German landmark tumbles into the sea

[Kellanved]

One of Germany's most famous landscapes, immortalised by the painter Caspar David Friedrich, has disappeared after a large chunk of white cliff fell into the sea.
The jagged chalk cliffs on Rügen, Germany's largest island on its northern coast, have long attracted a stream of visitors and holidaymakers. But tourist officials discovered yesterday that the Wissower Klinken, a well-known landmark, had vanished.

Some 50,000 cubic metres of chalk had slithered into the sea. Instead of vertiginous romantic peaks, the white cliffs on the eastern side of the island were now entirely flat.

"This is the first time an important landmark has vanished," Claudia Leppin, a spokeswoman for Rügen's tourist board, said yesterday. "It's not as if we can rebuild it because the cliff is in a protected national park. Of course we are going to miss it, but we still have plenty of beautiful landscape left. The cliffs are very porous and we have problems like this every year."

...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1425896,00.html

Just as a side note; the Guardian displays its usual level of poor journalism: Friedrich's pictures do not show the Ruegen chalk cliffs, despite an Urban Legend stating otherwise.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Flash: BushCo Patented "Propogando" News Release

"Global climate change is a whacko liberal plot to make you and your family miserable. There is no scientific evidence for this, or for evolution for that matter. Liberals hate freedom. Liberals hate our troops. Liberals made this happen."

- BushCo & Cronies
Propagandists at Large

[Kellanved]

2. Well, this time it looks more like acid rain was the reason

Anyway...

[ashmanonar]

3. or it could be natural, due to natural erosion?

ya know, the sort of climate effects that have been working for the past 4 billion years on earth?

i don't see anything suspicious on this. it's like saying "oh, no, it snowed! it must be global cooling!"

[Kellanved]

4. It fell down - perfectly natural.

While Acid Rain (during the GDR) did cause damage to the cliffs, they were never an especially stable affair to start with.

[ashmanonar]

5. yep.

cliffs fall. it's a fact of life. the sea crashing on the base of the cliffs makes them undermined, and they're then unstable.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Seems like a widespread mistake about the cliffs

Deutsche Welle makes it too: http://www.dw-world.de/dwelle/cda/popups/dwelle.cda.popups.bdt/0,3803,266_A_1501058_1,00.html