The EPA climate change web site uses this imagery as evidence of “climate change.”
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators/pdfs/CI-snow-and-ice.pdf
What they aren’t showing is that more than 80% of the glacier’s documented retreat occurred before 1940, and that between 1794 and 1879, the glacier retreated eight feet per day.
This obviously has nothing to do with CO2, and it is either fraudulent or negligent for the EPA to infer that it does.
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/glacierbaymap.gif
Not wrong, just evil.
It must have advanced during the LIA.
The LIA didn’t exist, but if it did it was ended by man-made CO2.
Contrary to the knee jerk predisposition to slander and demonize real scientists, the LIA has been taken into account. The rebound in temperatures from the LIA stopped having an influence in the early 20th century.
Please see my response below where I discuss how increased thickness obviously decreases the rate of linear retreat.
IWB confirms the first law of global warming thermodynamics – an ice cube can’t melt unless the room is warming up. Once the temperature in the room levels at 90 degrees, the ice cube stops melting.
Passing Gas:
The rebound from the Little Ice Age has not yet been completed. Where are the trees that were growing before the ice started covering them?
If vegetation can not grow where it once grew then the conditions have not recovered. Find another fairy tale to attempt passing off as science.
It did! It does not now! Is that simple enough for you to comprehend?
You forgot to these two things into account:
Thickness. The further back you go, the much thicker the ice becomes. The ice in front melts much quicker and doesn’t require as much of a temperature increase to do so Therefore it doesn’t take much to melt a long stretch of thin ice than it does
Altitude. The further back you go, the higher it gets and thus the colder it gets.
Increased thickness (longer melt time) + increased altitude (longer melt time also) = slowing down in the rate of retreat per year.
So what does that have to do with CO2?
Non sequitor.
You are, through indirection, trying to prove that CO2 cannot have any heat insulating effect.
You start out by stating that a glacier is not retreating as fast as (you assume) it should be. And that is supposed to indicate, in turn, that there is no meaningful warming occurring in the first place. Since there is no meaningful warming taking place recently CO2 has had no effect on glacier retreat. Thus implying that CO2 has little if any warming ability.
This is what your argument boils down to:
1. Most of John Muir’s glacier retreat occurred in the past when temperatures where not that much higher according to AGW.
2. Therefore, it’s not really warming up in the way indicated.
3. Which in turn means that CO2 does not have the effect ascribed to it by scientists.
This game of “telephone” does not convey any meaningful message, just distortion upon distortion.
What I brought up about the rate of glacier retreat disproves the premise of your argument. When the premise is disproved, so is the conclusion.
By the way, Sunsettommy, the Little Ice Age was a regional phenomenon limited to Europe/Greenland. It would not have effected Alaska.
What are you talking about? Essentially all of the ice loss occurred below 350 ppm. 70% of it occurred below 300 ppm. The EPA is being spectacularly dishonest not mentioning these facts.
“What I brought up about the rate of glacier retreat disproves the premise of your argument.”
This is a delightful statement from someone who can’t even spell “sequitur” correctly. I wonder what IWB would state that your argument actually is, Mr. Goddard. My best guess is that she thinks you’re talking about Xenu eating BBQ thetans. Tanning lotion and Christian Supremacist potluck dinners are probably mingled in there, too.
It is quite clear that John Muir was a climate denier, and that he spread glacial misinformation for Exxon in the middle of the 18th century.
You are that dense!
The Friggen glacier sits on top of a friggen bay. It is at sea level. You are wrong about this glacier on both counts. It was thicker in 1760 and has been receding since then.
Only in climate science can you find people that think the LIA was normal………..
The change in altitude may be small but even if there were no difference in altitude the point about ice retreat slowing down due to thicker ice still stands
Passing Gas:
Besides cherry picking wrong information you also forgot to include the longest record available for the site being discussed which would also be Cherry Picking! How is the Cherry Ice Cream?
I truly believe IWB is an actual scientist, because no-one else could be this stupid. So _thickness_ determines melting rate, right? I have one real quick ultra-science question here: How many dimensions does a glacier have?
Four!!!!!
Unless you consider it sentient, then five.
Ah, but if you get to pick the start and end points, then you get to define CHANGE
and you can make it FAST, SLOW, INCREASING, DECREASING . . . . . whatever.
The magic crystal ball – that always says exactly what you want it to say.
Now, that’s CONVENIENT
Thicker ice melts slower. The higher it gets, the colder it gets. Historic breakthrough discoveries, right up there with the Theory of Relativity. Give than man a Nobel Prize!
That thicker ice melts slower and thus slows down the rate of linear retreat is a common sense fact that has not been taken into account by the posters on this thread.
Steve used simple linear retreat as the crux of his argument while ignoring the effects that thickness would have had. The premise is flawed, thus the conclusion.
This is one of the dumbest straw men I have ever encountered.
Seen above: an illiterate who has never heard of “calving”.
If the Glacier is indeed creeping down a mountain valley, the more it retreats the less mass remains and that would allow it to move into warmer terrain faster. A simple matter og a little known item called “Gravity”.
CO2 was not a factor for the changes in this glacier. Long term weather patterns in that region were during both construction and destruction phases.
Mikey says there was no LIA. Clearly the retreat of the Muir Glacier was due to oil burning lamps and Irish dancing.
It was the Russian seal hunters getting drunk on vodka and grinding them down with dance!
You know how those Mikeys are! 8)
“CO2 was not a factor for the changes in this glacier. Long term weather patterns in that region were during both construction and destruction phases.”
If Global Warming caused by CO2 is not a factor “in this glacier” as you said then are you saying that it was a factor in other glaciers?
Why would this glacier’s retreat have non Global Warming causes compared to others? Please note that a substantial majority of glaciers worldwide are retreating. Only a very small percentage are either stable or advancing due to their being high in elevation beyond the current reach of warming temperatures.
The world wide glaciers that are retreating have been retreating for almost 300 years since the LIA which DID have ab effect in Alaska. As a matter of fact many regions around the globe show evidence of experiencing the LIA or a similar period about the same time even if not to the same extent. It is just like regional weather patterns today. Not every location experiences the same weather on the same day of even week.
The is recent evidence that the Majority of the glacier are not retreating, just those that have easy access and the researchers report while they tend to ignore the stable or advancing ones.
@GG – I would also add that of those glaciers that are retreating, many are revealing tree stumps. Until forests grow there anew, we have a lot of warming to go to get back to the MWP, Holocene Maximum, etc.
If Global Warming caused by CO2 is not a factor “in this glacier” as you said then are you saying that it was a factor in other glaciers?
Well, point one out. Do it. Right after you get back from jetskiing to the North Pole.
P.J.:
I agree and find the existence of glaciers is a sign the globe is still to cold to properly sustain a vibrant biosphere. It is easier to adapt to warm conditions for all the worlds life forms than it is to try to adapt to the cold arid conditions around glaciers. The water being retained by glaciers is water that can not be used in the environment. If all the Glacier in Alaska were to melt it would be a good start. Greenland and regions around the north pole being ice free more of the year would allow more life in that area.
@GG: “It is easier to adapt to warm conditions for all the worlds life forms than it is to try to adapt to the cold arid conditions around glaciers.”
Exactly! Having lived through many a Canadian winter (and we are told by almost all other Canadians that we have it easy in southern Ontario), I can tell you it is much easier to deal with hot weather than cold. Canada is the second largest country on the planet and we only have just over 30 million people, over 1/3 of which live in aformentioned southern Ontario. Most of it is just too cold and the growing season is too short to grow anything but moss, lichens, and scruffy black spruce trees. About 2 years ago in the local rag’s real estate section, there was an ad for land for sale up in Kapuskasing (I think), which is a tiny town in the middle BFN (boreal forest nowhere), with more black flies in a moose’s ear than people in the town. 200 acres was going for something like $10,000 and property taxes were $150 per YEAR!
P.S. Here is a look at how arid the world was at the last glacial maximum:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_glacial_max.html
Ill wind blowing says:
June 26, 2011 at 9:40 pm
By the way, Sunsettommy, the Little Ice Age was a regional phenomenon limited to Europe/Greenland. It would not have effected Alaska.
==============================================================
Post Little Ice Age Rebound in the Glacier Bay Region
Little Ice Age Glaciation in Alaska: A Record of Recent Global Climate Change ..
Post Little Ice Age Collapse of the Glacier Bay Icefield, Alaska
Rapid viscoelastic uplift in southeast Alaska caused by post Little Ice Age retreat
and on and on and on…..
Let me concede the possibility that LIA did have an effect on Alaska. The substance of my arguments have still not been responded to in any meaningful way.
Particularly, the effect on glacier withdrawal due to increased thickness. That alone invalidates Steve’s supposition.
Furthermore, anecdotal (cherry picked information from one Glacier used to make broad and sweeping judgments on Global Warming is invalid. How does any of this apply to the rest of the majority of the Earth’s glaciers that have retreated? This includes South America.
By the way, you’re obviously hiding behind the LIA as a cure all for your fears of AGW. Don’t you realize that we rebounded from the LIA a long time ago? Look at a temp chart and you’ll see that the starting and ending points of the LIA are lower than current temperatures.
Your a loon.
you’ll see that the starting and ending points of the LIA are lower than current temperatures.
What was that about cherry picking again, Mr. Ill “Sequitor” Bowling?
You really should replace Bill “Hack” Maher. Your stuff is at least 1.3 times as funny as his unfunny garbage.
OK, let’s try something more simplistic: IWB, do you think that the EPA photo comparison described in this blog entry is in any way misleading, wrong, or fraudulent?
Steve: “Your a loon.”
A typical example of Steve’s telegraphic, monosyllabic, in depth rebuttals.
You write thousands of words and say very little. You are completely avoiding the point of this post
Ill wind blowing says:
June 27, 2011 at 12:14 am
How does any of this apply to the rest of the majority of the Earth’s glaciers that have retreated? This includes South America.
===============================================================
“There is geological information from the position of moraines or till left behind by receding glaciers that provide a more global, albeit indirect, picture of the advances ( and, less precisely the retreats) of mountain glaciers. Such evidence suggests, for example, increased glaciation in certain regions of the world outside Europe prior to the 20th century, including Alaska in North American, and New Zealand, and Patagonia in the Southern Hemisphere. (see Grove 1988)”
————Michael Mann, Little Ice Age, 2002
WOW! JUST WOW! The glaciers in the alps, the glaciers in the Himalayas, the glaciers in the southern hemisphere all provide evidence of the LIA and the attempted recovery from that weather pattern. The biological activity in the regions most affected by the LIA do not show the recovery you claim has happened.
Some imagined Proxy research has ignored the obvious and you fell for the scam. As long as they continue to find full grown trees under the ice dating from jst before the LIA the recovery has not compleated!
I thought Ill would like to see Michael Mann’s thoughts on it. 😉
But you’re exactly right….as long as they are finding trees, buildings, cemeteries, farms, etc under glaciers…..
…then we still have not recovered or returned to where we were before the glaciers advanced
I’ve always wondered what they were going to do with the mastodons any way…
..all that frozen permafrost used to be pasture
Sorta blows a big hole in the unprecedented warming……………don’t it?
hey , I was very alarmed in 1969 when I heard about Glacier Bay’s glaciers retreating. I blamed mankind for influencing nature.
So now I can blame mankind because of co2, oh wait, damn that doesn’t make sense does it?
Oh well lets blame mankind, we have to be at fault, we need to do penance for our being here.Well not me or you per say but you know, the rabble out there. Let them pound sand while we enjoy our shelter…
My apologies for not being able to respond to every poster. I’m always jumping back and forth between sites.
Good night.
“By the way, Sunsettommy, the Little Ice Age was a regional phenomenon limited to Europe/Greenland. It would not have effected Alaska.”
LIA has been found in several places in the SOUTHERN Hemisphere.
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/jan/12jan2011a1.html
Little Ice Age Chronology for Classen and Godley Glaciers, Mount Cook National Park, New Zealand
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=ucin990634749
I think you better retract your statement.
Criminal Clowns maybe?
Jeez, I wanted to get into this thread and point out that obvious Cherry Picking made clear by Steve using the 240 year old record, but I see everyone came aboard quickly.
Especially Grumpy Grampy 😉 who’s kicking ass and taking names.
You go girl. 🙂
Thanks Sweety!! Blow Kiss!!!! But Grampy is for Granpa and a name given by a five year old. Grumpy:
http://www.amazon.com/Grumpy-Action-Figure-Disneys-Dwarfs/dp/B001A7BY48
WINK! WINK!!!!
Arrrgh! My bad.
Grampy.
I read Granny for some reason!
Either Dyslexia or Alzheimers, sorry!
No need for sorry! It is part of having fun! 8)