Visitors Rush to Glimpse Vanishing Glaciers

Visitors rush to glimpse vanishing glaciers

Attention turns to Alaska where climate change is transforming the landscape

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian


The four distinguished visitors looked on in awe at the sight before them. Exit Glacier in Alaska's Kenai Fjords national park is one of continental America's most imposing monuments, and last week it was at its most impressive - a hulk of ice and snow imperceptibly making its way toward the sea.

But lately that movement has quickened, a fact that will not have been lost on visitors. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Alaska, Exit Glacier has receded 300 metres (1,000ft) in the past 10 years. The movement means that the viewing platform from which the group of dignitaries surveyed the glacier would have been under several feet of ice just a few years ago. Today it is on dry land.

<snip>

Melting glaciers is only one of Alaska's problems. As Kate Troll, an environmentalist writing in the Anchorage Daily News, put it earlier this month: "Besides retreating glaciers, insect infestations and more intense forest fires, Alaska is experiencing melting permafrost, flooded villages, warming oceans, coastal erosion, shifts in bird and wildlife populations, and shorter seasons for ice roads. And there is more to come, as Alaska is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the world."

Last year was the warmest summer on record for much of Alaska. An Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report published in November 2004 said Alaska's average annual temperature rose 3.3C between 1949 and 2003. Some areas have risen twice that much.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1553673,00.html

I've wanted to go to Alaska nearly my whole life, 50 years. Not so sure now...I feel like it'd more like going to a funeral rather than the celebration of nature that it once was.

would only further the damage due to the fuel-laden real cost of long-distance travel, more global warming.

It's called tourism.

Icarus

Where's the American press? Oh, you don't need to answer that - they have their heads up bush's ass.

While many places have tighter control over the media the people know it. In the States there is the illusion of a free press which is far more dangerous as people think they are informed.

The worst sources are NY Times, Wash. Post etc. which really limit the range of discussion in the articles. They cover alot with some good writing but always within a VERy narrow framework of the elite mentality. Very dangerous propaganda.

The Apparatchiks(sp?) were in awe of the US propaganda system.

They say that the propaganda levels in the US are shockingly obscene and far, far beyond anything the USSR had, and even that USSR propaganda looked pathetic in comparison.

to some circus act doing there best to not only hide the truth, but to maintain a docile, (runaway bride) level of thinking specifically intended to prevent the masses from rising up against the reality they, the media/government create.


And it's so true, sure we have a free press - but air a program like the Weather Channel did 6 months ago about the melting of Alaska and the massive Bark Beetle infestation that killed some 250million acres of Spruce forests and walla - you get every right wing talking head Bush-bot claiming it's a lie or that no this did not really happen, it was cause by liberals or some lies like that. Then you get your Bush-bot minions, millions infected your town pub, your work place - with lies that global melting is a lie. Sickening.

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to "rush" to view the vanishing glaciers, if they weren't planning to run in 08.

As Kate Troll, an environmentalist writing in the Anchorage Daily News, put it earlier this month: "Besides retreating glaciers, insect infestations and more intense forest fires, Alaska is experiencing melting permafrost, flooded villages, warming oceans, coastal erosion, shifts in bird and wildlife populations, and shorter seasons for ice roads. And there is more to come, as Alaska is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the world."

Likely, nothing will be done. What did Bush call it? Pseudo-science?

DO something about this.

They are practically under water now..and their island nation will end up with people disbursing to Australia & other places.. Global warming has all but killed their whole island country..all since WWII

mining the Earth for the industrial-techno culture

"It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to the electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising...The modernist syndrome also tends to literalize everything it touches."

Not long ago, Tuvalu contained a number of beautiful islets. It is sad to have to say that many of these beautiful and enchanting islets have now gone underwater and one would have to wonder if Tuvalu will be next!

http://www.janeresture.com/oceania_warming1/

Its highest point is six feet above sea level.

When was the last time AK voted for the Democrat?

Tesha

cause and effect.

*music plays* Don't worry, Be happy

So much greenhouse gas (GHG) is being evolved by the thawing organic material in the permafrost that the whole area is turning into a giant GHG factory. We occasionally discuss this issue in the Energy and Environment forum.

What happens is that quadrillions of newly-produced microbes release carbon dioxide during their lives, and methane at death. The amount of gasses being generated is staggering, and far exceeds human GHG output now. This is a new phenomenon -- it wasn't happening extensively as recently as 2001.

I suspect that when this summer's numbers are in, that temperature increase won't be 3.3C, but closer to 4C. They've had actual heat waves -- three days or more of >90F temperatures -- in places like Yellowknife, Alaska, and in Siberia.

The fabled Alaskan mosquitos must be even worse than usual this year. Huge amounts of permafrost are melting, causing sinking ground and large sinkholes ("karsting"). Hornets arrived in Nunavut last summer. And it's been warmer this summer than last.

At some point in this cycle, the Arctic may stay warm all year around, even in the dark of winter. You can bet it will play havoc with the weather of the Northern Hemisphere.

My prediction: we will start to see tropical cyclonic storms -- tropical storms and hurricanes, but in cooler water -- form in the Arctic Ocean. Soon. Maybe later this year, but almost certainly within the next four or five years.

This is probably what happens in the warm phase of Heinrich climate events -- they are global cooling periods, but begin with drastic warming. IOW, we're probably hip-deep in one now.

--p!

experiencing remarkable decline the last few years.For the decade of the ninties it averaged about fifty feet a year retreat. In 2004 it retreated over six hundred feet and so far in 2005 it looks to be about the same as last year. The glacier is called the Mendenhall Glacier and in just two years it has retreated more than Exit glacier has in a decade. The Mendenhall Glacier is one of the very few that one can actually drive up to, so is very easily accessed and the melting can not be missed by anyone.

Portage glacier is also in rapid retreat.

Ruth glacier in the St. Elias mountains is almost completely gone. I have pictures of it from 1982 and a friend sent me a picture from 2003, and it's retreated more than a mile in that time.


Alaska glaciers in rapid retreat:
http://www.usgs.gov/features/glaciers2.html

“the change in the next 150 years will dwarf the change in the past 150 years,”

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues05/aug05/phenomena.html

This article doesn't have the pictures from the magazine. The comparison is startling.

The permafrost is melting in the interior and houses are dropping into sinkholes.

I'm compiling stories for a larger piece about global warmings impact in the Northern climates. Particularly looking for personal anecdotes like what you described.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
– James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

www.adn.com and www.news-miner.com

The Fairbanks News Miner had several good articles last winter and two winters ago.

Here's a couple of things I found on a Google search:
www.uaf.edu/seagrant/NewsMedia/97ASJ/02.21.97_MeltPermafrost.html

Fairbanks specific:
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/6815494p-6707211c.html

before it evaporates.

to see them before they disappeared 8 or 9 years ago or so.