Chasing Ice: Largest glacial calving ever recorded

[MikeL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hC3VTgIPoGU

Edited February 16, 2013 by MikeL

[Benji]

...............I watched that it was both amazing and sad, especially in the end when they compares the retreat of the last ten years to the previous 100 years.

[Palantir]

Thanks for that Mike - Totally awesome.

[Celethiel]

That was really cool I would have loved to have been there and watch that.

 

You are right though Benji it is kind of Sad.

[Ieshwar]

OMG, this was amazing. Like it said, also magical. I hope that I don't sound too crazy but I saw Nature really moving and breathing in this video, as if having a life of Her own. 

 

But yeah, it's sad too.

 

Thanks for the share. 

 

Cheers

Ieshwar

[PrivateTim]

...............I watched that it was both amazing and sad, especially in the end when they compares the retreat of the last ten years to the previous 100 years.

 

Gee, good thing they didn't show 500 years ago then, when there was no ice in Greenland, hence the name "green land". It was a real tough time for ice lovers.

[Zombie]

Gee, good thing they didn't show 500 years ago then, when there was no ice in Greenland, hence the name "green land". It was a real tough time for ice lovers.

 

Tim can also confirm that the Earth is a flat disc ... balanced on the backs of four elephants ... which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle

 

[Benji]

Gee, good thing they didn't show 500 years ago then, when there was no ice in Greenland, hence the name "green land". It was a real tough time for ice lovers.

 

........... I think you got it wrong, @ 500 years ago Greenland started to freeze over. The Vikings first came to Greenland in 982 AD when it was green enough and warm enough to even be able to grow grapes. They left between 1480 – 1500 AD. when the climate changed and Greenland became ice. Still the map shown at the end showed the decline of the ice sheet over a ten year period, which greatly surpassed the one of the previous 100 years. Greenland took @ 500 years to effect it's climate change, we are witnessing this occurring in decades.

[Zombie]

........... I think you got it wrong, @ 500 years ago Greenland started to freeze over. The Vikings first came to Greenland in 982 AD when it was green enough and warm enough to even be able to grow grapes. They left between 1480 – 1500 AD. when the climate changed and Greenland became ice. Still the map shown at the end showed the decline of the ice sheet over a ten year period, which greatly surpassed the one of the previous 100 years. Greenland took @ 500 years to effect it's climate change, we are witnessing this occurring in decades.

 

Just to clarify, Greenland is a big place. Just as most of Australia is hostile uninhabitable "outback", so too most of Greenland is hostile uninhabitable icesheet. The only bits of Greenland that are settled are a few coastal areas. It was apparently named Grœnland (translated as "Greenland") by an opportunistic Viking named Erik the Red in order to sucker settlers into thinking it was a verdant land of milk and honey. It ain't.  About 80% of Greenland is covered in an ice sheet about 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) long by about 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) at its widest and the average thickness is about 2 km (1.24 miles) and over 3 km (1.86 miles) at its thickest point. That's a LOT of Slush Puppie! So we're not talking about the accumulated snow of a few winters. Not even 500 winters. A lot of scientific research has been done into the Greenland ice sheet including analysis of core samples [The Greenland Ice Sheet Project]. It's estimated that the Greenland ice sheet has been around for something like 110,000 years.

 

Hey, isn't Google a wonderful thing - when it's not being evil

[Benji]

Just to clarify, Greenland is a big place. Just as most of Australia is hostile uninhabitable "outback", so too most of Greenland is hostile uninhabitable icesheet. The only bits of Greenland that are settled are a few coastal areas. It was apparently named Grœnland (translated as "Greenland") by an opportunistic Viking named Erik the Red in order to sucker settlers into thinking it was a verdant land of milk and honey. It ain't.  About 80% of Greenland is covered in an ice sheet about 2,400 kilometres (1,500 miles) long by about 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) at its widest and the average thickness is about 2 km (1.24 miles) and over 3 km (1.86 miles) at its thickest point. That's a LOT of Slush Puppie! So we're not talking about the accumulated snow of a few winters. Not even 500 winters. A lot of scientific research has been done into the Greenland ice sheet including analysis of core samples [The Greenland Ice Sheet Project]. It's estimated that the Greenland ice sheet has been around for something like 110,000 years.

 

Hey, isn't Google a wonderful thing - when it's not being evil

 

 

......I was aware that only the coastal regions around Greenland were habitable, the implication by another poster suggested that 500 years ago Greenland was green, when in fact that is the time it was abandoned by the Vikings. The other thought was that this climate change took almost 500 years to occur, while we are witnessing climate change in decades that are very dramatic.. Yes Google is a wonderful tool, the only difference I can see is that heating up the planet occurs fast while cooling down the planet occurs slower.

[Zombie]

......I was aware that only the coastal regions around Greenland were habitable, the implication by another poster suggested that 500 years ago Greenland was green, when in fact that is the time it was abandoned by the Vikings. The other thought was that this climate change took almost 500 years to occur, while we are witnessing climate change in decades that are very dramatic.. Yes Google is a wonderful tool, the only difference I can see is that heating up the planet occurs fast while cooling down the planet occurs slower.

 

My last post was just to show that the claim that "500 years ago ... there was no ice in Greenland" is simply absurd

 

The "green" thing is a bit of a red herring thanks to Erik the Red. In fact, since 80% of that country is white and has been continuously white for thousands of years, Greenland surely deserves some kind of award for being one of the most inappropriately named countries on the whole planet

[PrivateTim]

........... I think you got it wrong, @ 500 years ago Greenland started to freeze over. The Vikings first came to Greenland in 982 AD when it was green enough and warm enough to even be able to grow grapes. They left between 1480 – 1500 AD. when the climate changed and Greenland became ice. Still the map shown at the end showed the decline of the ice sheet over a ten year period, which greatly surpassed the one of the previous 100 years. Greenland took @ 500 years to effect it's climate change, we are witnessing this occurring in decades.

 

I think you put far too much faith in Wikipedia....

[Benji]

I think you put far too much faith in Wikipedia....

 

...............I think you put too much faith in non-science.

[MikeL]

Al Gore must be ecstatic.

[Zombie]

The North Greenland Ice-Core Project [NGRIP] obtained complete ice core samples from the Greenland ice sheet - the deepest core drilling extracted nearly two miles of ice from the surface all the way down to bedrock!
 

This table, released in 2006, shows analysis of these cores in 20 year bands from the top surface layer - most recent 20 years snowfall - down to 2,128 metres - snowfall 41,760 years ago.

http://www.gfy.ku.dk/~www-glac/data/GICC05_NGRIP_GRIP_20y_27nov2006.txt

If you want more information on the high-resolution record of digital images from 1330 metres down to bedrock [3085 metres] then read this article "Visual stratigraphy of the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NorthGRIP) ice core during the last glacial period" published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, 2005.

http://epic.awi.de/12321/1/Sve2005a.pdf

"No ice in Greenland 500 years ago". That's unscientific and silly Science doesn't understand everything and it can't explain everything but the modern scientific method has enabled us to understand a lot ,more about the physical world we live on and its planetary history than any system of beliefs. The scientific method works for all branches of scientific study, whether it's finding the Higgs boson, counting tree rings, or analysing ice core samples. You can't pick and choose which bits of science you "accept" and which bits you "reject" because you don't like certain findings. So those that reject science because they don't like what it says should surrender their iPhones, iPads, flat screen TVs and every other modern device that they are able to enjoy only because of the achievements of modern science

Edited February 19, 2013 by Zombie

[PrivateTim]

 

"No ice in Greenland 500 years ago". That's unscientific and silly

 

Google "hyberbole".

 

The point was that with climates you can not talk in decades or even centuries, you have to talk in terms of many millennia.

 

To quote Benji's favorite scientific source.

 

 

The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene, when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacial periods, glacials or glacial advances, and interglacial periods, interglacials or glacial retreats. The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island.

[Zombie]

Google "hyberbole".

 

So Google's to blame for you posting "500 years ago ... there was no ice in Greenland, hence the name 'green land' "

[Foopy]

I think you all need to google "Passive Aggressive" or perhaps "Social Niceties"... That said, I'm on a 'meh' stage with the whole climate change thing. Yeah it's happening. Maybe. (There are a lot of differing oppinions as to WHAT exactly is happening. We do NOT have proof of past climate models... Scientists use the best available means of determining things, but they still end up wrong at times. (They found an airplane under some ice that was a sample of so-called 10,000 year old ice...)) At this point though, it's likely too late to stop what we are currently seeing. Maybe this has nothing to do with us, maybe it does. What I do know is that yeah, we should all be a greener people. But I still think that people are doing too little, too late. We will see what really happens...