Posted on 03/27/2006 8:23:53 PM PST by quantim
PORTLAND, Ore. The seven largest of Mount Hood's 11 glaciers have shrunk by an average of more than 30 percent since the beginning of the last century, according to calculations by a Portland State University graduate student.
Keith Jackson, who is part of a glacier research team financed by the National Science Foundation and NASA, estimates that Sandy Glacier, on Mount Hood's west slopes facing Portland, covers about 60 percent less ground than it did a century ago and Eliot Glacier has lost at least half of its ice in the last 100 years.
And scientists think glaciers might recede faster in the coming century because of warmer temperatures. Average low temperatures at Eliot Glacier have been above freezing during at least six of the last 12 years, more than any such period in the last 110 years, according to Oregon Climate Service calculations.
Scientists in the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group predict the Northwest will warm nearly as much in the next 20 years as it has in the last 100, about a degree Fahrenheit.
It's almost universal that all glaciers are retreating, said Peter Clark, an Oregon State University professor who's an authority on glaciers. The signs of retreat are dramatic and accelerating.
It signals that the cause of that change is overwhelming other factors, he said. The fingerprint of global warming is increasing on a global scale.
Studies that show the glaciers receding do not surprise climbers of Mount Hood, who say they now skip certain routes to the summit because rocks and ice once locked solidly in place now break loose.
Warming and the receding glaciers are very much affecting the recreation potential and the dangerousness of it on all sides of the mountain, said Vera Dafoe, who has long led hikes on the mountain for the Mazamas. It has changed enormously.
The Columbia is the real American Rhine. Its even glacial fed, unlike that fake, the Hudson.
Never, we're concentrating on drinking Canada Dry.
So?
/sarcasm
Bunch of baloney. At Mount Rainier, some glaciers advance, some retreat and have for the last century.
Nam Vet
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/on_my_mind_freeman_dyson.php
That's great, but can you fill your own gas tank yet?
I am not a chemist or into physics, but when I fill my glass all the way full with ice and water, it does not flow over when the ice melts. Maybe that is just me though. I don't even play a chemist on tv.
As I told some enviro-paranoids once, "As long as we keep having weather, we will keep having apocalyptic predictions."
We elect a good Republican for Governor and all these little problems will start to disappear.
Have his book. He presents a well reasoned and verifiable argument about global warming, mass extinctions, and the misguided alarmism rational people are confronted with daily.
Well, considering that a large proportion of the southern ice cap, and ALL of the northern ice cap is floating ice, I'm not overly concerned.
If you are concerned, then you should prepare for the inexorable rise in sea level that is going to inundate the planet and drown everything within 200 miles of the coast.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to live my life 50 feet above sea level. On an island.
BUMP!
You forget to add:
. . . by world renowned climatologist Michael Crichton.
Oh wait, he is a world renowned writer of fiction.
What difference does it make though really. Thousands of scientists on the one hand, a fiction writer on the other.
If this were a debate about Christianity, would you site Dan Brown?
A glacier is ice on land. A iceberg is ice in the ocean and akin to your ice cube in a glass of water If an iceberg melts (or for that matter the artic ocean) it changes nothing.
If a glacier melts like in Greenland or Antartica, that is a problem because it is like ice on a spoon hovering above that glass. In other words, it will add water to the system.
The larger problem with the melting is the potential feedback loop. Melting land ice leaves darker surfaces exposed which trap more heat (ice is white and reflects heat back into space). Thus melting of glaciers on a global level as a result of warming will likely produce more warming.
Paradoxically it might make some areas of the world colder because ocean flows are disrupted. The Gulf stream may cease to carry warm air up the East Coast of the US and then on to Europe. The result might be colder temperatures on the East Coast and Canadaian-like temps in Europe.
Overall the warming is likely to cause more extreme weather and more extreme shifts in weather. Thus the very warm January and very cold February on the US East Coast this year.
All told, it is probably a bad time to invest in property in the Gulf or in the Netherlands. I would also recommend against building a ski resort in the Alps.
B-15A has recently started to break apart a little more..
Six years after it "calved" and entered the sea..
Six years and it's still around...
I don't see alot of "melting" going on there..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-15A
http://earth.esa.int/ew/special_events/iceberg-b15_antartic/sp_iceberg-b15.htm
Wow! Global warming is increasing on a global scale? I thought that it only affected Europe, California, Oregon, Washington and the northeast. I had no idea that it was so bad that it was affecting the whole earth. Now, that's scary.
Now, just like the cavemen (excuse me, cavewomen...no, that's wrong too...cavepersons, yeah that the one) watched in horror during the last ice age as the glaciers melted, we too, can stand in absolute horror watching the ice melt too.
I think that I am going to start building my global warming shelter in the backyard this weekend...before it's too late.
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