Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
And the opening of the NewYorkTimes article reads:
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont. — What will they call this place once the glaciers are gone?
My suggestions are at the end of the post.
There is a redeeming paragraph in the NYT article. It reads (my boldface):
The retreat is not entirely due to man-made global warming, though scientists say that plays a major role. While the rate of melting has alternately sped up and slowed in lock step with decades-long climate cycles, it has risen steeply since about 1980.
“sped up and slowed” suggests the glaciers have been melting all along. And that’s correct. The epoch we are now in is called an interglacial. And what happens during interglacials? Glaciers melt. That’s precisely what they’ve been doing since the last ice age ended many millennia ago. The author of the NYT article even acknowledges that in the opening of the next paragraph:
And while glaciers came and went millenniums ago…
The rest of the article is about how regional climate might be different with the glaciers gone. A hearty thank you to the author for noting that. That’s precisely why we need realistic regional decadal and multidecadal forecasts from climate models…something that climate models are still incapable of doing because the climate science community, under the direction of the UN, has only focused their efforts on the hypothetical effects of human-induced global warming, neglecting the basic processes and impacts of coupled ocean-atmosphere processes.
My suggestion is they leave the park name as it is OR they call it Beautiful Landscapes Are Now Visible…Now That The Dangerous, Cold And Slippery Ice Is Gone National Park.
Here’s a link to the slide show the NYT provided. As I said: beautiful landscapes.
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How about Glacier Memorial National Park?
Good suggestion, although I would prefer the more forward-looking “Future Tropical Paradise National Park.”
What about ‘Interglacial National Park’?
Imagine this today. It would be mostly blamed on man changing the climate. We must act now (1940)!
The paper’s abstract
“A lacustrine-based Neoglacial record for Glacier National Park, Montana, USA”
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.08.005
Or – “After the Martini is Drained National Park”.
My suggestion is, “the interglacial park”, got a good ring to it, and it’s the truth.
They can rename the lodge “The Interglacial Retreat”.
The last worldwide glacial retreat was in the 1940s. About a PDO/AMO cycle ago. Come on negative AMO, we need ya. 🙂
No thanks as somebody who lives around the Atlantic I prefer it warm.
‘Zackly. It’s perverse how AGW has skeptics “hoping” for cold, Warmists for warm. Skeptics should remember that aside from SSL continental flooding, all the negatives and disasters from storms to droughts that AGW warns about are actually results of cooling.
True Brian, yet climate is difficult to predict, and wll happen regardless, but CAGWA is manifesting tragedy. (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Alarmism)
Skeptics hope for cold, so that the certain economic harm of CAGWA, and social structure harm of CAGWA statism is avoided or stopped as soon as possible.
Just leave the name alone, and be patient, these things arrive and depart in cycles.
When I visited, it was June and the roads were still blocked with snow. So I never saw the glaciers anyway.
Ain’t Gonna Happen National Park
Maybe if the Glacier Park can’t use the name anymore, they can sell it to Buffalo.
You owe me a new keyboard. This one’s now covered in coffee.
Identity politics strikes again!
“And while glaciers came and went millenniums ago…”
Millennia
Good one. I’m a total pedant myself, when it comes to language. Stadia, referenda, millennia, et cetera.
Those perky “millennials” at the Times eschew “millennia”. The dumbing down of the Grey Lady muddles through to … irrelevance?
The NYT is being written at a 3rd grade level. What will they call the NYT building when technology puts the paper out of business an a cold wind blows through their shattered windows?
Justice
Now that’s funny!
But true
Long Overdue
I will miss the sports page however.
A few weeks ago there was plenty of new snow and ice across the high plains and the rockies.
The better question is what will they call it when the glacier becomes larger than yellowstone.
The Mannian Ice Sheet as in Laurentide Ice Sheet
Thanks, Bob.
There is something anti-green in this love for ice.
Oddly so, Andres.
Maybe the greens just love skiing, in their precious and over-privileged lifestyles.
Pick any story that reflects on the current state somewhere in the world of observable effects of this interglacial period and write it. Then add the “what ifs” to the story and state them as fact: what if these things were sped up by Catastrophic Warming, what if man were the cause. Presto, another perfectly reasonable sounding Climate Change story that passes the stinky smell test of those who perpetuate this fraud.
I was up there a couple of years ago. The AGW propaganda was everywhere.
Articles like this are so irritating because the editorial agenda so often contorts lists of facts into false cause-and-effect relationships. Here is an obvious example: “Rising temperatures and early snowmelt make for warmer, drier summers as rivers shrink and soils dry out. That is already driving a steady increase in wildfires, including in the park, and disease and pest infestations in forests.”. There is abundant research that shows that wildfires are nature’s way of moderating disease and pest infestations. Why doesn’t the NYT publish an article decrying the National Park System’s misguided wildfire suppression program?
By the way, I hiked the Skyline Trail and the Loop Trail. Highly recommended. Those hikes alone are worth the trip to this fairly remote national park.
But…. Carry bear protection. Bears are pissed at all the melting!
Just wear some bells on your ankles and take a whistle to blow. The noise will scare most bears away.
Works fine in Black bear country, but not so well in Grizzly country.
Now you might ask, how do you know if you are in black bear or grizzly country?
And the answer is you look at the scat.
Black bear scat will have twigs, nuts and berries.
Grizzly scat on the other hand…
…will have mostly bells and whistles.
‘Grizzly scat on the other hand…
…will have mostly bells and whistles.’
Just like the models!
if you’re running from a bear how fast do you have to run?
just a bit faster than your buddy.
grizzlies don’t climb trees.
no they crawl up the sides of big ones and pick the sweet succulent hikers off of the low hanging branches.
if the tree is to small to climb a grizzly simply reaches up bends the tree down to his level and picks the sweet succulent hikers off of the now low hanging branches.
if you’re out in the woods and see a cub bear (even if your transportation of choice is an m1a1 mbt.
RUN LIKE HELL……………. MOMMA IS GUARANTEED TO BE NEAR BY AND MOMMA BEARS DON’T LIKE PEOPLE MESSING WITH THEIR CUBS.
C
Well that, and fires have actually been declining over the last 20 years and it seems the rivers are going dry from drought at the same rate as they always were.
Bob Tisdale: ““sped up and slowed” suggests the glaciers have been melting all along. And that’s correct. ”
I had thought I’d head that some glaciers in Europe had actually been advancing a few centuries ago, to the extent that Alpine villages were in danger of being wiped out. Was I in error?
“I had thought I’d head that some glaciers in Europe had actually been advancing a few centuries ago, to the extent that Alpine villages were in danger of being wiped out. Was I in error?”
I dunno, Joe. Ask Otzi, the Ice Man. He was along for the ride in one of the glaciers.
This site: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120810-glaciers-vatican-prayer-alps-science-gobal-warming/ mentions a glacier that was advancing until 1850, after which it began receding. Its length has lost nearly 3 miles since 1864, i.e., about 106 ft./yr. Now that we’ve been enriching the atmosphere with CO2, the rate has fallen to 75 ft./year. Go figure.
Joe Born: Thanks for the link.
Well, then! Otzi just might have put on quite a few miles while he was out cold. I have some drinking buddies that have done that, too ;o)
Seriously, I never thought about it, but Otzi may not have been found where he died. I wonder if they matched up the detritus found on the body with the surroundings where he was found? I’ll have a look when I get some time.
Otzi died long, long before the Little Ice Age. The discovery of his remains is one of many cases that shows glaciers around the world were much smaller than now 6,000 years ago.
See http://wermenh.com/climate/6000.html
Ric,
Yup, I’m aware that Otzi was killed about 5300 years ago or so. My point to Joe was that glaciers are always advancing and retreating on a lot of different time scales – witness Otzi – but then his link got me thinking about anything that gets caught in a glacier. Whatever the object, there were certain conditions, including temperature, that existed when the object was captured in the glacier. His link points out that an object could do some significant traveling before the conditions returned allowing the object to be revealed.
P.S. Followed your link and did some reading. Nice… thanks!
Brian Fagan’s “The Little Ice Age” has a couple pages of notes about glacial advances, and destruction by ice and floods from glacial lakes:
Alpine glaciers, which had already advanced steadily between 1546 and 1590, moved aggressively forward again between 1600 and 1616. Villages that had flourished since medieval times were in danger or already destroyed,Land values in the threatened areas fell. So did tithe receipts. During the long period of glacial retreat and relative quiet in earlier times, opportunistic farmers had cleared land within a kilometer of what seemed to them stationary ice sheets, Now their descendents paid the price of opportunism. Their villages and livelihoods were threatened.
Notes from Scott Mandia (hey, I found his web site!) at http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html
During the post-MWP cooling of the climate, glaciers in many parts of Europe began to advance. Glaciers negatively influenced almost every aspect of life for those unfortunate enough to be living in their path. Glacial advances throughout Europe destroyed farmland and caused massive flooding. On many occasions bishops and priests were called to bless the fields and to pray that the ice stopped grinding forward (Bryson, 1977.) Various tax records show glaciers over the years destroying whole towns caught in their path. A few major advances, as noted by Ladurie (1971), appear below:
1595: Gietroz (Switzerland) glacier advances, dammed Dranse River, and caused flooding of Bagne with 70 deaths.
1600-10: Advances by Chamonix (France) glaciers cause massive floods which destroyed three villages and severely damaged a fourth. One village had stood since the 1200’s.
1670-80’s: Maximum historical advances by glaciers in eastern Alps. Noticeable decline of human population by this time in areas close to glaciers, whereas population elsewhere in Europe had risen.
1695-1709: Iceland glaciers advance dramatically, destroying farms.
1710-1735: A glacier in Norway was advancing at a rate of 100 m per year for 25 years.
1748-50: Norwegian glaciers achieved their historical maximum LIA positions.
It’s not called Glacier National Park because it has glaciers in it. It’s called Glacier National Park because the mountains were formed by Glaciers. Go there and any park ranger will tell you that. Go on the bus tour and the guide will point out how many ice age glaciers form this peak and how many formed that peak. It’s moronic not silly.
Come to Australia! We’re glacier-free (at least for now).
There is one very important aspect of the article. The glaciers are melting in the parks – as has been happening for a millennium. We are reaching a point where there will be water shortages from the lack of glaciers and much of the west depends on the constant flow of water over the summer that comes from the glaciers.
Although the loss of the glaciers has nothing to do with AGW, it still requires action for adaptation. Dams will need to built in order to capture some of the snowmelt, so that the water can continue to flow all summer long. These dams are going to destroy some of the current natural landscape (as hundreds of feet of water on the lake-side of the dam tends to do), but this will have to be done. If only the environmentalists would focus their efforts on reality and work to planning for the changes that are occurring, we might all be better off.
There is not one water system in the Western U.S. that depends on water from melting glaciers, the amount of water that melting glaciers add to the major river basins is trivial compared to water from year-to-year snowfall and snow-pack. Further if residents of Vegas and Orange County would recognize that they live in a desert, and adjust their residential planting to match their climate there would be plenty of water in the west.
Mark –
It isn’t just the OC – add San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, LA, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties to the list, The worst example, of course, is Palm Springs. However, you may be mistaken about the residential plantings being the problem. The biggest user of water in LA County (at ~10%) is the LA Parks Department.
The NY Times forgot to mention that “the park is named for its prominent glacier-carved terrain…” The landscape was formed by ancient glaciers and that’s where it gets its name. Quote from the park online brochure:
“The park is named for its prominent glacier-carved terrain and remnant glaciers descended from the ice ages of 10,000 years past. Bedrock and deposited materials exposed by receding glaciers tell a story of ancient seas, geologic faults and uplifting, and the movement of giant slabs of the earth’s ancient crust overlaying younger strata. The result of these combined forces is some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet.”
Of course they do promote man caused climate change, as all National Parks do now, as they have all been Gruberised with CAGW.
why not leave it the same, the terrain was created by a glacier right?
And pigs may sprout wings and fly….
We already have Humming Pigs here, they are nature’s response to Human Induced Micro Brewery Proliferation. We often see in the evening, just after happy hour.
I thought hummingbirds could fly! Duh, to go higher up to get the later-blooming lilies.
Keep the name. Dinosaur National Monument does not currently have any dinosaurs.
Yes it does. I’ve seem ’em. They’re hiding under the surface…
This humor is really quite deep! I wonder if Trenberth would get it?
Graboids predate the dinosaurs.
What is missing from both the NYT and this article is the history of how and why Glacier National Park actually got its name. It was not from the remaining glaciers in the park, rather because of the formation of the natural shapes left behind by retreating glaciers of long ago. It is a spectacular reminder of how glaciers carved and shaped the landscape. I have been going to GNP for decades, for the past 30+ years and hiked on many of its trails. When the human caused climate change adopted the GNP remaining glaciers as its focus point those of us who know and love GNP cringed! The National Park Service in line with the Fed Govt policy of trying to manager climate change has introduced some materials into the exhibits in the Park. When a year ago I asked a ranger to defend the claims there re” human caused climate change he demurred and said “this was sent for Washington and we have to show it, but I can’t defend it.
Spooky Environmentalism at a Distance has always been the approach with NY media coverage of conservation and related policy over reach. The farther it is from local issues the better with this approach, like world peace and other theoretical concepts.
What a coincidence. I am putting together a talk showing why vanishing ice is a better indicator of natural climate change and Glacier National Park is an iconic example if misinterpreting natural change in order to blame CO2 climate change.
http://landscapesandcycles.net/image/97767533.png
In 1913 the park’s largest glacier, the Sperry Glacier was nearly 500 feet thick at a point that would become its 1946 terminal edge, by 1936 that thickness had dwindled by 80% to just 108 feet. That rapid retreat prompted scientists 70 years ago to predict the natural disappearance of the park’s glaciers.
As seen in the graph of , the contrast between the early and late 20th century retreat is striking. Between 1913 and 1945 the Sperry glacier lost 1.88 squared km of its area. In contrast since 1979, it has lost just 0.1 squared kilometers despite extensive thinning. That is a yearly retreat rate less than one tenth of what scientists observed in the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed the glaciers is still receding but if rising CO2 has been the driver of recent glacier retreats, we would expect an increasingly faster rate of retreat, not slower rates.
And in 2014 what is/was the area? That may be crucial as maybe it has been growing for the last 11 years.
Who knows, in the next 20 years it may start growing again because of global cooling and/or because of increased snowfall.
You might want to study the largest tidewater glacier in North America – Hubbard Glacier. And Taku Glacier, the largest glacier in the Juneau Ice Field. Both are reported to be advancing.
I re-read my post and it reads like I was critical of your post. Not. I really enjoyed your presentation(s) to IEEE. I do see your point that most of the receding in Glacier Park happened before the big increase in CO2. I was just thinking about the record snowfall in the park which resulted in the latest opening of Going-to-the-Sun road on July 13, 2011, since its opening in 1932. I haven’t seen any reports about Sperry Glacier since 2011.
If you consider the actual volume of ice melted rather than area covered, the retreat before 1945 as compared to after is even more striking. When you see the “ranger” talk at Logan Pass about the loss of the glaciers you will note that the early pictures of Sperry and all the other glaciers show a rough and dirty surface on the ice indicative of a rapidly melting glacier. Point that out to the “ranger” and they will quickly change the subject and move along. Been there and done that.
Another way of looking at the shrinkage….
Of the total reduction in Sperry Glacier area between 1850 and 2003, 81% of it occurred by 1945, when the rapid rise in global carbon dioxide emissions began. Natural variability is dominant.
Call it ‘Still’
Still the Glacier National Park.