2 more glaciers gone from Glacier National Park (due to "climate change")

Associated Press ^ | April 7, 2010 11:40 AM CDT | MATTHEW BROWN (AP)

[newgeezer]

BILLINGS, Mont. — Glacier National Park has lost two more of its namesake moving icefields to climate change, which is shrinking the rivers of ice until they grind to a halt, a government researcher said Wednesday.

Warmer temperatures have reduced the number of named glaciers in the northwestern Montana park to 25, said Dan Fagre said, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He warned many of the rest of the glaciers may be gone by the end of the decade.

"It's continual," Fagre said. "When we're measuring glacier margins, by the time we go home the glacier is already smaller than what we've measured."

The meltoff shows the climate is changing, but does not show exactly what is causing temperatures to go up, Fagre said.

The park's glaciers have been slowly melting away since about 1850, when the centuries-long Little Ice Age ended. They once numbered as many as 150, and 37 of those glaciers eventually were named.

A glacier needs to be 25 acres to qualify for the title.

If it shrinks any smaller, it does not always stop moving right away. A smaller mass of ice on a steep slope would still continue to grind its way through the Rocky Mountains.

Glacier melting has accelerated in recent decades as global temperatures have increased. Over the past century, Glacier National Park's mean summer temperature has risen by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[mlocher]

Is this breaking news?

[Puppage]

a government researcher said Wednesday

Well, then it HAS to be true!

[newgeezer]

Is this breaking news?

LOL. I suppose it might be possible to make a case for that.

[WOBBLY BOB]

should be...hugh and series.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“should be...hugh and series.”

But still a mute point, and irrevalunt!

[Ben Mugged]

From Wikipedia:

An ice sheet on Antarctica began to grow some 20 million years ago. The current ice age, the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, started about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacials (glacial advance) and interglacials (glacial retreat). The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island.

[John O]

The meltoff shows the climate is changing, but does not show exactly what is causing temperatures to go up, Fagre said.

Hogwash. Everyone knows it's caused by white protestants driving SUV's! The park's glaciers have been slowly melting away since about 1850, when the centuries-long Little Ice Age ended.

WOW! I didn't know the SUV was introduced in 1850!

[cajuncow]

The real reason--

[a fool in paradise]

In Houston, the Comical’s website’s headline is “Two more glaciers bite the dust”

Nice mixed (or at best “ironic) metaphor.

[a fool in paradise]

The park's glaciers have been slowly melting away since about 1850

Um, NO you pinhead journalist.

The glaciers in North America have been slowly melting away ever since the Ice Age that came after the age of the dinosaurs!!!

[Williams]

I have a park manual from the 1980’s which says the glaciers have been shrinking since the 1800’s and will someday be gone, unrelated to any “global warming”.

[Invincibly Ignorant]

Oh my gosh. Glaziers melt. Imagine the odds. :-)

[FrankR]

So, what they are asking us to believe is, before they "invented" global warming, EVERY SINGLE GLACIER THAT HAS EVER FORMED IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK WAS STILL THERE?

I guess I was under the misconception that glaciers were always moving...slicing great swaths in their paths, and they eventually migrated to wamer area, where they did, indeed, melt.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere...back in the 5th grade or so...in the 1950's. But, nature's laws work differently for liberals.

[pissant]

Dan FAGre, you are full of crap

[mlocher]

I have a park manual from the 1980’s which says the glaciers have been shrinking since the 1800’s and will someday be gone, unrelated to any “global warming”.

Maps that were first drawn of Glacier Bay in the 1700s show the same phenomena.

[BunnySlippers]

Especially since climate has been changing ever since there was climate.

And we know why they had to change the name from “global warming” to “climate change”.

[Puppage]

And we know why they had to change the name from “global warming” to “climate change”.

'Cause global warming is scary.

[Tzimisce]

Did you know that low temperatures and snowstorms are proof that the globe is warming?