Hi Jennifer,
I believed that all glaciers are in retreat due to global warming. But then I discovered, when I recently visited New Zealand, that I had been deceived.
In September we visited the Fox glacier on the West coast. We passed a sign some kilometres from its face telling us that this marked where the glacier was in 1750.
When we reached the face we were told that the glacier stopped retreating in 1985 and is in fact now advancing at the rate of one metre a week.
I understand that the nearby Franz Jeseph Glacier has a similar history.
So I wonder what has been happening to other glaciers in the world in the last few hundred years not just the last 100 years. Were they also in retreat as long ago as 1750?
Doug Killeen
Seymour, Australia
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Isn’t the continuing advance of the glacier due to increased precipitation (as snow) as a result of warmer ocean temperatures?
Hi Doug,
Good to see you are fit and well.
My wife and I did an extensive trip of many of the glaciers in North America during July, August of 2007. On this trip we were accompanied by a retired Glaciologist from from the University of Alaska.
To our surprise we were on a number of Glaciers that have been growing for several years.
The most spectacular is the Hubbard Glacier ( the largest glacier in NA.) which is presently growing at several hundred feet per month and last northern winter completely closed off a river, creating a huge lake which is expected to create a joining glacier during the next few years.
The Professor over many days left us in no doubt that the alarmist claims of the IPCC were without foundation.
He believes the earth is likely entering a cooling phase, but unlike the consences screams of the AGW deciples, he said confirmation could be 30 to 50 years away.
However too long a story to repeat here.
“If we torture data sufficiently, it will confess to anything.”
Pikey.
Robert,
Here we go again, we have been subjected to the constant whining about the glaciers retreating due to AGW, and now you say it’s advancing, due to AGW?
Give us a break!
For those interested, there is some interest by NASA in trying to figure out how a flux tube event causes ice precipitation in the earth’s mesosphere.
The water molecule has some peculiar properties in an electrical sense and the conundrum of glaciers growing with cooling is counter intuitive.
This topic needs a little more searching.
There has never been a claim that all glaciers are retreating, could you provide a reference to it? Most are retreating.
The US Geological Survey has been charting the advance and retreat of several glaciers around the world – including the fox glacer.
A graphic can be found here that covers the time from first observation in 1866 up until 2000.
It clearly shows that there have been periods of both advance and retreat but the recent trend (and by recent I mean the last 150 years) is typified by an overall reduction in the girth and length of the glacial mass.
ie the losses and gains are not in balance.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386h/nzealand/nzfig13.html
This paper is also instructive:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386h/nzealand/nzealand.html
Grendel,
Neither of your two references support your claim of an overall reduction in the girth and length of the glacial mass. Girth of a glacial mass? I did a word search for “girth” in the second reference – nothing. Your first reference is limited to 1988 and thus meaningless for the point made here.
And girth is a new term for glaciology – so I conclude that haven’t a clue on the topic you are pontificating on. For a start how do you measure a glacier’s girth?
The graphic you used to support your statement cannot do that – it only shows retreat ad advance. Whatever the thickness of the arrows mean is not given – I would suggest artistic license.
Grendel
I can give another explanation for the width of the arrows on the right hand side of the graph – the arrow width represents the number of years that the data represent, the widest being 1921-1934. The rest is easy to deduce. Gosh I may even waste some time scanning the image, digitize it and see if length of observation correlates with width of arrow.
Same old – same old. Find a boutique exception and report it as a “surprise” !
Surprise !!! Oh look…
Funny that you never see the following style of report here !
“Glacier could be gone in five years”
The principal glacier of the world’s biggest tropical ice cap could disappear within five years as a result of global warming, one of the world’s leading glaciologists predicted yesterday.
The imminent demise of the Qori Kalis glacier, the main component of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Peruvian Andes, offered the starkest evidence yet of the effects of climate change, according to Lonnie Thompson, of Ohio State University.
Although scientists had known for decades that Qori Kalis and the other Quelccaya glaciers were melting, new observations indicated that the rate of retreat was increasing, Professor Thompson said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21239767-2703,00.html
But hey haven’t we been here before. I wonder what the world glaciology society would say about “the majority”? Hmmmm …. but let’s not look.
But what did NIWA say about NZ glaciers …. shrinking ?
http://www.niwa.cri.nz/pubs/wa/16-3/glacier
http://www.niwa.cri.nz/news/mr/2007/2007-11-18-2
And once again we a diversion when Lamprey Luke cites a completely different example so Grendel’s crass error can be ignored.
Given the recent demonstration of data fudging by the proxy experts, Lamprey’s examples here are best dismissed according to La Code Napoleon – wrong until demonstrated correct.
So there you go Lamprey, in your own words, contradict the empiricism founding this thread. And no modelling results either, just plain boring measurements backed by data.
SJT: ‘Most are retreating.’ Could you provide a reference to it?
OK I,m no Scientist but in summary this is what the Glaciologist told us:
In an oscillating line the Glaciers of the earth have been melting and receeding since the last ice age about 15,000 years ago.
The period of gratest retreat was about 1000 years ago when the earth was 2 to 3 degrees warmer than at present.
This can be clearly seen downstrem of the Alaskan glaciers present position, where stumps of fully mature trees have been sheered off by the growing glacier as the earth cooled after this warmer period. (note the Great Barrier Reef did not disappear).
Following this period the earth again cooled- the medieval ice age; when the Thames and Hudson rivers used to ice over every winter.
Since then the earth again warmed and the more recent retreat of the Glaciers is there for all to see.
We have also witnessed the loss of sea ice.
It is this phenomenon ( correctly noted by Robert above) that leads to increased evaporation and thence more snow and thus the gradual growth of the Glaciers again.
As a skier who skis in Colorado every year I can assure everyone that for the last 8 or 9 years the snow fall has been increasing every year to the point where last ski season we had lifts closed because of too much snow buildup.
Ther is much more to this story, but this is a hasty summary of what the Professor had to say.
Pikey.
Kooky chook – are you really really really really that stupid or just plain mental. You’ve been given empirical evidence doofus, Models? Lordy me. About now I start to suspect you’re a bot and wouldn’t pass the Turing Test.
Be under doubt – it’s on !
From the September 2008 report of the World Glacier Monitoring Service
http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/pdfs/unep_press_release_1sept2008.pdf
Glacier monitoring– The internationally coordinated collection of information about
glaciers began in 1894 and the efforts towards the compilation of a world glacier inventory
have resulted in unprecedented data sets. For the second half of the 20th century, preliminary
estimates of the global distribution of glaciers and ice caps covering some 685 000 km2 are
available, including detailed information on about 100 000 glaciers, and digital outlines for
about 62 000 glaciers.
The database on glacier fluctuations includes 36 240 length change observations from 1803
glaciers as far back as the late 19th century, as well as about 3 400 annual mass balance
measurements from 226 glaciers covering the past six decades.
In 2006, a new record annual mass loss was measured on the reference glaciers under longterm
observation. The average annual melting rate of mountain glaciers appears to have
doubled after the turn of the millennium, in comparison with the already accelerated melting
rates observed in the two decades before.
The previous record loss in the year 1998 has already been exceeded three times, i.e., in the
years 2003, 2004 and 2006, with the losses in 2004 and 2006 being almost twice as high as
the previous 1998 record loss.
Early measurements indicate strong ice losses as early as the 1940s and 1950s, followed by a
moderate ice loss between 1966 and 1985, and accelerating ice losses until present.
The global average annual mass loss of more than half a metre during the decade of 1996 to
2005 represents twice the ice loss of the previous decade (1986–95) and over four times the
rate of the decade from 1976 to 1985. Prominent periods of regional mass gains are found in
the Alps in the late 1970s and early 1980s and in coastal Scandinavia and New Zealand in the
1990s.
Glaciers and climate–The overall shrinking of glaciers and ice caps since their maximum
extents during the Little Ice Age is well correlated with the increase in global mean air
temperature of about 0.75 °C since the mid 19th century, which is most likely human-induced
for the most part, at least since the second half of the 20th century (IPCC 2007). On a scale of
decades, glaciers in various regions have shown intermittent re-advances, possibly in
response to precipitation changes (IPCC 2007).
Under current IPCC climate scenarios, the ongoing trend of worldwide and rapid, if not
accelerating, glacier shrinkage on the century time scale is most likely to be of a non-periodic
nature, and may lead to the de-glaciation of large parts of many mountain ranges this century.
Luke: ‘Be under doubt – it’s on !’
From UNEP and IPCC – Woohoo!
Why don’t you try submitting a paper on this to a peer reviewed journal?
Doug,
‘We passed a sign some kilometres from its face telling us that this marked where the glacier was in 1750’.
So who carried out the marking in 1750? Just interested.
Louis,
You should examine figure 6 of the second link which shows the measured variations in termini over time on three glaciers in New Zealand. All show both advance and retreat but the overall trend is very clear.
Don’t bother attacking me over the links I provided, I did not expect that you’d be convinced by the information and provided them for general discussion by those willing to go beyond a reactionary defensive position.
Waal suck mah sassafrass, Lamprey said something heah.
Waal, sorry para, but I had to watch a moovie, pay attention boy, moovie about Red October, huntin for sub that is.
Now what was ah on about – ooh yaas, Lamprey, mah boy, y’all as much fun as a sack of wet gerbils. Much ado inside but nothing on the outside.
Get mah meaning, Boy?
You are an empty bag of wind?
Unsurprisingly, the Swiss have pretty good records of glaciers, not just from current measurements, but from historical records. For anyone who really wants to know about the glaciers there, I recommend Swiss Glacier Monitoring Website, which summarizes ~100 glaciers, including a page per glacier in the list. This is a nicely-done website, starting from summaries to details, with the backup data.
If you want to see earlier history, the paper by Holzhauser, et al is useful, especially if you read about Grosser Aletsch, and then look at current web page, which goes back to 1870, but has data later than the paper.
For Swiss glaciers, at least, the message is fairly clear.
Jeremy C (10.45pm):
It would be fairly easy to figure out where the glacier front was in 1750; this point is now clothed in rainforest. This is why the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are such tourist attractions – they both come down to really low altitudes thanks to the huge dumps of snow at their top ends resulting from the Roaring Forties hitting these 3000m+ mountains.
You can tell when the glacier retreated from a point on the valley floor by just counting tree rings.
SJT,
You really do have serious problems with English comprehension – the art of diplomacy is knowing how to send someone to hell so they look forward to it.
Never mind Wil, one day you might.
I was surprised when I climbed Volcan Cotopaxi earlier this year that the locals informed me the glacier was retreating rapidly. I thought AGW didn’t exist and all glaciers were extending. Then again, perhaps it was altitude sickness and I dreamed the whole thing.
John Mashey; interesting site; but I think your conclusion about retreating is premature; check out the results for 1960 and 1950; at UR for instance they show the same degree of retreating occurring now, with some expansion in the ’80’s.
“There has never been a claim that all glaciers are retreating, could you provide a reference to it? Most are retreating.”
You got a start and finish date for that SJT? I can be quite sure that you are bullshitting. Mostly on the grounds that you are typing.
Look it may seem counterintuitive that the ice starts growing when it get colder but thats the history of it. It may be that though there is less precipitation in total that the precipitation may travel further from the tropical zones, leaving drier mid-lattitudes, but greater glacial growth in the far north and south. I would think that most glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere at least would either be on the advance now or soon. It would be good to see some sort of survey of this.
“I was surprised when I climbed Volcan Cotopaxi earlier this year that the locals informed me the glacier was retreating rapidly. I thought AGW didn’t exist and all glaciers were extending. Then again, perhaps it was altitude sickness and I dreamed the whole thing.”
It wouldn’t matter since you are a proven liar and its not for us to believe your testimony one way or another. Out of interest where is this here glacier that you claim to have climbed?
“But hey haven’t we been here before. I wonder what the world glaciology society would say about “the majority”? Hmmmm …. but let’s not look.
But what did NIWA say about NZ glaciers …. shrinking ?
http://www.niwa.cri.nz/pubs/wa/16-3/glacier
http://www.niwa.cri.nz/news/mr/2007/2007-11-18-2”
They don’t say what you claim they say Luke. So its just you being an idiot again.
Fact is, whether a particular glacier is shrinking or advancing at any particular moment in time has more to do with regional climate trends than global, much like the decline of ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro has more to do with the clearing of trees and thus declining local humidity than it is linked to global climate evolution. Of course, on a time scale of millennia the reverse is true.
Popularisers of the AGW hypothesis demand dramatic visuals, rather than rational, if equivocal, science—all the better to manipulate public opinion to accept the irrational, fear-driven decision making process of our current crop of political elites.
We’re forced fed endlessly recycled misleading images from the ABC’s video trope library, such as the power-plant-chimney-belching-columns-of-white-smoke-shot (99.99% of it condensing H2O, not CO2 “pollution”) and the ubiquitous calving-glacier-shot, even though a calving glacier is the sign of a growing glacier, not a shrinking one, whatever, it’s bloody dramatic.
Orwellian drama is what those who are manipulating AGW theory are all about. It’s the new never-ending War against Weather, where every hail storm, drought or cyclone becomes a political weapon. Either, we dramatically change the foundations of our socio-economic traditions towards a collectivist, negative growth, zero-sum, centrally-mandated model where power is concentrated in a technocratic elite beyond the pale of democratic processes or face climate apocalypse.
Yes, SJT, one could be forgiven for believing that every glacier in the world will soon be only faded memories, the polar ice caps melted, and St. Kilda Promenade some meters beneath the Bass Strait, while the great central deserts extend south to Geelong and east to Byron Bay, because that is what our children are being taught to believe their future will be.
And that’s the greatest crime of the AGW propagandists: The fear, self-doubt and cultural disorientation their misinformation has struck in the hearts of a whole generation, age 8 to 18, who believe that their unrealised future breaks at the hopeless bum end of a failed history rather than at the beginning of a tomorrow of burgeoning opportunity, invention and dreams worth striving towards.
SJT says most glaciers are retreating: how many are advancing.
Well, here’s a partial list of glaciers that are expanding.
http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm
Wes; everything you say is correct except for; “It’s the new never-ending War against Wheather,”; IMO it’s the never-ending War against humanity. There’s a lot of self-loathing out there and what better way to preserve your own inflated ego than to convert the self-loathing into misanthropy.
Dennis Prager has some interesting comments to make concerning the political left
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/11/25/why_reporters_–_and_judges_and_professors_–_are_biased
I had not realized that the lefties use a profession to achieve a political goal rather than enter a profession as a vocation.
Iceagenow as source – hahahahahahahahahaha – ooooo that’s good’un – how about a balanced comparison list from a trusted source and reasons from growth/shrinkage.
OH NO !
Bird and Wessy woo are BOTH back. ARGH !!!!!
SO we look forward to long maniacal madness from some NZ economic wanker combined with interminably long essays about nothing combined with English lessuns from some granitic boulder lover. (blah blah balh and blah and more blah blah blah – at least Hissink is interesting for novelty and diversity)
Ron Pike, You went on vacation to Alaska in the wintertime? Pass the mucklucks and right on dude. I hate the cold myself so it’s double impressive to find someone who volunteers for it on vacation.
Mount Logan’s glaciers are growing.
Mount Baker / Mount Shukson glaciers are growing.
Mount Rainier’s glaciers are too.
Mount Hood’s glaciers ///// ditto.
Mount St.Helens glacier “. ( A vulcano with a glacier??? are you kidding me? )
Mount Shasta ~~~~~~~~ yep…
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Ice_Age.html
Geologists Unexpectedly Find 100 new Glaciers in Colorado .
Officials previously believed the park (Rocky Mountain National Park), which is 60 miles northwest of Denver, included 20 permanent ice and snow features, including six named
glaciers. The new survey, conducted by geologist Jonathan Achuff, shows
there are as many as 120 features.
They don’t mean new, as in they didn’t exist before, but new, as in, they weren’t surveyed and recorded before.
James, I don’t know if you realise this, but, 21stcentury science and technology is a Lyndon LaRouche propaganda outlet.
Sorry about the mutiple posts.
I fired them off before it occured to me that your site was having a problem.
The “sorry” post is the only one that went through? Awww for crying out loud.
SJT what makes you think they would lie?
Might not know this but Mount Rainier isn’t exactly remote. You can see it from downtown Seattle on a clear day. The same is true of Mount Hood and Mount Shasta. ( OTOH Mount Baker and St Helens are a trek from any city)
If the glaciers on Rainier weren’t advancing, it being so close to the city airport and all, I am sure Al Gore would have used it as a prop for his movie instead of the troublingly ambiguous Kilimanjaro.
“Iceagenow as source – hahahahahahahahahaha – ooooo that’s good’un – how about a balanced comparison list from a trusted source and reasons from growth/shrinkage.”
Its a very good source. Don’t be an idiot. But there is one source that is always no good and thats you. You implied that NewZealands glaciers were by and large shrinking and yet your links in no way showed this.
So you had it backwards. Ice Age Now…….. Good Source…… Luke ……… Bad Source……. Lies all the time.
“SJT what makes you think they would lie? ”
I didn’t say they were lying, I said you misunderstood what they were saying.
“NEW ZEALAND
All 48 glaciers in the Southern Alps have grown during the past year.
The growth is at the head of the glaciers, high in the mountains, where they
gained more ice than they lost. Noticeable growth should be seen at the
foot of the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers within two to three years.(27 May 2003)
Fox, Franz Josef glaciers defy trend – New Zealand’s two best-known
glaciers are still on the march – 31 Jan 07 – See Franz Josef Glacier”
Right. Thats the answer we were looking for. And note. Its pretty much the opposite of the impression Luke tried to create.
“The growth is at the head of the glaciers, high in the mountains, where they
gained more ice than they lost.”
I think thats a very important point. Compare this to what we know about the heat island effect on precipitation when you have a hot city and then its cooler down wind from that city.
“Partly as a result of the urban heat island effect, monthly rainfall is about 28% greater between 20-40 miles downwind of cities, compared with upwind.[1]”
You are getting that extra precipitation when the clouds pass over and go from a warmer to a cooler area. So what we have to explain is how we get powerfully growing white wall of death during the cooler times when we ought to be getting less precipitation. I’m saying the only way (I can think of) to square that circle is to assume that we indeed get less precipitation during these times. But that the wind systems may work such that the winds at cloud level are a bit stronger or faster. And so less precipitation but more of it being blown further from the equator….
Which of course implies drought in the mid-latitude regions.
So why does the white wall of death wind up traveling like a slow-motion river, or billowing larval flow, crushing all that is before it? I think that what this is about is that when the lesser-precipitation-blown-further finally hits the ice front…….. shall we say 20-40 miles back from the front (going only on that heat island quote) the fact that the clouds have been traveling over this cold patch for that length of time will encourage the clouds to let go of more of their booty on average at that point. So you’ll have this build-up many miles back from the front which will keep on driving the ice-front onward. So what we’ll get is this vicious cycle that will bring the ice down off the mountains and then keep the glacial sheets moving across the land killing everything and buggering things up bigtime.
You mean about the 100 fresh permanent ice features? – You have a point. I was thinking they were newly formed.
Still, I don’t see how 100 newly surveyed ice features helps your case.
Hey James,
July and August are summer in Alaska Dude.
Surley you’re not that dumb are you?
Pikey.
Bird you really need your butt kicked all the way to Woy Woy.
I can see you are some pseudo-libertarian nitwit who embarrassed himself big time at the last election for being unelectable.
No formal references to your utter doggy-doo comments on glaciers – but anyway – you’re going to put up an UNRELATED quote from Wiki on UHI with an-referenced bit of drop crap from Iceagenow against a formal NIWA survey released 18/9/2008 http://www.niwa.cri.nz/news/mr/2008/2008-09-15
Yes Birdy – UHI such a major influence on NZ rainfall climate. Are you nuts?
Data interpretation on glaciers WRONG
Are you actually mental?
That link of yours in no way backs up what you are claiming. And it doesn’t contradict the information I quoted from the very reliable iceagenow. Its just that the science-grant whores have worded things to please their paymasters.
Re-read it dopey. And try and pull out of it the concrete facts.
UHI in NZ causing massive precip on the Alps …. hahahahahahahahaha
Birdy after this little incident don’t even bother. You drongo. But it’s telling isn’t it – you don’t believe AGW yet you want to ascribe some small NZ anthropogenic effects to climate “change” on glaciers… heap-‘um big medicine. Any hypocrisy. Just about a truckload.
woo hoo – you won’t live this one down …
Unbelievable – iceagenow written by some “former” architect versus NIWA … hahahahahahaha
and the dude believes in undersea volcanic warming too ….. LOL
No no. YOU are an idiot. And iceagenow is very reliable. Plus your link does not back up what you appear to be claiming. But of course since you are no scientist and merely a welfare recipient posing as a science worker you weren’t saying anything specific and I wouldn’t want to put words in your mouth.
So you make your case. Because the fact is that last year ALL New Zealand glaciers increased in mass. Your link is silent on this matter.
Your link mentions some glaciers that melted quickly in certain years. It mentions that if you go back a long way you can make the case that the glaciers are by and large melting. But that start date is way back in 1977. I see nothing suspicious about that. And nothing significant either. But your link says a lot less then it appears to say. So you just got it wrong idiot. But you go right ahead and try and make your case.
“Unbelievable – iceagenow written by some “former” architect versus NIWA ”
No NO dummy. The two aren’t in contradiction. But if you think they contradict you make your case.
No actually you are right. That wasn’t the link I started with. Well what do you know. It appears that Luke is right for a change. Will check it up. I guess if you wait long enough even the strangest things happen.
“NIWA Principal Scientist Dr Jim Salinger says the photographs taken on this year’s survey showed the glaciers had lost much more ice than they had gained during the past glacier year.”
Well he’s saying that the prior year they gained ice and this year they are saying they lost it. Its a media release written by someone else rather than their original publication. Its a very mixed picture that NIWA is giving overall. I admit that Lukes last link contradicts what I was saying with his other links in mind. But its not a cut and dried picture we are getting from NIWA at all.
FWIW there are many paintings of glaciers in Switzerland from the 17th century on which provide a rough gauge of where the glaciers were. Such evidence and written material is available, if spotty.
Bird kebabs for din dins. Birdy you should listen more often. It’s a NIWA release – sigh …
Birdy – a decent site references its sources – iceagenow does not – it’s some bloke from the pub’s opinion
“Hey James,
July and August are summer in Alaska Dude.
Surley you’re not that dumb are you?”
I have my moments.
Wendy Lawson had a press release back in April of last year,
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0704/S00026.htm , where she says, based on computer models designed to test the effect of the predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the glacier,
“The tongue of the iconic Franz Josef Glacier will melt away in the next 100 years,” and
“While small glaciers like the Franz Josef contain only a small proportion of the total global ice volume, they are important for sea level change because they respond very quickly to changes in climate”.
Small glaciers are going to rise the ocean? This is NIWA’s glacier expert.
We all can take heart that she is getting out of the office to fly around the glacier’s general area nowadays, which is an improvement.
James,
It is a rare pleasure to be conversing with an honest open Bloke.
Keep up the good work and just remember:
“Our democratic decision making process is less at risk from what voters do not know, than it is from what they do know that is FALSE.
Great to be conversing with you.
Pikey.
Approximately a decade ago, as I’ve mentioned once before, a Doctor R.J. Braithwaite wrote an article that appeared in Progress in Physical Geography.
In that article, which was peer-reviewed, Doctor Braithwaite tells us how he analyzed 246 glaciers, sampled from both hemispheres and latitudes, between the years 1946 and 1995. This “mass balance analysis” he conducted found that “some glaciers were melting, while a nearly equal number were growing in size, and still others remained stable.” Doctor Braithwaite’s unequivocal conclusion:
“There is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years.”
“By some estimates, 160,000 glaciers exist on Earth. Only 63,000 have been inventoried, and only a few hundred have been studied in the detail described by Braithwaite” (“It Would Be Nice to Know More about Ice,” Jay Lehr).
On the basis of the fallacy of insufficient evidence, all glacier fears are stopped cold right there.
But in fact that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Keith Echelmeyer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute, says this:
“To make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the problem is global warming, is very hard to do… The physics are very complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response.”
Mr. Echelmeyer goes on to tell us that in Alaska there are large glaciers advancing in the very same areas where others are retreating.
Quoting Doctor Martin Beniston, of the Institute of Geography at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland:
“Numerous climatological details of mountains are overlooked by the climate models, which thus makes it difficult to estimate the exact response of glaciers to global warming, because glacier dynamics are influenced by numerous factors other than climate, even though temperature and cloudiness may be the dominant controlling factors. According to the size, exposure and altitude of glaciers, different response times can be expected for the same climatic forcing.”
Of course, as Doctor Beniston intimates, the paramount thing to consider in any discussion of glacial melt is the sheer size of these suckers, which because of their size do not respond to heat and cold like the snow in your backyard. According to the excellent glacier program at Rice University, those response times run something like this:
Ice sheet: 100,000 to 10,000 years
Large valley glacier: 10,000 to 1,000 years
Small valley glacier: 1,000 to 100 years
“Glaciers are influenced by a variety of local and regional natural phenomena that scientists do not fully comprehend. Besides temperature changes, glaciers also respond to changes in the amount and type of precipitation, changes in sea level and changes in ocean circulation patterns. As a result, glaciers do not necessarily advance during colder weather and retreat during warmer weather” (John Carlisle, National Center for Public Policy).
“Glaciers are in world-wide retreat” — read one New York Times headline recently.
Well, they were anyway, starting decades before industrialization (i.e. increased CO2 output). As IPCC AR4 reports:
“Most mountain glaciers and ice caps have been shrinking, with the retreat probably having started about 1850 [NB: the end of the ‘little ice age’]. Although many Northern Hemisphere glaciers had a few years of near balance around 1970, this was followed by increased shrinkage.”
Research published by the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the much-touted Peruvian glacier (on p. 53-53) disappeared a few thousand years ago.
There are, moreover, glaciers forming across the globe, in both hemispheres. Here’s a very partial list:
In Norway: Alfotbreen Glacier, Briksdalsbreen Glacier, Nigardsbreen Glacier, Hardangerjøkulen Glacier, Hansebreen Glacier, Jostefonn Glacier, Engabreen Glacier, Helm Glacier, Place Glacier. Indeed, a great number of Scandinavia’s glaciers are exploding.
In France, the Mount Blanc Glacier.
In Ecuador, Antizana 15 Alpha Glacier.
In Argentine, Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest in all of Patagonia, was recently observed to be advancing at about 6 feet per day.
Chile’s Pio XI Glacier, the largest in the southern hemisphere, is also growing.
In Switzerland, Silvretta Glacier.
In Kirghiztan, Abramov Glacier.
In Russian, Malli Glacier is growing and surging.
In New Zealand, as of 2003, all 48 glaciers in the Southern Alps were observed to have grown.
In the United States: Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Mount Shuksan, Mount Shasta, Mount McKinley, Mount Hubbard, and Rocky Mountain National Park have all shown recent glacier growth.
There’s also this article from the Associated Press, which I quote only in part:
Geologists exploring Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Park say that they
discovered more than 100 additional glaciers here in a single summer,
said Mark Verrengia.
Officials previously believed the park, which is 60 miles northwest of
Denver, included 20 permanent ice and snow features, including six named
glaciers. The new survey, conducted by geologist Jonathan Achuff, shows
there are as many as 120 features.
“Comparisons with historical photos suggest that at least some of the
glaciers are expanding,” say park officials. “Subtle climate changes may
be helping the formation of glaciers or at least reducing their retreat.”
“We’re not running quite in sync with global warming here,” park
spokeswoman Judy Visty said.
Not, of course, that it really matters much either way, since the entire climate change issue is predicated upon a stupendously fraudulent premise: specifically, a corrupt epistemology.
To say nothing of the fact that, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, the free market is far better equipped to deal with environmental issues than the proposed “interventionist” (i.e. socialist) policies — for the simple reason that free markets generate astronomically more capital with which to deal with such issues.
The wealthier the country, the cleaner the country.
Louis “The water molecule has some peculiar properties in an electrical sense…”
I’ve noticed that too, Louis. If you put water in an electric kettle, you can make coffee with it. 🙂 BTW…I was reading a text book on the Sun. It’s amazing how many free electrons are spat out by Old Sol, and swarm past Earth. What we should do is stick up arrays of conductors and see if we can pick up some induced current to run our power projects.
Gordon,
Droll – 🙂
It’s the start of the wet season here in Halls Creek, WA, and the changing weather is truly amazing visually. Usually you are focussed on what job you might be involved in and take little notice of what is happening in the sky – the thunderstorm cloud formations are spectacular and take quite unexpected forms. This leads to the next question of what might be producing these unusual cloud morphologies.
I might take the AGW stance and lump it together as due to GLOBAL WARMING, or if you are an idiot, climate change. Personally these cloud formations share many similarities to the unusual astronomical pictures which the mainstream are puzzled with. From the electric plasma POV, not so puzzling.
Harking to my original post, IF the earth’s rotation is powered by a Faraday motor, then surely we should be able to come up with some way of tapping into this energy source?
It’s the equivalent of your indigent next-door neighbor surreptitiously wiring his home into your utility provided electricity.
I would have thought that this idea would appeal to the Lukes, NTs, SJTs, and other Barry Brook boofheads reading this – free energy without actually needing to create it.
If you need a reason why I think along this line, put it down to field experience with proton precession magnetometers that rely on spinning protons to precess to the orientation of the geomagnetic field at a location; my interest started from wondering why protons spin in the first place.
Enough – I think I might have overloaded SJT, Luke and NT past their limits.
Robert is correct when he states that increases precipitation causes glacial growth. But precipitation is largely dependant on the ENSO cycle in the tropics. Excess moisture is sequestered into glacial ice over a long period of time thereby removing moisture from the atmosphere, which in turn creates less snow. This increase and decrease in glacial movement is ongoing over eons and is nothing new. What is relevant here is the time frame used by the IPCC and its supporters to forecast and the sites used to bolster its argument.
There are literally thousands of glaciers worldwide and less than 10% have been studied, even less on a “climatic” timescale. Making predictions on singular studies on one or two particular glaciers in tropical Peru or Africa are irrelevant to the big picture, which the IPCC “assures” us it is looking at. The facts are they have continued to uses selective data from questionable sources over increasingly shorter climatic time frames because the “big picture” continually thwarts their best efforts to conjure up “Day After Tomorrow” scenarios.
For those interested in a bigger picture I suggest you GOOGLE Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski, an internationally recognised Glaciologist. He has studied glaciers over a long period of time throughout the world and has some interesting insights into the “real” situation concerning not only glacier movements but also how the analysis of gas bubble readings within them has been grossly abused to fit preconceived ideas on CO2 levels in the past.
The poor ‘warmers’ are certainly having a hard time on the glacier front. Or terminus! (Maybe terminal for the AGW Industry!)
Glaciers growing all over the world. Yet another official report in, this time from the NorwegianWater Resources and Energy Directorate, (NVE).
http://www.dailytech.com/Glaciers+in+Norway+Growing+Again/article13540.htm
Louis…”my interest started from wondering why protons spin in the first place”.
It was nicer for me back in the days when I accepted atomic theory as it came. You know, the nucleus packed with neutrons and protons with electrons orbiting them in discrete energy bands. That theory has served me well in my practice of electronics but it makes little sense overall.
More than 20 years ago, when I studied electrical engineering for a couple of years, no one spoke about quantum theory. It was not mentioned in text books nor was it very well known. Suddenly we are inundated with this theory, with it’s spins and probabilities. I was reading the other day that the notion of spin was introduced to account for certain things that did not make sense, so they fudged the science a bit to introduce it. Where have I heard that before? It seems no one knows if electrons and protons really spin, nor does it matter.
What we have here, as far as I’m concerned, is mathematicians adjusting equations to make sense of reality. In fact, that’s what the theoretical physicist David Bohm suggested about quantum mechanics, and he was an expert in the field. He portrayed QM and Newtonian mechanics as having traveled parallel paths with both of them having reached the ends of those paths. He put that down to a lack of understanding of what was actually happening, blaming part of it on the introduction of artificial parameters such as time.
I just hope that in my lifetime, they discover what an electron or proton actually is. I’m deeply curious and dissatisfied with the current theories. I would also like to see scientists getting back to being observational scientists rather than ego-trippers, politicians and overall jerks.
“More than 20 years ago, when I studied electrical engineering for a couple of years, no one spoke about quantum theory. It was not mentioned in text books nor was it very well known. Suddenly we are inundated with this theory, with it’s spins and probabilities. I was reading the other day that the notion of spin was introduced to account for certain things that did not make sense, so they fudged the science a bit to introduce it. Where have I heard that before? It seems no one knows if electrons and protons really spin, nor does it matter.”
I studied electronics engineering 30 years ago, and it had a lot to do with quantum theory. Semiconductor devices couldn’t work without it.
“… and it had a lot to do with quantum theory. Semiconductor devices couldn’t work without it.”
/ Turing word “Alan Turing”
Since I’ve been sifting through the net for all things glacial, I noticed that mountaineers appear to give the most up-to-date information. They give directions for the easier routes up the mountain, what kind of ice is up there, how much crevassing, if crevasses are hidden or exposed, snowlevels and accumulations, how much snow survived the summer, where avalanches are occuring, lots of good stuff.
They are actually interfacing with the test subject, which brings up a quantum mechanic type question.
The climbers seem to prefer climbing ice features. Their crampons, boot spikes, ice axes, practically all of their equipment is designed for diggin in footholds, drilling in spikes, carving out handholds, inducing avalanches (for safety reasons) and basicly doing violence to remote ice fields which in bygone days would have seen nothing more menacing then a mountain goat’s hoof.
Quantum theory says that the observer will always change the system.
I wonder how much of modern glacial retreat is a reaction to the observer?
@ Thinking Man
Silvretta in Switzerland advancing?
The Swiss say this about Silvretta. If you think it’s advancing, contrary to what they say, you should tell them their website is incorrect. There’s a contact email on the website, and from past experience, they’re pretty responsive. The Swiss of course care about their glaciers and have numerous reasons to wish them to stay about where they are [water, hydropower, tourism] or even advance a bit.
That Swiss website is one of the best around, as it has fairly complete data, not even interrupted by WW I and II, and you can look at the detailed records for each glacier, and see:
a) That nearby glaciers can be going in opposite directions in the same year, as local configurations do matter.
b) That on any date, if you cherry-pick, you can find at least one glacier going the opposite direction from the majority.
The only way to assess the general trends in Swtizerland is to look at *all* the data, without cherry-picking ones that support what you believe. Here’s a good, simple data analysis exercise, from a graph created by people who *really* want their glaciers to be around in 2100:
1) Print Glacier length variation page, which runs from 1880 to 2007.
2) The second figure shows the percent of glaciers retreating (red), stationary (green), retreating (blue)
Suppose we draw a line through the middle of the green bars, i.e., splitting those in half, saying:
retreat = red + .5* green
advance = blue + .5*green
3) Draw a second line at 50%. If the first line is above that, more glaciers are advancing than retreating.
From 1880 to 2007, that is true for 11 years, i.e., about 9% of the years
1916, 1918, 1919, 1920
1975, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985
For the other 91% of the years, more Swiss glaciers retreated than advanced.
4) This of course understates the degree of retreat of Swiss glaciers. If one takes the mean of “advance” as defined above, by eyeball, it looks like 20-25% average, i.e., most of the chart is red. I.e., most of the time, most of the glaciers are retreating, with occasional periods when slightly more glaciers advance than retreat.
Of course, in 2007, one glacier (Tseudat) advanced, so if someone wants to believe Swiss glaciers advanced in 2007, that’s the one to cite.
On the other hand, Silvretta has been shrinking regularly since ~1985.
5) Of course, none of this proves anything about glaciers anywhere else, but it is one of the most coherent and complete datasets, and is harder to cherry-pick than most.
To those arguing about Iceagenow.com’s veracity:
1. The host of it is an avowed ‘we’re headed for an ice age’. Question is when. Unless we’re at a cusp of history unknown for millions of years, there’s another one coming. It’s just when.
2. I’ve submitted some stuff to him for information and it’s clear that it’s edited with a global cooling aim in mind. Comment not judgement.
3. However: his theories are that ocean warming leads to increased precipitation as snow, leads to global cooling. Most of the time, that’s probably balances out over a century or so. His view, I think, is that occasionally epochal snowstorms+cold summers drive us into an ice age. He may be right, he may be wrong.
4. I’ve yet to find a single really neutral site on the web to discuss AGW. You’re either for or against. Nowhere is an interlinked climatic system discussed in terms of tangibles (changed weather patterns in US lead to changed weather patterns in Europe 1 week later etc etc). Nowhere are say 50 globally diverse sites monitored on an ongoing basis to determine a true picture of how glaciers are evolving. None that I’ve found anyway available to the public.
5. I neither agree with everything found on iceagenow.com nor do I agree with AGW.
6. In fact, I am currently of the opinion that oceanic modulation of the effects of multiple solar cycles on an interdecadal scale, allied to lunar influences probably has most effect, however carbon dioxide may also contribute. Not very popular, but it may be evidentially stronger than AGW…..
7. Glacier growth/retreat is a lagging indicator of climate – with a varying lag phase for different glaciers. It’s happened before and it will happen again. The world won’t die because of it.
8. Mount St Helens DOES have glaciers. Probably the most likely reason for current growth is that the eruption in the late 1970s wiped out ALL the glaciers in the crater, so to grow them again was probably pretty easy. Sooner or later it’ll return to steady state…..
9. Growth of glaciers requires:
a. Heavy late summer, autumn and winter snowfalls.
b. Regular mild freeze-thaw conditions to solidify the snow masses.
c. Cool summers with regular snowfall to prevent ice melt.
That happened in Alaska 2007/08. There’s been 275 inches of snow already at Alyeska by December 10th this year, so maybe it’ll happen again in 2008/09. Probably to do with PDO phase shift, since Alaska is very sensitive to that.
I think you’ll find similar things have happened in Europe 2007/08 too. Maybe less pronounced. But with 3m of snow already at 2500m in mid December, short of an unseasonable warm spell, this winter is shaping up similar to last.
I’d put a 50 year moratorium on CONCLUSIONS and a 50 year effort into DATA COLLECTION if I were you lot……..
RJ