Wood Romances

What Remains of Agassiz Glacier in GNP Sometimes well-meaning people shoot themselves in the foot. Somebody at Glacier National Park put up signs indicating that all the glaciers in Glacier National Park would be "gone by the year 2020." Sign at GNP The strange thing about this is that the statement wasn't accurate even when the signs were made. The  reference to "computer models" refers to a paper published in 2003[1] that made predictions under two scenarios regarding a subset of the glaciers in the Blackfoot-Jackson Basin of GNP, with one scenario "based on carbon dioxide–induced global warming and the other on a linear temperature extrapolation."  The Area for the Modeling Study To evaluate how well this model has performed, it's important here to understand how these two scenarios were defined. I'll quote the paper's definition of each. Scenario 1: "The carbon dioxide–doubling scenario, is based on the US Environmental Protection...

CO2 Coalition's " Fact #32 " tries to make a point from Glacier Bay's glacial history. They feel like since glaciers have retreated in  Glacier Bay since the late 1700s, that this is some how an argument that humans aren't causing the planet to warm. Here's a map with annotations from the CO2 Coalition. The declarations of what is "natural melting" and "man-made melting" are simply the opinions of CO2 Coalition. The map as published by the USGS looks like this. The figure's description describes how the southern terminus positions have changed since 1794, but interestingly I can find nothing this description or associated text any reference to the attribution of when the retreat was "natural" and when it transitioned to "man-made." All that appears to be made up by the CO2 Coalition. Here's the description: Location map of Glacier Bay National Park showing terminus positions and dates of retreat of the Little Ic...

CO2 Coalition 's " Fact #11 " (together with " Fact #12 ") claim that a "tipping point" occurred in 1800 that caused mountain glaciers to melt (and sea levels to rise), and since this "tipping point" occurred before major increases in CO2, both the glacial melting and sea level rise "are directly the result of the natural warming that began in the late 17th-century." They assert that glacial retreat (and sea level rise) "continues at about the same rate today as it was 150 years ago." The graph they use to support this claim was taken from Oerlemans 2005[1] with their own annotations. The paper they reference is pretty interesting, though there is absolutely no claim in the paper of any "tipping point" in 1800, and the "190-year trend of glacier shortening" is an annotation of CO2 Coalition, not a claim of the paper. The actual graph from the paper shows no "tipping point" but a gradual accele...