Huge iceberg breaks off Antarctica.

[babylonsister]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/02/100226_iceberg_wt_sl.shtml

Huge iceberg breaks off Antarctica.



Scientists say a vast iceberg weighing billions of tonnes which broke off the Antarctic continent this month poses a potential threat to the circulation of the world's oceans.

They say the 2,500 square kilometre iceberg, floating south of Australia, could block an area that produces a quarter of the world's dense and very cold seawater, known as bottom water.

This water drives ocean currents, and scientists say weather patterns could be affected in decades to come.

[ixion]

1. gee, I'm sure glad that climate change is a myth

I might otherwise be concerned. :sarcasm:

[ellenfl]

haven't you heard? we're just in a regular warming cycle.

nothing to worry about. :eyes:

ellen fl

[MercutioATC]

6. Climate change has never been a myth. Virtually everybody acknowledges it.

"Global Warming" was a silly moniker...

...and there are many who, while acknowledging the climate change, question how great an impact WE are having.

[ixion]

10. Six billion organisms pumping toxic garbage into the ecosystem

is going to have a pronounced effect. There is no question about it.

[MercutioATC]

11. One volcano eruption does more damage than we could do in scores of years.

...and the PLANET will be just fine, regardless of how warm it gets. What we're actually discussing is whether or not WE'VE made OUR lives more problematic.

[ixion]

12. No sir

As evidence I site the numerous volcanic eruptions that have occurred over the past 50 years, none of which have done as much damage as we've done in the same amount of time.

[MercutioATC]

14. True or not, the Earth will be just fine. By its nature, it adapts.

WE, on the other hand, might not be (at least not to the same extent we perceive ourselves to be now).

The Earth is just fine. Short of splitting it in half, we really can't hurt it (and, if we did, there's an argument that there are a near-infinite number of planets that could support Earth-like life...and there's also an argument that "Earth-like" life is pretty unimportant in a larger sense).

Wanna protest "global warming" in the same way you protest human rights issues? Fine.

It simply can't be logically spun as something that's for "the good of the Earth", though.

[ixion]

16. I agree the the correct phrase is "global climate change"

and this is the phrase I use when discussing the subject.

The Earth will outlive us, on that we agree. But why sh*t where you eat? :shrug:

Civil/Human rights issues are paramount. I'm not saying they're not. I am saying that this is an important issue, though, on the long term.

[villager]

18. Actually, civil/human rights issues are moot, if the biosphere goes...

... and while it's fraying, a lot of those rights are going to be tossed aside on the way...

[MercutioATC]

23. ...which is a great "selfish" reason to be concerned...

...but the Earth will be fine, with or without happy humans infesting it.

My point is that "Save the Planet" is a crock. "Save US" is what we're really talking about.

[pscot]

20. If by "Ëarth" you mean

a ball of rock with ambient water, no doubt you're right. But if the place won't sustain animal life, it's just another piece of space junk.

[PavePusher]

26. Humans are pretty adaptable.

We can live in environments that range from -100 to 130+ deg F.

And while I don't think we should be going out of our way to make vast, rapid changes to the biosphere, a few deg. cooler or warmer won't kill us off. It really won't even slow us down much, if any.

Now if you are talking Venus-ification, well, that's a different story. But I don't think the evidence is there.

[Viking12]

31. Yes, we can adapt to variations in weather

but we've grown to depend upon "stable" systems (agricultural, hydro, etc...) to be able to adapt to those variations. Once the stability of those systems is disrupted, our ability to operate within variable conditions will be diminished.

[NickB79]

24. Ah, the old "Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans" myth

Made famous by asshat scholar Rush Limpballs.

And completely untrue: http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans

And: http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

[neverforget]

27. And all those sequestered hydrocarbons that we're drilling, mining and burning

that have been in the ground for millions of years do nothing to the atmosphere? :shrug:

[jpak]

29. No they don't - that is nonsemse was conjured up by Larouche nutcases and parroted by repugs

and has NO scientific basis

period

:thumbsdown:

[guardian]

13. "many ... question how great an impact WE are having"

According to a recent Rasmussen Poll, just 35% of U.S. voters now believe global warming is caused primarily by human activity. Link http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/energy_update

[MercutioATC]

15. Yep, and the majority alsio say that they believe in an invisible man who lives in the sky...

...who gets really pissed if you do stuff like eating fish on a Friday.

People are, for the most part, a failed genetic experiment.

[kestrel91316]

19. A majority of cat owners believe that cat's don't need rabies shots

because they "can't get rabies". That doesn't make it so.

It just means that decades of veterinarians harping on them about it have had pathetically little impact, probably because people simply don't want to hear truth and are more comfortable with their fantasy.

[jpak]

30. many repugs/cons have been fooled by denier lies and bullshit

yup

[Gman]

2. This will be interesting in coming years

no telling what the effect will be.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

3. If it hurries along, it can make it north and hlp out with the Olympic's lack of snow/ice.

Mother nature shall provide!

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. See also

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=233074&mesg_id=233074

[Myrina]

5. ... can we name it Teabagistan and make the secessionists live on it?

:shrug:

[abelenkpe]

7. lol! If only! nt

[Viking12]

17. DUzy worthy!

[XemaSab]

22. .

:D

[FBaggins]

8. The fifth largest in the last 25 years or so.

(though I think one of those broke off of another)

With four of the five coming in the last decade.

[Odin2005]

9. EEEEEP!!!

:wow:

[Karmadillo]

21. But I think there are some emails or something somewhere and they kind of prove

there aren't icebergs or something like that, so what's the point?

[bik0]

25. "Garden hose to the sky" to the rescue...

The scientists who dreamed this up are actually some of the most respected in the world and swear it would work. The IV referred to in the article is Intellectual Ventures - the Bill Gates funded think tank...

Warming is largely a polar phenomenon, which means that high latitude areas are four times more sensitive to climate change than the equator. By IV’s estimations, 100,000 tons of sulphur dioxide per year would effectively reverse warming in the high Arctic and reduce it in much of the northern hemisphere.

That may sound like a lot but, relatively speaking, it is a smidgeon. At least 200m tons of sulphur dioxide already go into the atmosphere each year, roughly 25% from human sources such as motor vehicles and coal-fired power plants, 25% from volcanoes and the rest from other natural sources such as sea spray.

So all that would be needed to produce a globe-changing effect is one-twentieth of 1% of current sulphur emissions, simply relocated to a higher point in the sky. How?

Once you eliminate the moralism and the angst, the task of reversing global warming boils down to a straightforward engineering problem: how to get 34 gallons per minute of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. The answer: a garden hose to the sky.

For anyone who loves cheap and simple solutions, things don’t get much better. Here’s how it would work. At a base station sulphur would be burnt into sulphur dioxide and then liquefied. The hose, stretching from the base station into the stratosphere, would be about 18 miles long but extremely light, its diameter just a couple of inches.

It would be suspended from a series of high-strength helium-filled balloons fastened to it at 100 to 300-yard intervals (a “string of pearls”, IV calls it), ranging in diameter from 25ft near the ground to 100ft near the top.

The liquefied sulphur dioxide would be sent skyward by a series of pumps, fixed to the hose every 100 yards. These, too, would be relatively light, about 45lb each — “smaller than the pumps in my swimming pool”, Myhrvold says.

There are several advantages to using many small pumps rather than one monster pump at the base station: a big ground pump would create more pressure, which would require a far heavier hose; even if a few of the small pumps failed, the mission itself wouldn’t; and using small standardised units would keep costs down.

At the end of the hose, a cluster of nozzles would spritz the stratosphere with a fine mist of colourless liquid sulphur dioxide. Thanks to stratospheric winds that typically reach 100mph, the spritz would wrap around the Earth in roughly 10 days.

Because stratospheric air naturally spirals toward the poles, and because the Arctic regions are more vulnerable to global warming, it makes sense to spray the sulphur aerosol at high latitude — with perhaps one hose in the southern hemisphere and another in the northern.

Myhrvold, in his recent travels, happened upon one potentially perfect site. Along with Gates and Warren Buffett, the American investor, he was taking a whirlwind educational tour of various energy producers — a nuclear plant, a wind farm and so on.

One of their destinations was the Athabasca oil sands in northern Alberta, Canada. Billions of barrels of petroleum can be found there, but it is heavy, mucky crude mixed in with the surface dirt. You scoop up gigantic shovels of earth and then separate the oil from it.

One of the most plentiful waste components is sulphur, which commands such a low price that oil companies simply stockpile it. “There were big yellow mountains of it, like a hundred metres high by a thousand metres wide,” says Myhrvold. “So you could put one little pumping facility up there and with one corner of one of those sulphur mountains you could solve the whole global warming problem for the northern hemisphere.”

It is a fiendishly simple plan and startlingly cheap. IV estimates a “save the poles” project could be set up in just two years at a cost of roughly $20m, with an annual operating cost of about $10m.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6879251.ece

video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrimZzgqwdo

[patrice]

28. but, but . . . Wouldn't only half the Globe produce more imbalance?

[toolabard]

32. Fire and Ice

Since I'm new here, my style and concerns may be a little different. But I will speak my mind.
I began my first post, writing about the solar storms and CME's. I want to back up a bit and describe the big picture.
We live in a vast ocean current of energy. From the sun to the center of the earth, there are all manner of tidal energy flows. The core and mantle are a vast ocean of molten liquid rock. When something perturbs this 'lava', it reacts in kind. The moon for instance, can affect what goes on under our feet. A solar storm or Coronal Mass Ejection, also affects the mantle and core. Everything is interconnected.
In my last piece, I spoke about the coming sun storm cycle. A good CME event can generate millions of amps DC. Ever accidentally touch jumper-cables to each other while jumping a car battery? The sparks are a dead-short to the battery. If left connected, the battery will fry. Now picture 6 million amps DC hitting AC power cables and substations at say a few thousand miles an hour. You got it, melt-down! This is what is about to happen in less then 3 years.
Another way for things to get FUBR is to have the continental plates rub each other the wrong way. The result is Chile or Haiti. In this scenario, pressure is exerted and released quickly in a jerky fashion. Each earthquake is the setup for the next quake. Besides killing hundreds of people in Chile, the quake left us with another problem. When that plate moved, the energy was so great, it CHANGED the earths axis orientation 6". In other words, the quake knocked the earths tilt by half a foot. It also sped up the rotation a millionth of a second.
Now why am I so upset about that? Simple. The rotation and tilt play a major role in our very touchy climate. As it is now, there has been a change in the balance of the gyroscope we call home. As yet, it is unclear how this will affect the wobble at the north pole that changes the entire climate. ANY change in this very finely balanced sphere will cause a further change in our already worsening global climate change. I have no doubt the quake in Chile and Haiti sloshed the mantle magma and core, much like a kid getting a brain concussion playing football without a helmet.
So how does this all tie in? If you factor in the recent global geologic activity, and add in things like state-sized ice bergs that block current flow, the chances for more of the same are pretty high. Now add the solar-flares cycle, suddenly politics is a minor problem.
The time for panic is past. The time for getting your S#$%^ together is upon us. Either get away from a quake-prone area, or plan to survive at ground-zero. Personally, I find the west to risky to survive in. With the fault lines near the coast, and Yellowstone averaging higher tremors then usual, try Kansas or Oklahoma.
As for who will make the Darwin list first, I'd say it will be the conservative side of politics and religion. People with closed minds, and open Bibles will meet their pets in the here-after, you know, the dodo bird.