“I’m sorry, I can’t resist. The guy’s name is Mark Drinkwater.”
“Who?”
“Drinkwater, Mark Drinkwater. He’s a serious scientist. It’s just that his science is related to water, to fresh water, to, get this, potable or drinking water in the form of ice.”
“Okay, I’m caught in this whirlpool of elliptic comment. What’s this about?”
“All right, I’ll go upcurrent a bit for you. See, there’s this giant iceberg, really big, called A-76. It broke off from Antarctica.”
“Wait a minute. Why ‘A-76’? What’s the designation mean?”
“The United States has a ‘National Ice Center’—yeah, I know, is there a phenomenon on the planet for which a giant government doesn’t have an agency?—so, the Ice Center that is operated by the Navy, the Coast Guard, and NOAA, divided up Antarctica by longitude. Any iceberg that falls in the first quadrant, that is from zero degrees longitude to 90 degrees west longitude, is an ‘A’ iceberg. That means any iceberg from the Bellingshausen/Weddell Sea area. Obviously, A-76 originated there. And it is big. It’s 1,668 square miles of floating ice island. That’s bigger than Rhode Island—but then, what isn’t bigger than Rhode Island?”
“Okay, so this A-76 is a big iceberg from the Weddell Sea. Don’t big icebergs break off from Antarctica all the time?”
“Yes, they do. Not too long ago there was A-68, it floated around for the past three years oer so, but it’s gone now, melted. Some of these giant icebergs can last a couple of decades if they stay in the cold water around Antarctica, but when they escape the cold currents, they part rather fast. That melting makes the scheme of towing one to parched countries like Saudi Arabia a difficult, if not impossible, task though towing icebergs has been done on small scales, like in the Arctic, where they can crash into oil rigs. And supposedly, even in the nineteenth century people in Chile got some fresh water from towed icebergs though I have my doubts on that. But I digress, as usual.
“Since I don’t go sailing through the Weddell Sea, I have no ice tray to fill in this iceberg news, but I got into the story because of Mark Drinkwater’s name. He’s probably a legit scientist, and I know that icebergs can be a real problem and a hypothetical problem at the same time. Think Titantic. And that iceberg was like a chip the size nurses put in a cup to give to post-operative people when they can’t drink a whole glass of water but their mouths are dry…sorry, digressing again, a chip, as I was saying, off the giant A-76. So, yes, icebergs pose threats to ships, and they even pose threats to penguin colonies. A-68 threatened a penguin colony on South Georgia Island that way.”
“You’re brain is like an Antarctic iceberg. You go wherever the currents of thinking take you from one digression to another. Freeze the point, man, stick to what you want to tell me.”
“So, this Mark Drinkwater says that the breaking off of these icebergs is related to climate change.”
“Oh, here we go again.”
“No, really. If someone works for NOAA and is part of the National Ice Center in an age when the mythical 97% of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change, what else should I expect. I guess as giant glaciers moved toward the sea over the past millions of years, they didn’t break off by virtue of their massive size and weight, by a cracking of a brittle mass too big to remain whole. Sorry; I’m sarcastic. Calving ice has been floating around as long as there’s been ice. And ice sheets come and go, build up and melt down. Do A-68 and A-76 make me worry? Not really, but all those Antarctic icebergs definitely make work for people at the National Ice Center. ‘Where’s A-76 today?’ I can hear them ask over morning coffee and satellite images of ice islands. ‘Is it hot in here? Someone turn on the AC. It’s broken? Well, then get some ice in a pan and turn on the desk fan.’ Working at the National Ice Center doesn’t sound like a high pressure job though I’m saying that out of ignorance. Maybe they have their tense moments like the guys at their sister agency, the National Hurricane Center. Have you noticed how many centers the government has? Certainly, working at the National Ice Center doesn’t sound like a job that makes one sweat. I mean, what are they going to do about A-76 but track it? What did they do about A-68 except worry it was going to devastate penguins on South Georgia Island or disrupt the food chain, or whatever? It’s like trying to stop the seasons. We can observe when, as the medieval composer writes, ‘Sumer is icumen in,’ but remember the rest of that song. ‘Sumer is icumen in/Lhude sing cuccu/Groweth sed/and bloweth med/and springth the wde nu/Sing cuccu.’”
“What? What?”
“Well, in the medieval song the words say that summer has arrived and one should loudly sing ‘cuckoo.’ We can’t stop summer from coming; can’t stop any of the seasons from coming or going. Might as well just sing ‘cuckoo, cuckoo’ because that’s all we can do. And after at least a couple of centuries of people thinking about towing icebergs for whatever reason, fresh drinking water or cleared shipping lanes, we’re pretty powerless to stop an iceberg larger than Rhode Island from moving wherever the currents take it. Sing ‘cuckoo,’ I say. By the way in the second verse, you know what the lyrics say?”
“No.”
“’Awe bleteph afer lomb/Ihouth after calue cu/Bulluc starteph/ Bucke uerteph/Murie sing cuccu.’”
“What? I’m not into medieval English.”
“’The ewe is bleating after her lamb/The cow is lowing after her calf/The bullock is prancing/The Billy-goat farting/Sing merrily, cuckoo.’ Yeah. Good luck with that. Let’s see some scientists stop the Billy-goat from farting.” Maybe everyone who works for the National Ice Center should know that song since they, like the cow in the second stanza, ‘low after’ the calved ice. And probably everyone who is worried that calving ice in Antarctic waters spells doom for the planet should also learn those lyrics.
“Your point?”
“Okay, several points. it’s all right to monitor big icebergs, but you can’t do anything about them. And you can’t ascribe many inevitable and natural events to some exclusively anthropogenic cause. Look, wasn’t there a study done by some researchers from the University of Texas at Austin that the Thwaites Glacier of the West Antarctic Ice sheet was being melted from below by geothermal heat? ** Who’s going to stop that? If I remember correctly, those researchers said that the geothermal heat was a big-time contributor to the melting of the glacier’s underside. And like an ice skater’s blades melting the ice beneath the skater to facilitate movement by reducing friction, so the geothermal heat reduces the friction between the Thwaites Glacier and the underlying rock. Melted beneath, the glacier can slide. It becomes unstable.
But, no, everything has to be seen through the officially adopted language of climate change, of global warming, everything, especially ice sheets like Greenland’s and Antarctica’s. What’s next? Manmade magma chambers? Manmade geothermal heat? According to the article I read on A-76, Drinkwater says that climate change is responsible. Okay. He could be right, but what is he going to do about it? What are the Navy, the Coast Guard, and NOAA going to do about it? What can the National Ice Center do other than simply monitor the giant ice islands? Worried about climate change? Isn’t methane a problem there? Don’t we need a National Billy-goat Farting Center? Maybe with a more sophisticated name like National Flatulence Reduction Center. I can see the agency’s motto over the door. ‘Stop a fart and save a glacier.’ If climate change is ‘icumin in/Sing cuccu’.”
Notes:
*Phys.org. vast Antarctic iceberg could drift through ocean for years. 21 May 2021.
**Texas Geosciences. Researchers find Major West Antarctic Glacier Melting from Geothermal sources. 10 June 2014. Published online at https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2014/06/researchers-find-major-west-antarctic-glacier-melting-from-geothermal-sources/ The research article is
Schroeder, Dustin M., Donald D. Blankenship, Duncan A. Young, and Enrica Quartini. 24 June 2014. Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. PNAS. 111 (25) 9070-9072; first published June 9, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1405184111
Accessed May 23, 2021.
“Who?”
“Drinkwater, Mark Drinkwater. He’s a serious scientist. It’s just that his science is related to water, to fresh water, to, get this, potable or drinking water in the form of ice.”
“Okay, I’m caught in this whirlpool of elliptic comment. What’s this about?”
“All right, I’ll go upcurrent a bit for you. See, there’s this giant iceberg, really big, called A-76. It broke off from Antarctica.”
“Wait a minute. Why ‘A-76’? What’s the designation mean?”
“The United States has a ‘National Ice Center’—yeah, I know, is there a phenomenon on the planet for which a giant government doesn’t have an agency?—so, the Ice Center that is operated by the Navy, the Coast Guard, and NOAA, divided up Antarctica by longitude. Any iceberg that falls in the first quadrant, that is from zero degrees longitude to 90 degrees west longitude, is an ‘A’ iceberg. That means any iceberg from the Bellingshausen/Weddell Sea area. Obviously, A-76 originated there. And it is big. It’s 1,668 square miles of floating ice island. That’s bigger than Rhode Island—but then, what isn’t bigger than Rhode Island?”
“Okay, so this A-76 is a big iceberg from the Weddell Sea. Don’t big icebergs break off from Antarctica all the time?”
“Yes, they do. Not too long ago there was A-68, it floated around for the past three years oer so, but it’s gone now, melted. Some of these giant icebergs can last a couple of decades if they stay in the cold water around Antarctica, but when they escape the cold currents, they part rather fast. That melting makes the scheme of towing one to parched countries like Saudi Arabia a difficult, if not impossible, task though towing icebergs has been done on small scales, like in the Arctic, where they can crash into oil rigs. And supposedly, even in the nineteenth century people in Chile got some fresh water from towed icebergs though I have my doubts on that. But I digress, as usual.
“Since I don’t go sailing through the Weddell Sea, I have no ice tray to fill in this iceberg news, but I got into the story because of Mark Drinkwater’s name. He’s probably a legit scientist, and I know that icebergs can be a real problem and a hypothetical problem at the same time. Think Titantic. And that iceberg was like a chip the size nurses put in a cup to give to post-operative people when they can’t drink a whole glass of water but their mouths are dry…sorry, digressing again, a chip, as I was saying, off the giant A-76. So, yes, icebergs pose threats to ships, and they even pose threats to penguin colonies. A-68 threatened a penguin colony on South Georgia Island that way.”
“You’re brain is like an Antarctic iceberg. You go wherever the currents of thinking take you from one digression to another. Freeze the point, man, stick to what you want to tell me.”
“So, this Mark Drinkwater says that the breaking off of these icebergs is related to climate change.”
“Oh, here we go again.”
“No, really. If someone works for NOAA and is part of the National Ice Center in an age when the mythical 97% of scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change, what else should I expect. I guess as giant glaciers moved toward the sea over the past millions of years, they didn’t break off by virtue of their massive size and weight, by a cracking of a brittle mass too big to remain whole. Sorry; I’m sarcastic. Calving ice has been floating around as long as there’s been ice. And ice sheets come and go, build up and melt down. Do A-68 and A-76 make me worry? Not really, but all those Antarctic icebergs definitely make work for people at the National Ice Center. ‘Where’s A-76 today?’ I can hear them ask over morning coffee and satellite images of ice islands. ‘Is it hot in here? Someone turn on the AC. It’s broken? Well, then get some ice in a pan and turn on the desk fan.’ Working at the National Ice Center doesn’t sound like a high pressure job though I’m saying that out of ignorance. Maybe they have their tense moments like the guys at their sister agency, the National Hurricane Center. Have you noticed how many centers the government has? Certainly, working at the National Ice Center doesn’t sound like a job that makes one sweat. I mean, what are they going to do about A-76 but track it? What did they do about A-68 except worry it was going to devastate penguins on South Georgia Island or disrupt the food chain, or whatever? It’s like trying to stop the seasons. We can observe when, as the medieval composer writes, ‘Sumer is icumen in,’ but remember the rest of that song. ‘Sumer is icumen in/Lhude sing cuccu/Groweth sed/and bloweth med/and springth the wde nu/Sing cuccu.’”
“What? What?”
“Well, in the medieval song the words say that summer has arrived and one should loudly sing ‘cuckoo.’ We can’t stop summer from coming; can’t stop any of the seasons from coming or going. Might as well just sing ‘cuckoo, cuckoo’ because that’s all we can do. And after at least a couple of centuries of people thinking about towing icebergs for whatever reason, fresh drinking water or cleared shipping lanes, we’re pretty powerless to stop an iceberg larger than Rhode Island from moving wherever the currents take it. Sing ‘cuckoo,’ I say. By the way in the second verse, you know what the lyrics say?”
“No.”
“’Awe bleteph afer lomb/Ihouth after calue cu/Bulluc starteph/ Bucke uerteph/Murie sing cuccu.’”
“What? I’m not into medieval English.”
“’The ewe is bleating after her lamb/The cow is lowing after her calf/The bullock is prancing/The Billy-goat farting/Sing merrily, cuckoo.’ Yeah. Good luck with that. Let’s see some scientists stop the Billy-goat from farting.” Maybe everyone who works for the National Ice Center should know that song since they, like the cow in the second stanza, ‘low after’ the calved ice. And probably everyone who is worried that calving ice in Antarctic waters spells doom for the planet should also learn those lyrics.
“Your point?”
“Okay, several points. it’s all right to monitor big icebergs, but you can’t do anything about them. And you can’t ascribe many inevitable and natural events to some exclusively anthropogenic cause. Look, wasn’t there a study done by some researchers from the University of Texas at Austin that the Thwaites Glacier of the West Antarctic Ice sheet was being melted from below by geothermal heat? ** Who’s going to stop that? If I remember correctly, those researchers said that the geothermal heat was a big-time contributor to the melting of the glacier’s underside. And like an ice skater’s blades melting the ice beneath the skater to facilitate movement by reducing friction, so the geothermal heat reduces the friction between the Thwaites Glacier and the underlying rock. Melted beneath, the glacier can slide. It becomes unstable.
But, no, everything has to be seen through the officially adopted language of climate change, of global warming, everything, especially ice sheets like Greenland’s and Antarctica’s. What’s next? Manmade magma chambers? Manmade geothermal heat? According to the article I read on A-76, Drinkwater says that climate change is responsible. Okay. He could be right, but what is he going to do about it? What are the Navy, the Coast Guard, and NOAA going to do about it? What can the National Ice Center do other than simply monitor the giant ice islands? Worried about climate change? Isn’t methane a problem there? Don’t we need a National Billy-goat Farting Center? Maybe with a more sophisticated name like National Flatulence Reduction Center. I can see the agency’s motto over the door. ‘Stop a fart and save a glacier.’ If climate change is ‘icumin in/Sing cuccu’.”
Notes:
*Phys.org. vast Antarctic iceberg could drift through ocean for years. 21 May 2021.
**Texas Geosciences. Researchers find Major West Antarctic Glacier Melting from Geothermal sources. 10 June 2014. Published online at https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2014/06/researchers-find-major-west-antarctic-glacier-melting-from-geothermal-sources/ The research article is
Schroeder, Dustin M., Donald D. Blankenship, Duncan A. Young, and Enrica Quartini. 24 June 2014. Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. PNAS. 111 (25) 9070-9072; first published June 9, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1405184111
Accessed May 23, 2021.
RSS Feed