Weather variations, not global warming cause glacier melt
From the The Hindu, 9 August 2009
excerpts:
New Delhi (PTI): Himalayan glaciers, including the world’s highest battlefield Siachen, are melting due to variations in weather and not because of global warming, Jammu University scientists have claimed.
…
Geologists R K Ganjoo and M N Koul of Jammu University’s Regional Centre for Field Operations and Research of Himalayan Glaciology visited the Siachen glacier to record changes in its snout last summer.
“To our surprise, the Siachen glacier valley does not preserve evidences of glaciation older than mid-Holocene, suggesting that the glacier must have advanced and retreated simultaneously several times in the geological past, resulting in complete obliteration and modification of older evidences,” they said reporting their findings in ‘Current Science’.
Ganjoo and Koul dubbed as “hype” some earlier studies which suggested that the Himalayan glaciers were melting fast and caused serious damage to the Himalayan ecosystem.
There is sufficient field and meteorological evidence from the other side of Karakoram mountains that corroborate the fact that glaciers in this part of the world are not affected by global warming, they said.
…
Ganjoo said that the east part of the Siachen glacier showed faster withdrawal of the snout that is essentially due to ice-calving, a phenomenon that holds true for almost all major glaciers in the Himalayas and occurs irrespective of global warming.
…
Ganjoo contended the Siachen glacier shows hardly any retreat in its middle part and thus defies the “hype” of rapid melting.
The research findings by R.K. Ganjoo and M.N. Koul are published in today’s issue of CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 97, NO. 3, 10 AUGUST 2009 and are available at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/aug102009/309.pdf
(h/t to Benny Peiser)
Scott (11:18:14) :then what is it doing?
Easy: Check your wallet now vs. last year and vs.next year’s
“Why do you say “you” to Anthony when the article is just quoting a news item about a study? ~ ctm”
Does it make it any less of a mistake if it’s “just quoting”?
“Military activity, not weather variations cause glacier melt”
Lack of water in streams after the snow and ice are gone? Hardly!!!! Most of the snow and ice is gone from the Wallowa Mountains, yet we have more water in the river right now than we had for most of the summer after the initial summer-induced melt. Why? Because of nimbus clouds rising into the mountains and dumping buckets of water on us. To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen this much water in the rivers in August and stay that way for longer than a flash flood in my entire 53 years of life. There is so much water that some irrigation ditches now have fish in them from the water level rising over the fish screens. If we are warming, there will be rain. And there will be water available. Especially near mountains. The argument than global warming will decrease water down slope is nonsense.
I’m a little puzzled by this posting. Is there a lack of correlation with the MWP and Little Ice Age that indicates there is not a global effect on these glaciers?
If these glaciers do have a correlation with past global warm and cool periods then this paper shows the world was indeed warmer in the past, long before SUV’s and that it is not especially warm now.
no matter at all!
if global warming will go one and temperatures will rise about 4 degrees C in 100ys, the melting zone will increase maybe 600 to 800 meters in elevation.
this is almost nothing in regions like himalaya.
what are you talking about?
RW (12:48:49),
If you believe that story, then you’ll get really excited over this: click.
But don’t worry, this will help: clicky. Or this: clicky2.
Good luck!
Nogw (08:55:27) :
—Another question to the attending class: What is the goal of those who promote “global warming” and/or “climate change” in the developed world?—
i think, first off all “we” like to rule the world as long as possible
and it is a very smart idea to trade nothing more expensive than “cool air”.
its only, to rule the world, but there are a few good arguments.
The surging and even growth of glaciers in the high western Himalaya has been noted in journals for years as it is inconsistent with the retreat of the majority of Himalayan glaciers. It has to do with the weather patterns and increased precipitation in that area. It is actually very compatible with AGW.
Nothing new here, except a lot of “hype”.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3860.1
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1659/0276-4741%282005%29025%5B0332%3ATKAGEA%5D2.0.CO%3B2
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=klV7jReHIPcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA131&dq=Conflicting+Signals+of+Climatic+Change+in+the+Upper+Indus+Basin&ots=v1sF1k1cqv&sig=Mkj0oz-7SpZHMJWQ2Ga2YhJ64_I#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Perhaps their choice of ‘advanced and retreated simultaneously several times in the geological past’ is not perhaps the most fortunate of phraseology, but at least they as geologists are best placed to attempt to understand the palaeo-history of the glaciers. They will need it. Quite apart from the Indian-Pakistani territorial dispute and fighting across the Siachen glacier, the Himalaya has probably the Earth’s most complex and active recent histories of collision zone tectonism, uplift, fault seismicity, erosion, rapid geomorphological changes due to gravity mass movement, landslides, mudflows, lake ponding quite apart from its climatic influence due to extreme elevation. Not really an optimum geologically stable location to study subtle climate change.
Smokey (14:14:06) :
RW (12:48:49),
If you believe that story, then you’ll get really excited over this: click.
But don’t worry, this will help: clicky. Or this: clicky2.
Good luck
smokey: and this is yours?
Climate will change.
Some alarmists will claim every bit of climate change (whether up, down or sideways) is proof of anthropogenic impact.
Sensible people will resist such simplistic reasoning.
Meanwhile, the biggest threats facing our environment are NOT making headlines.
Am I the only ecologist who is outraged that irrationalism has hijacked the environmental movement? Certainly not. [Some have – so far – chosen not to confront rabid coercion.]
The allegiance of true environmentalists is to the lakes & trees, not the (misinformed) “green” nut-jobs who would best be purged from the environmental movement.
We need serious people defending the environment (not a league of con-artists who have abandoned common sense, favoring the embrace of anthropogenic computer fantasies).
Liberally-swung alarmist baseball-bats are insufficient for ensuring nature’s compliance with alarmist theory. Nature need not be bludgeoned, misrepresented (for example by ‘revised’ data), and subjected to the [attempted] influence of anthropogenic computer fantasies.
Is toxic pollution bad? Of course!
Should we have more forest & less pavement? Of course!
So Alarmists: Why suppress & misrepresent these serious issues? If by some insidiously-twisted logic you think the pursued-ends justify dishonest means, then you cannot be trusted to avert further corruption. Without honesty, credibility is destroyed. Try honesty.
“To our surprise, the Siachen glacier valley does not preserve evidences of glaciation older than mid-Holocene, suggesting that the glacier must have advanced and retreated simultaneously several times in the geological past, resulting in complete obliteration and modification of older evidences,” they said reporting their findings in ‘Current Science’.
Mid Holocene. You mean the the holocene climate optimum.
So during temperatures similar (perhaps even slightly warmer) to today these glaciers retreated enough too leave no trace of their older selves.
And this is a reason to declare climate change is a hoax, again.
And not a reason to sit down and ask, so just how vulnrable to small changes are these glaciers? Why is it almost as warm now, when we are at the trough of a Milankovitch cycle as we were when it would have been a strong warming signal?
Skepticism means asking questions of evidence that on the face supports what you believe. But this is a forum full of true skeptics.
Come now Arch, are you saying that natural weather pattern variation is responsible for one mountain’s glacier while global warming is responsible for a neighboring mountain’s glacier? That is a rather glib statement don’t you think? It reminds me of the frustrating world of black sheep kids. If you are a good parent and you have a black sheep anyway, you were unlucky. But if you were not such a good parent and had a blacksheep, it is the fault of the parents.
Good parents have bad kids. Bad parents have bad kids. Weather is responsible for poor conditions as well as good conditions. Genes are responsible for good kids and bad kids. That means that if you, being a good parent with a good family environment adopt a kid at birth who has a family history of bad personality disordered family members, don’t expect an angel.
You cannot, without fingers crossed behind your back, say that Wallowa County is cooler than normal because of weather and Union County is hotter because of global warming. But essentially, this is what you have said in your post on the mountains under consideration.
Glacial retreat is a poor metric of climate because of the influence of precipitation, and the individual complexities of the mountain geography in which each glacier resides. Taken together with the other questionable aspects of mainstream global warming theory, it’s reminiscent of that saying “What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive.”
To illustrate, here we have a study of thawing permafrost in Alaska:
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF19/1962.html
Their observations are that thawing causes increased plant growth which takes up more CO2 –
“In the paper, the authors ponder whether faster plant growth that results from a warmer northern landscape will take up the carbon dioxide released by microbes as permafrost thaws.”
“At Eightmile Lake, the early thawing that Osterkamp noticed has stimulated tundra plants to take up more carbon dioxide than the microbes have been giving off.”
They end up caving in to AGW –
“Should the big thaw continue, the tundra of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia could release as much locked-up carbon as does the current deforestation of the tropics, the researchers said.”
Once again, it’s the all-too-familiar outcome of global warming no matter what happens, heads I win, tails you lose.
pinkisbrain (14:32:45),
I love those dubbed in scenes from that movie! Must’ve seen a dozen of them by now. I’d give that one a B+.
You asked, “is this yours”? Sorry, Pink, it’s not.
Didn’t you notice about ten seconds in, when Hitler said, “Pink has pulled out as Justin Timberlake’s supporting act!” LOL!
Dave (07:50:06) When you intimate that these scientists ‘may’ be sponsored by government, you are including every scientist who does anything as ‘maybe’ bought!
So it’s normal. It’s not caused by man. Just like eclipses are normal, not caused by man. There was a time and place when man was blamed for eclipses. We think now it’s so ridiculous, and primitive, that that could have happened. What will people think of man made global warming in the future?
The headline of the article that is the basis of this thread is clearly incorrect.
” New Study Casts Doubt on Cause of Himalayan Glaciers Melting”
The field studies seem to have provided data that the glaciers have melted away in the past in warmer times.
If this is so, there is every reason to believe they could disappear easily in the future if global warming occurs in the future, and this is projected to happen because of AGW.
The fact that climate fluctuated in the past, due to natural causes, does not contradict the possibility that the projections of global warming due to GHG’s will melt glaciers. There is no scientific logic to this argument.
Field studies which measure the extent and age of glaciers cannot possibly determine the cause of present and future glacial melting.
Pamela, No I am not. Did you look at the links I provided? Glacier movement is not only a product of changing temperatures, but also of changing precipitation patterns.
Glib? You single my comment out of this list as glib?
pinkisbrain (14:17:47) :
Nogw (08:55:27) :
—Another question to the attending class: What is the goal of those who promote “global warming” and/or “climate change” in the developed world?—
i think, first off all “we” like to rule the world as long as possible
and it is a very smart idea to trade nothing more expensive than “cool air”.
its only, to rule the world, but there are a few good arguments
I would say, instead, that for “them” in order to control the world, first they must destroy the first world economies and specially the US with that silly thing of “global warming” and oblige you to kneel before them.
Arch, my comment was related to your idea (supported or not by a literature review) that neighboring mountain glaciers have different reasons for concurrent advance or retreat, one being AGW for retreat, the other being natural weather pattern variation for advance. Again, explain your understanding of how this can be in these mountains.
India already has a religion going back thousands of years.
Why would they want to scrap it in favor of a new one created by an outsider whose total theology rests on a movie script?
Were it not for glaciers advancing & retreating, we would not be so lucky to have places like Yosemite to sit and ponder the grandness.
Al Gore should spend a year there, pondering the meaning of Earth.
But not life, as that’s an Eastern thing.
“”” Dave (07:50:06) :
Whilst I dont believe in runaway Global Warming to AGW, I think we must recognise that some countries have a vested interest now, in not believing in Global Warming. India would be one.
The evidence here cannot be dismissed lightly, but we should acknowledge that the government that may have sponsored these scientists, might not welcome undue pressure to curb their own carbon emissions. “””
Well I believe that Indian Scientists who influence the Indian Governmnet have already said that they believe the whole IPCC global warming position is a scam, and they simply aren’t going to take any notice of either the IPCC or anybody else who tries to pressure them. Adn I believe China will do the same thing.
So they are staying away from carbon nonsense out of a belief that the “science” is false; noy because of any National need to ignore it.
As for the Himalayan glaciology report; I’m not at all surprised, given the altitude of those glaciers.
it’s similar to the antarctic warming “Crisis”; hey the south pole is warming and now it is only fifty degrees C below the melting point; whoop de doo !
Likewise, the waxing and waning of the “Snows of Kilimanjaro” doesn’t have anything to do with any global warming imagined or real.
You might make some kind of GW argument relative to the Fox, and Franz Joseph glaciers of the Southern Alps, which essentially come down to sea level; but even there the story is not quite so simple; I believe both are currently advancing; but have been in historical retreat for some hundreds of years which would befit emergence from an ice age.
dorlomin (14:46:57) :
“So during temperatures similar (perhaps even slightly warmer) to today these glaciers retreated enough to leave no trace of their older selves.”
Not exactly. The “complete obliteration and modification of older evidences” of previous advances occured during subsequent glacial advances, not retreats. I think you misunderstand what glacial retreat implies. It is not a physical movement of the ice (that can only be an advance); rather, a retreat occurs when melt-off exceeds advance. Melt-offs will deposit glacial sediments (i.e tills, moraines, glaciofluvial) and subsequent advances scour those deposits.