Vanishing Glaciers

[Smitty]

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/Western+Canada+could+lose+cent+glaciers+century+study/10949122/story.html

 

 

[dryfly]

Thanks Smitty

 

Yes, it is possible the glaciers will be gone by 2100. Shindler rightly discusses population growth and conservation...something we'd all agree with (but not willing to do much about). Indeed, these two items are the sole issues. However, there is a strong implication (computer models and climate simulations to find that warming temperatures are threatening glaciers in B.C. and Alberta) that the glacier melt is more rapid today than in the past. Not only is that patently false, in fact ,the reverse is true. Warming and melt rates centuries ago were massive and today's ice losses are miniscule compared. The glacier outwash valleys in southern Alberta were all scoured out by massive flows of water from ice sheets malting at rates we are unable to fathom. What we are witnessing is the ongoing process of ice sheet and glacier melt that started at the Late Glacial Maximum here. (The Late Glacial Maximum (ca. 13,000-10,000 years ago), or Tardiglacial ("Late Glacial"), is defined primarily by the beginning of the modern warm period, in which climates in the northern hemisphere warmed substantially, causing a process of accelerated deglaciation following the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 25,000-13,000 years ago).)

 

The article published this photo which is a nice segue. In 1955, I came to Canada and that year we attended the Columbia Ice fields in Jasper. There was a sign near the hotel that said something like in "The glacier was here in 19XX." That is a different sign than in the article, but it was the same idea, i.e. the glacier is/was indeed receding and exemplifies the state of many glaciers...but not all. In 1955, the glacier face was maybe a few hundred meters away from that sign. “Wow!” we thought. "It sure is melting." (This was when the earth's population was about 2½ billion or 1/3 of today....and yet melting was seemingly happening apace.) According to Google Earth the glacier face was ~1,500 meters away in 2004. (That's the last date for imagery in Jasper.) So the icefield glacier has receded back in those 60 years since I was first there and lost a few square kilometers. In the past 100 years a few more square km were lost. Sounds like a lot and makes for sensational media coverage. But recent ice melting is hardly anything compared to the past when warming had to have been rapid and not in man's hand.

(See diagram below made with data/diagrams from the Geological Survey of Canada. The area of Alberta is 661,848 sq. km. About 13,000 years ago, there were about 500,000 sq kms of ice covering Alberta. About 11,000 years ago, there were about 70,000 sq km of ice in NE Alberta. Over about 2,000 years (a mere 20 centuries), about 430,000 sq km of ice disappeared or an average of about 21,000 sq km per century. This melted area per century was more than the entire area of Banff, Jasper and Waterton Lakes National Parks...in the past century we've lost a tiny (tiny) fraction of that. And yet some are claiming today's melt is big. I was in Jasper 60 years ago and whereas there is some ice loss since then, it is insignificant compared to the ice loss in similar times periods way back when.

 

We run a pretty good chance of entering a cooling period, which of course will be far more devastating to mankind than a bit of recent warming. Warm is good. Warm is productive. Warm increases biodiversity. Cold? Not so much. People will die by the tens of millions when we enter the next ice age...whether it is like the LIA or the last major glaciation. I'll miss it.

 

Like Schindler said, this is about conservation in an age of rapidly growing population. We need to learn from the idiots in California that is in a 4-year drought. And it is not the worst drought in California's history. Here. But the drought is having a huge impact for two reasons. California's population has doubled in the past 40 years and there have been no (or few) new reservoirs. “Despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled.”

 

So we need to take action. Wasting billions on pretending to solve the wrong problem (with CCS and carbon taxes), will cause massive long-term harm to Albertans. We need to conserve water and find ways to store water as we (well not me for sure) approach 2100 AD. Pretending we can cool the earth is a hair-brained idea that is wasting now trillions of dollars globally. Locally and globally we need mitigation projects to deal with vulnerability and increase population growth. Schindler is partly correct. But one suspects he still believes in the wrong cause.

 

How many of us will block water-storage methods like has been done on California? We will probably be just as stupid as Californians. For those who believe Schindler are you prepared to do something to conserve and store water. Unlikely.

 

Well THAT got a bit carried away. Oh well.

 

Best to all.

 

Clive

PS: Probably some typos I'll worry about another day after I come back from fishing.

[fishinhogdaddy]

I appreciate the insite you provide Clive.

While I haven't been around as long as you, I too believe that my grandchildrens and their childrens challenges will be centred around water issues; or the lack of same. Every Spring, as I watch the Elbow River and Bow rise, I am reminded that in a few short weeks the water I am seeing will run through to the Hudsons Bay unabated. It makes me wonder why we haven't had the forsight to harness the energy and the resource that Springtime melts provide. I see it as a wasted opportunity every year as I marvel at the power of what will become our most precious resource as it funnels through our lands eastward. Maybe money would be better spent on ways to store this excess rather than what I think are silly, uninformed proposals to dig tunnels under the city to bypass homes? Managing resources, not spending or losing the opportunity.

FHD

[bigbowtrout]

Great read Clive. Thanks