By Kelvin Kemm
We constantly hear panic stories about glaciers melting, accompanied by hysterical voices calling out that retreating glaciers are a clear sign of human-induced global warming.
Much of this hysteria is driven by green activists and politicians who know just enough to be dangerous but not enough to be sensible.
Scientifically you can’t come to a conclusion, on the basis of a principle. You have to look at the real science and carry out correct measurements.
This is a complex subject, but let us have a quick look at the issue. What about atmospheric warming? Well, for starters, we need some physics. For a gram of cold glacial ice to warm up by 1°C, say from -4°C to -3°C, it takes about two Joules of heat. It needs this amount of heat for each degree Celsius that the ice warms. Inside a glacier it can be as cold as -50°C, but let us just consider the top part and, being generous, call it -10°C. In other words, to raise the temperature of a gram of ice from -10°C to 0°C we will need about 20 Joules. So far so good. So where would this heat come from? Well, the global warming enthusiasts say, ‘from the atmosphere.’ So we take 20 Joules from the atmosphere. That is reasonable.
But now for a bit more physics. When you melt ice to water, it needs a huge amount of heat to separate the frozen molecules. In fact, it takes just over 300 Joules for each gram. Remember that it takes 20 Joules to raise the temperature of a gram of ice by 10°C, but 300 Joules to turn that one gram of ice into water. So where does the 300 Joules of heat come from? ‘Well, the atmosphere,’ say the warmists. If that much heat is being pulled out of the atmosphere, why do we not see the air above a glacier cooling off? After all, the warmists are worrying about the atmosphere warming by only 1 or 2°C.
So if an entire glacier is melting faster than before, where on earth (excuse the pun) is all that melting-heat coming from? Remember, millions of grams of ice each needing 300 Joules just to melt. That is a vast amount of energy.
What about an alternative mechanism? There is another option. That is; direct sunlight falling on the glacier surface. What is known to happen is that sunlight warms the top couple of millimetres of the ice, which melts quite easily. So an obvious question is; where does that water go? The simple answer is that it percolates downwards through the fissures in the glacier. The water works its way to the bottom, where the ice lies on the bedrock. There it acts as a lubricant, and reduces the friction between the ice and the rock. So the ice can slide faster.
Therefore the whole glacier becomes more mobile, and more big chunks can break off at the end of the glacier.
The amount of sunlight falling on the glacier’s surface has nothing to do with the temperature of the atmosphere. In contrast, it has to do with the amount of cloud cover, which in turn is linked to the amount of cosmic radiation coming in from outer space. That in turn is linked to the magnetic activity of the Sun, because the Sun influences the protective magnetic barrier around the Earth.
Where this magnetic barrier ‘leaks’ is seen at the North and South poles where we see the spectacular Aurorae which form curtains of waving light sheets in the night sky.
So we clearly have a perfectly reasonable mechanism for retreating glaciers which has nothing to do with atmospheric warming.
But there is yet more! There has been a huge archaeological benefit resulting from the retreat of some glaciers, and melting ice sheets.
What has happened is that melting ice has revealed thousands of ancient artefacts which have been a bonanza for historians and archaeologists. For example, 10,000 year old Atlati spear-throwing hunting darts have been found in the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian Yukon.
Intact arrows have been found in a Norwegian mountain pass dating to 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. They have quartzite arrowheads secured by animal sinew and Birch-bark glue. A 1,700 year old Roman-style shoe was also found in Norway. In the Schnidejoch pass in the Swiss Alps, leather trousers, shoes and Birch-bark arrows were found, dating back to 3,000 to 4,000 BCE.
The list goes on, but what it shows is that there was no thick ice cover there in the past, at times like 1,700 years ago, 3,000 years ago, and 10,000 years ago. This indicates that ice cover and glaciers, have come and gone on a regular basis in the past. These past changes certainly had nothing to do with industrially-produced carbon dioxide.
But they can be linked to the magnetic activity of the Sun.
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Uh the glacier already produces enough pressure to form a film of water on which to slide. So that’s so much fiction. besides that, if it’s Greenland, the ice needs to slide up hill.
The point here is, glaciers don’t need any more water to slide on on the rock it sits on.
The situation is even more complex in that the basal ice, which can and does behave plastically, can shear over obstacles and even shear upwards. Generally, the transition from brittle to plastic behavior of glacial ice takes place at depths of about 60 meters, depending on the thermal gradient.
Don’t the records show that the planet has experienced a number of ice ages and warming periods during past 50,000 years at least? So what’s the big deal about glacial fluctuation since it’s been a regular occurrence? Didn’t the glacial retreat that began around 10,000 years ago usher in the warming period that we’re experiencing now with its steady increase in human population, life expectancy, agricultural output, scientific, technological and medical advances? Meanwhile infant mortality rates and poverty levels have been declining as global GDP rises. The reality is that humans have taken advantage of whatever warming has been occurring regardless of any short-term glacial advances and retreats, and the alarmists should face the reality that no one is staying awake nights worrying about some non-existent climate crisis.
” have been declining as global GDP rises“
Trouble is, the anti-CO2 scam is now causing GDP’s to decline in countries that embrace the idiocy.
And to think that the most privileged generation of young people, mostly in Western countries, are the ones hardest fighting the system that made them the most privileged young generation in all human history.
Infant mortality nearly does not exist in the West. They have a life expectancy most kings could only dream of not that long ago. No child labour and no need to grow up before 30.Never have experienced hunger and the list goes on.
I see that as a positive! If stupid doesn’t hurt stupid people will continue to do stupid shyte. Make it hurt!
Actually, the ‘present’ ice age record goes back to about 2.3 Mya, presumably when the Isthmus of Panama finally closed from plate tectonics and fundamentally changed ocean circulation. For about the first 1.3 my of that, the periodicy between long time more ice/short time less ice was about 45-50 centuries. For some not yet discovered reason, about 1mya it changed to a periodicy of about 120-130 centuries. Where it is today. The last Eemian ‘less ice’ interglacial ‘high stand’ lasted about 12 centuries and ended about 118 centuries ago judging from geological records of sea level high stands. We are therefore about ‘due’ for another glacial period to start. Not good news for Canada.
You’re saying “centuries”, but you mean “millennia”.
Downvote? So you think the Eemian interglacial lasted 1200 years?
I agree that Rud meant (or should of used) millennia, as 120 centuries between glacial periods is only 12,000 years.
Should HAVE used…
During part of the Eemian Hippos swam the river we today call the Thames .
The border between Canada and the US is on the place it is for a reason. And don’t forget not good for the homeland of Greta T. who wants a colder planet.
The present ice age goes back 34 million years when the Antarctic Circumpolar Current opened up. It deepened 2.58 million years ago when the Isthmus of Panama closed. All tectonic activity. Might end in 50 to 100 million years when the ACC closes. Again tectonic activity. CO2 has nothing to do with it.
Is there a glacier at the foot of Mt Everest?
If so, it would be regurgitating tons of shredded tents, trash, empty oxygen tanks, discarded food, plastic water bottles, human waste, and even rotting cadavers.
Come on, greenies – get your priorities in order.
Campaign for shutting down Mt Everest!
There is and it does.
All you have to do is look at the NPS map of Glacier Bay NP at the Brady glacier extent, in particular and the rest of the extents marked on the map:
Most of the recession occurred PRIOR to the 20th century. Brady has expanded.
Glaciers are always either advancing or receding, they are never static. Sometimes some are advancing while others are retreating.
The front or terminus is advancing or retreating, but the ice is always flowing downhill.
Note that 1775 was at the end of the Little Ice Age and a whole lot of ice was on shore and not in the ocean. – See Glacier Bay NP.
Glacier Bay was first surveyed in detail in 1794 by a team from the H.M.S. Discovery, captained by George Vancouver. At the time the survey produced showed a mere indentation in the shoreline. That massive glacier was more than 4,000 feet thick in places, up to 20 miles wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias mountain range.
Native oral history had names for many features that were revealled when the Ice melted.
That’s 1 watershed valley.
Many glaciers around the world did not even exist during the MWP…
They only formed during the LIA.. and are still there.
Can you name a single glacier that did not exist during the medieval warm period and which exists today? Also what is the source for that claim?
Can you name a single person who existed during the medieval warm period who exists today and who can claim to have seen or not seen a particular glacier?
Why not ask BNice? They seem very sure of the facts. And far more sure of them than I am. A very brief search of the literature does not seem to find any definite proof that any particular glacier disappeared during the medieval warm period.
The Maclure Glacier in California did not exist during the Medieval Warm Period. There are others can you name a few?
Where is the evidence for that? It might be the case given that it is only 300m long but can you provide any evidence for its non-existence during the medieval warm period?
The Maclure Glacier almost certainly did not exist during the Medieval Warm Period
Link
That view (article dated 2024) was revised by this paper: Glaciers in California’s Sierra Nevada are likely disappearing for the first time in the Holocene, (Jones et al. 2025)
The National Park Service page accurately reflects the earlier scientific consensus based on lake sediment studies.
The 2025 paper, which tbh I hadn’t seen, offers new evidence from bedrock dating suggesting that glaciers likely persisted through much more of the Holocene than previously thought, but the method used by Jones et al doesn’t invalidate that The Maclure Glacier almost certainly did not exist during the Medieval Warm Period, in fact, it leans the other way.
The new study has some caveats; alternative interpretations of the data are possible, the findings are strongest for larger glaciers, and it doesn’t challenge the observed recent changes or their drivers.
The broader picture holds: large Ice Age glaciers melted away long ago due to natural warming, smaller glaciers advanced during the Little Ice Age.
How do you account for what they say in their abstract?
The two largest glaciers they are referring to are the Conness and the Maclure. The authors say that these glaciers “have persisted throughout the Holocene” (~11,700 years ago to the present), so what causes you to think they are saying they did not exist a few hundred years ago?
Abstract.
No analysis of alternatives.
“The findings imply”
Implications are not proof, one way or the other.
It is essentially opinion, or perhaps, an educated guess.
Schoolroom Glacier (Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA) — Formed during the Little Ice Age.
Lyell Glacier and Maclure Glacier (Yosemite National Park, California, USA) — Small glaciers that formed/reformed during the Little Ice Age
Again this is just an assertion without proof. Clearly the smaller the glacier the more likely it is to have melted and reformed over the centuries but just because it is likely doesn’t mean it is true.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/glaciers.htm
Do you have any evidence that we’re experiencing a climate crisis?
Jeff,
that link states that “Most of this ice had melted away due to natural warming by about 10,000 years ago. During a more recent cold period called the Little Ice Age, small glaciers formed below the highest peaks.”
Which is different from BNice’s assertion that the glaciers melted during the Medieval Warm Period and reformed during the little ice age. So again this is not proof.
No, he said many glaciers didn’t exist during the MWP. If they first formed during the LIA, then logically they didn’t exist during the MWP.
Logic is not Izzac’s strong suit !!
Izzy quoted “ During a more recent cold period called the Little Ice Age, small glaciers formed below the highest peaks.””
So “logically”, those glaciers didn’t exist during the MWP.
And they certainly did not exist during the Holocene optimum, or any of the other warm periods on the way down to the LIA.
But they exist now.
That’s not what Bnice said – reread the comment
We have no proof that the 2 mile thick glacier over NYC was there during MWP either, but it ain’t there now.
Yawn… please do some simple research before posting.
And one day you will have to explain to everyone how large forests of trees grew, where now there are glaciers, and the presence of Medieval artefacts under glaciers
A 1000-Year-Old Forest Buried Under Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier Uncovers A Warm Medieval Period – Iowa Climate Science Education
That will be very funny ! 🙂
Game, set and match to bnice2000.
Ha ha yeah, and even before Izaak’s mathematical derivation of carbon dioxide’s influence on glacier melt got posted. Come on fisherboy, pull your socks up.
And in Europe you can discuss Ötzi the Iceman.
5,300-year-old natural mummy discovered in 1991 by hikers in the Ötztal Alps on the Austrian-Italian border. Preserved entirely by glacial ice, he is the oldest known human mummy, providing scientists an unprecedented look at Copper Age Europeans.
Location under ice since then.
Very nice.
If you spend enough time on glaciers (I spent 2 months on an Antarctic Glacier) you would know of the meltwater streams on the surface – very active during direct sunshine. Nothing when they go into shadow. It is the sunlight, not the air temperature, that is doing the surface melting. Only rarely did the shaded surface air temp go above zero – usually a rare up glacier breeze from the sea . The predominant wind is katabatic down glacier but that can be “warm” at high velocities. The terminal face melting is mainly the ocean supplying the heat. Advance/ retreat is all the snowfall surface melt and terminal face balance points. No rain down there to confuse the issue.
Pick up any meteorites?
No = the meteorites are only in areas right at the edge of sublimation zones. We were nowhere near that. Our glacier ended in an ice tongue. One of those things that regularly break off and the exciteable types use that as proof that the end of the world is nigh.
I do note that climate change is threatening meteorite collection though.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11006603/
I wonder if they used the discredited climate models or actual ice accumulation data for their great prediction?
So if glaciers are like rivers only moving much slower, how long would it take a snowflake that fell at the spring of the glacier you studied to reach the ice tongue?
Let’s say it would take 40 years than is what happened 40 years ago not part of the reason where the tongue of the glacier is today?
I spent a month working in and around an ice tunnel at Camp Tuto (Greenland) in 1966. As the original ‘miners’ were driving a ventilation shaft upwards, they got to a point where they could see blue light from the surface and hear a loud meltwater stream. They wisely decided to stop driving the shaft upwards. The point being, meltwater streams can be on the bed rock, at the surface, or in between. What surprised me however was that in July there was no visible stream activity, but the glacier surface near the snout was slush! It was firm enough to support a small Arctic fox, but when I threw a large cobble, the cobble sank out of sight, probably about 2 or 3 feet deep. I couldn’t access it to verify the depth. The slush wouldn’t hold my weight and I didn’t want to find out how deep I would sink.
“If that much heat is being pulled out of the atmosphere, why do we not see the air above a glacier cooling off?”
— Kelvin is correct about glaciers coming and going. Else why has the planet seen glacial periods come and go? That said: okay, I’ve actually stood on a glacier. Athabasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Alberta. It was high summer, warm everywhere else. Lemme tell ya, despite it being high summer, the air coming off that giant block of ice was really cold! Flowed downhill to the parking lot. The ice was incredibly dirty, so sunlight was probably heating the dirt more than the ice itself. Also possibly from radiant heat off the nearby rocks. I think the thermodynamics is much more complex than this. Oh, and a friendly warning: If you walk through the mud below the toe to reach the ice, plan to replace your shoes. The ice grinds the rock so finely it penetrates every opening in the shoes. No amount of cleaning can get it out.
Athabasca Glacier – me too, in the early 1970s. The ice has melted back 3/4 of a mile since then (that’s an estimate). We were surprised at how dirty (asphalt-like) the toe was.
The most blue ice I’ve ever seen. Had little kids with me, so was unable explore much.
Air above glaciers is cold, and always has been.
I was at Athabasca in the early ’70s; it had already melted back-hard to remember-50yds? !00yds?. I had a glass stoppered clear glass bottle and I filled it with flowing meltwater and as I found out, rock flour which was in the water. It settled to a white layer at the bottom-way cool. Wish I still had it, it was fascinating. Ruined my shoes also. Such explorers we all are-or were-back then. Sigh.
We have already specified that the interior of the glacier is at -50C. How does water percolate down to the bottom without freezing.
It can’t be pressure, the tube that the water is traveling through is open to the surface, so the water will remain at atmospheric pressure.
Search for “moulin”
The term is derived from the French word for mill because it sounds like one.
Water at the surface can get quite warm under sunny conditions. If it flows down a crevasse, it can melt ice like a thermal drill. I’m surprised that the moulins can excavate a hole past the transition from brittle to plastic behavior. However, I doubt that they stay open in the Winter in the absence of warm water. They probably close up below 60 meters in the Winter.
Your specification (“….interior of the glacier is at -50C.) ist wrong for almost all glaciers in non- polar regions.
A couple of years ago NASA published some satellite radar data that allowed me to do a calculation of the volume of ice remaining from the last (Wisconsin/Fraser) glacial maximum. Having mapped geology in both the St. Elias Mtns and the Juneau Icefields this interested me enough to do a comparison of the present ice volume with the maximum volume of ice in Canada (sorry, Americans will have add their own contribution) during the last glacial maximum, say 25,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Today, 0.2% of that ice remains. If 99.8% melted before humans could have made any possible contribution to its melting, it is not rational to wring hands because the last 0.2% may melt/is melting. Indications are that something much bigger than humans is at play here.
I then found data indicating when the retreat of glaciers in the BC fjords reached the height-of-land in the Coast Mountains. This allowed an estimated of the rate of glacial retreat in those fjords; it was in the order of 150-200m/yr, far greater than anything observed today.
I remain a scientifically unemotional and unalarmed geologist; data demonstrate that the major climate change from the last glacial maximum did not involve humans, and what change is occurring today is also ignoring humans. The only entity frightened of humans…is humans.
Virgins will be sacrificed.
Can I have one, first?
I prefer experience over enthusiasm.
Headache a lot of headache. I wish to be 40 years younger again enthusiasm over experience .
That would be the virgin’s sacrifice.
But did the glacier retreat because of melt or because of no new snow falling at the source? Do we know how active (UV radiation) the Sun was those days?
All interesting questions, but no answers to those can indicate that humans had anything to do with it.
And the (very surprising to me) Rottnest Island study which found mid-Holocene wave action 3m higher than the current sea level. Apparently there is a lot of supporting evidence from around the globe.
Now where do we put those ‘flood stories’ we find in most ancient cultures.
To boil it down,
“When glaciers calve, alarmist have a cow. That explains all the bellowing!”
(Yes, that’s recycled.) 😎
Kelvin Klemm, this article really clarifies for me the mechanism that makes the two western most glaciers of the Southern Alps, Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, among the fastest reacting glaciers in the world. The short, steep drop to sea level is main cause of their speed. After several decades of retreat, these two glaciers made a 25-year advance starting in 1983. This advance started about five years after a change in ENSO patterns in 1977-78. New Zealand entered a period dominated by El Nino. The previous 20+ years had been dominated by Las Ninas bringing drier winds from the east to southeast which don’t bring either the moisture to feed the neve’s of the two glaciers, or the cloud cover to block out the sunlight. When the regime changed to El Nino dominance the reverse happened. Moisture laden winds from the deep Southern Ocean hit the high slopes of the Southern Alps and loaded up the neve’s to start the dramatic advance for the next twenty-five years before La Nina returned. The increased cloud cover kept the temperatures cool enough to sustain the advances.
I visited the Fox glacier in 1979 and 1989. It had retreated substantially between those two dates. That doesn’t seem to agree with your description. Do you have any thoughts on the apparent contradiction?
If I could post a picture showing the terminal face that I recorded on my four visits in 1984 (when it was way up the valley where it is now), 1989 (when the face was visible from the car park once more), 2001, and finally in 2010 after the start of the latest retreat, then you would see that my observations concur with what New Zealand scientists have written about. You can read their article in Nature Communications Feb 14th, 2017, entitled, “Regional cooling caused recent New Zealand glacier advances in a period of global warming.
Andrew N. Mackintosh1,2,*, Brian M. Anderson1,*, Andrew M. Lorrey3,*, James A. Renwick2, Prisco Frei1 & Sam M. Dean4”
We know that due to the albedo effect that dirt and soot on glaciers causes them to melt even when the ambient temperature is below freezing. And there aren’t pristine glaciers. So, there’s that.
Yes:
Glacier change comes from net of precipitation and sublimation. (Ice evaporates directly – you may experience that with food in your home freezer going dry.