Petermann Ice Island 2010 poses no immediate threat, say ice experts...

It is old news by now that a 250 square kilometre iceberg broke off Greenland on 05 August 2010.
Check out the NASA satellite photo below, where the bulk of ice is clearly visible as being separated from the rest of Greenland:

The debate is already on the go, as to what the giant iceberg will do next, and whether or not it will affect or endanger ships, oil platforms and the like as it makes its way away from Greenland.

Estimates are saying that a problem could only potentially arise in 1-4 years time - that is how long it could take for the iceberg to reach anything that it could pose a threat to.

Add to that the constant erosion taking place from sea water and weather conditions, and the possibility of the iceberg getting stuck in a bay or somewhere else, and the iceberg threat diminishes even further.

We shall just have to wait and see.

The scary bit for me, is the sheer size of the damn thing - 250 square kilometres works out to a mass approximately 16km x 16km in size - can you imagine a chunk of ice that size floating freely in the ocean?

That is no small iceberg - hence the naming of the colossal mass - "Petermann Ice Island 2010" - Petermann Glacier being the glacier from which the iceberg separated.

Check out these related articles:

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• NASA Releases New Image of Massive Greenland Iceberg (physorg.com)
• Huge iceberg breaks off Greenland glacier (cbc.ca)
• Greenland's Peterman Glacier calves large iceberg - PHOTOS (gcaptain.com)
• Greenland ice sheet yields biggest glacier in decades (blogs.nature.com)
• Monster iceberg on the loose (bluenc.com)
• Greenland iceberg could be Canada-bound (cbc.ca)

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Been to Venice? Better go soon before it disappears beneath the waves...!

I received these photos of Venice in my Inbox yesterday - I gather they were taken during the December 2009 spate of floods, during which water levels rose approx. 1.5m, which is pretty darn significant...

Venetians are no strangers to the "acqua alta" (high water), as the city itself is built in the middle of a lagoon, resulting in a city which is completely at the mercy of changing tides.
It is a part of Venetian life to live life around the sea - residents regularly don boots and raincoats to slosh about their daily business.

Venice authorities are currently busy working on all kinds of projects to try and keep Venice above water, including ways to keep the water at bay, as global sea levels continue to rise.

Take a look - the pics tell a better story than I ever could!

Hurry up and take the darn photo.. I'm getting wet here!

Just taking a walk here, la la la OMG TIDAL WAVE!!

Could this be Venice Harbour - sometime in the near future maybe...?

Aahh... nothing like a drink with good friends while dangling your legs in the water...

Yes Sir, we do have tables available - where would you like to be seated?

Not sure about this one... how is this guy propelling himself?

Looking for the Fresh Fish Dept.? You're standing in it :)

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Another problem caused by deforestation...

Here's one for the Greenpeace activists out there... :)

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Amazon gets smart...

Down the right of my blog you can see my Amazon affiliate ads, which I though would display specials of the day, good deals etc. - that kind of thing generally.

So I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I saw how Amazon had cleverly picked up the context of my blog, and added in products related to topics I have recently blogged about, i.e. Bas Rutten, Global Warming and Bear Grylls.

It works in the much the same way as Google Adsense does, in that it crawls your site and checks for keywords, upon which it bases the content that it then displays.

Clever stuff.
What will they think of next? :)

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Finally some updates :)

I have been meaning to add some more meaningful stuff to Nybbles and Bytes lately, and to start I have added some links to my sidebar:

Vibrasphere - an awesome Psychedelic / Melodic / Progressive Trance act from Sweden.
If this is your kind of thing, you need to hear some of their stuff. A lot of their music is inspired by the Scandanavian landscape, weather and landforms. The album cover below should give you an idea of what I mean.

Bas Rutten - a legendary (now retired) Dutch MMA fighter. He was the UFC Heavyweight Champion, a three time King of Pancrase world champion, and finished his career on a 22 fight unbeaten streak (21 wins, 1 draw).
Look out for him on YouTube as well - his self-defence training videos can be quite a laugh!

Skeptical Science - "examining the science of global warming skepticism" is what the site description says - quite self explanatory! The site goes on to say "...this website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?..."
Basically a site dedicated to debunking the Global Warming denyers out there.

Bear Grylls  - he's the crazy guy from Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel. He jumps off crazy things, eats crazy things, goes to crazy places, and generally does some pretty crazy things. In spite of all his craziness, I think he is one hell of a brave guy. Vegetarians proceed with caution... this man will eat anything. Literally.

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Global Warming - is it all just a load of "hot air"...?

Ok here goes....

POP!!

Did you hear that?? Yup, that was the sound of a can of worms opening as I started typing this post :)
I say this because the term "Global Warming" has of late become a giant can of worms.
There are so many opposing views, opinions, scientific "facts" and dire predictions on the topic, that it becomes quite tiring to even try and make any kind of sense of it all.

Back when the Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth" hit the circuit, it certainly made waves on the issue. I for one was quite taken by the content of the film.
Part of me kept saying "... but Al Gore ran for President of the USA - of course he will try to play the Global Warming card to get votes...". Truth is, Al Gore has been concerned with environmental issues since the late 70's. 

Whatever the "truth" is regarding Global Warming, there are really 3 different stances on the issue (in my view).

1. The Believers (sounds a bit scary doesn't it?)
These are the people who have every faith in the words of the pro-Global Warming scientists. They completely buy into the idea that the world will indeed change notably in the next 50 years, and that the environment that we live in is in grave danger of disappearing if we as humans and residents on this planet do not change our wasteful habits.
They rely on data readings of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, taken over thousands of years of the Earth's history, which reportedly correlate directly to increases in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere. 

2. The Denyers
These people simply ignore the issue, or consider Global Warming to be a non-issue. They believe that the situation is all hype, created by "Big Brother" in order to somehow capitalize on the fear instilled in people. They argue that if any warming is actually occurring, it has happened before (naturally) in the Earth's life cycle, and that we therefore can do nothing about it, so why worry?

3. The "Sun Believers" (sounds like an ancient South American civilization...:)
These people will tell you that it might well be true that the earth is in fact warming up. The reason for this, however is not caused by humans, nor is it caused by greenhouse gases etc. No, the cause is in fact that the Sun itself is warming up. 
As a result, other planets in the Solar System are supposedly also warming up. Global Warming then, is not just an Earthly phenomenon, but in fact a much greater one, that of the Solar System itself. Problem is, the so-called "evidence" of other planets heating up is conflicting at best. I am no Scientist on the issue, but it does not take a very detailed search on the net to work this one out.
In addition, the rate of the increase in the Sun's temperature is not significant enough to cause the kind of climate change that Scientists are reporting.

So there you have it - the mish-mash that is Global Warming.
Personally I am somewhere in the middle on this one. I don't think that it is possible to know the exact truth on the subject until all angles have been properly explored and analysed. 
Theories of today will be disproven tomorrow.
The next day those same theories will be put in question, and so the cycle will continue.

The only way we will ever know the truth is in hindsight - 50 years from now, we will be able to look back and say "Wow they were right!" or maybe "Wow what a scam that was :)".

Who knows?
What's your take? 
 
 

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