A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
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Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#2> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go."
Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#3If we took a fleet of tug-boats and towed this ice to the Middle East, I wonder how long the fresh water would last?
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#4If we took a fleet of tug-boats and towed this ice to the Middle East, I wonder how long the fresh water would last?
An interesting theoretical thought exercise.
The money and fuel bill for tugboats sufficient to move that would probably be better spent on massive fields of photovoltaics and electricity-intensive seawater desalination equipment...
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#5> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go." Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?
I doubt it's a passing fascination with featureless ice, but more of a dread of the things to come...
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#6If we took a fleet of tug-boats and towed this ice to the Middle East, I wonder how long the fresh water would last?
An interesting theoretical thought exercise. The money and fuel bill for tugboats sufficient to move that would probably be better spent on massive fields of photovoltaics and electricity-intensive seawater desalination equipment...
What about nuclear powered boats? Russia has a fleet of nuclear powered ice breakers.
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#7If we took a fleet of tug-boats and towed this ice to the Middle East, I wonder how long the fresh water would last?
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#8 The crack in Larsen C grew around 30 kilometres in length
between 2011 and 2015. And as it grew, also became wider — by
2015, yawning some 200 meters in length.
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#9> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go." Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?
I really loved that plotline and the thought experiment around the ethics of changing a place, even a place without life.
Re: A huge crack is spreading across one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
#10> "I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go." Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. We humans can fall in love with large chunks of ice just by looking at them long enough. How will we ever bring ourselves to terraform another planet?
I doubt it's a passing fascination with featureless ice, but more of a dread of the things to come...
The article specifically distinguishes it from the concern about sea level. I think it's about the attachment to something you've studied and the desire to preserve it.