Whoa boy, just returned from Alaska. What a beautiful place, and great to be around rational people after all these years in Berkeley.

Was very impressed by the glaciers, but the funny thing was, while they all are receding, even the lefty drivel provided by the Parks Service showed that global warming is simply, a natural phenomenom. For example, the Exit Glacier.

This is one of the few glaciers you can hike right up to. No only that, they have signs along the trail where they show the extent of the glacier at different dates. At the visitors center, there is a morane with a sign that says "1919." Then you look at the glacier, 1.1 miles away, and you are struck by the extent of the melting. Well, you hike 0.6 miles, and there is a sign which reads "1962." Then you hike the last 0.5 miles to the edge of the glacier. There, they have a nice little display to show the glacier has receded 1.5 miles since the end of the mini Ice Age in 1810.

But wait, using my acute critical thinking skills, that would mean in the 100 years prior to 1919, the glacier receded 1.4 miles, or 73 feet/per year, then the 40 odd years between 1919 and 1962, 0.6 miles, or 79 feet/year, then 0.5 miles since then, or 62 feet/year. Thus, the 150 years prior to 1962, the melting rate was greater than the 50 years after.

But it gets even better. The Valley widens as it goes further away from the toe of the glacier. I estimated, it was about 1.5 miles wide at the 1810 mark, 1 mile at the 1919 mark, 0.75 miles at the 1962 mark, then about 0.5 miles wide at the toe today. Assuming the glacier was about 250, and using average end areas to calculate volume, the glacier lost 477M cubic yards of volume between 1810 and 1919 (4M yards/year), 143M cubic yards of volume between 1919 and 1962 (3.3M yards/year), and only 86M cubic yards between 1962 and 2008 (1.8M cubic yards/year).

So, even though all the Park Service guys were trying to push the man-made global warming bunk, what nature says, the rate of melting of the glaciers has actually decreased at a time that levels of man-made CO2 have been reported to increase, with the majority of the melting occurring when man was putting little or no CO2 in the atmosphere.

JP

funny how nature proves libbies wrong at every turn.

Dumbass Pugs: Because natural forces can affect climate we know that man's activities do not affect climate. The great el Rushbo told us so...

I will at least give you credit for acknowledging that global climate change is a reality, unlike the host of idiots on this board who seem to think it's just all in our heads.

Now if we can set aside the notion of "man-made global warming" for a moment, is it not possible to debate the very real problem of air pollution? How about the fact that I can't eat Galveston Bay speckled trout more often than a couple of times a month because they're full of PCBs?

Even if you can prove without any doubt that global warming is a natural event, you cannot ignore the very real price we are paying for petrochemical production, and how truly bad it would be if we had no environmental regulation whatsoever.

but do you have anything substatial in response to my post.

JP

now fashion your response in the form of a "red herring."

JP

it's tough, and there is a subtle difference, but give it a try.

JP, I stated very clearly that I accept--for the moment--your assertion about global warming. I changed the focus of the discussion. If that confused you, my apologies.

Want more? OK. You're a moron. You point to natural forces affecting climate (which occurs, of course) as "evidence" that man's activities do not affect climate. Daft, to sane people, as you hilariously crow about your "critical thinking" skills. Sane, smart people would be shocked if increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels did not warm the globe. You are not among them.

Enough?

jpfc:

but do you have anything substatial in response to my post.

JP

There a glacier that is growing in Alaska, the parks dept has monitoring systems on it and it will cover a town across a lake so they are moving the town

Firstly, it is more than "a few glaciers" that are receding; it is a pervasive, sustained, and accelerating global trend. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) maintains a chart of global glacier mass balance, and for as far back as their data allows us to look, all but a few years have shown a loss in ice volume of subpolar and mountain glaciers. Further, annual losses are increasing.

But no one claims that melting glaciers are proof of global warming. Proof is a mathematical concept. In climate science one needs to look at the balance of evidence. The above data is just one piece of evidence that is consistent with global warming.

So what do we find if we look to the other aspects of the cryosphere? It turns out what we find is lots more evidence indicative of world-wide and sustained temperature increases:

• Sea ice in the arctic is reaching new record declines as the year 2006 continues the pattern of sharply decreasing Arctic sea ice.
• Recent measurements by NASA have found that Greenland's massive ice sheet has been losing nearly 100 gigatons of ice annually in recent years.
• Glaciers in Greenland are receding and calving at record rates.
• Ancient permafrost is also thawing (which represents its own dangers).

And of course, this is all consistent with all the other evidence of warming out there. Clearly we are dealing with much more than a few receding glaciers.

Here is a list of organizations (real critical thinkers) that accept anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically well-supported:

• NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS): <link>
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): <link>
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): <link>
• National Academy of Sciences (NAS): <link>
• State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC) - <link>
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): <link>
• The Royal Society of the UK (RS) - <link>
• American Geophysical Union (AGU): <link>
• American Meteorological Society (AMS): <link>
• American Institute of Physics (AIP): <link>
• National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR): <link>
• American Meteorological Society (AMS): <link>
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS): <link>

Every major scientific institution dealing with climate, ocean, and/or atmosphere agrees that the climate is warming rapidly and the primary cause is human CO2 emissions. In addition to that list, see also this joint statement (PDF) that specifically and unequivocally endorses the work and conclusions of the IPCC Third Assessment report. The statement was issued by:

• Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil)
• Royal Society of Canada
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Academie des Sciences (France)
• Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
• Indian National Science Academy
• Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
• Science Council of Japan
• Russian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Society (United Kingdom)
• National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)

You can also read this statement [PDF], which includes all the above signatories plus the following:

• Australian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
• Caribbean Academy of Sciences
• Indonesian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Irish Academy
• Academy of Sciences Malaysia
• Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
• Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

But if scientists are too liberal and politicians too unreliable, perhaps you find the opinion of key industry representatives more convincing:

• BP, the largest oil company in the UK and one of the largest in the world, has this opinion:

  There is an increasing consensus that climate change is linked to the consumption of carbon based fuels and that action is required now to avoid further increases in carbon emissions as the global demand for energy increases.

• Shell Oil (yes, as in oil, the fossil fuel) says:

  Shell shares the widespread concern that the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities is leading to changes in the global climate.

• Eighteen CEOs of Canada's largest corporations had this to say in an open letter to the Prime Minister of Canada:

  Our organizations accept that a strong response is required to the strengthening evidence in the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We accept the IPCC consensus that climate change raises the risk of severe consequences for human health and security and the environment. We note that Canada is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Have the environazis seized the reigns of industrial power, in addition to infiltrating the U.N., the science academies of every developed nation, and the top research institutes of North America? That just doesn't seem

global warming is nature.

JP

go figure.

JP

but not as simple direct as needed for you to comprehend its meaning..

He was telling you you are being illogical.

You can lead a blind horse to water......

But wait, using my acute critical thinking skills, that would mean in the 100 years prior to 1919, the glacier receded 1.4 miles, or 73 feet/per year, then the 40 odd years between 1919 and 1962, 0.6 miles, or 79 feet/year, then 0.5 miles since then, or 62 feet/year. Thus, the 150 years prior to 1962, the melting rate was greater than the 50 years after.

Right off the bat, you make a mistake. Earlier in your post you stated a sign at the gift shop stated the glacier had receded 1.5 miles since 1810. You also stated that a sign marking a "morane" (moraine, btw) at 1.1 miles from the glacier edge was in 1919. So, that means from 1919 to 1810 (109 years) the glacier receded 0.4 miles, not the 1.4 miles you stated. This results in a melting rate of 19.38 feet/year. From 1962 to the present the melting rate was 57.39 feet/year. From 1919 to 1962 the melting rate was 73.67 feet/year.

So while the melting rate has decreased 22% from the middle part of this century, the current melting rate is still 296.13% greater than it was prior to 1919. Glad I could help.

Didn't bother to read the rest of your post, as the glaring and obvious error kind of spoiled it for me. BTW, with "critical thinking skills" you've evidence, I hope like hell my firm never hires you.

But I'm glad you explained it in terms even a FrayKon could understand.