Our glaciers are growing, not melting

These portions are in my 'back yard':

Names? More than just a handful, please.

When I reset trail poles along the Nisqually Vista Loop at Paradise, I don't see this.

When I look down from Burroughs Mountain to the toe of Emmons Glacier, I don't see this.

Of course the Crater Glacier has grown since 1980. Before May 18, 1980, the crater itself didn't exist.

Many glaciers in Washington State are being monitored. The old vs. recent slide shows have not been encouraging.

If the NPS has any official position about what is happening to its Cascades glaciers, it is not prominently displaying it. The situation is more complex than the common public AGW controversy.

But without some other detail to support these surprising claims about my own back yard, I won't waste any time looking at the claims about other areas.

 

Something I know of personally, the massive retreat of glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana (all may be gone within 20 years)...

Glacier Retreat in Glacier National Park | Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK)

I picked up on this one as, again, I know the area personally...

Not according to this they aren't...

...

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Josef_Glacier]Franz Josef Glacier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Also good article here...

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850]Retreat of glaciers since 1850 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Did you even read the wiki link on franz josef? Wiki says its been growing at a rate of 70cm a day since 1984 LOL

 

That was a difficult article to make any sense of.

In the first four paragraphs, what the author said was:

Some glaciers are growing. Yep, that's true, nobody says any different.

The number of glaciers being monitored is not enough to make conclusions about averages. He bases that on one paper and provides no analysis to support the statement.

Glaciers are supposed to be melting, we're coming out of an ice age.

Followed immediately by: Glaciers are actually growing, on average.

So, in the first four paragraphs, I see the following jumble of thoughts:

Some glaciers are growing.
We don't have enough information to tell whether glaciers are melting on average.
We're coming out of an ice age so of course they are melting.
But they are actually growing.

I didn't bother to go on to see why he thought sea levels weren't rising.

If we're going to argue about anecdotes, let's talk about taking our kids to Glacier National Park before 2020, the date at which the glaciers are not projected to be gone from there.

No More Glaciers in Glacier National Park by 2020?

If we want to talk about systematically gathered data regarding ice and snow, then, go to the National Ice and Snow Data Center and see what they say.

A thumbnail synopsis of what we do and don't know is here, including introduction to the satellite-based monitoring (for essentially all glaciers) and ground-based monitoring (for a small subset of glaciers).

SOTC: Glaciers

Understanding that glaciers vary significantly, here's what they post as a summary of what's happening to glaciers on average:



Anyway, if Gore was lying about glaciers, as is the thrust of the article, he seems to have good company.

Sea level? Again, if I want information sea level, I check with the data source of record. University of Colorado Boulder processes the data for NASA, as described here:

University of Colorado Global mean sea level

Showing this short-term trend graph:




There's no need to settle for somebody's spin about what is or isn't happening. Certainly not when they are all over the map, as this article is.

The basic data of record are publicly available. If somebody tells you that glaciers are growing on average, and sea level isn't rising ... it might be reasonable actually to look up the data rather than accept that at face value.

 

Did YOU read it? It stated it was the exception to the rule (the original article quoted at the start of the thread stated all 50 glaciers in NZ were growing). Further it stated it is projected to reduce massively.

 

What, asking non believers to actually look up data, you are not living in the reality of the see no evil people.

 

You do realize that there is a difference between localized sea levels (which you are referencing) and global mean sea levels which chogan2 is referencing?

It's the same as suggesting that because it was really cold on the east coast this winter, global warming is a hoax, when in fact it was one of the warmest if not the warmest on record when you look at the globe.

These links point out some the difficulties involved with measuring global sea levels. Note that all the alarmist warnings about coastal flooding are based on models that assume melting glaciers, or are based on nothing but creative license.

References please. Chogan2's reference clearly shows that the data has been trending up steadily for the past 16 years quite steadily.

Ah, that old fallacy again. Got anything new?

 

This is a short clip of time - but even still shows a recent flattening in the rate of sea level rise since 2006. Over the last century, rates of sea level rise were actually higher during the first half than in the latter half. So I'm not sure rate of sea level rise is at all supportive of an acceleration in warming as a result of man. The data do not make the case:

On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century
S. J. Holgate, Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool, UK

"Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea level for 1904–2003. These records were found to capture the variability found in a larger number of stations over the last half century studied previously. Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003). The highest decadal rate of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on 1964 (−1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of change was 1.74 ± 0.16 mm/yr."

 

Stop trying to pick trends from data sets which are not statistically significant.

There is an uncertainty level of 3-4 mm using that data. If you drew error bars around the chart, you'd quickly see that nearly all the data falls within those points.

Additionally - you could cherry pick your start/end points in a number of different ways to try to support an increase or decrease in rate ignoring statistics.

 

Although observations do show far more retreating glaciers than advancing ones, what gets forgotten in all these discussions is that climate change impacts are just barely starting to be noticed.

Yes, short (a few years or even just a decade or two) timespans are nowhere near as statistically significant as longer periods. The concern is not so much what's happening today or even five or ten years from now, but what's in store throughout this century and beyond.

Today we relocate a sinking arctic village or two and start planning for trans-arctic shipping lanes. Those are just sneak previews of the main event on the horizon.

I do hope, though, that skeptics who reject a decade of sea level statistics don't try to place significance on a decade of lesser global temperature increases. Fair is fair...