Global Warming a Little Closer to Home

[#juan]

Beating a hasty retreat


DAWN WALTON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
October 13, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT

COLUMBIA ICEFIELD, ALTA. — The Athabasca Glacier works magic on the senses.
Here, at the southern tip of Jasper National Park in Alberta, is a remnant of the last ice age that extends six kilometres, is almost a kilometre across and, in places, is 300 metres thick. Yet the trickle of water can be heard deep under foot. A mountain standing guard at the glacier's headwall groans with cracking ice. Massive avalanches occur here each day. A constant wind whips through the snowbound world. It's the beginning of June and warm temperatures taking hold of the Rockies serve up snow perfectly designed for snowball fights as spring ushers in the annual melt. Runoff of snow that fell 150 years ago tastes as pure as it is cold.
The Athabasca Glacier, easily the most famous and visited on the continent, sits within sight of the equally renowned Icefields Parkway.
The route, starting either from the Lake Louise or Jasper townsites, takes visitors along a 230-kilometre stretch of Highway 93, through a region recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its important geological value and natural wonder.

Everyone should see this beautiful place, but don't wait too long...

http://tinyurl.com/2qr79a

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

According to this article, the glacier has been retreating since 1843 (probably even before that). Probably since the last ice age. We can argue about accellaration caused by CO2 and Climate Change but given enough time and no pending ice age, this glacier will eventually disappear. Its just a matter of when.

 

[#juan]

According to this article, the glacier has been retreating since 1843 (probably even before that). Probably since the last ice age. We can argue about accellaration caused by CO2 and Climate Change but given enough time and no pending ice age, this glacier will eventually disappear. Its just a matter of when.

The industrial revolution started in the seventeen hundreds. Of course that glacier was retreating before 1843. We won't argue about climate change because climate change is a fact.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

The industrial revolution started in the seventeen hundreds. Of course that glacier was retreating before 1843. We won't argue about climate change because climate change is a fact.

Yes Climate Change is a fact. Whether Climate Change is caused, or what percentage of the change is caused, by humans is what is the unknown.

 

[coldstream]

The evidence for climate change is completely selective. In Antarctica the ice shelf is retreating on one side of the continent and increasing on the other.. which means there is a completely myterious phenomenon occurring for which the global warming climate models have no explanation. As they don't for any of the monumental climate changes of the epochs or more moderate climate changes that have happened in the millenium prior to the industrial age (a much warmer period than we are experiencing now around the year 1000, a mini ice age in Europe from1400 to 1700). The fact that the radical environmental movement has been so dishonest about climate change, and so dismissive of real science.. should be a caveat to all to beware of doomsayers who know nothing of what they are talking about.

We might be in transitory warming period, even that is far from conclusive, in line with a cycle, peak to valley, that happens every 500 to 600 years.. and which honest scientists admit they have no explanation for. Global Warming is not a scientific concept.. it is a political one.. tied in with a deep pessimism and confusion that is inundating Western Civilization.. and will lead to catastrophic economic and social consequences if unchecked. It is no surprise that Kyoto is intricately linked in with the Global trading regime that is throttling the Western economies with Free Trade. Environmentalism has elevated global warming to an article of faith that needs no material evidence or logical premis.. as indeed there is none. It only requires true believers who leave their reason and skepticism at the door of its temple.

 

[Extrafire]

Like it's unusual for glaciers to either retreat or advance. 30 years ago during the global cooling scare they warned us that glaciers had started to advance again, and that was scary.

It's always happening.

A New Alpine Melt Theory
By Hilmar Schmundt

The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren't around at all. A group of climatologists have come up with a controversial new theory on how the Alps must have looked over the ages.


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AP​

The Morteratsch glacier in Switzerland has retreated by 1.5 km since 1900. Some scientists believe that glacial fluctuation could be a more normal development than previously thought.
He may not look like a revolutionary, but Ulrich Joerin, a wiry Swiss scientist in his late twenties, is part of a small group of climatologists who are in the process of radically changing the image of the Swiss mountain world. He and a colleague are standing in front of the Tschierva Glacier in Engadin, Switzerland at 2,200 meters (7,217 feet). "A few thousand years ago, there were no glaciers here at all," he says. "Back then we would have been standing in the middle of a forest." He digs into the ground with his mountain boot until something dark appears: an old tree trunk, covered in ice, polished by water and almost black with humidity. "And here is the proof," says Joerin.

Radical new theory

The tree trunk in the ice is part of a huge climatic puzzle that Joerin is analyzing for his doctoral thesis for the Institute for Geological Science at the University of Bern. And he is coming to an astonishing conclusion. The fact that the Alpine glaciers are melting right now appears to be part of regular cycle in which snow and ice have been coming and going for thousands of years.

The glaciers, according to the new hypothesis, have shrunk down to almost nothing at least ten times since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. "At the time of the Roman Empire, for example, the glacier tongue was about 300 meters higher than today," says Joerin. Indeed, Hannibal probably never saw a single big chunk of ice when he was crossing the Alps with his army.

The most dramatic change in the landscape occurred some 7,000 years ago. At the time, the entire mountain range was practically glacier-free -- and probably not due to a lack of snow, but because the sun melted the ice. The timber line was higher then as well.

The scientists' conclusion puts the vanishing glaciers of the past 150 years into an entirely new context: "Over of the past 10,000 years, fifty percent of the time, the glaciers were smaller than today," Joerin states in an essay written together with his doctoral advisor Christian Schluechter. They call it the "Green Alps" theory.

Joerin admits his theory goes against conventional wisdom. "It is hard to imagine that the glaciers, as we know them, were not the norm in past millennia, but rather an exception," he says while he and his companions dig out the tree trunk with shovels, axes and bare hands.

Indeed, critics accuse him and his colleagues of relying on a thin and ambivalent layer of facts. The Green Alpinists respond to the argument their own way: with a large orange chain saw. Kurt Nicolussi, a slender man in his late 40s, slices a slab of wood as large as a wiener schnitzel out of the trunk and analyzes it. "At least 400 annual rings, well preserved, perhaps the best sample we have ever had," he declares proudly.

Dead wood tells a lively story
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AP​

Journey to the center of the earth. Or under the glacier at least.
Nicolussi, professor for Alpine Research at the University of Innsbruck, Nicolussi is a dendrochronologist, something of a tree historian. He records the exact location of the find, carefully packs up the slab and labels it with a new name: "TSC-160" -- find number 160 of the Tschierva Glacier. Under the microscope, the thickness and the shape of the annual rings reveal a considerable amount of detail about the location and the climate conditions under which the tree grew. To date, he has collected and analyzed more than 400 chunks of wood.

Nicolussi's assessment of TSC-160: It comes from a stone pine (Pinus cembra) that lived at least 538 years. "This is not unusual, pines grow extremely slowly, but become quite old," the scientist explains. TSC-160 died approximately 6880 years ago, during the Neolithic Age, somewhere at the foot of Piz Bernina which is today covered with an impenetrable ice shield.

Somewhere along the line, the tree was buried by masses of ice and dragged into the valley where it remained until the glacier set it free again last summer -- a secret message from the Stone Age at a place thought to be covered in "eternal ice."

Although glacier experts like Hanspeter Holzhauser have been collecting remains of plants in the vicinity of glaciers for years, they only began systematically analyzing the finds about 13 years ago.

I don't know if the links will still work. They seem to be down at the moment.

 

[Extrafire]

The industrial revolution started in the seventeen hundreds. Of course that glacier was retreating before 1843. We won't argue about climate change because climate change is a fact.

Yes, we've been on a gradual warming trend since the 18th century. And that just happens to have been the coldest period in the last 8000 years, and mankind suffered immensely as a result of that cool period. Why would anyone want to return us to such miserable conditions?

 

[DaSleeper]

Four is an even number:lol:;-)

 

[petros]

The industrial revolution started in the seventeen hundreds. Of course that glacier was retreating before 1843. We won't argue about climate change because climate change is a fact.

The industrial revolution came from wind and water power long before coal.

 

[darkbeaver]

No body knows how many industrial revolutions there have been on earth. Every one of them ended badly though. Will we be the exception? smelting copper IR stone arrow heads IR fur clothing IR iron swords IR

 

[petros]

No body knows how many industrial revolutions there have been on earth. Every one of them ended badly though. Will we be the exception? smelting copper IR stone arrow heads IR fur clothing IR iron swords IR

If revolutions aren't working then maybe something linear is in order?

 

[darkbeaver]

If revolutions aren't working then maybe something linear is in order?

Well there's a lot of debate about the value of failure. Maybe were not supposed to fix it, maybe it is there to fix us.

 

[Praxius]

According to this article, the glacier has been retreating since 1843 (probably even before that). Probably since the last ice age. We can argue about accellaration caused by CO2 and Climate Change but given enough time and no pending ice age, this glacier will eventually disappear. Its just a matter of when.

The glaciers have been retreating since the last Ice Age..... and as more years pass, of course they're going to melt even quicker then before.

Why?

Because there is less ice and less glacier mass to keep its core colder for longer. Take a full sized ice cube and put it beside a small broken piece of ice and see which one melts faster.

Which also explains why many of the tempratures in the world are going up as well...... because there is less ice in the world to keep things cool.... there are smaller and fewer glaciers for air currents to blow cooler air around...... eventually those Nor'easters won't be as bad as we've known them to be.

But like they have always done..... the glaciers will return after a while..... in full force, and then we're all dead.

 

[Bar Sinister]

The glaciers have been retreating since the last Ice Age..... and as more years pass, of course they're going to melt even quicker then before.

Why?

Because there is less ice and less glacier mass to keep its core colder for longer. Take a full sized ice cube and put it beside a small broken piece of ice and see which one melts faster.

Which also explains why many of the tempratures in the world are going up as well...... because there is less ice in the world to keep things cool.... there are smaller and fewer glaciers for air currents to blow cooler air around...... eventually those Nor'easters won't be as bad as we've known them to be.

But like they have always done..... the glaciers will return after a while..... in full force, and then we're all dead.

Your view seems to be a case of the chicken or the egg. Is it getting warmer because there is less ice or is there less ice because it is getting warmer? I wonder if that explanation works for the melting of snow in spring as well.