'They're looking at it through a microscope' rather than seeing macro trends, including the fact that oceans around Antarctica are warming, helping thin the ice, said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however.

In a widely quoted statement, Martin O'Leary, a Swansea University glaciologist who was part of the team studying Larsen C, said that the iceberg calving was 'a natural event' and that 'we're not aware of any link to human-induced climate change.' And we see the consequences.īut there is some dispute about whether there is enough evidence to tie the breakoff of this particular piece of ice to global warming. There is no disagreement among climate scientists about whether humans are warming the Earth by burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. This doesn't NOT look like climate change. I spent most of Thursday on the phone with scientists, talking to them about the huge iceberg off Antarctica and what it means. Some scientists think this has a lot to do with global warming.

The problem: That last detail - the climate one - is misleading at best.

And most important: None of this has anything to do with man-made climate change. The ice, which has been named A68, represents more than 12% of the Larsen C ice shelf, a sliver on the Antarctic Peninsula. Among the details that have been repeated ad nauseam: The iceberg is nearly the size of Delaware, which prompted some fun musing on Twitter about where exactly Delaware is and how anyone is supposed to approximate the square footage of that US state.

The internet iceberg levels