The self satisfaction Mark Dubovoy conveys in his article on the colour of icebergs is hard to knock, the problem is it lets people of a non scientific bent [myself] even more confused than they may have been before reading his article.This I believe is the common failing of most scientists when trying to explain their theories to the general public, they have not learned that less is more or that if they can't condense their explanations to one short sentence it will only serve to confuse.
This is not meant in a nasty sense just an opinion of one of a non scientific persuasion, my loss.
I still think life is more interesting when you can understand some of the basics of nature - why the sky is blue and why sunsets are red and of course icebergs !
Here is a simple dumbed down explaination ( the way I tend to remember it):
"White light is made up of all the colors of the rainbow (red, blue, violet, etc.) and each color has a different wavelength.
Icebergs are white because the ice is full of tiny air bubbles. The bubble surfaces scatter all color wavelengths by the same amount, giving the iceberg an overall white appearance. (Water and ice in clouds scatter color wavelengths the same way, and they also appear white.)
Ice that is bubble free has a blue tint which is due to the same light phenomenon that tints the sky - the wavelength of blue light causes it to be scattered or spread around much more than the other colors, and this scattered blue light is what makes the sky (and bubble free ice) blue"