The Life of an Iceberg


Rishi Chebrolu

Icebergs are such a big part of maintaining our ocean currents, water salinity, and freshwater supply. Without these big blue icy structures, coastlines and present islands that support a wide range of cultures and ecosystems would cease to exist. Governments and the economy begin to panic due to the destruction of industries and the preexisting tragedy of the commons. Climate change is the world's greatest threat that must be solved with extreme urgency.

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Plot twist! 

Did you know Icebergs can break off from glaciers naturally? This is a process known as calving. This is where sheets of ice break off when there are large amounts of snowfall. American glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker says that icebergs like to keep the same mass. The glacier loses mass because high amounts of snowfall give back some mass. This process is natural, but it doesn’t mean that the process isn’t being accelerated by the effects of climate change.


This past week, scientists began tracking the Amery Ice Shelf that just broke off from Antartica. Over 300 million tons of ice as big as two New York City’s. This idea of calving demonstrates that this chunk of ice was just a normal phenomenon. Because this iceberg was initially floating on water, it won’t contribute to the rise in sea level. It is important that the public is informed that this incident was purely natural and not by climate change. Why do you think so?
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This iceberg separation is, however, a great way to analyze current trends and predictions about the rate of calving of Arctic ice shelves. New observations can help scientists determine a new rate of ice flowing off the continent. Long term this data can help determine if natural events are just natural or cause by climate change. 

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How would this recent incident influence a climate change disbeliever? What impacts do you predict this will pose on the environment, society, politics, or economy if any at all? 



Comments

Anonymous said…
I think it’s important for people to know that some amount of calving is normal because of how social media is. I see so much horror videos of how we’re all dying tomorrow and everything is terrible, kind of like the war advertisements you see from war time. While obviously bringing attention to the issue is important, overblowing does nothing but cause major panic.
October 2, 2019 at 8:12 AM
Anonymous said…
I think that while there are natural causes to icebergs shedding ice, it should not be as heavily promoted as all of the negatives of climate change. Even though there are natural effects that result in environmental changes that can be caused by climate change, people that don’t believe in climate change will take this evidence and twist it to suit their own needs. All of a sudden, they will be screaming about how icebergs are naturally breaking down, and climate change isn’t real. This will have a much greater impact on climate change awareness than many people would believe.
October 2, 2019 at 12:31 PM
Unknown said…
With the information that icebergs sometimes shed naturally, people are naturally going to blow it out of proportion for sure. I think it’d be surprising if most of the public received the straight up facts rather than warped stories that were published to be biased for or against certain political parties.

Alice
October 2, 2019 at 4:55 PM
Anonymous said…
I didn’t know calving was a thing, but it makes sense. I think people have a right to know but it might fuel people that believe climate change isn’t very important and changing the world in very significant ways. Like Adam said, it shouldn’t be heavily promoted because of this. People like to pick small facts out of a sea of facts and only present the picked facts as true. In order to be non biased and 100% true, you must present both sides and the true facts. It’s sad though knowing that if certain people knew this, they would call all scientists liars because global warming “isn’t causing that”.
October 3, 2019 at 12:16 PM
Anonymous said…
Calving is so fascinating. When I was in Alaska we actually saw the natural fall of glaciers. It wasn't a huge piece that slid off, but it was truly fascinating. I don't believe that if people read articles about calving or climate change that their mind would be changed if they believe in something or not. in my opinion people need to see it first hand and do all the measurements themselves to actually believe.
October 6, 2019 at 12:02 PM
Anonymous said…
This is so interesting because I had no idea this was a thing. I believe people should know more about calving because it will help spread awareness for global warming. A lot of people don’t believe it because they don’t have all of this information. People need to understand that this stuff happens daily. Like the big amazon fire happened and it blew up but people don’t understand that calving and those fires aren’t rare. That’s a flaw with our generation and social media one thing gets so much attention but then with in days they get bored and start caring about something else.

-camilla
October 7, 2019 at 8:28 AM
Anonymous said…
Because climate change is such a critical problem, it could be really impactful over this problem. I think however that even though it may be a misconception about calving, it still is a good indicator of the environment. Since there is a problem, it could also raise awareness for addressing the climate catastrophe. Global warming is such a pressing issue, so I think the more people find it serious and impactful, the better we as a planet can tackle the issue.

-urvi
October 7, 2019 at 12:09 PM
Anonymous said…
This makes a very good point that, while climate change does exist and global warming is a problem, not every single incident involving the environment is necessarily imminently destructive or immediately threatening to the global environment. Knowing that this “calving” process is natural and commonly occurring would significantly reduce the often-widespread public outcry about the world ending tomorrow because of global warming. That said, I would like to make it clear that accelerated calving and global warming are issues that we must address as soon as possible, as nobody wants the destruction to the environment to continue past its present state.
October 7, 2019 at 12:50 PM
Anonymous said…
Although this phenomenon is not widely known, I feel it is better left that way. If this information was heavily spread across media i5 would negatively impact society by pushing against enviornmentalists. This would only sway people more towards the beliefs that global warming is false instead of aligning the idea. Demonstrating and branding, “calving” as a natural phenomenon only reinforces the previous of global warming as a hoax. Thus, I feel this information, while undeniably interesting would be a negative impact if spread throughout media coverage.
October 7, 2019 at 5:58 PM
Aerah Kim said…
People should be aware of calving and informs people to know about global warming. People need to know about this problem, on media we find things that are only eye-cathing but no one is really paying attention to the climate and how its changing drastically. Other than thinking that this is another idea we should really get a sense of what's really going on
October 7, 2019 at 9:16 PM
Anonymous said…
The media is so quick to latch onto anything that will cause a fear factor and benefit their side of the story. I hadn’t heard of calving before and I think it’s important that we all educate ourselves before believing all the horror stories about shedding glacier ice. Doing our own research and making sure all of our facts are straight is an important part to being able to help the earth.
October 8, 2019 at 8:11 AM
Anonymous said…
I personally did not know about calving, and this is definitely eye opening for me. I think you bring up an interesting idea that, especially with our generation, people are sometimes a bit brainwashed about the idea of environmental protection, as many of us automatically assume that certain things that sound bad (such as calving) are bad, when in reality they aren't, which could possibly lead to problems with us trying to "fix" things in the environment that aren't really broken.
October 8, 2019 at 6:29 PM
Anonymous said…
I think calving is an interesting occurrence, but I feel that this will weaken the argument over climate change. By making it sound normal, which it is, disbelievers will have another point to say that climate change is not real. They could just say that the glaciers are undergoing calving. I never knew about the process of calving, and I think it is mind-blowing that glaciers naturally break apart.
October 8, 2019 at 6:34 PM
Anonymous said…
I never knew about calving and how it was a natural occurrence. Unfortunately, although it is something completely natural, many climate change disbelievers are likely to use this as an argument to fuel the debate, saying that the rest of us are blowing ice cap melting out of proportion.
October 9, 2019 at 6:07 AM
Anonymous said…
I never knew what calving was and how it occurred until i read this article. This will definitely help the people that don't believe in climate change. This will most likely fuel their argument especially how normal it sounds, they will say climate change is not real. Helping our earth is very important
-Andrew Thomas
October 10, 2019 at 5:18 PM
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