Posted on 11/30/2005 11:48:49 AM PST by WmCraven_Wk
“Watch out, Al Gore. The glaciers will get you!” With that appended note, my friend, retired field geologist Jack Sauers, forwarded to me a report that should have been a lead item in every newspaper in the world. It was the news that the best-measured glacier in North America, the Nisqually on Mount Rainier, has been growing since 1931.
The significance of the fact, immediately grasped by any competent climatologist, is that glacial advance is an early warning sign of Northern Hemisphere chilling of the sort that can bring on an Ice Age. The last Little Ice Age continued from about 1400 to 1850. It was followed by a period of slight warming. There are a growing number of signs that we may be descending into another Little Ice Age—all the mountains of “global warming” propaganda aside.
Our current understanding of the long-term climate cycles shows that for the past 800,000 years, periods of approximately 100,000 years’ duration, called Ice Ages, have been interrupted by periods of approximately 10,000 years, known as Interglacials. (We are now about 10,500 years into the present Interglacial.)
What Causes Ice Ages These cycles are not mere statistical correlations, as some Wall Street prognosticator working at the modern PC version of a ouija board might spin out. They are determined, with great scientific precision, to correlate with long-term, cyclical changes in the Earth’s orbital relationship to the Sun. Three fundamental orbital relationships are involved, each of which contributes to the amount of sunlight received in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. When these cycles combine to reduce the incoming solar radiation (insolation) during summer months, over a number of years, the ice sheets which permanently cover Greenland, parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, begin to advance.
At a certain point, the growth process becomes self-feeding, partly because the high reflectivity of ice and snow reduces the local temperature, partly for reasons that are not fully understood. The glaciers thicken and expand until they become continental ice sheets, one to two miles thick, creeping ever southward. Geological evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, the southern boundary of the continental ice sheet, known as a terminal moraine, stretched down the center of Long Island, through New York City, across New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Southern Illinois and Missouri, then up the Plains States through Montana and Washington State. All of this real estate was buried under one to two miles of ice.
Geologically and climatologically speaking, we are due for another such glacial advance. It might not happen in our lifetimes, but radical shifts in the climate of northern regions can take place suddenly, and in some places may already be taking place.
How to Look at ‘Global Warming’ A very important thing to understand in interpreting all the swill that issues daily from the Global Warming mill (really the anti-industry, anti-population lobby, headed and pumped with money by the Royal Consort Prince Philip, and former Nazi Party member Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands), is that the onset of an Ice Age is not marked by global cooling. In fact, the very same astronomical conditions which cause a cooling at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, produce the opposite effect in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is much more ocean to absorb and retain the incoming solar radiation. Thus the global average temperature does not tell us anything of importance.
The geological requirements for an Ice Age are the presence of a large landmass around the Polar Circle and extending southward. A look at the globe, or world map, shows that those conditions exist in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern. Therefore, the important thing to look at is the climate conditions in northern and far northern regions. Some of the indicators:
• Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich. (From 1926 to 1960, some 70-95% of these glaciers were in retreat.)
• A comparison of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1965 and 1990 Plant Hardiness Zone Maps, shows a southward change of one zone, or 10°F, between 1965 and 1990.
• Careful measurements of the oxygen isotope ratios in German oaks, which are rigorously calibrated to temperature data, show a 1°C temperature decline from 1350 to 1800 (the lowpoint of the Little Ice Age). Temperature thereafter increased by 1°C from 1800 to 1930, and has been declining since then.
• From weather stations in the Alps, and in the Nordic countries, we find the temperature decline since 1930 is also 1°C.
• Satellite measurements have shown growth in the height and breadth of the huge Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere
On Nisqually That brings us to the Nisqually glacier, up on the 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, near Tacoma, Wash. Just 85 feet shy of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Rainier has 26 glaciers, and is the largest single peak system in the United States.
In 1931, fearful that the receding glacier would provide insufficient runoff for their newly completed hydroelectric facility, Tacoma City Light began careful measurements of the glacier. Since the mid-1800s, the glacier had receded about 1 kilometer. Annual to semi-annual measurements, continued by the U.S. Geological Survey and private contractors for the National Park Service, provide the longest continuous series of glacier measurements in North America.
The details are described in a report by government specialists, which appeared in the September 2000 issue of Washington Geology:
“The greatest thickening during the period of measurement occurred between 1931 and 1945, when the glacier thickened by about 50% near 2,800 meters of altitude. This and subsequent thickenings during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s produced waves that advanced its terminus. Glacier thinning occured during intervening periods. Between 1994 and 1997, the glacier thickened by 17 meters at 2,800-m altitude, indicating probable glacier advance during the first decade of the 21st century.”
That’s the story from Mount Rainier. Retired geologist Sauers, who has been observing conditions in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington for a lifetime, says “I’m preparing for an Ice Age.” Perhaps we all should.
I've got thetans.
"Science and the LaRouche youth movement? Are you one of them?"
I have no opinion of or connection to LaRouche.
That was what they said at the end of the Discovery Channel's special "The Little Ice Age." It must be true.
well. yeah. i guess if it was on tv then who can argue?
make up your mind! either we're globally warming or going into an ice age!It doesn't matter. Either way, it's all Bush's fault and Haliburton is going to make an obscene profit from it.
The only cure, in either case, is to shut down all industry everywhere (except India and China, who will refuse to go along but we can't criticize them because they aren't Europe and America) and outlaw births (except for Muslims, who get to continue having their customary 13 kids per family).
Well, you can't "brown-nose" unless you get up close.
SEE WARNING BELOW.
I am not qualified to judge the science in this article. The link to the magazine's main page http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com
shows more LaRouche info.
I imagine it is his latest publication. Back in the late 60s-early 70s he put out Fusion magazine from the Fusion Energy Foundation. Now it looks as if he is into climate. These publications look like a lot of effort goes into them.
WARNING! If you subscribe to one of his magazines, you will be placed on a list and they will call you all the time asking for donations. They will talk forever if you let them. DON'T EVER give this man your CREDIT CARD info. He has had "problems" with this before and did federal time for fraud. I was one of the lucky ones. You have been warned. Caveat emptor and all that.
In the science fiction novel Fallen Angels (and in the appendix), Larry Niven and co-authors suggest that the only reason why we haven't fallen into a full-blown ice age yet is human-influenced global warming.
As for terminal moraines, the terminal moraine from the last ice age didn't so much run down the middle of Long Island as Long Island is a terminal moraine, as are the Watchung Mountains in New Jersey. (The moraine is the pile of stuff that accumulates at the leading edge of a glacier.)
excellent map. thanks.
Some of that new "Ice Age" was all over my lawn yesterday.
What happened then and why is it Bush's fault?/sarcasm..
Funny thing is my Dad has been talking about the "next little Ice Age" for as long as I can remember.
Is he for real? Less incoming radiation is less, no matter which hemisphere you're in. Less incoming radiation means less radiation held by the oceans, which should ultimately mean cooler climes, unless I'm missing something...
"The geological requirements for an Ice Age are the presence of a large landmass around the Polar Circle and extending southward. A look at the globe, or world map, shows that those conditions exist in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern."
I think he had the map upside down. There is a large land mass around the South Pole. It is called Antartica.
The Watchung Mountains in New Jersey are Jurassic volcanic basalt left from when Africa rifted away from North America during the Pangea breakup; they are not moraines.
And that brings me to my second point: if we're 500 years past the end of the average interglacial, then we have no business trying to reduce CO2 outputs, that is, if we want to keep the planet suitable for large human populations.
Meanwhile, in an editorial, the sages of the Roanoke(VA) Times intone:
Two-mile long nail in the warming debate
Ice core analysis proves that industrial activities increase greenhouse gases and the temperature.
The Roanoke Times
The debate over global warming must move beyond whether science confirms that human activities are contributing to a change in the atmosphere and a rise in global temperature.
Analysis of a two-mile long ice core from the Antarctic should be the final nail in that debate.
Study of tiny air bubbles in the ice confirm that current levels of CO2 are higher than anything experienced at least in the last 650,000 years.
There can be no serious, reasonable doubt that this unprecedented increase is due to industrial activity that dumps billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year.
With the start Monday of a 12-day global warming summit in Montreal, the debate must shift to real steps the nations of the world can take to reduce greenhouse emissions before it is too late.
The consequences of continuing to ignore the planet's slow-motion catastrophe are more grave than most can imagine.
"The impacts of global warming are many and serious: sea-level rise ... changes in availability of fresh water ... and the increasing incidence of extreme events -- floods, droughts, and hurricanes -- the serious consequences of which are rising to levels which invite comparison with weapons of mass destruction," said Britain's top scientist, Royal Society President Robert May.
Data from the Antarctic ice core sample, which provided an additional 210,000 years of data to that previously available, should add urgency to the Montreal gathering.
"This [data] is saying, 'Yeah, we had it right.' We can pound on the table harder and say, 'This is real,'" Richard Alley, a Penn State University expert on ice cores, told the Los Angeles Times.
Someone needs to pound on the table, loudly. The meeting in Montreal should advance the community of nations -- including Congress and the Oval Office -- beyond the weak efforts of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
Global warming is real. The world should face that reality and act accordingly.
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