Guest ridicule by David Middleton
Note: The featured image is of thankfully former President Obama babbling about climate change at Yosemite National Park in 2016. While not part of the article being addressed in this post… It’s sort of a prequel to it.
From “The Stupid, It Burns” files…
Energy and Environment
Climate change is destroying our national parks at an alarming rate, study finds
By Alex Horton
September 25
By 2100, visitors walking the grounds of California’s Joshua Tree National Park may view exhibits showing what will have been lost — the spiky yucca palms that inspired the park’s name, dwindled to a few rare husks.
Climate change could kill most of the park’s iconic trees, wildfires may transform the towering conifer forests at Yellowstone National Park into scarred grasslands, and once-mighty ice sheets in the north will probably melt and flow into the sea, making Glacier National Park both an obsolete name and a hard lesson about environmental degradation.
A new study published Monday has warned that climate change has adversely and uniquely affected many of the 417 national parks spread across the United States and its territories, according to scientists from the University of California at Berkeley and University of Wisconsin.
[…]
Researchers looked at data between 1895 and 2010 and concluded temperatures in national parks increased twice as much compared with other parts of the country, while precipitation fell dramatically at those parks.
That is because parks are often in places sensitive to shifts in climate. Many parks are at high elevation, where the Earth warms quickly due to a thinner atmosphere, researchers said. Alaska is severely affected because melting snow uncovers darker surfaces that absorb heat.
[…]
Dude! Climate change created most of our national parks.
Where to begin?
Climate change will apparently turn Joshua Tree National Park into a desert!
Dude! It is a fracking desert…
Dude! It’s actually two deserts!
Where Two Deserts Meet
Two distinct desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado, come together in Joshua Tree National Park. A fascinating variety of plants and animals make their homes in a land sculpted by strong winds and occasional torrents of rain. Dark night skies, a rich cultural history, and surreal geologic features add to the wonder of this vast wilderness in southern California. Come explore for yourself.
[…]
Wildfires may transform the towering conifer forests at Yellowstone National Park into scarred grasslands…
Dude! Yellowstone got over this, several times…
How many giant eruptions have occurred in the Yellowstone National Park region and how large were they?
Volcanic activity began in the Yellowstone National Park region a little before about 2 million years ago. Molten rock ( magma) rising from deep within the Earth produced three cataclysmic eruptions more powerful than any in the world’s recorded history. The first caldera-forming eruption occurred about 2.1 million years ago. The eruptive blast removed so much magma from its subsurface storage reservoir that the ground above it collapsed into the magma chamber and left a gigantic depression in the ground- a hole larger than the state of Rhode Island. The huge crater, known as a caldera, measured as much as 80 kilometers long, 65 kilometers wide, and hundreds of meters deep, extending from outside of Yellowstone National Park into the central area of the Park (see map in question above for location information).
Later, activity shifted to a smaller region within the Island Park area of eastern Idaho, just southwest of Yellowstone National Park, and produced another large caldera-forming eruption 1.3 million years ago. Subsequent activity has been focused within the area of the National Park, and another huge eruption 640,000 years ago formed the Yellowstone caldera as we now see it.
The three caldera-forming eruptions, respectively, were about 6,000, 700, and 2,500 times larger than the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. Together, the three catastrophic eruptions expelled enough ash and lava to fill the Grand Canyon.
In addition to the three climactic eruptions, activity associated with each of the three caldera cycles produced dozens or even hundreds of smaller eruptions that produced both lava and pyroclastic materials.
And once-mighty ice sheets in the north will probably melt and flow into the sea, making Glacier National Park both an obsolete name and a hard lesson about environmental degradation.
Dude! They’re not ice sheets!
What is an ice sheet?
An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice extending more than 50,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles). The two ice sheets on Earth today cover most of Greenland and Antarctica. During the last ice age, ice sheets also covered much of North America and Scandinavia.
Dude! The once-mighty ice sheets in the north DID melt and DID flow into the sea… many times!
Dude! This is what once-mighty ice sheets in the north melting looks like…
Dude! This is what once-mighty ice sheets in the north flowing into the sea looks like…
Dude! The alpine/valley glaciers of Glacier National Park aren’t the last stand of the “once-mighty ice sheets in the north.” They most likely formed about 7,000 years ago (~5,000 BC) and generally advanced until the mid-1800’s, a period known as Neoglaciation.
Dude!
History of Glaciers in Glacier National Park
The history of glaciation within current Glacier National Park boundaries spans centuries of glacial growth and recession, carving the features we see today. Glaciers were present within current Glacier National Park boundaries as early as 7,000 years ago but may have survived an early Holocene warm period (Carrara, 1989), making them much older. These modest glaciers varied in size, tracking climatic changes, but did not grow to their Holocene maximum size until the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) around A.D. 1850. While they may not have formed in their entirety during the LIA, their maximum perimeters can be documented through mapping of lateral and terminal moraines. (Key, 2002) The extent and mass of these glaciers, as well as glaciers around the globe, has clearly decreased during the 20th century in response to warmer temperatures.
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.
Tree-ring based climate records and historic photographs indicate the initiation of frontal recession and ice mass thinning between A.D. 1860 and 1880. The alignment of decadal-scale climate anomalies over the early 20th century produced a period of glacial recession somewhat analogous to conditions experienced over the past few decades. 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). These multidecadal episodes have substantially impacted the mass balance of glaciers since A.D. 1900.
Dude! Would you prefer that they continued to expand? The brief increase in glacial mass balance in the mid-20th Century was one of the stars of That 70’s Climate Science Show…
As if this wasn’t enough, the “journalist” just had to make the stupid burn even brighter…
Researchers looked at data between 1895 and 2010 and concluded temperatures in national parks increased twice as much compared with other parts of the country, while precipitation fell dramatically at those parks.
That is because parks are often in places sensitive to shifts in climate. Many parks are at high elevation, where the Earth warms quickly due to a thinner atmosphere, researchers said. Alaska is severely affected because melting snow uncovers darker surfaces that absorb heat.
Dude! National parks are experiencing twice as much climate change because they are located in places sensitive to climate change???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji9qSuQapFY
Made me think of this classic from Bad Teacher…
Atticus Finch is a good lawyer because he’s a good person whose a lawyer.
Dude!. At least you’re not as stupid as this clown:
Dude! Do you even have the slightest clue that glacial valleys, like the one you were lecturing us from, are the result of drastic climate change?
The Scientific Basis
The “study”: Disproportionate magnitude of climate change in United States national parks
The lead author:
Patrick Gonzalez
Associate Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley[…]
Education
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley, 1997 (Dissertation Chair John P. Holdren)Master of Science (M.S.), Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, 1987
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Natural Resources, Cornell University, 1986
UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group is a prototypical enviro-psychobabble department set up to teach non-science majors how to sound all sciencey while spouting nonsense about energy and resources…
THE ENERGY AND RESOURCES GROUP
ERG is a collaborative community of graduate students, core faculty, over 150 affiliated faculty and researchers across the campus, and over 500 alumni across the globe. We award MA, MS, and PhD degrees to students working across disciplines and departments to create potentially transformative knowledge for the planet and its people. ERG is a world-renowned program with a 40-year history of outstanding research, education and outreach to government, industry, and civil society at the state, national and international levels.
ERG MISSION
The mission of the Energy and Resources Group is a sustainable environment and a just society.ERG actively promotes intellectual, racial, ethnic, and gender inclusion; researches the impacts of equality and inequality; and celebrates diversity in our community.
The ERG was founded by, none other than, John P. Holdren.
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As a fan of the late TV show, “Creature Feature”, I think the CAGWers are MISSING a scare story. Remember the end of the movie, “The Blob”, where the frozen blob is dropped in the Arctic? They can add warning that “global warming will release the BLOB!”
NOW… I’m worried…
Moderately, Different movie. The Green Slime.
Both had catchy theme songs.
I think few people understand that the alpine glaciers all over the world are NOT remnants of the Pleistocene ice age. At the end of the Pleistocene the alpine glaciers in places like the Sierra, Glacier N.P, and the Alps melted completely away. The glaciers we see today formed in pre-existing high valleys and cirques that were already there. The Little Ice Age created today’s glaciers and the end of the LIA is causing them to melt.
Except it turns out that the Blob is actually green and not red…who would have thunk it, the world threatened by a giant piece of climate generated snot.
“The unprecedented proliferation of teleprompters and bloviating stuffed shirts is a threat to Summers everywhere.” – UN IPCC
This reminds me of the time that I visited Yosemite Valley roughly 20 years ago shortly after one of the periodic floods that wiped much of the valley. The “Global Warming” narrative was starting to show up in explanations of everything. Many descriptions of what what what the floods caused were termed as “environmental damage”.
All of a sudden, the very forces that created a natural wonder were now accused of causing “environmental damage”.
I guess Yellowstone must be a grassland by now. That nasty fire in 1988? Must have wiped out the whole area. The fire did melt the paint off the guardrails….But I swear there were trees there after 1988 and tourism is still up…
When a university “science” department is committed to social justice, beware its graduates.
That goes for political science also.
You the sorting hat of personality types.
>>
Made me think of this classic from Bad Teacher…
Atticus Finch is a good lawyer because he’s a good person whose a lawyer.
<<
The sentence doesn’t make sense to me as written. However, if the “Bad Teacher” meant to say:
“Atticus Finch is a good lawyer because he’s a good person who is a lawyer,” then the contraction “who’s” would fit better–IMHO.
Jim
Bad Teacher is a hilarious and very raunchy comedy about a bad teacher (Cameron Diaz), who hates her students almost as much as she hates teaching. When she’s grading papers on To Kill a Mockingbird, she comes across one paper that said, “Atticus Finch is a good lawyer because he’s a good person whose a lawyer.” With a red pen, she writes, “WTF?!?! F-” on the paper.
Funny movie… very raunchy… extremely poor taste… politically incorrect in every way possible… Two thumbs up!
Reminds me of Blazing Saddles. One of the funniest movies ever made… very raunchy… extremely poor taste… politically incorrect in every way possible…and has a very strong anti-racist message. Too bad today’s shallow-minded SJWs could never get past the constant use of the N-word. (Or appreciate how making it the regular butt of jokes robs it of its power as a slur.)
Clevon Little…👍👍
One of my favorite English composition stories is where the student wrote: “The woman fell down the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom.” The instructor’s comment was: “My Dear Sir: You must learn the difference between a fallen woman, and one that has just slipped.”
Jim
“By 2100 . . .”
I wish someone would do a study on how the goalposts have shifted over time. Seems to me that in the early days of climate fear mongering, the time frame was ten to twenty years. The thinking being that being a Chicken Little was the way to call for immediate action.
When all of the predictions\projections\permutations\professments\propaganda turned out to be wrong, Chicken Little became the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
A change of propaganda strategy was needed. These days, the skying is still falling but it isn’t going to fall until 2100, when we all be dead.
The climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Climate change has been going on for eons and will continue to go on whether mankind is here or not. Many of the wonders at national parks are a result of climate change. Most of the wild life at the parks made it through the previous interglacial period, the Eemian, which was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels. They also made it through the last ice age. The warming up from the last ice age included an order of magnitude more warming than has occurred during the present Modern Warm Period and clearly mankind’s use of fossil fuels could not have been the cause.
“Climate change will apparently turn Joshua Tree National Park into a desert!” It already is a desert and for as long as man has been there it always has been a desert. Apparently the plants there survived the last ice age and the previous interglacial period that was warmer than this one.
And the glacial periods were drier with persistent C3 plant CO2 starvation.
I wonder how Joshua trees coped with the last eruption at Long Valley?
What does climate change have to do with Yellowstone and the possibility of an eruption there? That’s a geological process, not climate…but….yeah, they do blame volcanic activity on climate change, don’t they?