In contrast to your failure to cite anything, BBC’s conversations with scientists strike me as quite credible. Those reports would be legal in a court of law. They’re based on good research. Your opinion is pretty low, I admit, but I have nothing to suggest your opinion is better than any reporter anywhere. I regret I don’t know your science chops, but there you have it.

Of course glaciers advance and retreat on the basis of precipitation. Seasonally, there should be both advances and retreats; in some periods, glaciers should advance or retreat for a decade or so at a time. The reports I listed indicate glacier decline is a century-long trend in most cases. You’ve offered nothing in rebuttal.

So, since this is a century-long decline, which the science reports say are not the seasonal advances you offered, is there a reason I should have accepted your note as something more than it was?

I regret your joy at glacial decline. I wish you had evidence that would offer a glimmer of rebuttal to the claim that it’s human-caused activities that is causing the decline. Maybe someone with more information than you have will offer such a report.

The BBC’s opinion, however, is incredible. As in: not credible. And that link on Alpine glaciers only reports on a specific, localized area, not on global anything, which makes it a weather report. And it is from 2004 — meaning that the data was probably taken from the preceding decade, when temps were temporarily rising. Now, temperatures are falling, big time. That fact outdates your cite, no?

And Ed, you didn’t read the link I posted @09:44:28, did you? The information that glaciers advance and recede is primarily dependent on precipitation seemed to go right over your head too. That’s unfortunate, because precipitation is the cause of glaciers’ advance and retreat, not the silly, repeatedly falsified AGW hypothesis.

But that’s OK, you have your glaciers, and if their putative recession makes you happy, then I’m happy for you.

It’s got nothing to do with AGW, though.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119079325/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Chacaltaya (in Bolivia) has lost 80% of its area in last two decades:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6496429.stm

Rapid decline of Alpine glaciers observed with satellite data, Geophysical Research Letters, 2004:
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:5CH9G0de9H4J:folk.uio.no/kaeaeb/publications/grl04_paul.pdf+

Switzerland’s glaciers are shrunken by two-thirds, and experts say almost all mountainous, non-polar glaciers are shrinking:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/glaciation/glaciersrev4.shtml

Almost all European glaciers are shrinking faster than had been expected:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7299561.stm

And I don’t reject peer reviewed data. I had asked you for more timely peer reviewed data, rather than your 1990 article. You could look it up @3:52:06^

The fact is that glaciers are fed by precipitation. A 0.6 degree C change in global temps isn’t going to make glaciers melt.

Is my statement in error? Show us the data. Got no data? That’s what I thought.

It is not the job of skeptics, or their duty, to prove that the climate is not well within its normal historical parameters.

It is the duty of climate alarmists who hypothesize runaway global warming and climate catastrophe, as a result of AGW, to prove their case. They have failed to do so.

I am willing to debate AGW, but you must submit something more credible than 1990 data, or an unfounded opinion from the Society of Environmental Journalists. I know you probably believe they are credible and even-handed. But they are not. They have an agenda, as we can see from the name of their organization.

If you can not provide timely peer-reviewed data that states [as you have stated] that only a “tiny” number of glaciers are advancing, then your AGW/CO2/catastrophe hypothesis fails. Doesn’t it? Because the climate alarmist contingent has the obligation, per the scientific method, to prove that we’re headed for runaway global warming as a result of an extremely small addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. Serious proof of that conjecture would be much appreciated.

The Sunset maps are good, I agree, E. M. Smith. Of course, they show warming, compared to the Ag maps. No, you wouldn’t have much change since the latest edition of the Sunset maps. But if you compare them to the 1990 USDA maps, you see the changes. There are differences between the Sunset and AHS maps, too — but nothing in the Sunset stuff suggests any problem with AHS’s conclusions that plants formerly hardy in many cities, no longer are, and that there is definite northward creep in plant zones.

Especially, nothing refutes the annual march of springtime. It’s not shown on the hardiness maps, but it’s still there.

Forgive me if I don’t buy into the pronouncements of the “Society of Environmental Journalists.” A couple of selected counties in Florida do not mean anything at all with regard to planetary climate change. You can always find specific locations that vary from the mean.

And your link to “Shrinking glaciers worldwide” is also risible. The date on the link is January 1999. See here for what has transpired since.

Is that the best you can do?

Here’s a note from the University of Wyoming on shrinking glaciers worldwide:
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap10/nzglacier.html

Good and bad news from melting glaciers and decreasing sea ice in and around Greenland:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1001/p01s02-wogn.html

How climate change contributes to disaster in Darfur:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0727/p01s04-woaf.html