The photo below I took this weekend on my way back from a station survey in the remote northestern corner of California. It shows Mount Shasta getting it’s first significant snow of this precipitation season here in California.
Our local progressive weekly recently did a story on Mount Shasta’s glaciers, which have been growing. This isn’t news, but what is news, is the conclusion that was drawn from the growth. Apparently the growth is now being viewed as a sign of “global warming” or “climate change” if you prefer. So now we have glaciers that shrink, glaciers that grow, and these both signal climate change. Thank goodness that has been cleared up.
Unfortunately, the writer and the USGS person both seem to be oblivious to the fact that glaciers are a much better proxy for precipitation than temperature, and that sublimation, not melting, is the primary agent in glacier shrinkage.
North State ice age
Global warming melts glaciers elsewhere, but not at Mount Shasta
By Christy Lochrie
This article was published on 10.09.08. Chico News and Review, here is an excerpt:
First, the good news: Mount Shasta’s seven glaciers are on the grow. The largest, Whitney Glacier, has averaged a 60-foot-a-year growth spree for the past 50 years, according to Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Now, the bad news: The 14,000-foot volcano’s glacier growth isn’t a reliable canary in a mineshaft when it comes to global warming woes.
“Mount Shasta is just a local system and does not really tell us much about global warming,” Tulaczyk said in an e-mail. “Everybody should know from their own experience that weather and climate are highly variable in space and time. It is absolutely incorrect to use Mount Shasta as some kind of proof that there is no global warming.”
So what’s up with this volcanic mountain—home to lenticular clouds and, lore says, outer-space lumarians—some 130 miles north of Chico?
Why, while other glaciers are melting like sun-struck snowmen, are North State glaciers plumping?
And what does it mean in the scheme of global warming issues, even as vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin denies that emissions or other man-created factors are to blame for temperature upticks?
Ed Josberger, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey in Tacoma, Wash., says North State glacier growth is proof of global warming, even if, on the surface, it strikes a counterintuitive chord. Shifts in weather patterns are likely to heat some places while chilling others.
“In terms of climate change,” he said, “there’s going to be winners and losers.”
Mount Shasta glaciers have grown, in part, because they’re high enough to escape some (about 2 degrees) of the Earth’s warming trends, and the shifting weather patterns have dumped more Pacific Ocean-generated precipitation onto the mountain, explains Andrew Fountain, a geology professor at Portland State University.
Fountain likens a glacier to a bank account: It grows when there are more deposits (winter precipitation) than withdrawals (summer melt). In most of the world, sped by temperature upticks, glaciers are drawing down as melt exceeds wintertime snow and ice.
“If air temperatures continue to increase in this century, the warming will overtake the glaciers,” Fountain said.
When asked if glacier melt is cause for alarm, both Tulaczyk and Fountain say no, but add that the melt is cause for concern.
Read the entire story on the News and Review here
“…and that sublimation, not melting, is the primary agent in glacier shrinkage.”
Sublimation is also explains the transformation of climate science into the specious science of AGW.
“The number of humans on Earth is large and growing,” he said, “but the planet is not getting any bigger.”
I beg to differ. Earth is doused with up to 40 tons of dihydrogen monoxide and interplanetary dust and meteorites daily, although the space provided by the growth is not adequate to compensate for the space requirements of additional humans. Global warming will also cause a thermal expansion of the Earth, although again not adequate to accommodate additional humans.
Another esteemed scientist, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, warned of the dangers of over-population. We humans need not be concerned about the future, there is always a well-meaning scientist who will inform us of our destiny.
“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death.” (Population Bomb 1968)”
Dr. Ehrlich did not know that the growing season would be extended by AGW, resulting in more food for the teeming masses.
“I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” (1969)
I don’t know if any of you Brits are betting people, but be advised you are living on borrowed time.
“Actually, the problem in the world is that there is much too many rich people…” – Quoted by the Associated Press, April 6, 1990
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Quoted by R. Emmett Tyrrell in The American Spectator, September 6, 1992
“We’ve already had too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.” – Quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in her book Trashing the Planet (1990)
If Dr. Ehrlich was a younger man, he may well have had a run at being president of the USofA.
Never mind the glaciers.
I predict that in one week, November 12, Arctic sea ice will reach its highest level in 7 years. A cold air mass has just moved over the Barent’s Sea, which has up to now been ice free for the most part.
Concerning our new President, change is coming – and probably is all we’ll have in our pockets soon!
“If you don’t like history, change it!”
Via Icecap:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NASATEMPS.pdf
Toggle between the two graphs to see Hansen’s handiwork.
Well, yes, glaciers growing and glaciers shrinking are indicators of ‘climate change’ in that the climate is always ‘changing’, it is never static.
Why is the fact that a glacier is growing necessarily ‘good news’?
According to Cryosphere Today, the global sea ice area anomaly is back to almost zero after approaching the record low a few months ago.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
“If you don’t like history, change it!”
Via Icecap:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NASATEMPS.pdf
Toggle between the two graphs to see Hansen’s handiwork.”
Interesting graphical display. It appears to me that 1967 was a pivotal year!!
A hack friend of mine says “hackery” is an honourable profession … nothing wrong with being an honest hack, he says. A “useless hack” … now that’s sumpt’n else.
Why is the science not settled on the fact that climate changes and is in fact chaotic? There is a sense of stability in it’s averages – but why is it assumed that it’s a constant – which really is the underpinning principle of AGW (other than a trace gas being solely responsible for the warming we experienced btwn the late 70’s and ending around 2000)?
P Folkens;
“Perhaps that part of the story in which they were “ashamed” and resorted to covering up the private parts had more to do with global cooling than any shame at being nekkid.”
Do you mean….’SHRINKAGE”!
Just for fun I did a bit of
data editingimprovement for Mt Shasta pictured at the top of the thread.Interesting what data manipulation can reveal – but is it TRUE?
Interesting post and responses; a note is posted bringing light to an intriguing natural phenomenon. I just wish there were more reply-posts delving into reasons why this might be; scientific-based discussion of the physical-natural reasons why this might be; perhaps jsut a little less of the “faction”-based opinion?
As for myself, it is easily concievable that a single causal factor can manifest in multiple, even contradictory responses (depending on spatial-temporal scale). It’s a very complex natural world out there.
As I understand the reasoning regarding Mt. Shasta specifically, since it pushes 14,000 feet, it is a localized topographic anomoly that provides for a temperature-orographic regime not shared by the surrounding landscape. Increased temperatures in (and over) the Pacific have increased the water vapor load transported eastward. Mt. Shasta, being the high-elevation “sore thumb” catches the increased precip, and since it is so, high, it is not as affected by the local increase of ~1.8 degrees occurring over the last 100 years or so. This does not occurr furthern north in the Cascades because a greater proportion of the rainfall comes in the Spring, Summer and Fall months, so more falls as rain instead of snow.
This explanation seems completely plausible, no? People too often expect single cause-and-effect in the natural world. As a biologist at least, I know in nature that single cause-single effect phenomena are exceptions, not the rule.
REPLY: That’s an interesting view of the issue. I would add that we also have had a change in the synoptic scale weather patterns, with the jet stream often oscillating North-South within +/- 100 miles of Mt. Shasta, which is also a contributor. We have not seen as many deep southerly excursions of the jet stream as we used to, hence the drought issues for California. – Anthony
Imagine where the Global Sea Ice Area would be if Cryosphere Today had not adjusted their numbers without any explanations to anyone.
From the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070311234525/arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
Here is an animated GIF that shows the difference:
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2918/anomalykm3.gif
Every time I hear your new president make one of his speaches this goes through my head
http://www.bobthebuilder.com/ca/english/bob_the_builder_official_canadian_website_homepage.asp
Here’s some terribly sad news:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081105180134.9eca9cgy&show_article=1
CRICHTON’S DEAD
This is awful, just heard that Michael Crichton just died.
The reason for all these anecdotal “anything is a result of global warming” stories is that there is no smoking gun evidence for it.
Sure, there is a glacier melting here and there is less summer sea ice there, but that is just about all the evidence there is for global warming.
There is no smoking gun. There really hasn’t been any kind of substantive change in the climate anywhere in the world. (Maybe a little in the Arctic.)
The warmers have to use “stretch evidence” to prove their global warming belief. They need to show some real smoking gun evidence instead.
Anthony;
You need to move to the mid west. I’m convinced that you have waaay to many
functioning brain cells to remain in Chico. Or anywhere on the left coast for that matter.
Anthony,
Could you please explain what “synoptic-scale” means?
Thanks!
REPLY: It’s at the frontal systems level, see this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_scale_meteorology
– Anthony
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081105/ap_en_ot/obit_crichton
Michael Crichton died yesterday. It is a very sad day.
I think Crichton’s State of Fear played an instrumental role in giving the skeptic
side of the AGW issue a big momentum boost. He reminded us that science does not move by consensus, but by challanging existing dogma. His novel also clearly demonstrated the dangers of allowing science to be hijacked by politics. If you haven’t read it already, then you should.
I’m so saddened by his unexpected departure.
Can this day get any worse?
Bill Illis,
That’s why I don’t like people on our side using anecdotes. It’s just not science. Michael Crichton would never tolerate it. It’s grasping at straws.
Michael Crichton died today at age 66
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4A49B420081105
Pierre Gosselin (09:00:15) :
“Never mind the glaciers.
I predict that in one week, November 12, Arctic sea ice will reach its highest level in 7 years. A cold air mass has just moved over the Barent’s Sea, which has up to now been ice free for the most part. ”
Ive been watching that too. 🙂 But we wont be hearing about it unless they tell us the ice is thin, one year ice and will probably melt quickly:)
Im holding out some hope for our new pres tho.. his trends seem to indicate that he says what you want to hear and goes his own way after he wins. We shall see his true views soon enough:)
It’s a sad day indeed.
Best-selling author and filmaker Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, after a courageous and private battle against cancer, his family said in a statement. He was 66.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/05/print/main4575403.shtml
Reading State of Fear is what made me a AGW skeptic.
Crichton’s 2004 bestseller, “State of Fear,” acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios. His views were strongly condemned by environmentalists, who alleged that the author was hurting efforts to pass legislation to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
Jumped the gun and didn’t read previous posts… You can delete my above post.