Anytime I see the “canary in the coal mine” phrase being applied to some phenomenon related to climate, I know right away that the person using it hasn’t really put much thought into using the phrase, and that it is purely an emotional response. Photographer James Balog is the emotional user this time.
This misleading headline, photos, and story in the Daily Mail highlights the photo work of James Balog and the “Extreme Ice Survey” (EIS). They write:
This shocking time lapse video shows how a glacier has receded thousands of feet in just four years.
The footage of Alaska’s Columbia glacier was taken by expert and photographer James Balog and his team between May 2007 and September 2011.
Balog used to a climate change skeptic himself but eventually went on to start the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most comprehensive photographic study of glaciers ever conducted.
His new documentary Chasing Ice will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on January 21, the Huffington Post reports.
…
Balog told the Idaho Press: ‘Shrinking glaciers are the canary in the global coal mine.
‘They are the most visible, tangible manifestations of climate change on the planet today.’
Unfortunately, I can’t show you the video, because this is what happens when you try embed it in a blog or newspaper article:
So, you have to follow the link: AK-01 Columbia Kadin Narrated
It seems Balog is all about his film, paying speaking engagements, and photo shows, and less about “saving the planet”, since everything he does is heavily copyright plastered. Given that he only wants people to visit his website and see his talks/photo/presentations, I’ll not try to post any of his video or photos here given that he’ll likely squawk about it even though it would be considered fair use. He won’t like what I’m about to say.
Here’s the interesting thing though. In the video, Balog shows what glaciers do normally: calve to the sea, no surprise there. And yes, there was some reduction in the terminus between May 2007 and September 2011.
But is it really honest to show the glacier time-lapse with different endpoints (May versus September) when you know those endpoints have seasonal differences?
And, more importantly, is a four-year period statistically valid for comparison of anything climate related?
If any of us used four years worth of data to make a point about climate, our warmer friends would have a veritable cow. Tamino would call out the cherry picking brigade and scream about hiding/not using the whole data set. Dana1981 of “Skeptical Science” would dash off another get even missive calling us names in violation of his own site policy. Peter Gleick would create some new “worst climate deniers” list to denigrate us with for being so dumb as to use 4 years worth of data to try to make a point.
But, not one of those guys has uttered a peep about four years of glacier footage being used to make a point. Of course what they’ll say now in response is that “Watts is ignoring the ENTIRE glacier record with his four year criticism”.
So to head that off, and to keep in the spirit of photographic evidence, I am in fact going to show more than four years worth of Alaskan glacier data. Let’s have a look at what the USGS says about this glacier. They also have a page on glacier photography.
While they don’t have Alaska’s Columbia glacier in that page, they do have others. Here’s the photos of the Muir glacier in sequence. I’ve added captions for the dates the USGS says they were taken at:
It seems a good portion of the reteat happened well before 1950. They write about this photo sequence, bold mine:
Three northeast-looking photographs taken from a Glacier Bay Photo station that was established in 1941 by William O. Field on White Thunder Ridge, Muir Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska. The three photographs document the significant changes that have occurred during the 63 years between August 13, 1941 and August 31, 2004. The 1941 photograph shows the lower reaches of Muir Glacier, then a large, tidewater calving valley glacier and its tributary Riggs Glacier. Muir and Riggs Glaciers filled Muir Inlet.
The séracs in the lower right-hand corner of the photograph mark the location of Muir Glacier’s terminus. The ice thickness in the center of the photographs is more than 0.7 kilometers (0.43 miles). For nearly two centuries prior to 1941, Muir Glacier had been retreating. Maximum retreat exceeded 50 kilometers (31 miles). In places, more than a 1.0 kilometer (0.62 mile) thickness of ice had been lost. Note the absence of any identifiable vegetation and the numerous bare bedrock faces present on both sides of the glacier (W. O. Field, # 41-64, courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve Archive).
The August 4, 1950 photograph, the first of two repeat photographs documents the significant changes that have occurred during the 9 years between it and the 1941 photograph. Muir Glacier has retreated more than 3 kilometers (1.9 miles), exposing Muir Inlet, and thinned 100 meters (328 feet) or more. However, it still is connected with tributary Riggs Glacier. White Thunder Ridge continues to be devoid of vegetation. In places, erosion has removed some of the till from its surface. (W. O. Field, # F50-R29, courtesy of the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve Archive).
The August 31, 2004 photograph, the second repeat photograph, documents the significant changes that have occurred during the 63 years between the first and third photographs and during the 54 years between second and third photographs. Muir Glacier has retreated out of the field of view and is now located more than 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) to the northwest. Riggs Glacier has retreated as much as 0.6 kilometers (0.37 miles) and thinned by more than 0.25 kilometers (0.16 miles). Note the dense vegetation, dominated by Alnus, that has developed on the till cover of White Thunder Ridge. Also note the correlation between Muir Glacier’s 1941 thickness and the trimline on the left side of the 2004 photograph. (USGS Photograph by Bruce F. Molnia).
And here’s a map from USGS that James Balog will never, ever, show in his videos or photo essays, because it blows his argument (and meal ticket) right out of the water:
Note that the majority of the glacier retreat occurred well before CO2 was said to be a problem, when CO2 was at the “safe” level below 350 parts per million as espoused by weepy Bill McKibben and Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS.
Balog may be an “expert photographer” but he’s a pretty shoddy historian. Maybe instead of “chasing ice” he should chase historical facts, it might help him be a skeptic again.
But none of these guys will ever show you this, it’s just too damned inconvenient.
h/t to Steve Goddard
Steven Goddard went back a little further in history in an earlier post… The vast majority of the glacier receding happened in the 1800’s.
As you enter Glacier Bay in Southeast Alaska you will cruise along shorelines completely covered by ice just 200 years ago.
Explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait choked with ice in 1794, and Glacier Bay was barely an indented glacier. That glacier was more than 4000 ft. thick, up to 20 miles or more wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St.Elias Range of mountains.
By 1879 naturist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay. By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier headed Tarr inlet 65 miles from Glacier Bay’s mouth.
http://www.real-science.com/glacier-climate-scam
I love the Muir Glacier photo series. In about 70 years the area went from barren, desolate, ice covered lands to vibrant, budding, CO2 capturing forests!
If you look at the map provided, just think of the vast swaths of current greenery that were, relatively recently, looking like the 1941 shot of the Muir.
And this is a bad thing, how again?
klem says: “…Of course they are wonderful visual documentation of how glaciers move and calve but that’s all. However they are being sold as evidence that human activity is the cause, therein is the lie.”
Therein lies the lucre.
Joey B says: “…Jason, they are not looking for debate. They merely throw out claims and hope the naive will eat them up. Far too many people only read headlines and have lost the ability to think for themselves….”
They are zombies in the service of the AGW witch doctors.
Dated ’41, ‘ 50, ’04, the only pictures you could find? The glacier has obviously been retreating for over a century, you don’t deny it; pretty soon, there won’t be anything left of it to speak of. What have you demonstrated? That CO2 in the atmosphere has not increased roughly in the same proportions?
Look how fast all that endangered vegetation migrated…..
…I’ll bet bugs, birds, and furry animals migrated with it
…..poor things, obviously all the vegetation at the other end is gone
As David L. said, the 2004 picture looks so much more hospitable -like a good vacation spot.
Note too, the complete lack of any signs of life in the first two photographs. That’s the difference between warming and cooling. Warming is good for life (including humans). Cold is the only real “climate catastrophe” where life is concerned.
Why the AGW crowd wants the world to look like the first two pictures I’ll never knowl
A year and a half ago I took my son hiking in Glacier National Park (Montana near the Canadian border). The visitor center (US Park Service) has an impressive display showing how in the last great ice age most of North America was covered by glaciers. It explains how beginning about 13,000 years ago the earth’s climate slowly began to change and the glaciers began to recede, exposing all that is now Canada and the northern United States. My first thought was of the awesome power of nature. My second was: “Wonder what man was doing between 11,000 BC and 1800 AD which caused all this climate change – you know, the kind that is unprecedented?”
Balog needs to learn about photoshop. It will save him time for his useless endeavors so he can concentrate on more fruitful things.
Read the book over Christmas,
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/what-was-life-like-in-the-little-ice-age/
In 1642 the Des Bois glacier advanced “over a musket shot every day even in the month of August”
Page 124
“But is it really honest to show the glacier time-lapse with different endpoints (May versus September) when you know those endpoints have seasonal differences?”
No – but then, the videos/pictures are Art, with a capital “A”! So the feeling sure was honest.
“….Balog used to [be] a climate change skeptic himself but eventually went on to start the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most comprehensive photographic study of glaciers ever conducted…..”
May just as well have said – ‘Balog used to be a skeptic……….but there wasn’t any money in it!
We happen to be discussing glaciers on my local blog and i came accross this comment.
Why would glaciers “advance”, when the rate of mass balance loss has accelerated since being at near equilibrium in the 1970’s?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing-intermediate.htm
“. . . After 1975, glacier shrinkage continues to accelerate until present. The mass loss from 1996 to 2005 is more than double the mass loss rate in the previous decade of 1986 to 1995 and over four times the mass loss rate over 1976 to 1985.”
It still amazes me that many climate researchers would like us to return to LIA conditions, so that some glaciers will stop shrinking. Glaciers are always shrinking and they are always growing. They are never static. Surely the purpose of this planet is not to propagate ice, but life instead. Growing ice serves no critter, including man.
It is reckless to assume that the ideal climate for the planet is the present one. To attempt to preserve this climate, would be an attempt to keep the planet locked in it’s current ice age. I for one, do not want to doom the planet to a eternal ice age. Ice must melt before it is biologically useful.
GK
There’s two interesting papers here on Alaskan glaciers.
One concludes the rate of retreat has been pretty constant since 1780ish, with the exception of a couple colder interludes.
The other maps out just how far they grew during the LIA. MWP trees are reappearing at the current edges of glaciers.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/the-truth-about-alaskan-glaciers/
Nick Shaw that was funny! The sad thing is Mr. Balog and his ilk would probably miss the sarcasm in your post. Gotta love the censorship at the warmist sites. Can’t have the truth leaking out, you never know what would happen. These people are truy pathetic.
Overall, the volume of a glacier should not be proportional to temperature but roughly to an integral of temperature, in a long-term mean. So when it was already retreating in 1950, no further warming is necessary to maintain the retreat.
Francois says:
January 17, 2012 at 10:54 am
Are you seriously trying to suggest a direct linkage with the percentage of atmospheric CO² and the length of this glacier?
Want to think about that?
This glacier, as pointed out in this very thread, has been retreating for the better part of 200 years and most of its retreat took place in the 19th century.
Want to think about that as well?
The AGW argument on glacial retreat needs to be, not that it is happening, but that it is happening faster in the industrial period than in the pre-industrial period. (A hockey stick inflection in rates of change.) haven’t seen that argument made. Anything less and the retreat is just a local response to local changes.
J. Snow, if you teach your son about Milankovitch Theory, it will help him toward a sobering understanding that even rather small decreases in the Earth’s energy balance can take our planet into an ice age, or conversely, that small increases in heat retention can drown vast tracts of Earth’s land-masses under rising seas from melting glaciers and icecaps.
Then your son will be better-prepared to consider (rationally, and for himself) whether the CO2 that we are adding to the Earth’s atmosphere may (in the long term) exert a warming impact sufficient to cause the latter rising-sea eventuality, not in thousands of years, but appreciably within your son’s lifetime, and accelerating during his children’s lifetime.
I am always sceptical about any of Goddard’s claims – it is always necessary to look for the pea under the thimble. In this case the sudden loss of ice in the Columbia Glacier is well documented and appears to be the result of the glacier changing from grounded to floating.
The retreat apparently started in about 1980
These are worth a read
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051210120437.htm
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/163-glacier-once-stuck-to-sea-floor-breaks-loose.html
The first link states
Tad Pfeffer, associate director of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, said the glacier is now discharging nearly 2 cubic miles of ice annually into the Prince William Sound, the equivalent of 100,000 ships packed with ice, each 500 feet long. The tidewater glacier — which has its terminus, or end, in the waters of the Prince William Sound — is expected to retreat an additional 9 miles in the next 15 years to 20 years before reaching an equilibrium point in shallow water near sea level, he said.
and
The glacier’s retreat appears to be due to a combination of complex physical processes, he said. “The start of the retreat in 1980 is not the direct result of global warming, but was triggered by longer-term warming,” said Pfeffer. “The Columbia Glacier, like all Alaska glaciers, is melting at an increased rate, but the enormous volume of loss accompanying the retreat is much greater than melt alone.”
I had to take another look at the two pictures in the linked article representing the “loss” over a couple of years time. A couple of observations:
1) In the second picture (taken in September), you can tell the “loss” was due to the glacier breaking off. I say that because of the nice, sharp break you can see.
2) Imagine what happens the winter after the second picture and take a look at the first picture, taken in May a couple years earlier. Can you see the line? Or is that just my imagination? The new ice/snow simply fills in where the old stuff broke off.
A physicist says:
“Yep, taken overall, the Earth’s glaciers are in retreat, and the rate of that retreat is accelerating. ”
Evidence?
The map above shows most of the retreat between 1780 to 1880 (50-100 km compared to 30-40 km from 1880 to present). That’s not acceleration, that’s deceleration. Do you have a data source that is not a cherry picked “sampling” of glacier extent that supports this accelerating retreat assertion? (BTW: a global survey of <10% of glaciers is inadequate for determination.)
Oldjim reports:
“… the glacier is now discharging nearly 2 cubic miles of ice annually into the Prince William Sound, the equivalent of 100,000 ships packed with ice, each 500 feet long.”
Get up to speed, Oldjim! The correct units are Olympic-sized swimming pools. That number would surely be bigger, and thus more scary. Which is, of course, the whole point.
OTOH, the planet is still emerging from the LIA, and glacier retreat is normal due to the natural warming. But that explanation doesn’t generate grants, does it?
wow, lots of CO2 using trees in that final picture that didn’t exist 50 years ago….