in 1,000 year or more cycles being studied by scientists who have less than 100 year lifetimes!
If global warming is indeed happening, and I do mean “if”, then it’s happened before, like when the glaciers as far south as Minnesota started to melt. That was 10,000 years ago and there’s no question as to whether or not that warming period was due to human intervention. There were no humans with all of the conveniences that are said to be causing warming now and yet the cycle went on its merry way until the glaciers had retreated all the way up into what would eventually be Canada.
If it’s happening, it’s happened before and if that’s the case we are simply SOL since it’s so much bigger than us. Like Rush says, some of us take ourselves way too seriously!
women, children, red indians, spacemen and an idealized version of flemish merchants to the lifeboats first!
Hey! If it’s good enough for Red Green?
Someday something really serious is going to happen and science will discover that all of the crying wolf has totally bankrupt its credibility.
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.And the rest of the continent is cooling, which this article conveniently ignores. Guess that wasn't in the talking points handed to the reporter.
I gotta tell ya I’m ready to send a check to “SAVE THE WILKINS ICESHELF FOUNDATION”, just tell the
foundation to fill in the amount since I have no money in my account and don’t want to appear stingy.
Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event,
but even though they admit they don’t know what’s going on let’s blame it on evil humans and assume it portends a dire future.
where did icebergs come from before George W. Bush, as part of the vast right wing conspiracy, caused global warming?
Less facetiously, are you aware of any correlations between sun spot activity, ice berg calving, oceanic currents and average oceanic temperatures?
Thanks.
agreed, a lot of things come to play, none of which are even directly related to the presence of hairy apes with wireless devices running to and from in metal motorized carriages.
There is another earlier thread just posted about the earth’s magnetic poles ..
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2043609/posts
Who know what the effects are of a gaseously encased metal driven orb in space bombarded by charged particle radiation and resisting gravitational tugs on a crust that is anything but rigid in many spots around the earth?
They don’t call it the Living Planet for nothing.
Talk about your E ticket ride. ;-)
OMG we are DOOMED I tell You DOOMED Yawn
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