Icebergs have been breaking off long before Global Warming threat

Written by Ronald Kitching

Thursday, 27 March 2008

Today¹s press reports a 415 sq. km iceberg has broken off the Wilkins shelf of Antarctica. The occurrence has been blamed on global warming by activist alarmists.

 But here are a few that broke off long before the current alarm broke out.

Very large icebergs have been breaking off and leaving Antarctica long before coal burning was even contemplated.

In his book, titled The Tyranny of Distance Geoffrey Blainey reports (on page 26): In the southern summer of 1854-55 an enormous island of ice was afloat in the relatively warm latitude of 40 degrees south, just south west of the island of Tristan da Chuna. Lying near the sea route to Australia it was was observed by a score of ships.

Some of those ships saw nothing but ice for days, because the mass of ice was about 60 miles long and shaped like a horseshoe and some emigrant ships sailed unknowingly into the icy bay and one, the Guiding Star, did not sail out.

A record sized iceberg, code named B9, was calved in the Antarctic in 1987. It was 154 kilometres long, 35 kilometres wide, (5,390 sq. km), and would take up to 20 years to melt. It originally contained enough fresh water to supply everybody on earth with two glasses a day for almost 2,000 years. A recent very large iceberg reported on August 17th 1998 was also calved.

It¹s dimensions were 19.3 km by 5.6 km., (1,080.8 Sq. km), It¹s weight was estimated at 750 billion tonnes. It was reported to be drifting north at about 1.5 km per day. (News Item : Early February 2001). An iceberg 140 km long and 35 km wide, (4,900 sq. km.), has broken off the ice shelf of the south pole and has begun to move north. 303 words.