14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like congratulations are in order for Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier. Specialists keeping a close eye on the massive block of ice say that, only this past Monday, the glacier conjured up all its might and spawned a ginormous iceberg.
No, really, it looks like the iceberg is about 8 times the size of New York's Manhattan Island. More precisely, it is estimated to measure an impressive 277 square miles (720 square kilometers) in area, The Examiner informs us.
Then again, the Pine Island Glacier is the longest and fastest flowing in Antarctica, so it makes sense that, when it gets around to creating ice bergs, it likes to go big.
The same source explains that the Pine Island Glacier went into “labor” in October 2011. At that time, satellite images showed that the glacier had developed a crack that spread across its entire surface.
Although some might rush to blame climate change and global warming for the birth of this iceberg, specialists explain that such events have happened many times in our planet's history.
They are the result of natural processes, and people must not be too quick to link them to changes in global weather patterns.
All the same, this does not mean that climate change and global warming are not happening. These are real phenomena that, unless put on a tight leash sooner rather than later, threaten to forever transform our planet.
