Where have all the Glaciers gone?

[zjrog]

I do not doubt that things are changing. But I have serious doubts that we as a species have done it all. I learned in Earth Sciences almost 30 years ago (when we were concerned with the coming ice ages), that the Earth's climate is always changing. There haven't always been glaciers, so using melting glaciers as a measure of the climate seems a bit dishonest to me.

I believe that it is MAN'S arrogance, to believe we have done so much harm, and there are plenty of people willing to prey on people's FEARS that they have done so much harm. As for Anthropomorphic Climate Change, my question is who is responsible for setting the thermostat? We have MANY variables that need to be factored in, say, the lack of solar activity?

NOT to take lightly our role in the environment at all. No doubt, we (as a species) HAVE done bad things to this planet. I am extremely tired of being accused of all the worlds troubles, when plenty of other countries have far more work to do than we do. MOST Asian countries have absolutely NO pollution controls and aren't doing their part. Japan being a striking example in contrast. We as a a Nation, have made GREAT strides to cleanup our environment over the last 35 years. I believe the Native American in the ads of the 70s would have less to be tearful over today.

And not to say I'm not trying to do my part either. My thermostat is set a little warmer in summer than I have in the past. This summer here in Utah has been VERY mild so far and I only just turned on my AC unit 10 days ago (the last two years I've had it on as early as the end of April). I'm using CFL bulbs in a lot of fixtures (some I need a consistent color and brightness so I still have some regular bulbs), as much for my own energy cost savings as anything else. I installed a couple more ceiling fans. I use a toaster oven more often than the fullsize oven. I water my yard only enough to maintain a bit of color as opposed to soaking my yard. With my offroading activities, I participate in trail cleanups and repairs, and am very concerned with land use issues, which includes trail etiquett and peer pressure education.

I also really dislike being lumped in with the "closed minded", "half minded" just because I disagree with a lot of the unsettled science. Science never has been about consensus. Consensus was when the middle ages church accused men of science of heresy when church teachings were threatened with real evidence. I'm very concerned with WHO is profiting/benefiting from all this fear mongering.

We DO need to do more. We DO need to get other countries involved a lot more. We DO need to stop making this such a divisive issue, have a more civil discourse, which in this day and age is becoming very difficult to reign in emotions. And we really need to have a much better understanding of other forces and dynamics at play. I do not doubt that things are changing. In fact, I truly believe the climate will always change no matter what we pitiful human beings do. This planet will spit us off long before we ever have a chance to "kill" it. Our tenure here as a species is minute compared to the time the planet has been warming and freezing on its own, without us around.

[zjrog]

In talking with people who have lived here in my town a lot longer than I have, they were thinking that our weather pattern this year was much like the weather patterns of 25 years ago, when Utah was hit with a very wet summer and followed with record snowfall the following winter. I personally am a very poor judge of weather patterns, as I have moved around a great deal over the last 30 years.

I also seem to recall that overall polar bear populations are on the rise, and the classic photo of a polar bear "stranded" on a piece of ice is NOT typical of the entire population. Perhaps small regions have declining polar bear populations though.

[metroschultz]

This generated more than I though it would.
I just needed to rant, and organize my thoughts before Google-ing all night.
I did some research and found evidence for both sides of the argument.
The general consensus of all the researchers I followed being that there has been a steady decline in ice pack worldwide for decades.
And , yes, that is only one measure of how climate affects the environment.
And yes , my colleague is closed minded.
Yes, we are apparently doing more to save the Earth than most other industrialized nations.
The loss of ice in the Arctic won't raise ocean levels.
The arctic ice pack is floating, like an ice cube in your Mojito.

and now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[zjrog]

Sorry, I got a little long winded there... I'd like to think I have a very open mind. But I would like to see some honest research that isn't government paid for, or UN supported. I believe this completely bias' the data to whoever is paying for the study. JUST like having the oil companies pay for the research, it too would be skewed. There are too many independent groups that do research that isn't recognized since it doesn't support the UNs theories.

[Bicycle Bob]

About half of the sea level rise is from melting glaciers on land, and half from the water expanding from heat. Loss of Arctic ice increases warming elsewhere, by not reflecting light over vast areas of ocean. Here's a site with news on individual areas, 3 years ago: Glaciers melting at alarming rates, water problems feared

This column has the first rumour I've heard of Polar bears doing better on average, although obviously, they will migrate to new areas and show a local increase. Eskimo homes are falling into the sea, due to lack of ice and permafrost.

James Lovelock looks at the big picture:
OpEdNews » The Dark Side of Climate Change: It's Already Too Late, Cap and Trade Is a Scam, and Only the Few Will Survive

"He notes that the IPCC and its many powerful computers have successfully undershot all of the indicator trends of climate change so far. Most notably, sea-level rise has outpaced IPCC predictions at a rate of 2 to 1.

Of all the indicators of climate change, Lovelock maintains sea-level rise is the most important. Given the complexity of the millions of interactions within the Gaia system, Lovelock argues it is best to ignore year-to-year temperature fluctuations and instead watch the oceans. The seas, he says, are the lone trustworthy indicator of the earth's heat balance. "Sea level rise is the best available measure of the heat absorbed by the earth because it comes from only two things," he writes. "[These are] the melting of glaciers and the expansion of water as it warms. Sea level is the thermometer that indicates true global heating."

Using Gaia Theory as his lens, Lovelock also examines five dreaded positive feedback loops, those processes now underway that at some point will become ferocious amplifiers of global heating (he finds "warming" too soft a word for the process). Lovelock describes how the most important of these feedback loops already in motion""the loss of reflective ice cover, the death of carbon eating algae as oceans warm, and methane released by thawing permafrost""will soon accelerate the heating trend underway, leading to sudden and dramatic shifts in global climate. Rather than the steady rise predicted by the UN's IPCC, Lovelock is confident the change will resemble economic charts of boom and bust, full of sudden and unexpected discontinuities, dips, and jumps. "The Earth's history and simple climate models based on the notion of a live and responsive Earth suggest that sudden change and surprise are more likely than the smooth rising curve of temperature that modelers predict for the next ninety years," he writes."

The rich countries are doing more to soften their impact, but still lead in terms of sheer impact, especially when you consider that China pollutes to produce for the U.S.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

I am far more suspicious of industry funded "research" than I am of some scientific/UN cabal. The facts are the facts: 150 years ago -- before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution when we started burning coal and oil and gas -- was ~280ppm.

The best current estimates are that 350ppm is a threshold/tipping point that puts us into a self-accelerating cycle.

Now it is ~387ppm and rising fast -- so we are past that point already. The best case scenario is that we double the 280ppm; so 560ppm by 2100, and the worst case is we get to 560ppm by 2045.

That is a virtually instantaneous change (in geological terms) and it is the RAPIDITY of the change that makes it so ominous, and it is the best evidence we can have that we humans have caused it. If we had not also caused so much smog in the earlier part of this time, we would have had more rapid warming. Now that we have improved the particulate/opaque part of our pollution, we need to move to change the greenhouse gasses much more rapidly than we are.

[zjrog]

Still the cause/effect of CO2 and warming hasn't been settled, or is it warming creates higher CO2 levels? The planet has had higher concetrations of CO2 before man without high temeratures. As long as we have only computer models to go off of, which more often than have poor data sets to begin with, everything is slightly better than pure conjecture. Easy to skew the datasets a tiny bit to get the outcome that matches your beliefs/theories.

Solar activity has to have some bearing in all this as well. Reduced solar activity

I have an inherent distrust of industry funded research as well as government/UN IPCC funded research. As I stated above. But I also don't know of a way to provide the true independent research that OUGHT to be done.

I think we as a populace love to be scared. Scared of impending doom. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s we had the Soviet threat and MAD, and near certain nuclear destruction. Also in the 70s we were warned of peak oil and the coming ice ages. In the 80s we had the ozone hole, which actually changes size and shape quite regularly. But GW or Global Climate Change if you want, puts a fear in people and leaves you with nobody in particular to be afraid of. So emotions become important.

Want to know what really scares me? The planet's magnetic field is changing. It has done this in the past as well. But there is nothing we can do about this. The field does a lot, including protecting us from the harmful radiations of the sun...

[wagonman76]

I'm with Neil. The last two months here have been very rainy (much wetter than the previous few years, but no records so far). Before the heatwave started two weeks ago the weatherman in the news said something like "Another cold and rainy week coming up, and what's all this about global warming?". Maybe he was trying to be funny, but many people will take that at face value. They think that global warming = Sahara desert, when that's not true. No place is going to suddenly become tens of degrees hotter. In fact, many places will become cooler, like Europe, which won't be getting the rush of warm, moist air from the Atlantic. In most places the average temperature won't change by much, but the temperature variations may be greater. The average rainfall may not change, but there will be more dry spells followed by sudden and very powerful storms.

Same here. Michigan summers have always been short, but they used to be nice for the most part while they were here. Now the quality just keeps going down the tubes. Warm sunny days are becoming few and far between. Overcast and rain and highs of about 50F is the norm around here. It keeps reminding me of the way people describe Seattle or Oregon. Every week I get hopeful then I see another 7 day forecast of crap. Memorial day used to be a nice opening to summer. Several recent years including this one I have had to keep a fire in the woodstove till mid June.

Another thing I (as well as many others I have talked to) is the wind gets stronger here every year. It was never like this when I was younger. Even in the late 90s it was still enjoyable to take my trailer out even though the wind was stronger, but anymore it is just a battle, getting whipped all over the highway. High winds were occassional before, now just about every single time I go out on the highway it is high wind. We get a lot of rain but everything is always dry and fire danger is moderate to high. I think it is because the increasing wind constantly wicks the moisture out of the land, like clothes on a clothesline. We are also getting a lot more wind from the South. A breeze west off the lake used to be the norm.

I would consider it more of a climate shift than warming. I see it's not just here that is getting colder. Obviously the poles are getting warmer. The south USA must be getting colder too. Where I work we have finally made low-temperature equipment our standard. Almost 30 years in the business, but in recent years we have needed to send out low-temp replacement parts to places like Georgia, Alabama, etc., places that have always been fine before.

I did watch that show on History Channel awhile back. I do understand how the ocean current keeps New England and Europe warmer than what it normally be at that latitude. Don't see how it would be affecting Michigan though. If anything, it seems inland areas like us should be getting hotter and drier.

I think climate change has to do more with the sun and natural causes than anything we can control. The renaissance era, and time of the Dinosaurs, were very warm too. None of that can be blamed on burning of fossil fuels. And the little ice age started in something like a few years to a decade, it came on very quick. On one of those global warming shows on History Channel, first they were talking about how volcanic activity caused warming. In the same sentence they said sulfur would cause warming, where CO2 would NOT. Then later on in the show they started talking about the last 100years and then started saying CO2 WOULD cause warming.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

The basic principle of greenhouse gasses making our lives possible, by slowing down the heat loss into space -- is a fact. We're here, right? So, if some insulation results in the "right" temperature for life as we know it, then adding a whole bunch more insulation quickly, is resulting in the overall higher temperature that we have already seen.

Greenhouse gases = retained heat = fact.

Scientific process works the same for all fields of science. If you trust any science: medicine, geology, paleontology, biology, chemistry, physics -- all of them use and depend on the same methodology and peer review! So, if you trust any of these, then you have to trust the overwhelming conclusions about global climate change.

Scientists do not make things up.

The economic motivation of the naysayers is obvious to all -- they want to continue unhindered at selling us all the oil and coal they can. I fail to see how anybody could profit from global warming. If the UN is swaying people with their funding -- why are they doing it?

Oil and coal are in specific places and are finite, so the people who control them can profit from them. Renewable energy on the other hand is all over the place, and they cannot be controlled by a few -- so, this is why there is so much resistance to switching over.

We fight wars over oil. Would we fight wars over sunshine, or wind, or tidal, or wave, or geothermal energy?

There is no disputing that all old carbon fuels release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we all depend on. So, why are we letting a few profit, while we all pay the penalty?

[zjrog]

Of course, nature always plays with us...
El Nino conditions return to affect weather

El Nino conditions return to affect weather

WASHINGTON (AP) - El Nino's back. Government scientists say the periodic warming of water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can affect weather around the world has returned.
The Pacific had been in what is called a neutral state. But forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the sea surface temperature climbed to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal along a narrow band in the eastern equatorial Pacific in June.

In addition, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center said temperatures in other tropical regions are also above normal.

In general, El Nino conditions are associated with increased rainfall across the east-central and eastern Pacific and with drier than normal conditions over northern Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

A summer El Nino can lead to wetter than normal conditions in the intermountain regions of the United States. In an El Nino year there tend to be more Eastern Pacific hurricanes and fewer Atlantic hurricanes.