

Huge iceberg breaks off Antarctica - yread
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/02/100226_iceberg_wt_sl.shtml

======
andreyf
More info here:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1241059...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124105970)

In summary, B9B, a 97-kilometer long iceberg, crashed into the Mertz Glacier
Tongue in the Australian Antarctic Territory on Feb. 20, 2010. The collision
created a new 78-kilometer long iceberg. Those two are now drifting around,
chilling out. Complicated ocean currents will most likely be affected,
possibly depriving huge parts of the ocean of oxygen, interrupting millions of
biological feedback systems we know nothing about, shifting them to newfound
equilibria, making this little ecosystem of ours a lot more livable for
obscure branches of bugs, and a lot less livable for us.

tl;dr: We're all going to die.

~~~
gjm11
But, of course, Phil Jones wrote some rude emails and used the words "trick"
and "hide", therefore global warming isn't real and poses no threat even if it
is. So, nothing to worry about.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
If global warming is a danger Mr. Jones has made it a little more dangerous
with his illegal actions that have discredited climate research.

But anyway, I get the feeling that we're suffering a collective bout of
climate hypochondria this century. Haven't icebergs been colliding and
breaking apart forever?

~~~
icey
I don't really know if we're reacting appropriately, overreacting, or
underreacting to climate change; but I think your last sentence is kind of
like saying "Volcanoes have been erupting since Earth began, who cares if a
supervolcano is about to erupt?".

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Is it a supervolcano or is it just supercharged perception of everything that
might or might not have to do with climate change?

I can't bring myself to react to very long term potential dangers in the same
way I would react to clear and immediate dangers like a volcano that's going
to blow up in my face. That's why your analogy doesn't work for me.

~~~
jbooth
Summer ice melts have generally been setting records year after year, both in
the northern and southern hemisphere.

So, uncertain, but probably more on the "supervolcano" end of your spectrum
there.

Experiment: Fill a glass with ice water. Take the temp. 32 degrees or so. Drop
a thimble full of boiling water in, some of the ice will melt. Take the temp.
Still 32 degrees. Repeat. What happens when we're out of ice? (Situation is
slightly different for a planet as opposed to a glass but the fundamentals
still apply)

~~~
fauigerzigerk
So are you saying that the temperature up until now should not have been going
up since we're not out of ice?

[edit] And my second question would be this. If all of this is so simple that
it can be demonstrated with a glass of water and a few ice cubes, why is it
that a minority of serious scientists has doubts? The same scientists would
probably confirm that your experiment is correct.

~~~
jbooth
Of course I'm not saying that, I even included a parenthetical to make it
explicit -- you have higher temperature gradations on a planet than in a glass
of water -- it's always hot in the tropics, always cold at the poles. But you
still have an average.

The answer to your second question is that no legitimate scientists have
doubts about whether the temperature's rising. It's an established fact.

What's uncertain is how much CO2 is related to the rising temperature. They
correlate, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it makes intuitive sense, but it's not
"proven" and to certain levels of "proof", is impossible to prove because
there's billions of confounding factors like sunspots, water vapor etc.

You're probably confusing this with uncertainty over whether the temperature
is rising (which is proven), because paid shills and ideologues (who get paid
in emotional satisfaction) deliberately conflate the issue. Confusion is on
their side -- educating people will probably hurt their argument, even if
they're right.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
You're trying to refute an argument that I haven't made. The debate about the
supervolcano was about our collective perception of the potential consequences
of global warming, not whether or not warming takes place.

I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it.
What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no
scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex
systems.

We had the Stern review tell us what the costs of climate change are going to
be many decades down the road. It's not possible to make such predictions
because it's not possible to know the social and scientific reaction to any
change. It's that kind of government sponsored charlatanery that I don't like
about this debate.

I am still in favor of reducing CO2 and changing our energy infrastructure in
a moderate fashion, because by and large I do believe that we are causing
changes in the athmosphere that we should try to minimise (There are other
good reasons for doing this as well). I just think we need not have a
collective bout of panic and I don't need politicised scientists present
things in a way that suggests way more certainty than we could ever possibly
have about goings on in complex systems.

~~~
KirinDave
> I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about
> it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is
> no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about
> complex systems.

Like the Solar System. Or chemistry. Or biology. Or evolution. Or medicine.

We're pretty much flying blind here. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to pay
my taxes this year.

If you don't know anything about climate science, maybe you should do the
rational thing and listen to the experts and the best scientific consensus of
the time.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I find your comment interesting. Let's take a look at your list.

Solar System -- after 500 years of research, multi-body problem still not
solved, many features still amaze and baffle, scientists have no idea how
common the system might be

Chemistry -- in spite of having a great model with lots of reproducible
experiments, issues remain:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_chemistry>

Biology -- where to start?

Evolution -- big vague term. Hard to critique this one. Do you mean natural
selection inside a species? Speciation?

Medicine -- wonderful ability to find and fix many diseases. Lots of things
work although we have no idea why. Lots of things that we think should work
don't. Lots of medicine is so much of a mystery that only statistical analysis
can give us rough correlations to begin to form theories. The reason it is so
advanced? Billions of test subjects (as opposed to one climate for Earth)

And let's not even get into physics, quantum or otherwise. Or cosmology. Or
the problems with the use of Cellular Automata as a modeling tool. I could go
on.

Be careful with grand sweeping statements. Ignorance is a fine position and
should be the default. Science is a humble questioning of the cosmos, always
willing to correct itself and always looking for reproducibility. Be careful
about putting so much trust in scientists that you forget what science is
about.

Ignorant people have plenty of tools at their disposal to reason and
understand the quality of the underlying science. The science itself may be
complicated beyond belief, but the underlying meta-data -- how science is done
-- is not.

~~~
KirinDave
> I find your comment interesting. Let's take a look at your list.

I find yours interesting as well, because you struck down a straw man. I
didn't say these problems were _solved_ , only that we _CAN_ credibly make
long term (which is of course relative to the field) predictions about these
fields with reasonable success.

And then you proceed to strengthen my point by reminding me—as if I needed a
reminder—that the scientific process is ongoing and our body of knowledge
increases every day; new evidence overturns old and we revise predictions all
the time.

If this is not a credible process, I think we are operating on very different
definitions of ”credible”. And I see 0 evidence that the general body of
knowledge amassed by the IPCC has been significantly tainted. Some of it will
be overturned, and I'm sure much of it will be repeated and audited over time.
That's not a black mark or a warning sign, that is _the status quo_.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
poster -> _I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims
about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there
is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about
complex systems._

You ->(Provide examples, presumably, of complex systems that we can provide
long term predictions about. _If you don't know anything about climate
science, maybe you should do the rational thing and listen to the experts and
the best scientific consensus of the time._

Me-> Provide examples about how in each of your examples, we are not able in
many cases to predict long-term system state or reaction to stimulus. Trivial
example in medicine: tell me how an individual is going to die by examining
them as a baby. Original poster was correct to be skeptical. _Ignorant people
have plenty of tools at their disposal to reason and understand the quality of
the underlying science. The science itself may be complicated beyond belief,
but the underlying meta-data -- how science is done -- is not._

You-> Straw Man! You're using a straw man!

I think we're done here.

~~~
KirinDave
So you're saying we can't make any sort of general long-term predictions about
the Solar System? That's the core of your argument?

Maybe we are done here.

I mean, the crux of this absurd argument is that “our long term forecasts
might be updated so they are never trustworthy!” Except that nearly every
field of science is this way and it hasn't stopped us from using our knowledge
to make meaningful predictions and incredible technological breakthroughs.

Basically a double standard has been applied. When it comes to quantum theory
or multi-body problems, our best guess is all cool. But when it comes to the
weather suddenly everyone gets all philosophy-of-science and asks what we
_really know_. The absurdity is compounded by the suggesting that climate
science is basically models and “long term predictions” rather than a huge
array of physical evidence showing us what is happening _right now_ , a short-
term trend leading up to it, and a long term contrast with multiple lines of
evidence.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I feel awful. I really do. This is so simple yet somehow it's not getting
through.

1\. We don't really know anything. So let's all get that out there and get
over it.

2\. Some things we have a lot of examples of. Stuff like atoms, people,
animals. Some things we have only one example of, like the climate. Those
things that we have a lot of examples of, we can make better guesses about
what might happen based on prior outcomes. Those that we don't, we can't.

3\. In the past, over hundreds of years, we have examples of two types of
science, science that speculates by applying rules about structure and theory
to unobserved phenomenon, and science that has no idea how things work but can
make lots of measurements and guess what might happen. The second kind of
science has done much, much, much better than the first, for lots of reasons
(too many to go into here) The structure/rule/extrapolation guys do best when
it's only a degree or two of extrapolation (which is not true in climate
science to any degree)

There's no double standard, because we're not taking the same thing and
looking at it two different ways. We're taking many different things and
looking at them many different ways. Which is the way it should be, right?

EDIT: The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that _we've been
watching the solar system for two thousand years_. Plus we have solid
observations about all the theory that goes into predicting where Pluto will
be. We have observations. We have falsifiable theories. They both agree. That
makes orbital dynamics about a zillion times different than, say, psychology.
Different kinds of science are not all the same. There are important
differences to understand. Medicine is not biology is not physics is not
sociology is not climate science. This is NOT about argument from ignorance
versus science. It's about the true nature of science, a very important thing
to grok. _sigh_

~~~
codahale
_The reason we know where Pluto will be in 9 years is that we've been watching
the solar system for two thousand years._

How long do you think people have been watching the weather for?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Widespread watching and recording, like astrologers did with the planets?
Maybe 150-300 years or so? And that's with varying degrees of precision.

It's interesting to note that there was a huge gap in time between observing
the weather and recording it. There was a further gap before we started
predicting the weather. For most of that time, people substituted
superstitions about the weather for science. The sky gods were happy, the sun
came out. The sky gods were unhappy, it rained. If we would only do the right
thing, the sky gods would remain happy. If we want the weather to be
agreeable, we must change our behavior.

With the worldwide climate, we are only about 20-50 years into simply
observing and recording. It could be quite a long while indeed before global
long-term climate predictions is anything at all like the 3-day local weather
forecast.

Remember, three stages: abduction, deduction, and induction. Abduction:
gathering data and spotting patterns. Deduction: taking patterns and positing
relationships. Induction: taking those relationships and extrapolating to
future behavior of the system.

Climate science is currently mostly abduction. But folks like to describe it
in terms of induction because lots of pieces of the underlying physics _are_
at that stage. But it doesn't work that way.

I don't know if that strikes you as some kind of big hand-waving philosophy
bullshit, but it's just the way things are, whether I point it out or not. I'm
just the dumb schmuck stuck with trying to explain it.

~~~
codahale
You have got to be kidding. 150-300 years?

Agriculture dates back to at least ~10,000 BC (the "Neolithic revolution").
Effective farming (i.e., not dying of starvation) requires planning for
changing weather conditions. If you think Neolithic farmers didn't have a
vested interest in detecting patterns in weather cycles, you're sadly
mistaken.

Hell, the term "meteorology" was coined by _Aristotle_... in a book he
wrote... called _Meteorology_... _in 350 BC_.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Remember: abduction, gathering of data and spotting patterns.

Got the daily weather report for Athens for the years 150-100 BC?

Neolithic man had a deeply vested interest in the weather, but that doesn't
change his advancement of weather science. The gods were useful for many
thousands of years.

Sure, the general _idea_ of watching the weather -- long history there. But
that just proves my point. There was a huge gap between _seeing and naming it_
, _recording it_ , _spotting patterns_ , _making falsifiable theories_ , and
_making predictions_. We're just at the "seeing and naming it" stage with
climate science. The use of computer models hide this fact, sadly.

~~~
codahale
Oh, ok. So it takes _making predictions_ to quality as real science.

Here's a real prediction, with actual confirming evidence: giving someone with
a high MADRS score an SSRI will reduce their score.

That's beyond _seeing and naming_ depression, it's beyond _recording_
patients' reactions to SSRIs, it's beyond _spotting patterns_ in their
reactions, it's even beyond _making falsifiable theories_ about its mechanism
of action. It's making predictions which are confirmed on a statistically
significant basis.

Does this mean you think psychiatry has the same epistemological standing as
physics?

------
protomyth
"It has been nuzzling and shifting alongside the Mertz for about 18 years
before this month's dislodging" - so we kinda should have seen this coming.

------
t3rcio
It appears here too:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/26/antarctica...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/26/antarctica-
iceberg-global-ocean-circulation). This iceberg has a fresh water enough to
supply a third world's population for one year.

------
MikeMacMan
Maybe Monty Brewster can hitch a motor to it and float it up to the Middle
East, where he'll make millions off the ice cubes!

~~~
evgen
Harry Broderick and his team already did this one, I know because I saw it on
TV :)

[OK, that one will date several of us... but there was once a time when sci-fi
on TV was so rare we would watch just about anything...]

------
metamemetics
The Story also links to this: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8539198.stm>

"I think on larger scales, it's not likely to have a very major impact on the
global climate" -British Antartic Survey.

------
banana
I say, nuke that iceberg! It will melt like a marshmallow :-)

~~~
raganwald
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use nuclear
bombs." Now they have two problems.

~~~
theycallmemorty
I'll admit that the first thought I had was "Why not drop some bombs on it?"

Maybe not nukes, but it doesn't seem like such a terrible idea if the giant
sheet of ice is going to be so disruptive.

~~~
Semiapies
Maybe drop some kind of very low-albedo, non-toxic powder on the top (or as
much of it as can covered) to encourage faster melting.

The fresh water will still cause disruptions to currents, though presumably
not as much as a solid mass...

~~~
rudyfink
My recollection is that the Coast Guard tried quite a few different methods
(paint, directed charges, etc) to break up small ice bergs before they entered
the shipping lanes in the late 50's early 60's. The ice bergs proved to be
exceedingly hardy. Efforts to dissipate them were abandoned in favor of simply
detecting them and avoiding them.

~~~
Semiapies
Fair enough, but I'm thinking mainly in terms of making it melt faster than it
otherwise would, not keeping it out of shipping lanes. As someone else on the
thread said, this thing goes where it wants to go. :)

EDIT: Especially as this thing has a lot more exposed surface area relative to
its mass than your average small 'berg.

------
heliodorj
this is NOT worthy of the front page. this has happened before and it will
happen again. nothing interesting to see here. moving on...

------
johnohara
Stake a claim and sell it.

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915637,00.h...](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915637,00.html)

------
sliverstorm
I don't quite understand why it's such a bad thing to worry about, suspect,
and try to fight climate change, even if it doesn't exist.

It's like Pascal's Wager, imho.

~~~
jacoblyles
Because throwing a trillion dollars worth of resources down a black hole is
stupid in a world with limited resources and billions of poor people.

Also worth noting: despite the writings of Pascal, you won't find many
atheists in church. Most of them decide the cost is not worth the (odds-
adjusted) expected benefits.

~~~
sliverstorm
Funny, I always thought the best ways to fight climate change, if it exists,
were to use less and make what is left more efficient. That is why I don't see
it as a bad thing- in a world with limited resources and billions of poor
people, increased efficiency and decreased consumption seems like a good
thing.

~~~
InclinedPlane
OK, sure. So, let's say we develop technology that allows us to lower our
emissions by a whopping 80% compared to today. OK, now imagine that India,
rural China, the middle east, South America, and Africa develop into first
world nations. The world CO2 emissions would end up back where they are today,
despite the revolutionary technologies developed and employed.

By which I mean to say that forcefully curbing CO2 emissions is a very, very
hard problem. And curbing CO2 emissions without forcing developing nations not
to develop is even more difficult.

Personally I think that even if global warming is every bit its cracked up to
be the Bangledeshis, for example, will probably be better off with higher sea
levels _and_ first world wealth and infrastructure than they would be with
existing sea levels and another century of poverty.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm not a climatologist, but rising sea levels are not the only problem. They
are simply the most commonly selected problem to cite, as 'submerged cities'
strikes close to home, and is a classical apocalyptic (and thus greatly
feared) event.

There are far more consequences than just that. For example, all the coral of
the entire ocean would be dead or dying. Not that I expect you to care about
coral; that is just one example.

------
Apreche
It's OK, we found the remains. It landed on New York.

