Ice shelf about to break away from Antarctic coast

[steven johnson]

Thawing of ice masses is occurring all over the earth as a result of global warming.

PARIS (AP) A massive ice shelf anchored to the Antarctic coast by a narrow and quickly deteriorating ice bridge could break away soon, the European Space Agency warned Friday.
The Paris-based agency said satellite images show the bridge that connects the Wilkins Ice Shelf to Charcot and Latady Islands "looks set to collapse."
"The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts" appeared and a large block of ice broke away, it said.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf — which like the rest of Antarctic's ice sheet "was formed by thousands of years of accumulated and compacted snow" — had been stable for most of the last century before it began retreating in the 1990s, the statement said.
The shelf, which was originally of Jamaica or the U.S. state of Connecticut, is located on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, which thrusts up from the continent toward the southern tip of South America.
Originally covering about 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometers), the ice shelf lost 14 percent of its mass last year alone, the statement quotes a scientist Angelika Humbert of Germany's Munster University as saying.
In two 2008 incidents, large chunks of the ice bridge fell away, shaving it down to just 985 yards (900 meters) across at its narrowest, the statement said.




http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h1YwRKCHpwN65ds0uwNjB7W0JQ-QD97B7K100

[this_side_up]

1. will Las Vegas & Arizona

pony up the money to have it hauled off San Diego and pay to have it broken up and hauled east?

Just wondering.

[HamdenRice]

2. South Africa and Namibia have studied iceberg towing for years

They are much closer to Antarctica. The idea was to tow them to the west coast of southern Africa (much, much drier than the east), put them in a small bay, impound the bay the let it melt, and using the water for drinking and agriculture.

For years they studied towing them, but the costs seemed prohibitive. Now there are all sorts of cool high tech proposals like giant computer controlled kites to push them north to southern Africa.

[this_side_up]

3. wow, I didn't know about the kite

idea. Sounds good to me and hopefully more useful and productive than
more green golf courses and lawns.

OTOH, We're #1!! We're #1!!! so I won't be surprised if we
do grab it.

(sigh)

I need to take a break from the news & the net.