From Rice University and the “staged climate photo-op, aka please send money” department.
HOUSTON – (July 18, 2019) – Iceland’s first glacier lost to climate change will be remembered with a monument to be unveiled next month at the site of the former glacier. Researchers from Rice University in Houston, author Andri Snær Magnason and geologist Oddur Sigurðsson will join members of the Icelandic Hiking Society and the general public Aug. 18 to install a monument recognizing the site of the former Okjökull glacier in Borgarfjörður, Iceland.
The melted glacier was the subject of the 2018 documentary “Not Ok,” produced by Rice anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer. The film, narrated by former Reykjavík Mayor Jón Gnarr, tells the story of “Ok,” which in 2014 became the first glacier in Iceland to lose its title because of global warming. Boyer and Howe said scientists fear all of the island nation’s 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200.
“This will be the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world,” Howe said. “By marking Ok’s passing, we hope to draw attention to what is being lost as Earth’s glaciers expire. These bodies of ice are the largest freshwater reserves on the planet and frozen within them are histories of the atmosphere. They are also often important cultural forms that are full of significance.
“In the same spirit as the film, we wanted to create a lasting memorial to Ok, a small glacier that has a big story to tell,” Boyer said. “Ok was the first named Icelandic glacier to melt because of how humans have transformed the planet’s atmosphere. Its fate will be shared by all of Iceland’s glaciers unless we act now to radically curtail greenhouse gas emissions.”
The film celebrated its world premiere at Bíó Paradís Cinema in Reykjavík last August, and the film’s creators hosted an “Un-Glacier Tour” to view the remnants of Okjökull. A second “Un-Glacier Tour” will lead participants to the site where the monument will be installed. Those interested in joining the tour may RSVP online at https://www.notokmovie.com.
Howe and Boyer hope the monument will raise awareness about the decline of Iceland’s glaciers and the impact of climate change.
“One of our Icelandic colleagues put it very wisely when he said, ‘Memorials are not for the dead; they are for the living,’” Howe said. “With this memorial, we want to underscore that it is up to us, the living, to collectively respond to the rapid loss of glaciers and the ongoing impacts of climate change. For Ok glacier it is already too late; it is now what scientists call ‘dead ice.’”
Media interested in attending either event or interviewing Boyer or Howe may contact Amy McCaig, senior media relations specialist at Rice, at 713-348-6777 or amym@rice.edu.
-30-
Ok, first of all, I don’t think these people fully understand how glaciers work. They are almost entirely driven by precipitation, not temperature. The process of ice loss in a polar glacier is mainly two things, with temperature coming in last.
- Calving into the sea (not applicable on this glacier).
- Ice loss through sublimation.
- In some cases, melting due to elevated temperature.
Al Gore made the mistake of blaming ice loss at Mt. Kilimanjaro on “global warming”, when it turned out to be entirely due to less precipitation, thus allowing the ice to sublimate.
In the case of Iceland, the glaciers there are dependent on precipitation just like any other glacier, and changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation could easily explain the change in precipitation.
Then there’s the inconvenient truth that the glacier likely didn’t exist a few hundred years ago, according to a paper by the U.S. Geological Survey:
Bemoaning the “death” of a glacier that only appears at certain times in Earth’s geologic history is a fools errand. But then again, most climate alarmists posing as scientists are fools anyway. Just look at what recently happened at Glacier National Park, where they had to remove plaques indicating they expected the glaciers to be gone by 2020.
Any bets on how long this new plaque will last?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Oops. My post may be in the bin because I used the word “sla***y” in it.
Where are the plaques commemorating the Laurentide Ice Sheet?
Remnants of it still persist on Baffin Island.
And of course still depressed Hudson Bay commemorates its enormous weight. Not to mention NYC, which has risen some 150 feet since being freed from the 2000-foot tall mass of ice which covered it until 16,000 to 12,000 years ago.
The glacial morane of Long Island surely merits a plaque commemorating the sad loss of this magnificent ice sheet. But for Holocene global warming, Rep. Ocasio would have no Bronx or Queens district to misrepresent in Congress.
IIRC, there are plaques in NY Central Park commemorating the marks left on exposed boulders by retreating (or advancing, as it were) ice sheets. People need to get a sense of geologic history before celebrating or bemoaning transitory happenings.
Not holding my breath until NYC celebrates liberation from ice day.
At that time the Rep.s were hunting with staff for caribou and seals, from the kayaks they speared porpoises and with nets they caught crabs and fish.
It’s a way of life.
Not a very good one, by modern standards of living.
Said monument to end up like the viking settlements in Greenland …. BURIED UNDER THICK ICE SHORTLY
The iceman cometh.
Plant wheat, not signs, dumbasses.
Chip Fletcher had his 15 minutes of fame last fall but has yet to acknowledge that East Island, a little sand islet on a inside lagoon patch reef on the La Perouse shoal has regained 50% of its extent, is being visited by happy seals, less than a year after hurricane Walaka, consequence of global warming, that Fletcher blamed for the disappearance of “the 2000 + old island”.
Fletcher’s alarmist BS has been debunked as proven by a May 3, 2019 satellite image compared to October 2018 and May 2018 images, and yet this “scientist” is yet to post anything on East Island on his twitter feed. he prefers tweeting about Greta Thunberg… Says it all!
How come the world media are not making as much noise as they did promoting him to correct their stories?
It looks as though whatever was there as an alpine glacier has melted back to a snow field on an old cone-shaped peak.
Perhaps it could again become the top of an alpine glacier.
In the Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Gelderland are found moraine glacier deposits. There were glaciers during one or more of the last glaciations. They have now disappeared, ceased to exist, gone. Due to post-glacial global warming. Methinks we need a few plaques to commemorate them too and remind us that nature is perfectly capable of disappearing glaciers without any help from humans.
There should be a lucrative trade in commemorative plaques with one needed for older lost glaciers that once filled each fiord in Norway and in New Zealand. We could set up “trips of remorse’ to remind us of ice long lost and throw plastic ice cubes overboard to relate to the past
Putting up plaques on Long Island, Block Island, Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket would be a good start. They are all terminal moraines from the last (latest) glacial maximum. Just to remind the “elite” of the sad demise of the Laurentide Ice Sheet.
You can’t fix stupid…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/18/yosemite-obama-national-parks-climate-change
Note to the worst POTUS evah… That glacial valley and all of those glaciers are the result of climate change, relatively recent climate change.
Poor glacier. The Icelandic Hiking Society doesn’t care enough to host a communal cry-in so we may mourn its passing.
As the neoglaciation proceeded, glaciers started to reform about 4000ya. The depth of the neoglaciation was 100+ya. (depends where you are). It has now apparently ceased and glaciers are now disappearing. Warmth is good but too much might knock us back to the end of the Northgrippian.
I bet they use a helicopter in some part of the installation. kerosene!
The only thing certain about the future is the continuing distorting influence of human arrogance. More than any contributing factor, we believe what we believe because of what we want to believe.
Meanwhile all glaciers in Iceland began growing this year for the first time in decades. They made a plaque for that too, right? Right?
Growing Iceland, Greenland glaciers make scientists gasp
https://www.cfact.org/2019/05/19/growing-iceland-greenland-glaciers-makes-scientists-gasp/
That statement of ‘all Iceland glaciers are growing’ is blatantly wrong aka FakeNews or Alternative Facts.
Original report of interview with researcher Finnur Pálsson.
https://www.visir.is/g/2018181209563/joklar-islands-ryrnudu-ekki-i-fyrsta-sinn-i-aldarfjordung
Growing and ” glaciers do not deteriorate.” are two different things.
and then: “Langjökull had generally thinned about one and a half meters a year over the past twenty years, ….But over the last few years he has been nearly zero”
Does not sound like grow either.
The largest glaciers have definitely stopped shrinking, and some have grown; Mýrdalsjökull significantly so. We’ll see what happens in 2019.
But getting back to my initial point: considering the fact that the largest glaciers have stopped shrinking, shouldn’t they put a “Letter to the Future” plaque at the growing Mýrdalsjökull glacier with the warning to always be skeptical of what scientists predict because they quite frequently get things wrong (particularly climate scientists who always get things wrong).
You can watch one of tehm here:
https://observers.france24.com/en/20190621-iceland-photos-skaftafell-glacier-climate-crisis
but only if you look at the reverse order!
Blatantly wrong:
https://www.vatnajokulsthjodgardur.is/en/areas/melting-glaciers/glaciology/mass-balance
Is cfact short for “alternative facts”?!?
Why, oh why, won’t the climate follow its CliSci Masters’ instructions?
I don’t trust anyone’s crystal ball, alarmist or skeptic. I put my money where my wife tells me, icisil.
It wasn’t viable. Mother Nature’s… Her Choice.
Quote: “Ok, first of all, I don’t think these people fully understand how glaciers work. They are almost entirely driven by precipitation, not temperature. The process of ice loss in a polar glacier is mainly two things, with temperature coming in last.”
Okjökull is not a polar glacier, so why ‘discuss’ here polar glaciers?
Glaciers need precipitation (as snow) to exist. But glacier mass balance outside the polar region is driven by precipitation AND temperature mainly during summer (outside the tropical mountains).
TomRude July 22, 2019 at 2:27 pm
Hi Tom interesting place, that east island, “French frigate shoals”.
I think that was the place that had U.S. listening post during WW2. The post had to evacuated because of a typhoon in 1944.
Oh yeah that listening post helped screw up the Midway campaign for the Japanese.
Maybe Chip Fletcher have taken 15 minutes to first read the history of the island group.
michael
There are clearly visible glacial marks on rocks in Werribee Gorge some 50 km west of Melbourne Australia. I demand a plaque be placed there mounting its loss. Can someone in the UN send me a million dollars to get the project started. It will delayed somewhat as the ice disappeared several million years ago but better late than never.
It would be vastly more worth a plaque than this. Small glaciers come and go. The occasional glacial landscapes found in Australia have miraculously lasted since the Permian glaciation 300 million years.
Glacial striations at Hallett Cove SA:
http://hallettcovemh.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/9/2/29923367/6276145.jpg?464
According to a new study Iceland was ice-free during the Holocene Temperature Maximum up until about 5500 years before now: https://www.clim-past.net/15/25/2019/
Yes, an Ice-free Iceland.
Neoglaciation is registered in the highlands of Iceland (Langjökull) around 5500 years before now. All records indicate a strong decline in temperature, which culminated during the Little Ice Age (1250–1850 CE) when the glaciers reached their maximum Holocene dimensions.
Only afer that the glacers retreatet somewhat, but they seem to start growing again during the last couple of years.
The sign will probably be removed at some point. Quietly.
“Boyer and Howe said scientists fear all of the island nation’s 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200”
That would require Vatnajökull to melt at an average rate of 44 square kilometers of area and 5.25 meters of thickness starting this year.
By the way if you think the image looks pretty icy you are right. Okjökull hasn’t melted yet. It has however becomer thin enough not to flow under it’s own weight which is the definintion of a glacier (icel. jökull). Now it is dödis “dead ice” which may melt completely in the future, or last indefinitely, or start thickening again into a glacier. Usually however dödis melts within a few centuries.
I’ll apologize for my university’s silliness.
Rice used to teach actual science.
Agreed, when did Rice go over the edge? I took my daughter on a campus visit just a few months ago and they seemed not ashamed to highlight technical partnerships and internship opportunities with ExxonMobil and Shell…
Iceland energy is all in renewables, only the SUV’s are guzzling fossil fuels – because Iceland sits fully on Internal Combustion, on the rig between US and Europe.
It’s glaciers ar mere tourist Kitsch, glass snow globes, Souvenir Travel gifts:
https://images.app.goo.gl/XzGXKPkGLtVcReuM7
One of the rock formations in the images looks suspiciously like a caldera.
You found the missing heat
According to the Randolph Glacier inventory there were 198,000 glaciers on our planet, based on satellite imagery from 1999 to 2010.
So maybe it’s 197,999.
Cry me a (frozen) river.