Sunday, June 09, 2019

Gasp!


Global warming ... aka climate change ... aka extreme weather. We are doomed to the exigencies of carbon dioxide. More hurricanes ... rising sea levels ... more childhood asthma ... polar bears dying off ... more illegal immigration ... shrinking glaciers ... all sorts of plagues and pestilence caused by our naive use of fossil fuels.

Hold on Pilgrim. Recently we learned that Greenland’s glaciers are growing again (see: Greenland Glaciers) ... and, gasp! we are also now informed the the glaciers at Glacier National Park in Montana are not disappearing on schedule ... but, in fact, are once again expanding ... see: Daily Caller Story.

These ice-forming anomalies must also be being caused by global warming, aka climate change, aka extreme weather! No?

Afterward: I just looked up info about the Mendenhall Glacier outside of Juneau, Alaska and got the following official word about its shrinking ... see next. The obvious question presents itself ... was CO2 spiking back in the mid 1700s?

Is the glacier retreating?

A neo-glaciation period began 3,000 years ago and ended in the mid-1700s. At this time, Mendenhall Glacier reached its point on maximum advance, and its terminus rested almost 2.5 miles down valley from its present position. Mendenhall Glacier started retreating in the mid-1700s because its annual rate of melt began to exceed its annual total accumulation. The icefield's snowfall perpetually creates new glacial ice for Mendenhall Glacier and this ice takes 200-250 years to travel from the Juneau Icefield to Mendenhall Lake. Water depth at the glacier's terminus is 220 feet. At this rate, the glacier would take several centuries to completely disappear. For Mendenhall Glacier to advance, the icefield's snowfall needs to increase, the glacier's rate of melt needs to decrease, or both.

No comments:

Post a Comment