Massive Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica — But Not Because of Climate Change

On Wednesday, scientists reported that a humongous iceberg with twice the volume of Lake Erie had broken off from a key floating ice shelf in Antarctica. Scientists admitted, however, that the event was not caused by man-made climate change, but came about by natural causes.

“We have been anticipating this event for months, and have been surprised how long it took for the rift to break through the final few kilometers of ice,” Adrian Luckman of Britain’s Swansea University told the Associated Press (AP).

The iceberg, which measures 5,800 square kilometers (2,240 square-miles) and weighs 1 trillion tons (1.12 trillion U.S. tons), broke off the Larsen C ice shelf in a process known as calving, the Swansea scientists reported.

“We will continue to monitor both the impact of this calving event on the Larsen C Ice Shelf, and the fate of this huge iceberg,” Luckman added.

Swansea glaciologist Martin O’Leary emphasized that this was a natural event, not caused by man-made climate change. Even so, the event “puts the ice shelf in a very vulnerable position.”

This iceberg break will also not affect sea levels in the short term.

Scientists from the UK-based Antarctic project MIDAS have been monitoring the rift in Larsen C for years, following research on the collapse of the Larsen A shelf in 1995 and the breakup of the Larsen B shelf in 2002.

The researchers suggested the iceberg is likely to break into fragments and while some of the ice may remain near Larsen C for decades, parts may drift north into warmer waters.

“At this point it would be premature to say that this was caused by global warming,” Anna Hogg of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, told the AP.

Climate alarmists continue to push the man-made global warming narrative as fact, despite scientific debate on the issue. Indeed, many are stifling dissent. In January, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology resigned from her post, accepting “career suicide” in the name of “scientific integrity,” because the intellectual climate had become so hostile to anyone questioning the “consensus.”

Pseudoscience has tied climate change to the civil war in Syria. How long before this iceberg is credited for the burning of fossil fuels, in the absence of evidence?