By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, ICECAP
Map of US weather records for week ending 4/6/09 click image to enlarge or here for source. Map created by HAMWeather,
UPDATE: NOAA predicts the Red River Will Crest Again in Fargo-Moorhead in Late April here possibly again at records levels.
Just a week after the last major northern plains blizzard another significant snowfall occurred this weekend. Models did poorly with the location of the heaviest snow bands and generally overdid the magnitude. These models sometimes have difficult with the first 48 hours, but Susan Solomon and friends tell us you can depend on cruder models to predict the climate 100 years or even a thousand years in advance.
Several inches of snow fell in parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, southern Minnesota into southern Wisconsin. This will include parts of the Red River Basin already in flood and with deep snowcover (click here to enlarge).
The northern plains has been hit hard this year. Fargo set a record for snowfall and precipitation for March, Bismarck also in North Dakota had record snowfall in December and the second snowiest March, the first year with with two monthly totals in the top ten enlarged here.
Bismarck is on the northern edge of this storm. If they get more than 1.4 inches of snow from this (or some later) storm, they will set an all-time snow record. See the enlarged listing shown below here as of April 1 after the big blizzard. See all the watches and warnings here.
The National Weather Service said International Falls, with the reputation as the nation’s icebox, recorded 124.2 inches of snow this winter. That tops the old record of 116 inches set in 1995-1996. The nearly 9-inch dump from this week’s snowstorm pushed International Falls over the edge. The Minnesota-Ontario border area has been pummeled with snowstorms this winter.
And from KOMO News Weary Spokane residents who are sick of snow can at least now be consoled by the fact that they were a part of history.
A snow storm on Sunday has made this the snowiest winter on record in Spokane. The National Weather Service said 93.6 inches of snow has been recorded at Spokane International Airport this winter, breaking the record set in 1949-50 by a tenth of an inch. It took snowfall of 3.9 inches of Sunday, a record for the date, to break the all-time record. This is the second-consecutive heavy winter in Spokane. Last year, more than 92 inches of snow fell on the Lilac City, third most since records started in 1893.
Spokane’s Top 5 Snow Years:
RANK WINTER SNOW TOTAL
1 2008-2009 93.6
2 1949-1950 93.5
3 2007-2008 92.6
4 1974-1975 89.0
5 1992-1993 87.3
Spokane is also mired in unseasonable cold. Normal high temperatures at the of March are in the low 50s, but this month has seen highs in the 30s and 40s.
See here how an amazing 358 lowest temperature records and 409 snowfall records were broken for the week ending Apr 2, 2009.
Roger Knights (10:37:38) :
No he hasn’t. He’s made a win/no-lose bet.
No, I’m sorry, he didn’t. His reply amounted to “I will accept that CO2 is the cause if it continues to warm if you accept it is not the cause if it continues to cool.” Look at what he was replying to, Matt asked him where it would leave his opinion if it continues to warm, i.e., given the context in which he replied, it was “warming = CO2, cooling = not CO2.” It is a fallacious position, btw, a bifurcation of possible outcomes. There are more than two, perhaps an infinite number.
I’m not criticizing Steve for disagreeing with Matt, because I agree with Steve, I’m criticizing him for not taking on the strawman offered by Matt. If your position is that CO2 is not causing the warming, then what difference does it make if it continues to warm? Spot the issue with logic, then diffuse it, i.e., “Even if it continues to warm, Matt, that does not mean CO2 is to blame, but if it were to cool, that clearly sheds doubt on CO2 as a causative agent. Where would that leave your opinion?” would have been a better response, that’s all.
In this instance, btw, the contrary evidence does tend to falsify the hypothesis, however, i.e., a cooling earth tends to disprove the concept of CO2 = warming (or at least, it weakens the case and certainly lessens its magnitude if there is a causative link). On that, Steve is correct.
Mark
Matt Bennett (05:55:04) There are scientists who make a living by making things work in the real world. There are theoretical scientists who play with theories, that have little or no connection to the physical world. Both are necessary, only one is dealing with reality. After examining climate reconstructions for the past 47 years, I can say with certainty that AGW via CO2 is an unproven hypothesis that appears to be wrong at every assertion. It was invented, just like communism, as an intellectual conjecture and both fail in the physical world.
If CO2 can cause or be part of runaway temperature on this planet it would have happened when it was 6000ppm, almost 16 times the current level. Look at the basis for the theory, the temperature and CO2 plots from ice cores. Pick any value of CO2 as the amount to cause warming, then notice the same value exists when it is cooling, how can this be? The same level of CO2 exists when warming occurs and when cooling occurs. It isn’t even logical, let alone a tenuous hypothesis. You don’t seem to grasp that many of those who write on this site are successful scientists, from all branches.
Don’t lay on the tired fantasy about not being ‘climate scientists’, nor about the importance of publishing papers. Many are too busy making things actually work in the world to be concerned about getting published. If you follow this blog you will learn many here think greenhouse gases do have an effect, but it is limited by other, apparently stronger, feedbacks. No one pretends to understand it all because it is obvious that a lot is missing from any climate modeling, thus it is easy to mock those who pretend to understand it. Perhaps Sidney Shelton’s book ‘If You Meet the Budda On the Road, Kill Him’, is an appropriate perspective of scepticism.
Here is a graph of temperature and CO2 from Vostok. Note also temperature change leads CO2 change by an average of 800 years, so it is difficult to pin temperature change on CO2.
http://i40.tinypic.com/2pquhee.jpg
My point, btw, is that people in debates are often too quick to turn the tables, which actually gives the argument they’re attempting refute legitimacy. The first step should be to point out that the argument is invalid to begin with, then move forward with the alternate (in this case, opposite) argument.
This is very common in political battles. Person A accuses a person B’s candidate of something he considers wrong, then person B turns around with “well, your candidate did it, too.” By doing so, person B has immediately given credibility to the actual argument being made: what was done was wrong and Person B’s candidate IS guilty of doing it. Person A wins the debate by default, and Person B was complicit in his own loss.
Sorry to rant so much, but there are soooo many ways to defeat the alarmist positions using their own statements I hate to see them slip away.
Mark
I should have said, “Something similar is very common in political battles.”
Mark
Mark:
Steve simply ignored Matt’s challenge and responded with a challenge of his own. In no way did this counterthrust “amount to “I will accept that CO2 is the cause if it continues to warm if you accept it is not the cause if it continues to cool.”” Here’s the exchange:
Matt wrote:
“Let me ask you, where exactly will it leave your opinion if, for arguments sake, over the next five to ten years we have two or three more record-breaking years and the anomoly moves to +1 degree C above average while the summer sea ice sets another record low? …”
Steve M’s. (08:57:15) response simply ignored Matt’s challenge. There is no concession of equivalency in it:
“Matt, are you willing to change your opinion if the anomoly continues to drop and arctic sea ice continues to recover?”
Further, Steve M’s. second paragraph implied that he would not consider continued warming to be evidence that CO2 was responsible for it, but rather that he would attribute it to the natural variation that has produced the ice ages and the ups and downs in between them:
“Other interglacial periods have peaked at a higher temperature than the current interglacial.”
Steve M
To answer your question first, yes of course I would. Evidence is what it is all about. This is what I’m getting at – I can name just EXACTLY what it would take to make me reassess things and change my mind. Which is why I asked if the same could be said for the other side. The answer is doubtful, given that the position is not arrived at by science, but by political thinking.
If we saw a continual year on year increase in summer sea ice cover over say 10 years or so, where last year’s ice stays around to a greater extent each year and gets thicker, then it would at the very least require a re-think. This is distinctly NOT happening if you know the slightest thing about statistics.
There are people on here loudly proclaiming that ‘sea ice is recovering’. To a lay reader, that may sound very reassuring. But this is a deceptive tactic. The only way in which it’s ‘recovering’ is that it is winter! Happens every year. To a greater or lesser extent, the arctic freezes over. What is of interest though is how big is the remelt in summer and is this figure on a consistent downward trend? (it is) Just look at the graph on the link I posted – there have been winter refreezes of more than twice the magnitude of this year’s, but the trend is still ever down. This is so simple I can’t believe it needs pointing out. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, the ice cover extent at maximum when our first satellite went up and began measuring was X million sq km. Now if every year in summer the extent of sea ice was getting less, this would be a sign that less robust winter ice was being formed each year, right? Even if every single winter, the extent of cover went all the way back to X million sq km (perhaps simply due to the fact that all the area of concern is still well below freezing at that time) one cannot make the claim that sea ice in summer is not on the decline. And note that because we have the same amount of cover every winter in our little example, the greater melt every summer NECESSARILY means that there is a bigger ‘recovery’ of ice cover every winter. But that’s irrelevant.
Now, the real world is much noisier than this example and the sea ice does not fully recover each winter (and is thinner where it does) but you get my point. How much freeze happens over winter has NOTHING to do with the fact that summer sea ice is in decline – which is the only thing these scientists have claimed. And they’re right.
Mark T
How is it arrogant to defer judgement to those better informed than I? I am certainly not saying you need to listen to me, or that I have access to more or better information than others on here. I am saying get out and read the literature and see what conclusions are being reached by real scientists in this field. And IT IS singularly instructive to see that deniers don’t have a problem relying on the peer-review process for other areas of science. This actually tells you a lot about their level of understanding of how it really works. If you or any others on here have robust findings that contradict the accepted causation between CO2 and global warming, by all means publish and claim your fame. Scince stands or falls on its own findings and if there is relevant information they’ve missed, you can rest assured Science or Nature would be very keen to publish it. Peer review is not some circular boys club no matter what others on here might think.
And CodeTech,
You go on believing that, just make sure you don’t take your fingers out of your ears lest you hear the crashing calving of another magestic glacier in retreat.
“Based on what I have seen, what passes for peer review in the climate community is pretty poor”
How convenient that a process that has delivered a doubling of your life span and put humans on the moon ‘falls down’ and is ‘corrupted’ just where you happen to disagree with it…
“It is not broken because it is politically expedient to wish it so, it is broken because it has become purely political.”
What year did the science of climatology (as vastly different from meteorology) stop being a process of disinterested accumulation of evidence, construction of physical models and data analysis and start being about politics? When did the memo go out to instruct the boys club that findings have to head in one direction only? What an absurd proposition, if you have any idea how things really work. Who’s the Dark Lord that controls them all? Why hasn’t he had Roy Spencer et al ‘dealt with’ in a dark alley?
“It is equally arrogant of you to assume the same, i.e., that we (or anyone) do not know better.”
It is not.
I could make with great confidence the claim that the Pope knows the inner workings of the Vatican better than you or I (unless you’re a reformed priest 😉 and it would not be arrogant at all on my part – it would just be true. Same applies here and unless you’re a climatologist and you haven’t told me (a possibility, I’ll admit) then it is quite easy to understand why one would defer to their better judgement over you or I. A completely non-controversial claim. So stop with the arrogance canard already.
Matt,
At least one scientist IS wobbling a little on what will happen after this summer’s melt
At Science Daily her.e:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090406132602.htm
“Heading into the 2009 summer melt season, the potential continues for extensive ice retreat due to the trend toward younger, thinner ice that has accelerated in recent years,” said Maslanik, also a member of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “A key question will be whether this second year ice is thick enough to survive summer melt,” said Maslanik.
“If it does, this might start a trend toward recovery of the perennial sea ice pack,” Maslanik said. “If it doesn’t, then this would be further evidence of the difficulty of re-establishing the ice conditions that were typical of 20 or 30 years ago.”
So apparently the trend is not etched in stone. Some people refuse to believe that trends DO reverse. You, I know, are not one of those people.
You said, “If we saw a continual year on year increase in summer sea ice cover over say 10 years or so, where last year’s ice stays around to a greater extent each year and gets thicker, then it would at the very least require a re-think.”
If that were the case we would probably be heading for a change in trend to less ice.
Thanks,
Mike
Matt Bennett (17:29:00) :
How convenient that a process that has delivered a doubling of your life span and put humans on the moon ‘falls down’ and is ‘corrupted’ just where you happen to disagree with it…
Since when has climate science peer review put humans on the moon? False analogy. Also, the process that put the men on the moon was rigorous engineering peer review, not journal peer review. And, furthermore, why exactly do you repeat the strawman “just where you happen to disagree with it” after I’ve already pointed the problem out? Let’s be intellectually honest, please, my opinions on other review are a) not part of the discussion and b) irrelevant.
What year did the science of climatology (as vastly different from meteorology) stop being a process of disinterested accumulation of evidence, construction of physical models and data analysis and start being about politics?
I don’t know, and I don’t care. All that matters is that NOW it is a political debate, not a scientific one. Another strawman.
When did the memo go out to instruct the boys club that findings have to head in one direction only?
Hyperbole.
What an absurd proposition, if you have any idea how things really work.
Wow, now you’re insulting my intelligence because why? Because I disagree with the way the scientific method is applied? Absurd indeed. You have no idea what my background, experience, or credentials are yet you feel justified in asking such a question?
Who’s the Dark Lord that controls them all? Why hasn’t he had Roy Spencer et al ‘dealt with’ in a dark alley?
Hyperbole #2 and #3.
It is not.
Yes, it is. You assume that just because someone spends their life on a project they must be right. Sorry, it ain’t so. Argument by authority.
I could make with great confidence the claim that the Pope knows the inner workings of the Vatican better than you or I (unless you’re a reformed priest 😉 and it would not be arrogant at all on my part – it would just be true.
False analogy. Also, I’m not claiming this, which also makes it a strawman.
Same applies here and unless you’re a climatologist and you haven’t told me (a possibility, I’ll admit) then it is quite easy to understand why one would defer to their better judgement over you or I.
Irrelevant. An ad hominem if you assume I don’t know just because I’m not a “climatologist.” Jim Hansen is a physicist. Does that make him wrong, too?
A completely non-controversial claim. So stop with the arrogance canard already.
Stop being so arrogant, and I’ll stop with the canard. I can, and have on multiple occasions backed up every assertion I’ve made.
Sooo, you committed 11 fallacious arguments in one post. I cannot say that you’re wrong because of that, but it does sort of prove my point that people like you are incapable of making a legitimate argument without seriously abusing logic (albeit mostly informal). I’d had to have to see what you do with formal logic. Capable?
Mark
Matt Bennett (17:07:08) :
How is it arrogant to defer judgement to those better informed than I?
Try reading, Matt. I never said that. You said:
That is what I mean by the extreme arrogance of people on here to assume they know better than someone whose life’s work they are criticizing.
It is arrogant of you to accuse others of “extreme arrogance” just because whomever people on here are criticizing assume they know better than someone whose life’s work they are criticizing. There are quite a lot of people in here, as well as other sites, that have not only done the same sort of work they criticize, but are better at it.
Mark
Mike,
Thanks for the link.
What did you mean by that last bit:
“If that were the case we would probably be heading for a change in trend to less ice.”
That doesn’t seem to gel with what you’ve quoted from me immediately prior? I would have thought it was confirmation that the trend is to MORE ice and that therefore the AGW scientists need to re-think things. Did I miss something?
Cheers
Matt
Give it up. CO2 is not the problem mans contribution of CO2 in the atmosphere is extremely small compared to what mother nature puts into it. Higher CO2 in the atmosphere is a by product of warmer temps not the other way around as far as a greenhouse gas it is one of the worst. The only reason that CO2 is so widely discussed is due to the fact that the government wants to try to control it. Carbon cap is a con. These people want to claim a naturally occurring substance is a pollutant. Every living creature puts out CO2 when it breathes. Plants require CO2 to photosynthesize. The more CO2 the more plants thrive which means more food for the populace. The majority of real scientists realize this. The ones that don’t are the ones who depend on funding from the government with the money that is stolen from the people.
You said, “If we saw a continual year on year increase in summer sea ice cover over say 10 years or so, where last year’s ice stays around to a greater extent each year and gets thicker, then it would at the very least require a re-think.”
If that were the case we would probably be heading for a change in trend to less ice. I mean that every trend eventually reverses, so ten years of increasing sea ice in the Arctic would probably indicate that the trend might soon reverse.
This isn’t the greatest analogy, but you know that children of very tall parents are usually shorter than their parents, just as children of unusually short parents are usually taller than their parents. If this were not the case the world would be populated by giants and midgets. Most things on this old Earth of ours usually return to the mean. Unfortunately, we don’t always where precisely that mean lies.
Mike
Matt:
There are people worth discussing things with…
and there are people not worth discussing anything with.
“Majestic” glaciers advance and retreat all over the world all the time. I honestly pity the people who are, right now, crying over the cherry picked images of the few glaciers currently in retreat. Seriously. Pity.
Unfortunately, we don’t always KNOW where precisely that mean lies.
Mike
Mark,
“Since when has climate science peer review put humans on the moon? ”
Never claimed it did. Wilful misreading, strawman. The scientific method put man on the moon and you know very well that’s what I meant. My point stands. Why do you have a problem with just one little corner of the scientific community? – It clashes with what you want to believe. Nobody is stopping you publishing contrary evidence. Put up or shut up. I’m not saying there are no arguments in science – to the contrary, its strength is in the very battles that rage over a myriad of topics. But they rage within the literature and if you wish to have credibility with your dissent, it is only therein that you will be respected. Verbal or written rants are very easy to manufacture – backing them up with evidence that impresses the most knowledgable people in that arena of discourse is another matter.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
Then stop making ridiculous allergations of conspiracy. If you believe the science has become political, it should be child’s play to point out where along the process this happened and what needs to be fixed. The fact that you can’t answer this with any specifics shows how hollow and rhetorical is you point. If you say ‘NOW it’s political’, I want to know WHEN it wasn’t because then we at least know we can trust the data/theories prior to the great subjugation.
“Wow, now you’re insulting my intelligence because why”
I’m not insulting anyone, I’m sorry that you seem to take it that way – instructive, no? What I’m saying is that you don’t seem to have a very good appreciation of how the peer-review actually works in the real world (this is not a crime) and the impossibility of a mass coordinated fraud/hoax (whatever you guys like to call it) across multiple disciplines, countries, languages, journals and governments involving researchers who all want more than anything to prove each other wrong. It is, prima facie, an absurd proposition. That is all I’m pointing out.
For goodness sakes, enough with the ‘arrogance’ claim. Get a dictionary. I haven’t claimed to know more physics than you or be smarter than you, or hold keys to special truth – I have simply pointed out that if one wishes to make the various claims that you do, you will need to be able to back them up with high quality literature should you wish to be taken seriously. That’s where I look if I want to see where current thinking is at on a topic. How, pray tell, can that deferential posture be construed as arrogance?
Wow CodeTech,
You touch with reality is pretty loose.
“glaciers advance and retreat all over the world all the time”
Indeed they do, which has been known for centuries. The sustained, coordinated and dramatic retreat of almost all mountain glaciers globally in the last 50-100 years, many having completely disappeared or close to it, is something altogether different. Try looking at some old photos, there’s plenty on the web. You’d have to cherry-pick to find ones that WEREN’T in retreat.
Honestly, you just seem to spout vague words or collections of (incorrect) assumptions that (I guess) make you feel better. A good look at the hard data would make you think otherwise, which is what I’m recommending.
Matt Bennett (20:45:35) :
The sustained, coordinated and dramatic retreat of almost all mountain glaciers globally in the last 50-100 years, many having completely disappeared or close to it, is something altogether different. Try looking at some old photos, there’s plenty on the web.
Well, we only monitor less than 1% of the world’s glaciers (a thousand or so out of 270,000 or so), so this statement is false on its face. Furthermore, they started retreating at the end of the LIA several hundred years ago (really, at the end of the last ice age), not just in the last 50-100 years.
You can’t even get your “facts” straight, Matt, yet somehow we’re arrogant?
Mark
Matt Bennett (19:02:52) :
Never claimed it did. Wilful misreading, strawman.
Excuse me?
Matt Bennett (17:29:00) :
How convenient that a process that has delivered a doubling of your life span and put humans on the moon ‘falls down’ and is ‘corrupted’ just where you happen to disagree with it…
which you said in response to my comment:
“Based on what I have seen, what passes for peer review in the climate community is pretty poor”
Sorry, bud, but you’re wrong again. Willful misreading on your part I guess, eh?
What I’m saying is that you don’t seem to have a very good appreciation of how the peer-review actually works in the real world (this is not a crime)
I’m curious what the basis of that statement is other than the one statement I made that indicated I think climate science peer review is lacking? How can you assess that I don’t understand peer review in the real world off that one statement?
Btw, you seem to think there is an equivalence between the review process that put people on the moon and the process it takes to get a paper in a journal, which is what I’ve criticized. Tell me, Matt, have you ever sat in on an engineering design review? Have you conducted your own design review? Have you authored? Have you reviewed any papers?
I can say yes on all 4 counts, I’m guessing you can’t. So, Matt, how exactly do you know my understanding of the process is lacking if you don’t even know the distinction between paper reviews and design reviews?
and the impossibility of a mass coordinated fraud/hoax (whatever you guys like to call it) across multiple disciplines, countries, languages, journals and governments involving researchers who all want more than anything to prove each other wrong. It is, prima facie, an absurd proposition. That is all I’m pointing out.
There’s your strawman, again. Nobody ever claimed there is a mass coordinated fraud/hoax of any kind. Second, if you understood peer review AT ALL you would understand that it is at best, a means for catching gross errors. At worst, peer review is nothing but check kiting among friends. There doesn’t need to be any fraud when all the reviewers have already authored papers with you. Wegman got ahold of the biggest climate discovery of the 20th century and decimated it (MBH98). None of the reviewers had sufficient background to critique Mann’s flawed statistics. Steig’s recent Antarctica article has been similarly torn to pieces. It is shameful what passes for peer review.
No, Matt, it is you that does not understand peer review, design reviews, and what either entails (hint: I’ve been on both sides of both fences, a design reviewee, reviewer, an author and a reviewer).
I haven’t claimed to know more physics than you or be smarter than you, or hold keys to special truth
No, you came in and accused us of extreme arrogance. If you don’t have any special knowledge, how do you know we’re arrogant instead of simply smarter than the other guys?
I have simply pointed out that if one wishes to make the various claims that you do, you will need to be able to back them up with high quality literature should you wish to be taken seriously.
No, you did not, you said we have “extreme arrogance.” And, for the record, exactly what claims have I made other than your own flawed logic?
Mark
So Mark you’ve never heard of sampling and extrapolation? You think because we haven’t discovered and named every single species on earth that we can’t make an estimation of what percentage of them might be ants? or beetles?
Of your thousand or so glaciers, how many are bulking up faster than they are calving? If ‘your story is straight’ it should 50% or more given that they ‘advance and retreat’ all the time…. This is patently NOT the case. So, given that your assertion goes against the findings of most of the world’s glaciologists, you don’t think you’re being perhaps a teeny bit “over-reaching” in your conclusions?
(I’m going to avoid the “no, you’re arrogant and I’m not!” game henceforth)
Matt Bennett (21:26:33) :
So Mark you’ve never heard of sampling and extrapolation? You think because we haven’t discovered and named every single species on earth that we can’t make an estimation of what percentage of them might be ants? or beetles?
Another false analogy. You said ALMOST ALL, period.
Of your thousand or so glaciers, how many are bulking up faster than they are calving? If ‘your story is straight’ it should 50% or more given that they ‘advance and retreat’ all the time….
You need to brush up on your statistics: this is only true if the sample is random, it is not.
This is patently NOT the case.
Your hypothesis was almost all, so what percentage is it really?
given that your assertion goes against the findings of most of the world’s glaciologists, you don’t think you’re being perhaps a teeny bit “over-reaching” in your conclusions?
What assertion is that? Most of the world’s glaciologists are smart enough to say “most of the glaciers we monitor are receding, but some are growing while others are staying the same.” You, on the other hand, well…
I’m going to avoid the “no, you’re arrogant and I’m not!” game henceforth)
Good, because it is silly that you claim no special knowledge, yet somehow have the ability to divine things about my knowledge.
And, I reiterate, have you ever sat in on an engineering design review? If you have not, then you are arguing from a position of ignorance, and yes, arrogance, because you should know better not to comment on things you don’t really have experience with.
Mark
Oh, and for the record, a glacier that is calving off into the sea is growing, i.e., it is gaining mass at the top which pushes the ice out into the sea and it eventually calves off the glacier. You can look this up on Wikipedia if you like.
If you prefer to continue to argue from a position of ignorance, that is fine by me.
Mark
Mark,
No I am not a design engineer, my specialty lies elsewhere. Neither, I assume, are you a glaciologist. It does not stop us from conversing on these matters, but we should both bear in mind (this is my point continually) that we defer to the specialists on any given topic.
Given that they say…”most of the glaciers we monitor are receding”… (your quote) and given that this dovetails neatly with other aspects of AGW, you’re the one left in need of an explanation of why this is so. AGW does not predict all glaciers will immediately retreat off the tops of their mountains, or even that every single one must be waning at the same time. The balance of evidence is there though, you make up you’re own mind.
You see, Matt, this is why you’re not worth discussing anything with. You seem completely incapable of even considering that you might have the wrong information.
A simple google search involving “glaciers” and “advancing” will find a plethora of educational links. Unfortunately for you, that goes against what you believe, so you won’t. Or more likely, you’ll just determine that anything you don’t agree with is from a “skeptic” site and therefore not worthy of your time.
This demonstrates that you are not posting from a position of knowledge, but from a position of indoctrination. In actual fact, “almost all” is about as far from incorrect as you can get.
Eventually you’ll understand just how absurd your statement is. I wonder if, once the whole AGW thing is in the past like Y2K, you’ll remember the people at WUWT and wonder if maybe they knew more than you after all?
I live near glaciers. They are not retreating…
Well call back the glacial field teams, CodeTech’s got it covered with the view from his bedroom window.
….”since 1980 a significant global warming has led to glacier retreat becoming increasingly rapid and ubiquitous, so much so that some glaciers have disappeared altogether, and the existence of a great number of the remaining glaciers of the world is threatened. In locations such as the Andes of South America and Himalayas in Asia, the demise of glaciers in these regions will have potential impact on water supplies. The retreat of mountain glaciers, notably in western North America, Asia, the Alps, Indonesia and Africa, and tropical and subtropical regions of South America, has been used to provide qualitative evidence for the rise in global temperatures since the late 19th century.(IPCC2) (NSIDC) The recent substantial retreat and an acceleration of the rate of retreat since 1995 of a number of key outlet glaciers of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, may foreshadow a rise in sea level, having a potentially dramatic effect on coastal regions worldwide”…
Straight from your beloved Wiki, Mark. So, CodeTech, which papers were you referring to that support your contention that the majority of glaciers ARE NOT in retreat?