
A large slab of ice is breaking off an Antarctic glacier - mjfern
http://www.businessinsider.com/antarctica-giant-iceberg-breaking-off-2017-1
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mewo2
Hey folks,

I'm one of the scientists on Project MIDAS (the team that made the
announcement). Happy to answer questions about this. I've also been keeping a
spreadsheet of things roughly the size of the iceberg, for journalistic
comparisons:
[https://twitter.com/mewo2/status/818826891545210881](https://twitter.com/mewo2/status/818826891545210881)

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tucaz
I have a really stupid question. Here it goes, anyway. Isn't there a way to
"glue" these big block of ice back to the main part?

I was going to add a few ideas on how to glue it back, but then I deleted them
as it would sound more stupid than it already does.

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codeddesign
Get 10,000 snow machines to dredge the water and spray snow and water
everywhere ;) If people can build islands, why not glaciers?

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kazagistar
Powered by...?

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woah
Coal

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leeoniya
you may also be interested in:

largest glacier calving ever filmed:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU)

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mewo2
For some context on size, the calving event in this video is about 7 cubic
kilometers. The Larsen C berg will be about 1000 cubic kilometers. On the
other hand, this berg is overturning, so the calving is, to put it mildly,
quite energetic (equivalent to a couple of hundred kilotons of TNT). The
Larsen C berg will just drift away in a much less dramatic fashion.

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leeoniya
yeah, thx for the numbers. i wasn't implying the scale was comparable :)

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civilian
This article is about Larsen C-- so this is borderline off-topic, but I always
enjoyed this ode to Larsen B. "British Sea Power - Oh Larsen B"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HN0rqVJT4U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HN0rqVJT4U)

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nstj
Thank you @mewo2 for your insider responses - a fantastic ammendum to the
original article!

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deathtrader666
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to
make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
November 6, 2012

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Firebrand
Doesn't seem like that big of a deal considering it's already floating on
water, so it's displacing the water it'll make when it melts. No sea rise at
all.

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newbish
Water in the form of a solid takes up less spaces than as a liquid so not sure
I agree... Plus there is a large part of this that is above sea level
currently so that part is not current being displaced.

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carl_corder
I agree with Firebrand (^above) that if the ice is already floating (sea ice)
and it melts it will cause no other immediate displacement of volume (even if
a large part of that floating ice is above sea level and even if solid water
takes up less space than liquid water). That's an application of Archimedes
principle and can be explained here:
[http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/110645/why-
does-i...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/110645/why-does-ice-
melting-not-change-the-water-level-in-a-container). Indeed it's land ice
melting that causes sea level rise. However, sea ice melting still changes the
albedo and does directly contribute to climate change.

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newbish
True, I was thinking that its not truly free floating sea ice and that much of
it may be supported by the remaining ice its attached to (hence the crack).

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anc84
For the metric people who don't know random US states: 335 meters thick and
about the size of Palestine.

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sarcher
Product idea: automatically generate dimensional metaphors with regional
cultural context based on geoIP.

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TeMPOraL
That's actually a great idea! Kind of what Wolfram|Alpha does when it gives
you various comparisons to the number you've entered. E.g. for "10 kilotons":

    
    
      ≈ (0.2 to 0.3) × mass of a Handy size cargo ship ( 28000 to 40000 lg tn )
      ≈ (0.3 to 0.5) × mass of a Small Handy size cargo ship ( 20000 to 28000 lg tn )
      ≈ 0.83 × daily mass of trash produced in New York City (≈ 1.2×10^7 kg )
    

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+kiloton](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+kiloton)

EDIT:

For the ice slab in question, W|A gives following comparisons:

    
    
      ≈ ( 0.25 ≈ 1/4 ) × total area of Wales (≈ 8023 mi^2 )
      ≈ 1.7 × total area of Rhode Island ( 1212 mi^2 )
      ≈ 3 × area of forest flattened by the asteroid explosion over Tunguska in 1908 (≈ 2000 km^2 )

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sarcher
Ha, sometimes I wonder if I've ever had an original idea.

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TeMPOraL
I know I haven't. Everything has already been done (usually not to my liking,
but that's bikeshedding, I guess...).

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cel1ne
It's not bikeshedding if the topic is not trivial.

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snowpanda
Global warming (even if it were to happen again) is not the problem that it's
made out to be. History has proven this several times, such as during HCO [1].

Not that most people on Hacker News would agree, but I encourage people to do
more research on the topic. MIDAS is funded by NERC, so they obviously aren't
going to share this view.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum)

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battlebot
Sorry you got downvoted to hell, but certain subjects are echo chamber
religion with a lot of folks. It's just how it is. I don't know how some
people can be so open-minded to scientific inquiry one the one hand, but when
it comes to the matter of climatology, they treat skeptics as sub-human
heretics.

I tend to think it is a deep-seated personality flaw that a lot of people have
but don't realize they have. They think they are more open-minded that they
actually are.

I'm heartened knowing that not long ago, the majority of people believed the
sun revolved around the earth and anyone who dared to speak against that
"settled science" was excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

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happosai
There is little need to be open minded when laymen challenge educated
scientists. Climate denial has all the same mechanisms as Evolution denial. It
all tends to boil down to the idea "But the scientist have an against religion
/ american lifestyle / whatever ".

I don't deny that many progressives are less open minded than they think. But
better challenge them things like anti-GMO / pro-organics ideas that don't
really have much base in real science.

Unlike in the climate field, you'll find that actually lots of people who
research GM / food safety will not agree with the alarmist headlines of GMO or
"processed foods".

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battlebot
You think someone with a doctorate is a layman? We're educated people, we can
form our own opinions, thanks.

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cholantesh
If your doctorate is in a completely unrelated field, yes, you are a layman.

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battlebot
Oh, so I am without the ability to reason? Hardly.

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cholantesh
Your ability to reason is not being assessed, it's your level of exposure to
and understanding of the facts. Which, if you are not a climate scientist, is
unlikely to be exhaustive.

