By Alister Doyle
23 January, 2009
Reuters
WILKINS ICE SHELF, Antarctica (Reuters) - A huge Antarctic ice shelf is on the brink of collapse with just a sliver of ice holding it in place, the latest victim of global warming that is altering maps of the frozen continent.
"We've come to the Wilkins Ice Shelf to see its final death throes," David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), told Reuters after the first -- and probably last -- plane landed near the narrowest part of the ice.
The flat-topped shelf has an area of thousands of square kilometers, jutting 20 meters (65 ft) out of the sea off the Antarctic Peninsula.
But it is held together only by an ever-thinning 40-km (25-mile) strip of ice that has eroded to an hour-glass shape just 500 meters wide at its narrowest.
In 1950, the strip was almost 100 km wide.
"It really could go at any minute," Vaughan said on slushy snow in bright sunshine beside a red Twin Otter plane that landed on skis. He added that the ice bridge could linger weeks or months.
The Wilkins once covered 16,000 sq km (6,000 sq miles). It has lost a third of its area but is still about the size of Jamaica or the U.S. state of Connecticut. Once the strip breaks up, the sea is likely to sweep away much of the remaining ice.
Icebergs the shape and size of shopping malls already dot the sea around the shelf as it disintegrates. Seals bask in the southern hemisphere summer sunshine on icebergs by expanses of open water.
A year ago, BAS said the Wilkins was "hanging by a thread" after an aerial survey. "Miraculously we've come back a summer later and it's still here. If it was hanging by a thread last year, it's hanging by a filament this year," Vaughan said.
Nine other shelves have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002. The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.
WARMING TO BLAME
"This ice shelf and the nine other shelves that we have seen with a similar trajectory are a consequence of warming," Vaughan said.
In total, about 25,000 sq km of ice shelves have been lost, changing maps of Antarctica. Ocean sediments indicate that some shelves had been in place for at least 10,000 years.
Vaughan stuck a GPS monitoring station on a long metal pole into the Wilkins ice on behalf of Dutch scientists. It will track ice movements via satellite.
The shelf is named after Australian George Hubert Wilkins, an early Antarctic aviator who is set to join an exclusive club of people who have a part of the globe named after them that later vanishes.
Loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean. But the big worry is that their loss will allow ice sheets on land to move faster, adding extra water to the seas.
Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it. But ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice. "When those are removed the glaciers will flow faster," Vaughan said.
Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) since 1950, the fastest rise in the southern hemisphere. There is little sign of warming elsewhere in Antarctica.
BAS scientists and two Reuters reporters stayed about an hour on the shelf at a point about 2 km wide.
"It's very unlikely that our presence here is enough to initiate any cracks," Vaughan said. "But it is likely to happen fairly soon, weeks to months, and I don't want to be here when it does."
The U.N. Climate Panel, of which Vaughan is a senior member, projected in 2007 that world sea levels were likely to rise by between 18 and 59 cm (7 and 23 inches) this century.
But it did not factor in any possible acceleration of ice loss from Antarctica. Even a small change in the rate could affect sea levels, and Antarctica's ice sheets contain enough water in total to raise world sea levels by 57 meters.
About 190 nations have agreed to work out a new U.N. treaty by the end of 2009 to slow global warming, reining in emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants, cars and factories.
Submitted by Shootingsparks on Sun, 2009-01-25 03:22
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why the fuck dont you ban THAT one Sullivan???
Can we please ban shooting sparks.He/She is trying to feed us obvious New World Order propaganda dressed up as "science".
Please Sir,can I have some more (soylent green)?
This is great news! Hopefully it calves off a big enough slice to become the new floating homeland for the zionists, complete with lots of fresh, cold water.
and who are the main deniers of global warming?
your logic seems to have been corrupted by alex ("i need to lose 50 pounds and get laid!") jones.
neocons "benevolent global hegemony"
AEI warming denial
AEI neocons
AEI israel
AEI likud
dont you find it the least bit peculiar that the people who are trying to achieve "benevolent global hegemony" are mainspring global warming deniers?
dont you find it peculiar that those people are the american branch of the likud party of israel, whose leader thought 9/11 was "very good"?
Are you arguing to save these boils on the backside of humanity now?
i'm showing an israeli and israeli american motive to stage 9/11, which is: sea level rise caused by global warming.
if global warming was the long-range motive for israel staging 9/11, the american branch of the likud party of israel ---aka, the AEI--- would have motive to deny that global warming exists.
lo and behold, the AEI and its partner, exxon, are the world's prime deniers of global warming.
now, was that so hard to figure out?
sea level rise caused by global warming was israel's and the israeli americans' long-term motive for staging 9/11.
they either have to grab high ground in the west bank, or they have to grab control of the remaining oil and ration emerging economies' oil consumption... or a combination of both.
because oil has already peaked, and the looters smell blood in the water, israel has to be secured now, before america goes tits up from oil shortages and the looting... so peak oil was the immediate trigger of the 9/11 operation.
the 9/11 operation had to be done before the motives for that operation became obvious, and the longer the israelis, israeli americans and exxon can obscure peak oil and global warming, the more chance they have that people will not put two and two together and come up with 9/11.
I myself think it's good old shylockian greed, same as caused the Armenian genocide for the Baku field in 1914-18, that is driving these matoids.
That and their filthy talmudic supremacy.
...to cover the fact that the only thing left to do is loot america and europe ---like the soviet union was looted--- while they can, because it's gonna be really slim pickins once peak oil sets in in earnest... especially if americans with pitchforks and long coils of rope are looking for the perps.
there are diehard zionists, religious fanatics and ashkenazi racial supremacists that still want to preserve israel, but the top guys have probably written everything off, and all they're concerned about is stacking up enough loot to hide out until the dust settles, post-oil.
...which implies they'll have enough loot to buy refuge wherever they want, and they wont have to move to shittylittlestan.
Well, we're not gonna solve global warming here, that's for sure. I views it as an attempt to put a tax on exhaling, warmth and mobility. And since I live at 7000 ft in the Rockies, I'd actually welcome some warming.
The only thing constant is change!
Actually, when you think about the dynamic of the 2000 election, it's probably not too far off base. Americans had a choice of a whacked out environmental ghost writer and a couple of failed oilman puppeteered by PNAC.
...from a global catastrophe, which global warming has the potential to become.
this carbon trading bullshit seems like some kind of scam to me, but i havent looked into it at all.
meanwhile, doc aumann, the israeli american nobel-winning game theory guy who's so depressed about israel's prospects, says you can figure out what people know by watching their actions... and the israelis, israeli americans and exxon are acting like peak oil and global warming are real.
so it would behoove the israelis, israeli americans, exxon and the rest of the neocon troop to quit acting as if global warming and peak oil are the real things... nevermind what they say, it's how they act that's the giveaway.
and we gotta wonder about doc aumann's nobel prize... he gets his prize ---"for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." --- a couple days after elbaradei get his peace prize for not caving in to the neocons' bullshit about iraq's wmds.
was the nobel committee showing a warped sense of humor, or were they trying to warn us, backhandedly, to ignore what these assholes were saying, and pay attention to what they were doing?
strategy for the 9-11/PNAC operation is found in aumann's game theory
so we can see from aumann's game theories why it's so important to control the flow of information...
israel, the israeli americans, exxon and their fellow travelers knew about peak oil and global warming long before 9/11, and they had to respond to peak oil and global warming before peak oil and global warming became obvious.
...all of which accounts for the AEI/CERA/exxon efforts to deny the existence of global warming and peak oil.
it's just too damn bad that aumann is being hoisted with his own game theory petard, as the actions of AEI/CERA/PNAC/exxon/israel are showing an awareness of peak oil and global warming.
Meanwhile, real human caused problems, like ground water pollution and over fishing, are unanswered. These two will effect mankind a lot sooner and harder that climate IMHO.
Up here we have coalbed methane development, where they drill over coal seams, then pump water and some organism that feeds on coal into them to generate methane.
Seems to me that hydrocarbons are just that Hydro and Carbon. Maybe this carbon recapture is a way to turn fresh water deposits into oil and gas deposits by adding the abiotic bugs and carbon, using the earth's heat as catalyst.
For example, the Irish Green Party minister for the environment declared the site of a former steel works riddled with Chromium VI to be 'safe', reneged on pre-election promises to remove flouride from the water supply, but spouts this AGW bullshit, day-in, day out. The former two are far more of a threat than the latter.
...and the concentration has increased from 280 ppm to 380 ppm since we've been using fossil fuels, and if the last 50 ppm increase of that total 100 ppm increase has occurred in the last 33 years, you should be able to figure out what's happening.
we happen to have a couple things coinciding here, too.
la nina cools, sunspot cycle at the low point cools, and the pollution from china cools.
the problem being, the la nina thing only lasts for a few years, the sunspot cycle last 11 years, the particulate pollution settles out in four or five years, but the co2 remains for 300 years.
the ocean cycles arent that big a force, the sunspot cycle causes a variation of about a tenth of a percent in solar irradiance, and neither comes close to accounting for the warming.
then you take the possible two degrees centigrade of cooling that the shade from the pollution is causing, and it looks to me like we're in a world of hurt if we burn up the rest of the oil, coal and gas, the particulates settle out, and the air cleans up.
and underneath it all is this basic fact: co2 is a warming gas, the second-most important after water vapor, and we're putting about 30 extra gigatons of that stuff into the atmosphere every year.
it's not rocket science. it's just a tiny bit of physics ---i.e., the physical properties of the co2 molecule.
there's no escaping the laws of physics, even if you, like the neocons, are an empire and you create your own reality.
...makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
eat your words...
"
...come out with little more than foul-mouthed, juvenile insults, that's why. I see you are keeping up your usual low standards."
nice back handed attack clown...cant you justify yourself in an intellectually defensable manner, as opposed to snotty cracks like the one you posted. You are a giant hypocrite.
Are you incapable of engaging in dialog without using your foul language? I don't think attacking someone like Sullivan is in anyone's best interest.
Grow up!
you add noting of value...go back to playing with your stupid pictures
Looks like your dusty old propaganda and potty mouth rage finally got the best of ya!
I asked this on one of the threads, but I guess this is the hottest. Anyhow, it's not much of an issue and I wish folks like Atheo and Sparky would add their links and comments to the first (IF anyone really thinks that the topic worth discussing at WUFYS. Yeah, it's a scam, but trivia and multiple postings of trivia just drive more important stuff off the screen).
Yeah, I'm not being sensitive and one person's meat is another person's rat poison and all, but I miss guys like the History Worm and Quasimodo and the days when the site had far fewer postings, much more important postings, and extended discussions with links to historical info.
And yeah I've been guilty of extended bullshitting when battling lying shills who try to deter people from going to www.iamthewitness.com and discovering critical historical info such as Benjamin Freedman.
Someone must have thought the topic worth discussing, otherwise they wouldn't have posted it! You don't have to read stuff you don't want to read!
And for others here who throw hissy fits every time an article is posted that contradicts their particular worldview or questions the integrity of one of their heroes, they don't have to read that stuff either.
the reason i posted this article here as opposed to posting it as a comment in what i know to be globalist propaganda that constituted atheo's post was because had i done that, the front page of WUFYS would have had a stand-alone headline of what i know to be essentially royal dutch shell and exxon funded and sponsored nonsense.
I would think you would find it more interesting that atheo's two consecutive posts on the topic contradict each other...
Sparky, I don't read any of the global warming crap. I'm way behind on serious reading and serious tasks and view this entire subject as diverting newbies here from doing likewise. I DO enjoy the photos from the Reaper and Clay. The rest is pure bullshit. If it's a serious issue, the MSM is lying, probably in several directions. It's an age old Jewish run conspiracy; no Lizards, not Black Popes, not NWO, not Skull & Bones, not all that other bullshit.
When folks realize that 911 was a Zionist job and that the Holofraud is another grand Zio LIE, then we'll be real close to a grand awakening. The rest is horseshit. Pushing the historical info on the Commie Revolution etc advances this process. Bush news etc is garbage and doesn't belong here. Peace.
...for israelis and israeli americans to stage 9/11.
what if the israelis have known for a while now that, if they dont grab control of the remaining oil and, through control of oil, grab control of emerging economies like china ---which recently passed the US as the biggest emitter of co2, the co2 emissions will pile up, warm the planet so bad that the methane gets loose, the planet warms so bad that greenland and antarctica melt, which will produce a 70- or 80-meter rise in sea level, which will wipe out about 70% of the population of israel that lives on israel's coastal plain?
what if the project to grab the oil had to be started (a) before their motives (peak oil, global warming) became obvious, and (b) before israel's american protector is crippled by oil shortages and looting by american oligarchs who see the peak oil handwriting on the wall?
you cant defeat the logic of it... you can ignore til the cows come home, but that doesnt seem to be a constructive sort of behavior if your aim is to understand what's going on.
...the israeli americans of the PNAC/AEI and their exxon allies, are also the most prominent deniers of global warming and peak oil.
if global warming and peak oil were the reasons they did 9/11, it makes quite a bit of sense that (a) they'd deny the existence of peak oil and global warming, and they'd (b) make sure they started their project before their motives became undeniably obvious.
motive, means, opportunity and character...
once we establish that the israeli americans, exxon and their corporate fellow travelers had "motive" to stage 9/11, it's obvious that they had "mean, opportunity and character" galore, and stand head and shoulders above any other likely suspects for having done 9/11.
Wadosy, one of the early foci of WUFYS was the banking system. THAT is how they control governments, economies, populations, corporations, and the planet. If you don't understand that, then I understand how you could become tangled and distracted in the various strands of the web that you mention.
As for proof that the Zionists did 911, my dear fellow, where have you been?
That's the SHORT version.
If you're sincere, then I suspect your sources are crappy. Try www.iamthewitness.com and LISTEN to the interviews in the archives. Pay attention to Freedman, Pidcock, Dickey, Turner, Coughlin, for starters.
...on alex jones' and art bell's program.
he's got about as much credibility as the chupacabra experts.
meanwhile, you can explain why the birthplace of abiotic oil, ukraine, has to import oil and gas from russia.
you can explain why all those supposedly abiotic wells in russia seem to have peaked in the last year or so.
you can explain why oil companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars drilling wells hundreds of miles offshore, in two miles of water and another couple miles of dirt under that, to find oil in fields that are a fraction the size of the big fields that are now declining.
you can explain why global oil production peaked maybe four years ago, you can explain why american production peaked in 1970, and you can explain why we're diverting food production to alchohol production.
finally, you can explain why, after oil hit $147 a barrel, it became necessary to disguise peak oil by crashing the global economy.
...that the global economy was crashed to hide the rising price of oil and not to bring about a return to medieval serfdom for the comfortable middle-classes? Do you really believe that the root cause is the price of oil and not the ludicrous amount of debt brought about through the issuance of currency with wild abandon, the believe that entire economies can thrive on property development alone and the casino-like speculation on derivatives?
why was ditech hammering us 24/7 for years, trying to get us to borrow 125% of the value of the house we were using as collateral?
so the crook that founded ditech in 1995 sold out to GMAC in 1999, which gave GMAC time enough to put together an ad campaign that convinced everyone that had a shred of equity in their shack that they should cash that equity in so they could charge more on their credit cards... the "convincing" to be accomplished by dint of non-stop 24/7 advertising on every commercial television outlet in amurka.
it also comes as no surprise to learn that goldman sachs, known for their creative use of derivatives, is in this caper up to their eyeballs, including manipulating the price of gasoline to help re-elect its front man, our noble and heroic president, crusader bunnypants.
...and it comes as no surprise that goldman sachs becomes a partner with GM in the ditech operation in august of 2005.
...and as that fat little fuck in the television commercials kept losing more and more refi jobs to ditech, greenspan was relentlessly lowering interest rates, which of course made the whole scam possible.
now about all that's left to do is arrange a fed bailout of GM and goldman sachs, whose creative packages of homeowner debt were peddled to anyone addled enough to buy them.
and as the housing prices sink farther (as per another greenspan prediction) we can expect goldman sachs and cohorts to take advantage of the low prices, and wind up owning whatever's left of amurka.
...this as demand for oil from american consumers falls to the point that peak oil wont become a factor for years, possibly decades, which brings us to the whole purpose of the caper: crash the economy to disguise the fact that peak oil was the motive we did a "new pearl harbor" on ourselves on 9/11...
...as per PNAC's wishes.
and the beauty of the whole operation is: the american taxpayer is expected to bail these people out.
that these high-flying moneymen, these experts, these professionals, didnt know what they were doing when they sold $500,000 houses to people who couldnt afford more than a bicycle and a cat?
I believe that those who instituted these policies knew exactly what they were doing
And that's probably the reason that most of us think global warming and peak oil are just more scare tactics.
...tells you what you want to hear.
or even majority agreement, When those who shout the loudest, or proclaim the debate to be over before it has even started, win?
...are reinforced by propaganda fed to you by the israeli americans of the AEI, exxon and the financial wizards of wall street.
I've seen too many wars fought to take oil out of production to believe there is a shortage of oil.
Please explain the Sakhalin Island oil wells hitting oil at 40,000 ft if there is no abiotic oil?
The best science that ziobucks can buy.
All Aboard!!!
first of all, post reputable urls confirming sakhalin wells are 40,000 feet deep, then post chemical analysis of oil recovered from those wells (seeing as how that would be big news and hugely publicized), then explain why global oil production has been flat for the last 4 years, then explain why ukraine ---the birthplace of abiotic oil theory--- has to buy oil from russia, and finally, you can explain why russian oil production seems to have peaked despite their "abiotic" wells.
in addition, please post reputable evidence of barium residue from chemtrail operations, post evidence of infrastructure supporting chemtrial spray operations, post evidence of aircraft rigged as chemtrail spray planes.
...fundamentally different concepts such as production capacity and actual production. How about you provide some proof, other than production levels (which can be artificially constrained to keep prices high) to support your 'peak oil' theory. Truth is, you have about as much evidence in favour of your pet theory as others have for theirs.
Speaking of oilboy or tinman, whatever happened to Mike Ruppert? Is he hiding somewhere at Castle Gore ?
about global warming when they probably were the ringleaders of the 9/11 operation... and have been lying constantly since, including lies that got us into iraq, and lies that are intended to get us into a war with iran.
to suggest that "Israeli-Americans" have anything to do with the movement to reject the pseudo-science of anthropogenic global warming? What makes you think they are not represented on both sides of the debate, raking it in from both sides of a non-existent argument, as per-usual?
And while I'm at it, I have to ask why you totally ignore the economic reality that ever-scarcer resources fetch ever higher prices for their 'owners'?
...during a doubling of drills and a seven-fold increase of price.
oh. i forgot again. in addition to the laws of physics, you've repealed the law of supply and demand.
...works in favour of the producer and against the consumer when the supply is restricted, artificially or otherwise. You claim that those who oppose your AGW spin are in thrall to the oil companies, who would lose out if we were to be less reliant on oil. The fact remains is that while there is any demand for oil, the oil companies can coin it. When demand drops, they can drop supply, and keep the readies coming in just as before.
I don't necessarily buy the abiotic oil theory, but I don't see the conclusive evidence that suggests we have reached an absolute peak in the availability of oil resources, no more than I believe the anthropogenic 'just pay more taxes, cattle' global-warming bullshit you keep spinning.
have you forgotten that the israeli americans of the AEI are, with their exxon partners, the main driving force behind the global warming denial campaign?
have you forgotten that PNAC wanted "a new pearl harbor"?
have you forgotten that the AEI, PNAC and bill kristol's "weekly standard" are all in the same building in DC?
have you forgotten that kristol and his israeli american cohorts at the AEI and PNAC intend to establish "benevolent global hegemony" by controlling oil?
are you unable to figure out that it would be impossible to control the world by controlling oil if oil were so abundant?
...the long term motive for 9/11, can you understand why the israeli americans and exxon would do their best to deny both global warming and peak oil for as long as possible, to prevent people from connecting the dots between 9/11, global warming and peak oil?
would you please explain why you prefer to believe proven liars about global warming and peak oil, rather than professional climate scientists and geologists?
...and i suspect the oil guys were having a little fun with the padre, if he didnt make the story up out of whole cloth.
lindsey is a charlatan, and he's making a living selling books and tapes to people who'd rather believe their "gut feelings" than the truth.
sorry.