Massive Canada Arctic ice shelf breaks away - Reuters

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Massive Canada Arctic ice shelf breaks away
Wed Sep 3, 2008 2:21am EDT

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice
shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the
remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate,
the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote
region, scientists said on Tuesday.

They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice
shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island
in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47
square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing
it in size by 60 percent.

-snip-

Mueller said the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along
Ellesmere Island this summer totaled 83 square miles -- more than
three times the area of Manhattan island.

The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover
that scientists estimated on July 30 would vanish from around
the island this summer.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0246073320080903

[lapfog_1]

1. time to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" again

and cry. We are so fucked. And in a very serious way.

We are talking about reducing THE RATE OF INCREASE in CO2... we need to be reducing the amount of atmospheric CO2 (and methane, etc). That's right, 0 greenhouse gases and then on to negative greenhouse gases. And we can't even talk about slowing the rate of increase of CO2 emissions with the anti-science morons that make up this country.

We don't have 100 years. We don't have 20. We have, at most, 5 maybe 10. That's it. It's not about our release or non release of CO2 in that time period, it will be about the positive feedback loops in place. The vast amount of DARK OCEAN instead of WHITE ICE at the top of the world, the melting permafrost finally decaying, the peat moss fires that will follow, and, finally, the release of the methane hydrates from the ocean bottom. We may not have to do another damn thing.

Sorry to be such a downer, but after this Palin crap and the first night of lying Repukes and fawning media... well, it just brings out the Nihilist in me.

[Nihil]

2. Watch? Time to NAIL a copy to the forehead of *every* politician.

> well, it just brings out the Nihilist in me.

You and me both! :hi:

[Nihil]

3. Paging Xemosab ...

> Mueller said the total amount of ice lost from the shelves along
> Ellesmere Island this summer totaled 83 square miles -- more than
> three times the area of Manhattan island.
>
> The figure is more than 10 times the amount of ice shelf cover
> that scientists estimated on July 30 would vanish from around
> the island this summer.

So, 10 x their estimate from July 30 is ... how can we say this ...?

:shrug:

[lapfog_1]

4. Ice sheet was large (relative to record setting last year)

but it was very very thin.

[Nihil]

5. I doubt that was unknown at the end of July ...

... which is when they made their estimate as said estimate was
in response to a serious ice loss event:

> The first sign of serious recent erosion in the five shelves came in
> late July, when sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles
> broke off the Ward Hunt shelf.

I would have thought that their revised estimate would have taken the
ice thickness into account?

:shrug:

Yet another "wake up you you b*st*rds" call to foot-dragging politicians:

> "The changes ... were massive and disturbing," said Warwick Vincent,
> director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.
>
> Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the
> global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked
> to global warming.
>
> "These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes
> taking place in the Arctic," said Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf
> specialist at Trent University in Ontario.
>
> "These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate
> that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in
> balance for thousands of years are no longer present," he said in an
> e-mailed statement from the research team sent late on Tuesday.

(My emphasis)