From my friends at KOVR-TV in Sacramento, here’s this interesting tidbit: Mount Shasta’s glaciers are advancing rather than receding.
Mount Shasta, at 14,162 feet seems to have a mind of its own these days. Shasta has seven glaciers. The biggest is the one on the middle, Whitney Glacier. What has surprised scientists about the glacier is that if the theories about global warming are true, the glacier ought to be shrinking, but it’s not.
“Unlike most areas around the world, these glaciers are advancing, they are growing. Thirty percent in the last fifty years,” says scientist Erik White.
Read the complete article here
By itself this proves nothing about climate changebut it does illustrate one thing that the media likes to toss around. Worsening localized weather. Too often a local or regional effect is incorrectly attributed to “global warming” when its just not the case at all. In the case of Shasta’s glaciers. it is more likely linked to El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
But you can bet that if Mt. Shasta’s glaciers were shrinking, it would be front page “proof” that “global warming” is occurring.
The careful approach – good.
Because you wouldn’t want to slap up some pictures of ice melting from one location, call it climate change, then start mass marketing the poster, without relating the phenomena to outside stimuli such as rainfall totals, temperature change, local land uses, understanding the historical behavior and extent of the glacier.
You know like the USGS does.
They don’t have many doubts at all, do they?
It would be nice to give them some.
It would be nice to point out that many glaciers underwent a severe melt during the dust bowl years (in fact all of the glaciers I have looked at), and have recovered or remained stable during the years of GORE/MANN/HANSEN induced climate change regardless of rainfall totals and caviates.
I realize not having an agenda or feeling the need to use propaganda is a strength.
I’m a rare bird though.