Tourists around the World CHEER and CLAP as Glaciers Collapse

If Global Warming is going to provide such entertainment, good luck doing anything to stop it...


New Zealand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDeB-5iFlS4&mode=related&search=

Alaska:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arNX-gE40Wc

Argentina:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0EFOBTSHGo

Alaska:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8jgGm9keUs&mode=related&search=

Whooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Chalk it up to a lack of awareness?

at least the ones here in Alaska. It's just part of the process as they move to the sea. I'm not saying that some glaciers aren't receding, but this calving isn't proof of much, IMO.

Which is clear evidence of the climate change we're seeing. When the glaciers are gone, that scene won't be repeated...at least for a very long time...

or "the Galloping Glacier":

Seventy-five miles long and covering over 1,350 square miles in area, the Hubbard Glacier is the largest tidewater glacier in North America. It is also one of the most impressive, a 300-foot wall of ice rising sheer and jagged from the ocean. It has been thickening and advancing toward the Gulf of Alaska since it was first mapped by the International Boundary Commission in 1895. This is in stark contrast with most glaciers, which have thinned and retreated during the last century.
This atypical behavior is an important example of the calving glacier cycle in which glacier advance and retreat is controlled more by the mechanics of terminus calving than by climate fluctuations. If Hubbard Glacier continues to advance, it will close the seaward entrance of Russell Fiord and create the largest glacier-dammed lake on the North American continent in historic times.

Mendenhall has receeded so far from when I first saw it only 20 yrs ago, I am appalled.

You can't even see it from the visitor's center anymore. I was interested to read, though, that apparently Hubbard Glacier, which is the subject of one of these videos, is in fact thickening and advancing. Maybe the dynamic is somewhat different for tidewater glaciers than for mountain glaciers. :shrug:

I was there in '89 and I was SHOCKED to learn that it could no longer be seen less than 20 years later.

SHOCKED I tell ya.

I saw it in 1993. That was only 14 years ago!

I myself hadn't been back there for a few years, but when my now husband moved up here from Texas to be with me in 2002, I wanted to show him the cool glacier. Alas, when we got to the end of the road, there was nothing there, just the lake. When I first moved to Alaska in 1975, the glacier was clear out into the middle of the lake and in the winter you could walk up to it. Sadly, no longer.

Here are some dramatic pictures

Portage Glacier, 1950

Portage Glacier, 2002


Portage Glacier, 1914


Portage Glacier, 2004



This is the most seriously receding glacier around here.

back in the valley, and the lake is lovely, but it's just not the same.

and came back in '97. Dh and I took a drive out to Portage on the way to a hotel where a reunion event was being held... and I was shocked that it had receded so much.

I won't be going to my 20th this year, so I won't be stopping by the visitors center. It was damned impressive back in the mid to late 80's.

people were really expressing joy at the climate change responsible for the glacier calving. I suspect it's a normal reaction to a fairly spectacular event....

there will be no more laughing...

:)

'We've' gone completely MAD!!

the greatest entertainment in our lives is death and destruction...

:kick:

Our society sees everything as entertainment. It is barbaric, I don't see this as "normal" behavior (as in positive).

And seeing a twelve-ton chunk of ice fall and create a wave that could possibly eat a town in some cases, is pretty intimidating. It's a conciliatory sort of thing, one of those "if I think you're great maybe you won't kill me" things.

Myself... I used to watch Sheridan and Miles Glacier calving, up near Cordova, AK. Last I heard, they're just heaps of mud now. Depresses the hell out of me.

But it enrages me.

And there are still a lot of people (intelligent ones, I should add) who refuse to accept global warming as a fact. I am losing friends over it. I won't spend any more time trying to tell them what is going on.

There's no doubt that we are witnessing these devastating changes to our environment.

Damn you, George W. Bush!