Glaciers Are Melting at Fastest Rate in Past Five Millenia
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 03.16.08
Image courtesy of ricardo.martins via flickr
In light of our ongoing coverage of the melting Arctic ice caps - or, as we like to think of it, the "how low will they go" game - it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that the world's glaciers are now melting at a faster rate than at any prior time since records began. Reporting for The Observer, Juliette Jowit and Robin McKie scrutinize the results of the latest World Glacier Monitoring Service report, which reveals that 30 glaciers around the world lost a record amount of ice in 2006 - a clear sign of global warming's impact, its authors argue (no arguments here).
Jowit and McKie cite Achim Steiner, head of UNEP (UN Environment Program), who warned of the dire consequences this continued melting would bring - large sea level rises, mass migration and conflict. Lester Brown, whom they also cite, said its effects would especially be felt by farmers in China and India, whose "food security" would suffer.
While it may seem easy to dismiss this latest bit of hand-wringing as nothing more than glorified "alarmism" (as we're sure many will be wont to do), it is now abundantly clear that glaciers - not to mention icebergs and the ice caps - are melting at alarming rates (let's also not forget that scientists' estimates have tended more on the conservative side). We can argue over whether they will be gone by 2010, 2020 or 2030; the debate we should be having is how we can best tackle this and other looming challenges global warming will bring in the near future.
Via ::Th Observer: Glaciers melt 'at fastest rate in past 5,000 years' (news website)
See also: ::Call 07758225698 to Hear a Glacier Melting, ::Melting Ice Cap Triggering Earthquakes, Endangering Wildlife
Glaciers are surely melting at the fastest rate this century, but my understanding is that glaciers are always contracting and expanding in different historical periods at different speeds. I don't question whether global warming is real, but rather how one can demonstrate it with circumstancial data like glacier contraction/death.
I hope this comment sparks conversation and not outrage, but outrage has inspired many great political movements.
Dan
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Well, at the risk of being a naysayer - I for one am glad, yes, glad that the Glaciers are melting - especially over the last five millenia
Over the last *five thousand* years a lot of other things have happened as well. Like, say, civilization?
But now that the glaciers have retreated, maybe even as recently as *two thousand* years ago, I was able to build my home.
Can the title of this snippit be any more inane?
How does the author know what happened - *five thousand* years ago? I mean the whole BC/AD thing only happened a couple of thousand years ago, more or less.
Please, can we just focus on something a bit more current and important - like cutting cutting greehouse gases spewing from India and China before we all drown?
At least the EU is starting to take a stand..
This is sad stuff.
I do agree with Dan's comment that basically, we haven't been accurately recording this type of thing for THAT long, and there is historical waxing and waning to consider. However, it is just freakish that it seems to be happening so quickly over a single generation... it's pretty upsetting.
I think we aren't doing enough, and even if EVERYONE did make a complete eco-friendly turnaround right now, I don't know if it would really reverse the changes in time... we've done far too much damage.
http://www.joyfuldigesting.com/
I don't mean this in a negative way, but from the information i've gathered this year has been the coolest(avg. world) year in maybe like the last 100 years. And as a result of this a fairly decent percentage of the ice caps and glaciers have returned. I'm not bashing the "global warming" idea, although i'm skeptical that it's caused by man, but i think maybe we should "go green" simply for the sake of cleaning up our planet rather than global warming.
i won't venture to prove global warming on a post...
but,i would like to know what glacier this photo is of. i visited the laconte glacier in southern alaska 20 years ago. i flew over this and the high school in petersburg, has been tracking the growth and retreat. the laconte has retreated about one mile since my visit.
i have seen burnt trees in upstate new york that died from acid rain soaked clouds seeded by coal fired power plants upwind in the mid west
i recommend watching carl sagan's cosmos and not SAT DVDs
Hmm... a solution...
Oh yeah. I care more about the acid rain mentioned in that last post because I'm going to be living on a yacht.
I've been trying to develop a dramatically cheaper, safe and effective building technique for them. It's not amazingly environmentally friendly, but it's better.
Human, please reduce your car traveling by 50% starting from today onward! Companies around the world please encourage staff to work from home as this will reduce car traveling tremendously. We all, as a living thing on Earth, should discard our selfishness and stop harming the environment. We all live on Earth and we got only one and only one Earth! Please protect our Mother Earth and stop destroying it. What the hell is in our mind? We build weapon to destroy our Mother Earth ... ? We create toxic matter to pollute our Mother Earth ... ? What the HELL are we thinking?
What is wrong with human being?
When will the scare end. Coldest year in over 100 years and you are trying to still tell me that the glaciers are melting. How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. The US was bombed with snow...the southest is finally getting a lot of rain.....what are you gonna try to scare us into next. The west will have as much water as ever....they use more than ever but Mother Nature is producing tons of fresh water out there in the mountains. This global warming stuff has got to end. Its just a way to get us to give up the things we love. When will this madness end? Now that is cold this year watch out....it will be global cooling because of all the carbon dioxide not allowing the sun to warm us. Blah blah blah
Hello mr. satan, did you just escape from hell and try to bullshit here?
Yes, Anon. It's just a big conspiracy to keep you from having that which you hold near and dear. Al Gore is at the north pole right now with a hairdryer, melting the icecap so he can sell DVDs.
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell ya, real cheap!
As devastating as it will be with the loss of possibly millions of lives, I honestly cant wait for the ice to melt flooding the farmlands then turning them to desert when there is no more melt water and the sudden catastrophic rise in sea level submerging most of the inhabited areas along oceans and rivers. Why do you ask?
Just so all the uninformed ignorant pig headed people will shut the heck up when climate change becomes too obvious to ignore!
And by the way IT WILL HAPPEN no matter what we do because humans are dramatically INCREASING co2 production not reduding it and co2 stays in the atmosphere for many decades, not to mention we are changing the albedo of the earth so that it is absorbing not reflecting more heat, and the frozen methane sequestered in the previously frozen peat and ocean floors are now melting and being released into the atmosphere and methane is a 25 times more powerful greenhouse gas than co2.
"Al Gore is at the north pole right now with a hairdryer, melting the icecap so he can sell DVDs."
Ironically, many scientists and "reporters" are doing exactly this. Flying with jet engines, or shipping themselves with diesel powered heat producing machines, into frozen lands, setting up little pockets of heat, and then breaking and melting ice to "study" it, in order to tell us that the glaciers are melting faster, and there has never been such damage in x years.
Next time you see a "report" from a pole, turn off your television, close the webpage, turn the page, whatever. I don't doubt it is happening, but how many people need to "report" on this? Shall we all fly a weekly JET to Antarctica like the Aussies?
Cause and Effect...
Building on what anon just said, yes, thats completely true. How can someone like Al Gore talk about saving the earth, when, he is driven in a limosine and flown by private jet all over the world? Not only that, look at his political influence, where he standes with his reputation, that will add to his influence on people. Yes fossil fuel use is a problem, why, because it damages the ecosystem, like the tailing ponds produced from the oil sands (1.5 barrels of toxic tailing water, 6 barrels of sand, for every one barrel of oil, is that healthy for the enviroment?), or the heavy smog that flys over cities, or the low. So if peak oil production is, or just more investers means more people to pay off, well either way, oil prices are increasing, causing the price to trasnport goods to increas, increasing the price for food, and many other basic needs. We really should switch to solar when the sun provides 20 000X more energy than we have in fossil fuels, but....
Global warming.... Try global cooling, go read the studies by scientists and see what they think about how much we affect and how much the sun affects the earth and the evidence across the globe showing lowered temperatures, for instance it snowed in Baghdad this year.
Global warming should be called global climate change, the sun has been burning rather hot for the past 50-100 years, right when our technology would allow us to notice it, and just when massive production of CO2 has begun. So why should instant conclusions be made up when we dont know the complete story yet.
Read up on both sides of the arguements, dont fall for one, fossil fuels should and are slowly being replaced, to save nature.
Who has more influence on the people, the media and government, or scienctists? The glaciers have been melting at alarming rates, but maybe there is a reason.