Government climate experts blame glacial retreat on CO2, because they are completely incompetent and have the same political motivations as the IRS.
As you enter Glacier Bay in Southeast Alaska you will cruise along shorelines completely covered by ice just 200 years ago.
Explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait choked with ice in 1794, and Glacier Bay was barely an indented glacier. That glacier was more than 4000 ft. thick, up to 20 miles or more wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St.Elias Range of mountains.
By 1879 naturist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay. By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier headed Tarr inlet 65 miles from Glacier Bay’s mouth.
Here’s a US Geological Survey map showing glacier extent at Glacier Bay, Alaska, in the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries:
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/glacierbaymap.gif
Notice the large deceleration in rate of glacial retreat during the 20th century.
http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/glacier_retreat.htm
“While the glaciers that carved GNP’s majestic peaks were part of a glaciation that ended about 12,000 years ago, current glaciers are considered geologically new, having formed about ~7,000 thousand years ago. These glaciers grew substantially during the Little Ice Age (LIA) that began around 1400 A.D and reached their maximum size at the end of the LIA around A.D.1850.”
Glaciation peaked in 1850.
I have raised the same facts to Appell and Stroeve on this blog. They don’t even respond.
It is stumping in an age of low CO2 that a massive block of ice melted.
No it isn’t. It’s only stumping to anyone who thinks CO2 is the only thing that changes climate. Fortunately, most climate scientists know that there are many factors that change climate from Milankovich cycles to changes in solar output to feedback loops to changes in albedo due to where most of the land ends up due to continental drift. However, ceterus parabus (all other variables being equal), more CO2 means a hotter climate. Period.
It seems that the only people who think CO2 is the only thing that can change a climate are the denialists like yourself – so they use that as some red herring argument that makes no sense.
It is a current driving factor yes because nothing is changing the atmosphere quicker right now than an increase of CO2. The sun is not doing anything dramatic, albedo hasn’t changed that much, volcanic activity is stable and hasn’t changed, so it points to rising CO2 to explain the current warming we’re seeing.
Who knows if you’ll even read this, understand it, or if it even makes it past moderation.
I’ve noticed that Steve likes to delete posts that show he is wrong or disagree with him. He loves censorship when it’s on his side, but hates it when it disagrees with him.
What a moron
If CO2 is not the only thing to change climate, why is there $3 Trillion in carbon credits?
CAGW is a scam of galactic proportions and is unwinding fast. Na na Nenana!
So CO2 was higher in the 1700s, when those glaciers were retreating even faster than they are now?
http://now.msn.com/climate-refugees-in-newtok-alaska-will-need-to-relocate
What’s Suzanne Goldenberg up to now?
What is the rate of retreat currently?
Much less