The largest ice shelf in the world just collapsed.....

[chequita guevara]

Collapsing ice shelfs aren't really a problem. It would be similar to a huge chunk of the Arctic ice flows breaking off, they're already floating on water, so they won't raise the sea level or anything.

BUT! (there's always a but), what this does do is removes the pressure from in front of the glaciers, so they can no more rapidly advance into the sea.

BTW, skywalker, we are not leaving an ice age, we are still in one. Ice Ages are very long. We are in what is known as an instatial thaw, kinda like when it gets really warm in the middle of winter for a few days.

[Kuciwalker]

If you are leaving the Ice Age, you are still in it. Only after you have left are you no longer in it.

You knew what I meant anyways.

[General Ludd]

Can an ice age end in one persons life time?

[Kuciwalker]

Well, an ice age is really a fuzzy time period. Lots of furry creatures to keep warm, etc.

What I mean is that you usually can't say "it started today" or "it ended today". You probably can't even specify the year. These things last around ten thousand years.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by skywalker
These things last around ten thousand years.

Actually, they last quite a bit longer than that. This thaw has lasted ten thousand years.

However, it's possible we could end the ice age in our lifetime through global warming. We could also send it roaring back with a vengence if we manage to get it warm enough that the oceanic conveyor shuts down.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by skywalker
Well, an ice age is really a fuzzy time period. Lots of furry creatures to keep warm, etc.

What I mean is that you usually can't say "it started today" or "it ended today". You probably can't even specify the year. These things last around ten thousand years.

Then why is it 'ending' so quickly?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Osweld
Then why is it 'ending' so quickly?

No one (in the know) says it's ending.

[Dis]

global warming is my theory why we have so much crazier weather lately.

of course none of tha crazy weather affects me Okay I'm being self absorbed there. I should care about people who live in hurricane/tornado/blizzard zones. Because I want people to continue living there, I don't want them moving to wear I live and ruining things. Weather is perfect where I live, and I don't think it could support 6 billion people.

[Berzerker]

Can an ice age end in one persons life time?

Tough to say, the mechanisms that cause ice advances and retreats can occur in a lifetime, but the effects of those mechanisms usually take much longer to be realised. There's evidence from ~115,000 years ago of an ice advance not only starting but it's impact being felt withing a few years. Pollen from NW Europe shows vegetation changed rapidly from an "interstatial" - warming period - to a glacial period and this happened "suddenly" geologically speaking, within as few as 20 years.

At the end of the last ice advance, ~13,000 years ago, the planet had been warming for about 1,000 years but suddenly reverted back to glacial conditions in NE America and NW Europe. This was caused by a retreating ice sheet covering the Great Lakes region weakening enough for "Lake Agassiz" - a monstrous lake once located just to the NW of Lake Superior - to break through and drain down the St Lawrence pouring into the N Atlantic shutting down the "conveyor belt" system - a mechanism for transfering heat from the tropics to the poles. Of note, this conveyor system for re-distributing heat to the poles roughly follows the path of hurricanes. This period also saw other vast glacial lakes bursting their ice dams, Lake Bonneville in Utah and Lake Missoula in Idaho and Montana, and those Siberian glacial lakes responsible for the sudden freezing of mammoths so often cited by "Great Flood" proponents...

Btw, technically speaking, we're in an ice age and have been for millions of years. While there may be evidence from long ago of ice ages, several theories have been advanced to explain the one we're in. The rise of the Himalayas ~40 million years ago changing the jet stream, the closing off of the Panama Isthmus shutting down the transfer of tropical and equatorial waters between the Pacific and Atlantic, etc.

I seriously doubt "warming" in Antactica caused the ice shelf's collapse and I'd love to see the evidence. Ice shelfs can only grow so larger before they break off and that is a natural cycle, not something induced by man.

[DRoseDARs]

Minor point-of-correction in that last sentence, Berzerker:
Arctic (north pole), not ANTarctic (south pole).

That's all; carry on...

[Verto]

How do we know this is the beginning of the apocalypse, because the world is warming? Who is to say this isn't simply the continuation of a cycle, which is what Harvard's studies have found.

[Berzerker]

Oh, I didn't read the link and just assumed it was a chunk of the southern ice shelf that broke off. Aside from Greenland, I didn't even know there was a significant ice shelf at the north pole since it's all water and ice up there.

[Lancer]

Che is correct. We are in the middle of an ice age, enjoying a few sunny millenium. That is a fact, according to the ice cores reamed out of the very deepest ancient pack ice, according to past ice ages. If this ice age is anything like prior ones, get some good thermals.

So, when you drive your car you are in fact preserving the world as we know it, and perhaps delaying the next inevitable 'snowball earth' scn.

Do a search for 'snowball earth'. I dare you.

[Ted Striker]

Does your brother's ass get cold in the summer though?

[Dinner]

Lancer: We're actually on the tail end of an ice age and not in the middle of one.