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
Someone asked about global glacial mass balance. Here’s a paper from 2006:
http://ppg.sagepub.com/content/26/1/76.short
abstract:
The paper reviews measurements of glacier mass balance in the period 1946-95. There are data for 246 glaciers but most records are quite short. The available mass-balance data are biased to Western Europe, North America and the former USSR with too few measurements from other parts of the world. The data are also biased towards wetter conditions with too few data from the dry-cold glaciers that are typical of many regions. There is no sign of any recent global trend towards increased glacier melting, and the data mainly reflect variations within and between regions. The ‘direct method’ of measuring glacier mass balance is with stakes and snowpits but it is a very laborious way of measuring long-term glacier changes. Stake/snowpit measurements should be more integrated in future with geodetic and remote sensing methods, especially laser profiling, and with modelling.
A physicist says:
January 17, 2012 at 10:35 am
“Perhaps as Willis learns more-and-more about radiative transport, he will eventually be able to tell us why that retreat might be happening.”
You’re a physicist why don’t you tell us. And please tell us what emissivity you will use in your radiative heat transfer equation for CO2 at 1 atm and 288K. I will truly be interested.
Hey, could it be that both sceptics and warmistas are wrong? A third school of thought attributes glacier movements to supernatural causes rather than boring old physics.
Since 1862 the people of Fiesch and Fieschental in Switzerland have been offering prayers to the almighty, hoping to halt the advance of the Great Aletsch Glacier. It worked!
Here’s an account of the prayer: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=151382
Here’s the 3500-year history of the Aletsch: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M_qAas_Ctoc/Tnz2VWOdfcI/AAAAAAAAABM/nU5MKRG6Fho/s1600/Image3.jpg
Archonix says:
“Want to think about that?”
“Want to think about that as well?”
Why didn’t I think of that? Perhaps no one has ever invited them (AGW advocates) to simply think about it. It’s so obvious that we’re in a natural cycle of warming (perhaps even near or @ur momisugly peak) following a natural cooling (LIA) that if anyone thinks about it they’d have to realize it. Hopefully it’ll work, but for some reason I’m skeptical they will really think about it.
Archonix says: 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?
Ummm, well, they were burning an awful lot of peat and coal in Britain during the 19th. Do you think that might be the answer Francois could cuddle up with? 😉
dvunkannon says: “…that it is happening faster in the industrial period than in the pre-industrial period”
You wanna’ try looking at that USGS map again and maybe, rephrase your comment?
“REPLY: Goddard did an incomplete job, and didn’t provide enough sources and references to everything. I felt it needed a proper treatment – Anthony”
I agree that this story was well worth expanding here. But I never thought that Goddard’s presentation was “incomplete” by his standards, as all his posts are ultra-concise snapshots that I feel are always just invitations to readers to dig deeper.
All these little feuds are kind of funny.
I find the term ‘canary in a coal mine’ rather apt here. Because they don’t get there by themselves. Somebody has to deliberately put a canary there… sort of like this whole bogus glacier tale was arranged.
And that is what photographers do. They attempt to compose images of reality to suit their needs. And even when they take so many images that they do capture reality – like news photographers for example – they CHOOSE the ones that fit their story.
Or like the way news organizations choose the most unflattering photos they can find of somebody they don’t like.
Unfortunately, people fall for this overt and subliminal messaging all the time.
And it is getting worse with photoshopping. Once upon a time you actually could accept a photograph as evidence of something, with fakery readily detected. Now it is not so simple.
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
1 – Place canary in coal mine.
2 – Take time-lapse photos until canary falls off perch,
3 – Conclusion: anthropogenic global warming.
I am always fascinated by how easily we are led down a pathway of assumed fact without even noticing. The language in print media commonly ASSUMES that the normal state for a glacier is static, hence it must be evidence of something abnormal if it is retreating. I live high on the hill in the Pacific Northwest and sometimes amuse myself by gazing down into the valley and recreating in my imagination the thickness of ice that was in the actual location of my kitchen table. First, I gaze out the window and visually estimate the length of a city block then imagine it tilted it up on end 90 degrees. I do that 14 or 15 more times, mentally stacking this thickness of ice high into the sky above my head.
This is a LOT of ice and it is ALL GONE in only 14,000 years. That’s roughly a foot of ice thickness every year or 2.
Your glacier retreating? Such is life in the Holocene.
“All these little feuds are kind of funny.”
I didn’t see it as a feud; I saw it as Anthony expanding a smaller story. On the other hand, I think Steve made his point well: that alarmists left out facts in order to create a scare story.
I usta be a climate skeptic. But then I noticed that people would pay money to see evidence of impending catastrophe…Hey! A guy’s gotta make a living!
And yes, precipitation is the prime mover of glaciation.
The final 2004 picture shows an explosion of life where formerly there was just cold ice, more evidence that “Happiness is a Warm Planet!”.
John West says:
January 17, 2012 at 12:08 pm
[M]ost of the retreat [is] 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.)
Not only that, the initial faster retreat involved a substantially larger volume of ice. I don’t buy the meme-recital about recent acceleration, either.
Halog the Sundance Film Festival participant offers his Artist’s Impression: ‘They are the most visible, tangible manifestations of climate change on the planet today.’
Art has long filled in the missing gaps in observations. It started with artist’s impressions in textbooks and astronomy news releases, and now has come to its extreme fruition in computer simulations – which now not only provide illustrations, but are used as actual evidence. But at least in this case with glaciers, a little EXCELLENCE in scientific rigour and investigative journalism can reveal the artist’s brush strokes.
But the alarmists who shamelessly hide the extreme monthly variations in the Antarctic ozone hole and pick out the largest hole from each month, and present it in a series of years getting larger – these are the ones who deserve a big Sundance Prize for Wild, Flagrant, Unreserved, Uncontrolled, Immodest, Wanton, Indecorous, Indecent, Rude, Improper, Forward, Bold Fabrication.
A physicist says:
January 17, 2012 at 11:51 am
============
While I don’t respect it, I do somewhat admire your admiration and dedication to your religion of CAGW. I have never understood the unadultered belief in a cause or other belief without some form of confirmation. I always thought it was just a position to be expressed to be accepted by some form of peers or other group. To be a ‘Believer’ requires something that I can’t grasp.
@Nick Shaw – I was pointing out what the AGW argument needs to be, not asserting it. What distinguishes AGW from GW is a change in rate of (CO2 concentration, ocean acidification, glacial retreat, etc.) away from we would otherwise expect, which can be associated with human activity. My eyeball inspection of that USGS diagram doesn’t see support for the AGW argument.
Dave N says:
January 17, 2012 at 1:30 pm
“All these little feuds are kind of funny.”
I didn’t see it as a feud; I saw it as Anthony expanding a smaller story. On the other hand, I think Steve made his point well: that alarmists left out facts in order to create a scare story.
——-
I agree with your main point and, indeed, stated that.
But if you know the history here you would know about this little feud. I have no idea where it came from but when I first started reading this blog, “Goddard” was a regular commenter here and now he’s not. And his site is not listed on this blog. So… what’s up with that?
In any case, I now read both. WUWT for in-depth ‘main course’ stories, and realscience for multiple condensed appetizers. Together they make a very delicious dinner.
Glacier Bay looks so inviting. I have some worms that need drowning.
DirkH says:
January 17, 2012 at 11:32 am
Temperature isn’t the only variable to affect glaciers. No precipitation = no glacier.
See the dry valleys in Antarctica. There are dry valleys in Northern Greenland too.
Thank you for your question, Mkelly. If you work through the reasoning in the Manabe-Wetherald one-dimensional radiative-convective model (or any model that incorporates similar physical mechanisms), you will see that the predicted warming associated CO2 doubling is surprisingly insensitive to the exact value of CO2 emissivity (the internal numbers of the model are sensitive to the precise value, but nonetheless, the overall CO2 forcing number is reasonably robust).
John West, please consult this summary of mass balance for all glaciers having continuous long-term observation series. Do you see a pronounced downward mass slope, and an obvious accelerating trend of the melting rate?
And this global data is in common-sense accord with the pronounced year-by-year shrinking we are seeing here in the PNW, where all the glaciers of the North Cascades are shrinking rapidly.
By the way, John West, are you familiar with the well-respected, non-partisan Rasmussen Poll of American political trends? Well, it so happens that in this week’s pool, precisely 1/500 of the Rasmussen numbers are the opinions of … yours truly. 🙂
But hey, feel free go ahead and disregard this week’s Rasumussion poll, and in fact, disregard all polls. For the too-simple reason, that because polls sample only a tiny fraction of American voters, they can tell us precisely nothing, eh?
dvunkannon says:
Sorry, D, I just read your comment too fast, I guess!
However, for the warmistas to take your tack, they are going to have to burn a lot of books and scrub a lot of pages! 😉
Of course, deep down, that’s exactly what they want to do!
Must be embarrasing;
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/disappearing-glaciers-in-the-pacific-northwest-a-lesson-in-deception
In reference to Steve Goddard @ur momisugly Real Science.com:
Al Gored says:
January 17, 2012 at 2:08 pm
In any case, I now read both. WUWT for in-depth ‘main course’ stories, and realscience for multiple condensed appetizers. Together they make a very delicious dinner.
====================
I’m with you there.
sorry, pick out the smallest or largest ozone hole