After 2 centuries of shrinking, Alaska glaciers got thicker this year

Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August.

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• lengould100 - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 2.9 / 5 (15)
  marjon: That's a wierdly biased take you have. The key point is "nobody knows", including you. My position is, untill we DO know, we should stop taking actions which we know CAN have an effect.
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• Mayday - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 3.5 / 5 (16)
  Isn't is just a bit odd how the global warming screechers(GWS) are put off by this news? I mean, isn't a little cooling what they want?!?
  
  Or might they have a somewhat different agenda? Hmmm.
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• x646d63 - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 4.6 / 5 (10)
  The last time the sun went into a super-long solar minimum was during the "little ice age." Guess what, we've already entered an extended solar minimum (about 1 year in.) The solar minimum during the "little ice age" was 70 years long.
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• MikPetter - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 2.9 / 5 (9)
  Any study of the long term temperature records will show the in both warming and cooling phases there is an oscilation both up and down in temp. This does not however change the underlying upward or downward trends. This just means that there are homeostatic processes at work in global climate. For instance with global warming large blocks of ice can come adrift from antarctica. These bits of ice could then induce cooling in the southern hemisphere but this would NOT alter the fundamental trend.
  This study does show the importance of an effective global monitoring network so as to improve our knowledge and guide our responses.
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• Mayday - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 4.1 / 5 (16)
  A real argument (for Soylent):
  Global climate changes continually, with man's input or without. Look at every record of past climate and you will see this is true. And in fact, sometimes the changes have been quite extreme. The current fun and games surrounding an attempt to create some sort of global climate stability or controlled stasis is not only ill-concieved but well beyond man's abilities. Additionally, I see no clear way of separating out any human input from the natural variances, given the huge variences that have been deduced over just the small available record (a mere several hundred thousand years). Given the truly vast climate history of the planet, we lack a record that can predict any future natural variances with any reliability whatsoever. Looking back over every climate record and then suddenly tying the recent climate fluctuations to my tailpipe is not what I would call a rational position given the available data. And I mean ALL the available data, not just the marketing pull-quotes from An Inconvenient Truth book jacket.
  
  My personal opinion:
  Too many otherwise intelligent people are leaping to unsupportable conclusions and gleefully conducting witch-hunts in order to further their own political and economic agendas that have little to do with global climate.
  
  What is most difficult and perhaps ultimately tragic is that many of these otherwise intelligent people should know better than to join a movement based on emotion rather than peer-reviewed proofs. Especially when the complete effects of their bold solutions are as unknown as tomorrow's weather.
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• RayWilson - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 1.7 / 5 (15)
  It is a sign from God, that if the right people are chosen to govern Alaska, good things will happen.
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• MikeB - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 3.4 / 5 (7)
  Bravo, physorg, a reasoned and reasonable article. Keep up the good work. I can hardly believe that no one said that the glacier growth was caused by CO2.
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• Damon_Hastings - Nov 06, 2008
  • Rank: 2.5 / 5 (13)
  Mayday: the presence of noise in the data does not mean we simply throw up our hands and give up. We measure the noise, extract a signal from the noise, and gauge the statistical certainty of that signal. And this has already been done. The result is a 90% or so certainty that a climate change as sudden and drastic as the currently measured one cannot be explained by natural variation. Yes, you're right, the climate has changed this drastically in the past -- but such sudden-change events are separated by millions of years. And, yes, local weather can get colder in certain places (such as Alaska) even as the globe warms overall. Likewise, all forms of precipitation (including snowfall) are increasing in some places while decreasing in others, and increasing on the global average.
  
  GrayMouser: yes, the climate models are complex and are constantly being refined as we increase our understanding, but can you imagine a world in which we get the models right the first time? Sorry, it's just never going to be that easy. And if you discard all science that has undergone any changes, then you discard all science. This is why science is built on an extensive peer review process, and the global warming research is some of the most extensively scrutinized research in the history of science. Show me the top 10 most heavily reviewed scientific papers in human history, and I'll show you 10 studies of climate change.
  
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• Pkatt - Nov 07, 2008
  • Rank: 3.5 / 5 (11)
  "Show me the top 10 most heavily reviewed scientific papers in human history, and I'll show you 10 studies of climate change."
  
  And I can show you at least 100 reviews that disagree with those 10 studies, yet there is no debate allowed. Even to your comment "but such sudden-change events are separated by millions of years" I can put a disclaimer on. See history of early settlements in Greenland. Note how quickly the cold came and how quickly it made their settlements uninhabitable. It was not over the space of 1000 years. Climate as we know it is an acumulated adverage of localized weather data. Our cooler weather today will effect your mean adverage tommorro. Im interested to see what the 30 year adverage will be once the cold era of the 70s drops off and this last decade is added in.. will it work like that? Or will we forever be trying to get back to a temp base that started when the consensus thought an ice age was coming to be considered normal?
  
  
  
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• marjon - Nov 07, 2008
  • Rank: 2.5 / 5 (8)

  marjon: That's a wierdly biased take you have. The key point is "nobody knows", including you. My position is, untill we DO know, we should stop taking actions which we know CAN have an effect.

  
  
  How do we KNOW CO2 traps so much heat it can warm the planet? All I have seen are numbers to make a model work. NOT data.
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• deepsand - Nov 07, 2008
  • Rank: 2.2 / 5 (9)

  marjon: That's a wierdly biased take you have. The key point is "nobody knows", including you. My position is, untill we DO know, we should stop taking actions which we know CAN have an effect.

  
  
  How do we KNOW CO2 traps so much heat it can warm the planet? All I have seen are numbers to make a model work. NOT data.

  
  Elementary Physics tell us that.
  
  Incomplete and inaccurate data that attempt to measure the composite effect of many causes cannot serve to render non-existent a specific & unavoidable cause.
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• Velanarris - Nov 07, 2008
  • Rank: 3.9 / 5 (7)

  Incomplete and inaccurate data that attempt to measure the composite effect of many causes cannot serve to render non-existent a specific & unavoidable cause.

  Unless that cause fails to be substantiated prior to introduction of the data.
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• rubberman - Nov 09, 2008
  • Rank: 2.2 / 5 (5)
  You didn't just say that CO2 doesn't cause warming....
  
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• Velanarris - Nov 09, 2008
  • Rank: 3.7 / 5 (6)

  You didn't just say that CO2 doesn't cause warming....
  

  
  
  Nope I didn't. We know CO2 is part of the greenhouse effect.
  
  I was referring to the second part of deepsand's statement.
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• Noein - Nov 09, 2008
  • Rank: 1.7 / 5 (6)
  Hallelujah! Praise be to big oil! My religious faith in global warming denialism has been strengthened by this great news!
  
  For it is so written, in the Scrolls of Exxon, that one data point from one location on Earth is all that is needed to project long-term climate trends into the far-flung future. It was cooler in Alaska in 2007-2008. Therefore, it will be cooler everywhere on Earth each year forever and ever. Thank you, big oil, for thinking for me! I wouldn't know what to do without your enlightened guidance and wisdom!
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• MikeB - Nov 09, 2008
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
  Noein,
  You are so wise. Surely we will be neighbors when we finally get rid of all the thieving corporations. Then we can have a cup of tea and talk about the bad old days when people thought they needed all those crazy electric appliances and automobiles that burned nasty gasoline. I am with you, man. We use way too much energy. Soon we will be a part of the new Gaian paradise where everything will just be so lovely. I look forward to the new times... no air conditioning, no heating, only lots of satisfaction knowing that we are making our dear Mother Earth happy. SWEEEET!
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• Treetops - Nov 10, 2008
  • Rank: 1 / 5 (4)
  Again, poeple mix effects of weather and climate. I really suspect a coordinated campaign by the Palinihilists or Exxonists to cast doubt on established scientific results. All the significant feedback processes point to warming. Some here even do not understand the basic atmospheric processes but act as the most competent critics. It is pointless to get into a discussion with them.
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• Velanarris - Nov 10, 2008
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (4)

  Again, poeple mix effects of weather and climate. I really suspect a coordinated campaign by the Palinihilists or Exxonists to cast doubt on established scientific results. All the significant feedback processes point to warming. Some here even do not understand the basic atmospheric processes but act as the most competent critics. It is pointless to get into a discussion with them.

  
  
  I'm really getting tired of the Big Oil label. Especially seeing as the IPCC and other prolific AGW researchers have all received a lot of money from Exxon, British Petroleum, and multiple other oil refinery subsidaries.
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• denijane - Nov 10, 2008
  • Rank: 2.3 / 5 (3)
  How many ways there are to measure the ice thickness? Because there's surely is something weird in the reports we receive. In the summer, there's new sea way, now, the ice was thicker? Erm, contradictions?
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• GrayMouser - Nov 10, 2008
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (3)

  Mayday: the presence of noise in the data does not mean we simply throw up our hands and give up. We measure the noise, extract a signal from the noise, and gauge the statistical certainty of that signal. And this has already been done. The result is a 90% or so certainty that a climate change as sudden and drastic as the currently measured one cannot be explained by natural variation. Yes, you're right, the climate has changed this drastically in the past -- but such sudden-change events are separated by millions of years. And, yes, local weather can get colder in certain places (such as Alaska) even as the globe warms overall. Likewise, all forms of precipitation (including snowfall) are increasing in some places while decreasing in others, and increasing on the global average.

  
  
  How to extract the data from the noise when the noise is neither systematic or random... There are a number of people questioning the methodology of how this signal is being extracted.
  
  

  GrayMouser: yes, the climate models are complex and are constantly being refined as we increase our understanding, but can you imagine a world in which we get the models right the first time? Sorry, it's just never going to be that easy. And if you discard all science that has undergone any changes, then you discard all science. This is why science is built on an extensive peer review process, and the global warming research is some of the most extensively scrutinized research in the history of science. Show me the top 10 most heavily reviewed scientific papers in human history, and I'll show you 10 studies of climate change.
  

  
  
  This has gone beyond science to religion. There is enormous faith placed in those models, to the effect that they must indicate something, even though the processes being modeled are not understood.
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• Velanarris - Nov 10, 2008
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  How many ways there are to measure the ice thickness? Because there's surely is something weird in the reports we receive. In the summer, there's new sea way, now, the ice was thicker? Erm, contradictions?

  
  
  Sea ice, ice shelf, ice sheet and glacier are not synonyms.
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• Roach - Nov 12, 2008
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
  These are tropical glaciers they prefer the warm weather, but they may well drive out the endangered arctic glaciers... Swear... The Tooth fairy explained it to me. they are also more dangerous because they eat baby seals. I saw it. really grusome.
  
  Why is it when the glacier recedes it's MMGW but when it grows we get, "Nobody knows. Climate is constantly shifting. "
  
  The second seams much more plausible in both cases.
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