By Don J. Easterbrook, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
The recent Portland State University study of glaciers on Mt. Adams by is a good example of bad science, i.e., how a dogmatic bias and selectively leaving out contrary factual data can lead to bad conclusions. As an exercise in critical thinking, I used to have my graduate students take a paper like this apart, piece by piece, to show any scientific errors. Here is an analysis of bad assumptions and errors in the Mt. Adams study.
First, what are the basic contentions in this study?
- Washington’s gradually warming temperatures have caused Mount Adams [glaciers] to shrink by nearly half since 1904.
- The Mt. Adams glaciers are receding faster than those of nearby sister volcanoes.
- The glacier recession is another sign of gradually warming temperatures.
- The study lends urgency to an earlier federal report that shows the water content of Cascade Mountain snowpacks could dwindle by as much as 50 percent by the 2070s.
Let’s take a careful look at each of these. Have the Mt. Adams glaciers indeed shrunk by nearly half since 1904? How do we prove such a statement? The best way is to have photographic evidence of where the glacier termini were in 1904 and where they are now. For the moment, let’s assume they have shrunk significantly since 1904. But the rest of the conclusion (gradually warming temperatures have caused them to shrink) isn’t a logical consequence of smaller glaciers. Two important aspects of this question are (1) has the climate gradually warmed over the past 100 years and (2) what were the glaciers doing before 1904?
The answer to the question, has the climate gradually warmed over the past 100 years, is no, the climate has not gradually warmed—it has oscillated back and forth between warm and cool periods four times during the past century (Figure 1), and the glaciers have fluctuated back and forth with the climate changes. The inference that the Mt. Adams glaciers began to retreat near the turn of the past century and have gradually shrunk because of gradual warming due to increased CO2 is false.
The answer to the question, what were the glaciers doing immediately prior to 1904 is that they were strongly advancing during the 1880 to 1915 cool period, and many reached terminal positions close to their maximum extent during the Little Ice Age (1300 AD to this century) (Figure 2). Most of the subsequent retreat of the glaciers occurred during the following warm period from 1915 to 1945, well before CO2 began to rise sharply after 1945.
Let’s look at the second contention–Mt. Adams glaciers are receding faster than those of nearby sister volcanoes. The advance and retreat of glaciers on two of those sister volcanoes, Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier, has been well documented (Figure 4) (see references in Easterbrook 2011 and 2010).
Glaciers on Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker advanced strongly during the 1880 to 1915 cool period, retreated strongly during the 1915 to 1945 warm period, advanced again during the 1945 to 1977 cool period, and retreated during the 1978 to 1998 warm period. The contention that Mt. Adams glaciers are retreating faster than those on nearby volcanoes and that they have been retreating gradually since 1904 is false. Glaciers on Mt. Adams have not been gradually retreating and are ‘not retreating faster than the others’–all of these volcanoes have fluctuated strongly back and forth during each period of warming and cooling.
The third contention of the study, that glacier recession is another sign of gradually warming temperatures is only partially true. Although climatic warming does indeed cause glacier recession, the inference that gradual warming has caused gradual glacier retreat since 1904 is not true. The glaciers have clearly been periodically advancing as well as retreating.
The fourth contention of the study, that the study lends urgency to an earlier federal report that shows the water content of Cascade Mountain snowpacks could dwindle by as much as 50 percent by the 2070s is totally unfounded. It assumes (1) that gradual climatic warming dating back to 1904 will continue at a constant rate until 2070, (2) that the supposed warming is continuous, (3) that the climate will continue to warm, and (4) that it is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2. The first assumption of gradual warming since 1904 has been shown above to be incorrect—there have been warming and cooling periods that have caused glaciers not only to retreat, but also to advance during this time. The assumption that the climate is presently warming is also not true–in fact, the climate has been cooling slightly since 2000, not warming, so projecting continuous gradual warming into the future is not warranted.
The assumption that CO2 is causing climatic warming is also not true. Much of the glacial retreat was caused by climatic warming that occurred from 1915 to 1945, well before atmospheric CO2 began to rise sharply, so this warming cannot be attributed to rising CO2. In addition, the glacier re-advance from 1945 to 1977 was caused by climatic cooling during the same time that CO2 was rising most rapidly, just the opposite of what should have happened if CO2 caused climatic warming.
So what credence can be given to the contention that Cascade Mountain snowpacks could dwindle by as much as 50 percent by the 2070s? Temperatures in the Pacific NW have been cooling over the past decade, not warming (Figure 5, 6) and the snowpack in 2010 was about 70-200% above normal. In the late summer of 2011, some areas normally snow-free were still covered with 30 feet of snow. Thus, the conclusion of Cascade snowpacks declining by 50% by the 2070s is not credible.
Figure 6. The trend of global temperature since 2001 has been cooling at a rate of -4.0°C (-7°F) per century. Computer models had predicted a 1°F rise in temperature during this same period—that did not happen, showing that the computer models are invalid.
Summary
- Rather than glacial retreat since 1904 due to gradual warming, glaciers have advanced and retreated four times in the past century.
- Glacier termini advanced from 1945 to 1977 during the time of most sharply rising atmospheric CO2,. showing that rising CO2 does not cause climatic warming.
- Glacier recession on Mt. Adams does not prove a gradually warming temperature.
- No climatic warming has occurred during the past decade. Instead a cooling trend of -7° F per century has occurred.
- Cooling during the past decade is not consistent with a claim of 50% reduction of Cascade snowpack caused by climatic warming.
- The 1904 position of glacier termini resulted from strong cooling from 1880 to 1915. Comparing the position of recent minimal glacier termini following 20 years of warming from 1978 to 1998 with 1904 maximum glacier termini gives an exaggerated view of glacier recession.
- Because glaciers on Mt. Rainier and Mt. Baker advanced and retreated four times in the past century, there is no basis for assuming that glaciers on Mt. Adams are retreating faster than those on nearby volcanoes.
References
Easterbrook, D.J., ed., 2011, Evidence-based climate science: Data opposing CO2 emissions as the primary source of global warming: Elsevier Inc., 416 p.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2011, Geologic evidence of recurring climate cycles and their implications for the cause of global climate changes: The Past is the Key to the Future: in Evidence-Based Climate Science, Elsevier Inc., p.3-51.
Easterbrook, D.J., 2010, A walk through geologic time from Mt. Baker to Bellingham Bay, WA: Chuckanut Editions, Bellingham, WA, 329 p.
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Addendum:
Something’s odd here. I tried to find the paper, and found references to AP news articles like this one:
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/01/glaciers_shrinking_on_mount_ad.html
From that article:
In the first comprehensive study of its kind, a Portland State University study has found Mount Adams’ 12 glaciers have shrunk by nearly half since 1904 and are receding faster than those of nearby sister volcanoes Mount Hood and Mount Rainier.
The link in that AP story on OregonLive.com is to a paper, Sitts Et Al 2010 …and it’s a dead link. (It was dead at about midnight last night, it has since been restored)
Found it here: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3955/046.084.0407
And… no mention of a 2012 study in Portland State University news:
Its like AP recycled old news from a 2010 paper or something. The closest thing I could find was this on PSU news site from December:
http://www.pdx.edu/news/node/16390
I’m thinking perhaps the reaction in the NW press is to a presentation by Fountain, and not a new paper. If readers can find a more recent 2011/2012 paper that I’ve missed, please leave links in comments. – Anthony
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UPDATE: Don Easterbrook responds to comments, I’ve elevated his response here:
Easterbrook writes: A couple of points of clarification—
1. We’ve been warming up from the Little Ice Age for several hundred years but not at a continuous rate. The figure of the series of moraines in front of the Deming glacier was meant to point out that glaciers have been see-sawing back and forth for centuries but present glaciers are well upvalley from their Little Ice Age maximums as we ‘thaw out’ from the colder climate. Thus, the idea that glaciers have gradually retreated in response to gradual warming the past century and that it will continue until the 2070s is nonsense. Yes, it’s warmer now than during the Little Ice Age, but because CO2 could not have been a factor hundreds of years ago, the warming must be due to natural causes.
2. I agree that projecting a temperature history of one decade 2070 would be ridiculous (actually we can use a much longer historic record to project to 2070). The point here is that the 1978 to 1998 warming trend is over and cannot be projected indefinitely into the 2070s. The cooling experienced over the past decade began with the switch of the eastern Pacific Ocean from its warm mode to its cool mode in 1999. This mode switch, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has happened four times during the past century and every time the global climate has remained warm or cool for three decades (depending on whether the mode switch was to a warmer or cooler mode). We have been entrenched in a cool PDO mode for the past decade and temperatures have cooled slightly. What we know from this is that we have several more decades of cooling to go before the Pacific switches back into its warm mode. Thus, predicting 50% reduction in Cascade snowpack in the 2070s due to global warming is ridiculous.
3. The main point of my comments is that you can’t look at glacier termini in 1904 after 30 years of cooling and glacier expansion, compare it with present termini after 20 years of warming, and extrapolate that as ‘gradual warming’ over the past century as a continuous process that didn’t begin until CO2 began to rise.
I visited Mt. Saint Helens four years ago during a trip to Seattle. It was vey striking that the summit had two new glaciers growing on it twenty five years after the volcano exploded. Global warming sure is melting everything in sight.
What we expect from anything Portland Oregon. Another example of the crap coming out of our universities. I quit gifting them my money and time a long time ago.
Funny, how during the time period since Mount St Hellens ( http://neogeo.kent.edu/munro/glacial/reading/Schilling_Steve_P.pdf ) blew off that all this new ice is forming. Especially in the face of a warming period. How can that be overlooked in their glacier cherry picking assuming science opinion paper?
As for the greeners who hoof it through the cascades, many have personally reported that recent snow and ice levels are blocking many popular treks. Nothing scientific about my comments, but at least it is an actual observation that does not wonder off into some politically driven its all are fault mantra.
And South of Mt. Adams, the glaciers on Mt. Shasta, California have been GROWING.
Shasta’s glaciers have nearly doubled in size since 1950 and this is likely due to changes in precipitation patterns, not any great changes in temperature:
http://www.iceagenow.com/Glaciers_growing_on_Mt_Shasta.htm
Peter,
The inconvenient truth that you refuse to accept is the fact that the globe has been warming along the same trend line since the LIA – and the natural warming is not accelerating, as had been universally predicted by the alarmist crowd. They were flat wrong.
The current warming is simply a continuation of the reversion to normal Holocene temperatures from the depths of the LIA, when CO2 levels were steady and very low. Occam’s Razor says: take the simplest explanation, because it is by far the most likely. And the simple explanation is that CO2 is not causing any measurable, testable global warming. AGW is still at the conjecture stage because it is not testable. If AGW becomes testable and quantifiable, it will then become a hypothesis. But so far, the evidence points to natural causes for the warming since the LIA.
“The globe is warming, glaciers in general are in retreat and the Arctic ice is thinning and disappearing.”
So? How is this bad?
REPLY: I never understand how people can miss the author of the post when it isn’t me – Anthony
Its [the] cross you have to bear Anthony! I understand but anyone that cannot check the author is not worth your comment! Time and again it happens but they hit the man instead of the ball! Sad but it shows how narrow minded they are. Ignore and keep up the site that gets hits beyond comprehension! By the way, just been watching BBC with people in Alaska moaning about huge snowfalls! Winter! Who would have thought our kids would see snow again!
Peter says:
January 11, 2012 at 9:48 am
Steven will love the fact you’re likening yourself to Baldrick!
REPLY: ……… basically what I’m saying is that any paper with a time series has to pick a period. By picking a period, some data is left out. That data may/may not be useful – Anthony
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Thank you. One can even legitimately state the 1904 period was cherry picked.
Maybe this would be more useful than the bickering about HadCrut and periods of global temps……
http://climvis.ncdc.noaa.gov/tmp/graph-Jan1109:25:104492797851.gif
Don,
Thanks for the write up, I have read your past studies as they have popped up in research. I have to remind my daughter to take one of your courses here in the future, since she started at Western last fall.
That being said, how do you keep your job there? B’ham is a fun little town, but there are plenty here who would love to Tar and Feather your heretic self. 🙂
Thanks again,
Josh
“Although climatic warming does indeed cause glacier recession”
Sometimes. Warming from -10 to -9 might not cause glacier recession. A decrease in snowfall during warming might cause glacier recession due to less ice. A decrease in humidity might cause glacier recession due to sublimation.
What about the Crater Glacier on Mt. St. Helens? It seems that the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project based in New England, not in the Pacific Northwest, has not “grappled” as the Physicist put it, with the expansion of this low elevation glacier since 1980. I suppose that one could retort that there are special conditions responsible for the rapid advance of this glacier and that it’s not located in the “North Cascades”. But then again, Mt. Adams is not in the “North Cascades” either. Perhaps, they’re not the best source of information on the topic after all.
As a plant scientist with training in geology, I have an interest in the subject of glaciers and their action on the landscape and plant communities although it’s not my professional field of study. I’ve seen the advances and retreats of glaciers in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon over the past 30 plus years of hiking and climbing to the same spots and watching the changes. These observations lead me to believe that the factors influencing the behavior of glaciers in the region, including Mt. Adams, are far more complex in nature than those investigated in the study and merit additional scrutiny as Dr. Easterbrook has done here.
More on Crater Glacier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_Glacier
Missing the author’s identity is the least egregious lapse of reading skills in the comment. He is literally arguing with a mountain:
@ur momisugly Jim Carson
Your egregious lapse of reading skills is the assumption that he had in fact been arguing with a mountain. He could actually been arguing with Mr. Adam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Adams_(film)
@ur momisugly Jim & @ur momisugly Anthony
YOU GUYS SAY:
“January 11, 2012 at 9:11 am
Anthony, how does one give you constructive criticism?
For the record, I agree with everything you’ve said here (except maybe the hyperbolic statement that ALL papers cherry-pick data points). I also agree with Dr.(?) Easterbrook’s conclusions that the Mt. Adams paper is seriously flawed.
But right answers aren’t enough. We must get there via scientific rigor. I’m not asking you to fall on your sword, retract the post, or even admit that you didn’t give this enough review. I’m just hoping for better next time.
How about just fixing Figure 6 by adding the CO2 data that is supposed to be there, and let’s call a truce?
REPLY: I’ll ask Don about Figure 6, as for the statement about cherry picking, I was drawing from your inference, but basically what I’m saying is that any paper with a time series has to pick a period. By picking a period, some data is left out. That data may/may not be useful – Anthony”
I SAY:
You gentlemen are making great points. My point in this thread, and how it relates to the bigger Universal Debate, is this.
Finally, there seems to be a growing debate in which academics are beginning to question the ‘consensus’, growth spurred on by the Climategate emails. I think we need to focus on how to communicate this ‘growing debate’.
The ‘scientific’ debate in this forum does not always capture the indirect cost we pay for the outcomes of these debates. Politicians and the media have decades of ‘muscle memory’ and ‘Pavlovian’ type issues that need to be worked out. We all spend to much time indoors these days. When bad things happen outside, we ask the experts. The ‘experts’ are not the same people they were in 1947. “His Master’s Voice” does not arrive the same way it does today. Yet, JVC makes MP3 players, I think.
Anyway, I am not sure what my point in all of this rambling is about, I have had tons of interruptions since I began writing this. I think we need to make sure antiquated methods of knowledge distributions continue to evolve.
I think WUWT is the ‘Missing Link’ or something…
@ur momisuglyeveryone else…pay no attention to the Mann behind the curtain…
Andrew
Figure 5 is concerning.
I note that cooling in the areas previous covered by continental glaciers is severe. That could be a real precursor. This interglacial will not last.
I wish these warmists would not tempt and taunt Mt Adams to errupt like that.
Back in 1957 I visited Glacier N.P. for the first time as a sixteen year old. At the vistors center up on Logan Pass I bought a little booklet about the park’s glaciers. It was full of pictures taken every five years or so, starting around 1900, that showed how much the glaciers had shrunk over time. Pretty dramatic reduction in ice size but not a whisper about global warming.
Paul Homewood says:
January 11, 2012 at 8:58 am
Studies in Alaska suggest glaciers began retreating around 1780 and that the rate of retreat then was similar to now, with the exception of a expansion around 1880.
Also tree logs dated to around 1300AD are reappearing as glaciers retreat now, confirming MWP glaciers must have smaller than now.
Paul remember “Iceman” the mumified 5000 yr old guy found under a retreating glacier in Italian or Swiss Alps depending on who you listen to. They find all kinds of things under them.
Some of the comments on this thread assume that the glaciers in question are holdovers from the last glacial period. However, in his Climate, History and the Modern World (2nd ed., 1995), H. H. Lamb mentions (unfortunately only in a brief comment) a developing consensus (at that time) that the present mountain glaciers have appeared during the current interglacial period. Which, of course, would mean that they had disappeared in this same period. I haven’t had a chance to track down what the present views are on this point, but if it hasn’t been refuted then this puts the whole issue of mountain glacier retreat in a somewhat different light.
“Climate reconstructions representative of the Glacier National Park region extend back multiple centuries and show numerous long-duration drought and wet periods that influenced the mass balance of glaciers (Pederson et al. 2004). Of particular note was an 80-year period (~1770-1840) of cool, wet summers and above-average winter snowfall that led to a rapid growth of glaciers just prior to the end of the LIA. Thus, in the context of the entire Holocene, the size of glaciers at the end of the LIA was an anomaly of sorts. In fact, the large extent of ice coverage removed most of the evidence of earlier glacier positions by overriding terminal and lateral moraines.” From: http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/climate_glaciers.htm
The coupling of hot, dry summers with substantial decreases in winter snowpack (~30% of normal) produced dramatic recession rates as high as 100 m/yr from A.D. 1917-1941 (Pederson et al. 2004).
Just to put in some facts from another paper.
James Sexton of 6:44 am: Using your same link but using the month of May, instead, produces .03 degrees per decade. That is a whopping .3 degrees the last 100 years!
A good article including that plot which just can’t help showing a 60 year cycle.
Unless and until someone can produce EMPIRICAL proof that thermal energy can be transferred from a cooler body to a warmer one by radiation, then there is absolutely no empirical evidence for any atmospheric greenhouse effect because the “explanation” of such depends upon the critical assumption that backradiation from a cooler atmosphere somehow warms the Earth’s surface.
Bear in mind that it has been shown that the atmosphere at night is colder than the surface and is COOLING FASTER than the surface all through the night. Just click the ‘experiments’ link on this page of my site for further details on this point http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html
This may be of interest to folks with limited glacier-time horizon:
“The Coming and Going of Glaciers – A New Alpine Melt Theory”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,357366,00.html
The abstract:
“The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren’t around at all. A group of climatologists have come up with a controversial new theory on how the Alps must have looked over the ages”.
Reminds me of “Green”land.
If Mt. Adams is loosing it’s glaciers faster than other Cascade volcanoes, especially considering that the nearby Crater Glacier on Mt Saint Helens is growing, may indicate a non-atmospheric cause… remember, these are VOLCANOES. Has anyone correlated the ground temperature under the glaciers? Is there a growing magma chamber under Mt Adams?
Mt. Saint Helens lost it’s glaciers very quickly in 1980. Rainier will lose it’s very quickly during it’s next eruption, pushing a lahar into Tacoma. Measuring glaciers on a chain of active volcanoes and trying to tie it to the atmosphere seems a little dodgy.
A half physicist
January 11, 2012 at 9:31 am
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Your comments remind me of the contortion of logic my son used to try, when he was 10, in order to get out of trouble.
This report in the Daily Mail here in the UK (Dr Michael Gottfried, from the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (Gloria) programme),
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2083967/Edelweiss-plants-A-risk-extinct-summers-gets-warmer.html
is a similar scare-mongering bit of fluff. It is saying that cold-loving plants in the mountains are being forced upwards and will “run out of mountain” to climb to e.g. Edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinum). Also that the beautiful alpine meadows will disappear because, due to warmer summers, they will be gradually invaded by small shrubs.
The meadows are, of course, man-made and if they were no longer maintained by the farmers for grazing and winter hay they would become forest again as they were originally.
The alpine flowers are not so much cold-loving as winter rain-hating. Most of them, including Edelweiss. grow quite happily in this country at sea-level, provided they get sharp drainage.
Temperatures vary in the mountains enormously swinging from 70-80F to below freezing – all on one summer’s day. All the plants have come though much warmer times in any case.
How were the data points in Fig.6 calculated?
Why does Fig.6 show a -4°C per century cooling??
I ‘love’ this term ‘warming’ that’s being tossed about :
fractional increases in temperature that humans would not even be
able to discern