Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
And the opening of the NewYorkTimes article reads:
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont. — What will they call this place once the glaciers are gone?
My suggestions are at the end of the post.
There is a redeeming paragraph in the NYT article. It reads (my boldface):
The retreat is not entirely due to man-made global warming, though scientists say that plays a major role. While the rate of melting has alternately sped up and slowed in lock step with decades-long climate cycles, it has risen steeply since about 1980.
“sped up and slowed” suggests the glaciers have been melting all along. And that’s correct. The epoch we are now in is called an interglacial. And what happens during interglacials? Glaciers melt. That’s precisely what they’ve been doing since the last ice age ended many millennia ago. The author of the NYT article even acknowledges that in the opening of the next paragraph:
And while glaciers came and went millenniums ago…
The rest of the article is about how regional climate might be different with the glaciers gone. A hearty thank you to the author for noting that. That’s precisely why we need realistic regional decadal and multidecadal forecasts from climate models…something that climate models are still incapable of doing because the climate science community, under the direction of the UN, has only focused their efforts on the hypothetical effects of human-induced global warming, neglecting the basic processes and impacts of coupled ocean-atmosphere processes.
My suggestion is they leave the park name as it is OR they call it Beautiful Landscapes Are Now Visible…Now That The Dangerous, Cold And Slippery Ice Is Gone National Park.
Here’s a link to the slide show the NYT provided. As I said: beautiful landscapes.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Maybe they could erect snow fences on the continental divide like Colorado Governor John Arthur Love did in the 1960s to make snow drifts on the east side to feed more water to the rivers east of the divide. Erect giant snow fences to Save the Glaciers. I remember seeing these in 1966 and 1967 from Independence Pass on the continental divide east of Aspen. This sounds a little like carbon (CO2) sequestration boondoggles.
Ref: http://newwest.net/topic/article/healing_colorados_independence_pass/C41/L41/
“In October, a helicopter lifted the last sections of a metal snow fence from the Continental Divide on Independence Pass. For the first time in 50 years, the delicate alpine life zone in Aspen’s high mountain backyard was clear of tons of unsightly debris…
…The snow fence was a misguided effort by the Forest Service in the 1960s to sequester water for the insatiable thirst of Eastern Slope agriculture. Long lengths of slatted metal fence were installed to form snowdrifts on the East side of the Continental Divide, drifts that would purportedly melt and feed streams at the headwaters of the Arkansas River. However, the fences failed to perform, and left Independence Pass with an unsightly mess.”
The precursor of today’s crazy schemes to change climate.
(That scheme seems odd, would require specific placement and only have a local effect. Snow fences keep snow back by reducing wind velocity so snow drops out on the upwind side – commonly used on the upwind side of roads where I grew up to keep snow from precipitating out on the road, where it was lower than adjacent field.
Correction: I stated Portage glacier retreated 900 ft in three years… It was Exit glacier…
“In the years between 1914 and 1917, Exit Glacier experienced its most rapid retreat. In just 3 years, the glacier retreated 908 ft (277 m) or almost a foot per day. ”
http://www.nps.gov/kefj/naturescience/upload/The%20Retreat%20of%20Exit%20Glacier.pdf
[Thank you for checking. Thank you for the correction. .mod]
You know how Lake Mead is running dry? You know how they have so much snow in Buffalo that they’re afraid of flooding when it melts. It seems to me if Buffalo has too much snow but Lake Mead needs the runoff, they should truck it over.
Better yet, use Warren Buffett’s railroad to haul it.
Global warming has been increasing the amount of snow falling on the glaciers in Glacier NP recently:
http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/ftm_snow.htm
2013 and 2014 are both well above the 1970-2013 average.
In 2011 it took until 7 July to get the snow ploughs to the Logan Pass Visitor Center on the Going to the Sun Road.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/glaciernps/page15/
This site shows the opening dates for the GTTS road from 1970 -1999, the latest being 23 June:
http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/research/gtsr.htm
How’s the Park going to manage if it can’t open the Going to the Sun Road?
Suggesting global warming is increasing snow fall is a leap, Changes in precipiiation due to Pacific Decadal Oscillaiton would be a more likely driver.
Actually, it was sarcasm!
Hey Billy, if you’re interested, I did a small piece on this subject.
I should do a repost/follow-up.
In 2011 the opening was actually the 13th. But it would have been even later if they hadn’t rushed the opening. Snow removal was expensive that year to get the Logans Pass opened, but once visitors got there, the Lodge was still buried in 8 feet of snow.
You should go see the photos I found.
oops.. heres the address:
climate4all.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/forced-openings/
Great pics! There are some on the Glacier Park Flicker stream of visitors going into the Visitors Center between walls of snow at least 7 feet high in 2011.
Excellent point about glaciers melting in an interglacial period.
Another factor is precipitation. On the BC coast north of Vancouver BC tribal people gave one glacier a name that referred to its disappearance and appearance over a long time.
(It may be a marginal location for a glacier, I’d suspect the PDO as a factor though north-south shift of winds might be another – winds from the southwest bring moisture, from the north cold.)
No problem. We just need to turn down the Co2 dial a little bit, and all our glaciers will be just fine.
In fact, it will solve all known problems.
Eamon.
I didn’t read all 103 comments so if this point has been made I apologize, but it wasn’t called Glacier NP because of the glaciers but because of the visible past glacier activity.
I don’t think so Don. It’s a lot easier to see past glacial activity in Michigan ironically. Or Wisconsin of course.
What this article needs is a tear-jerking Photoshopped image of a grizzly stranded on a moraine.
I wonder why there are glaciers there at all? The altitude is way too low for year round snow caps at that latitude isn’t it? At that latitude shouldn’t it be above 3000 m? The mountains there are a couple thousand feet too low. Glacier has more to do with unique local weather patterns than with anything else.
On the PBS Newshour toningt the headline of a story about tundra and rodents was “Baked Alaska”
NYT is lucky I can’t leave comments on that post, because I was ready to expose that piece of trash.
@Wondering Aloud.
Glaciers are more or less just compressed snow. Over years and decades of pressure from annual precipitation, the compacted glaciers are forced down the valleys from gravity.
As far as altitude, it really just becomes a matter of mass vs temperature. If there is enough snow to last the year, regardless of altitude, the accumulation will create glaciers.
I don’t know if WUTW ran a story about roaming glaciers in the tundra flats up here in Alaska, but do a google on it. Its quite interesting.
I Googled and Binged Roaming Glaciers in tundra, and a bunch of other stuff. Didn’t find anything – could you be more specific, or provide a link? Are they the glaciers originating in Denali National Park? What do you mean?
Hey sorry for not replying sooner. I guess it would help if I used the right term.
The correct term is “Frozen Debris Lobe”
It is a relatively new term and mostly unknown.
There is 23 such features along the Dalton highway and will threaten the Alaska Pipeline within 3 to 10 years. One lobe is just 50 meters away from the highway and its moving about a half inch a day.
Here is the kicker…. some scientists say that climate change may be the cause of these lobes moving so fast.
You just can’t this stuff up.
Thanks, I hadn’t thought it through that way, but I guess that is still a local weather phenomena.
I remember going to the Columbia Icefields in the Canadian Rockies around 1970. The guides said that the ice had been receding since the last glacial period, and that in a century or so they would be out of a job (arf, arf).
Yet this was a time when people were concerned about global cooling, not warming,
Johnathan Gruber opportunity alert! Sell off Glacier Park prime real estate. any fool will buy it hook line or sinker, just don’t let anyone read the fine print on the sale document of course and eventually when the glaciers advance sometime, this will be another opportunity to declare it a park, i.e. sell high then re-buy at catastrophic low prices, and in between create taxing opportunities complete with scary predictions and of course make it look like you cared one way or the other. sarc……
“GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont. — What will they call this place once the glaciers are gone?”
NY – What will they call this place once the NYT is gone?
In honor of the those who still cling to their Hockey Sticks, how about “Glazed-eyes National Park”?
Call it “Waterton Lakes National Park South.” Since the northern half of the international park is in Canada where sanity in their government still reigns.
I have rellies who live on the edge of Glacier Park. I first visited them there in 1980. My cousin said we have to take a long hike to see the glaciers before they all melt. And we did. We hiked about 5 miles one way to see Grinnell Glacier. I believe in 1980 the hysterians were talking global cooling, not warming, yet it was known that the glaciers were slowly receding and had been for a long time, certainly from before coal fired power plants and gasoline engines.
it’s assumed the Glacier National park has an identity. Whether the Glacier National Park would agree with this proposition is not known.
The park former known as ……..
eh, formerly. (It’s late here)
They should keep calling it Glacier National Park. After all, we have the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz.