Brett I do my skiing to the northwest of Glacier at Fernie & some observations are of interest.
In the summer of 2007 we were surprised to see several snowfields surviving through the summer since we hadn't seen that previously since we bought a place in Fernie in 1997. Also last years snow was epic ... about 30 % higher than the average of ~ 9 metres but the snow did all melt in the bowls thanks to the finest summer I've enjoyed since moving west in 1980. This year's snow got off to a slow start but is now running hard with 68 cm in the last 2 days / 1.4 metres in the last week & coming up on 3 metres total. I think it is important to remember that the snowfall total is important to glacier growth ... perhaps more so than summer temps.
As an older fart I can draw on my years of experience & it seems that W Canada is having the type of winter that was typical of the late 1970's & early 1980's which I think makes sense with the flip in the PDO. Time will tell.
Be good,
Rick.

Sad...likely one of the last vestiges of the Medivel Little Ice Age.

Those glaciers are really new:
"The glaciers in Glacier National Park today are all geologically new having formed in the last few thousand years."
http://www.glacier.national-park.com/info.htm#his

Surprising they lasted this long.

Similar for Alaska

Here's an October 2009 article from the Anchorage Daily news on the Alaska glaciers which includes a bit of the history:

"Bad weather was good for Alaska glaciers"

Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008. [Excerpting to the history part...

When the first Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no Glacier Bay. There was simply a wall of ice across the north side of Icy Strait.

That ice retreated to form a bay and what is now known as the Muir Glacier. And from the 1800s until now, the Muir Glacier just kept retreating and retreating and retreating. It is now back 57 miles from the entrance to the bay, said Tom Vandenberg, chief interpretative ranger at Glacier Bay...
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/555283.html

Glaciers have been melting and retreatng for the past 14,000 years when they covered most of Minnesota. What does it have to do with man made global warming?

2020? Load of bullocks if you ask me...

Kind of like all the northern hemishere ice was going to dissapear this summer? Please spare me.

It would be much better if they could produce video/pictures of the glaciers during the Medieval Warm Period, then more during the Little Ice Age, and through today. Seeing the same area during the warmest part of the MWP would be a real eye opener.

Folks, we are in an INTERGLACIAL Period meaning that the glaciers are acting in accordance with nature. They are melting because every hundred thousand years or so the Earth experiences a relatively brief period of warmth. This is good. Look at the following graph for a moment. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png

Notice that there have been 5 times during the last 400K years where we had nice warm temps. Also notice that most of that time had conditions that were colder than the Little Ice Age. That is not good.

Also, the resolution of temp changes seems to get better the closer one gets to today. Could the what is considered "wild" temp increases, by some, we see today also have been common during the last interglacial? We are very aware of the warm and cold periods just over the last 2K years where CO2 is known not to be the driver.

What is truly alarming is that we know we are in the warmest part of a 100K year climate cycle and a .5 C is seen as catastrophic and a "tipping point" to extinction by many who are excited about joining a cause but too lazy to examine that cause with scrutiny.

If records last into the next Ice Age, I would be curious to see how our descendants would describe the people who feared a .5 C increase in temps during the brief interglacial of a predominately glacial climate cycle.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggraham/2009/01/06/one-pissed-off-dude-5/

Steve

ooooooh....oooooooh....I KNOW THE ANSWER!!!!
I'll buy a prius and vote for politicians that want to impose taxing carbo dioxide!

Brilliant!

Thank you Lord Gore for leeding me and the rest of the flock in predicting the future!

Yeah, it will be a shame to see such visual magnificence disappear, however, glacial retreat is not due to any rise in global temperature, mind you, it has an effect, of course, but glaciers have been in retreat since the mid 1800's, and the Hysterics thought processes don't go back that far.

Who knows, with the cooling they are talking about, we may see an advance... :-)

as I said......maybe it will be advancing.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1108983/Astronauts-threatened-cosmic-rays-sun-active.html#comments

Excerpt:

The sun has been relatively active for around 80 years. Scientists have now calculated that the active spell's total lifetime is likely to be between 95 and 116 years.

They suspect it will probably finish at the shorter end of this range.

Cosmic rays from deep in space are to some extent prevented from entering the solar system by the solar wind, a gale of atomic particles blasted out from the sun.

The sun produces more solar wind when it is highly active.

Fluctuating levels of rare isotopes such as beryllium-10 in Greenland ice cores provide evidence of the effect of the sun's active and inactive phases, according to Jose Abreu from the Swiss Institute in Duebendorf.

Isotopes are atomic mutations - different versions of a particular element. Certain isotopes are formed when cosmic rays break down the nuclei of oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the Earth's atmosphere.

Mr Abreu's team found that production of these isotopes peaks when the sun is inactive and more cosmic rays hit the Earth.

This is a serious threat since a very inactive sun not only produces less energy causing global cooling in itself but in addition, increased cosmic rays impacting the atmosphere leads to more cloudiness by a kind of natural cloud seeding.

Bob Tisdale: Re your previous note to me regards cutting and pasting your link....sheesh! Got a lotta practice in cutting'n'pasting so it was a cool breeze! :-)

Interesting presentation on dendrochronology in Finland covering the past 7,500 years.

Good news for Kipp: recent warming clearly shows up;

Bad news for Kipp: the data indicates that Finland was several degrees warmer than today 5,000+ years ago.

http://lustiag.pp.fi/MTP_231007.pdf

And now we see the skeptics and deniers slowly realizing that we are having big time warming.

Now the agenda turns to - it a natural cycle of things.

Well it is and it isnt. If you consider our human contribution to the warming as natural it is.

If you think that we can live with this to support our standard of living based on fossil fuels, goody two shoes.

The fact is however were staring mass extinction in the face (well its just beyond the door thats swinging open) and we along with the state of the planet as we know it are going down the drain.

CO2 Vs Mass extinctions

So, you all slow converts keep plodding along while the world melts.

Glaciers usually melt when it gets warmer and grow when it gets colder -- all else being equal.

Without any evidence the melting is due to human activity, what is the point of this?

Recall Kilimanjaro? In Al Gore's infomercial, he falsely claims the decrease in the snowcap is due to global warming. The actual cause is land use changes on the lower slopes, which makes the receding snow line on Kilimanjaro due to human activities.

So where is the fingerprint indicating AGW for the reported decline in this glacier? Sorry, the fact that the glacier is receding is not indicative of the cause.

Is black carbon the culprit? How about urbanization or clearing too many nearby forests? And is the glacier still shrinking, even with the recent drop in temperatures?

gwsteve: This is physics. You won't counter this. You are the main denier here. You know what rapid climate change is. This ice went through a glacial period and is 20,000 years old. There is evidence of melting in every glacial area in the world. It hasn't melted normally. It's called
rapid climate change. Your wrong. Tell me what you think about this.
For a planet with no infrared absorbing layer above the surface, the fourth power of the surface temperature always approximates a value determined by the incoming solar radiation. The only way the surface temperatures can exceed this value is if there is an atmosphere which acts to be a blanket to outgoing radiation.Greenhouse gases to an atmosphere whose temperature decreases with height must act to warm the surface by making the net downward emission greater than zero. KIPP

Good to see these guys nailing their colours to the mast.at last,Can't wait to see them fall.

On a related issue, the glaciers within the Ohio State Glacier Preserve melted some 15,000 years ago. Betcha it didn't take them long to go either.

I believe the MSM at that time blamed the demise on the indigineous peoples and their insistence at driving Large Sport Utility Mammoths (SUMs) at a time when clearly the science stated that their "emmissions" were leading to a warming planet. Gore's Great (raised to the 20th power) grandpa Al NeanderGOREanthal was a leading proponent of anti-mammoth technology.

Though sea levels were predicted to rise and planet was sure to fail, it seems that the loss of the ice actually benefitted the people over time.

And frankly, as a modern resident of the State, I'm thankful that the 6,000 feet of ice that supposedly existed on this spot melted back then. Would have sucked trying to drive to work today if it hadn't.

Kinda like what ya'll had in State College the last couple of days huh Brett?

Change Happens whether you want it to or not.

Brett:That pentax1000, was the main camera for Vietnam. You couldn't kill it with a Tank. Great lens,fast and quiet.Hasselblads bang.The mirror is horizontal and falls to vertical.Carl Zeiss lenses though. kipp

Thats two fish in the basket ,the other is Al Gore with his crazy prediction of no summer ice in the arctic in five years time.Roll on.

Reply: I don't believe that was his prediction, he was quoting what a recent group of scientists from Canada said about the Arctic summer sea ice possibly being gone in six years.

SKEPTICS:Ice doesn't melt during an interglacial.You know this Steve,I thought.
During the 2.5 million year span of the Pleistocene, numerous glacials, or significant advances of continental ice sheets in North America and Europe have occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. These long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials.
During the interglacials, one of which we are in now, the climate warmed to more or less present day temperatures and the tundra receded polewards following the ice sheets. Forests returned to areas that once supported the tundra vegetation.
Call it GlobalWarming. KIPP
http://www.aip.org/aip/search_results.html?cx=004445072414534619134%3Avptvposetya&q=history+of+global+warming&cof=FORID%3A11&sa.x=17&sa.y=12#925

Melting glaciers are good for humanity, it's when most of them grow that times get rough. Again, history will prove this out, but I guess if it's not alarmist it doesn't see the light of day. Tragic, really.
Reply: If the glaciers are gone you lose a precious water supply.

Before we panic about a few melting glaciers, let's review some glacier facts:

a) There are about 71,000 glaciers that have been inventoried out of an estimated 170,000 in existence.
b) Only a few hundred glaciers have been analyzed for mass balance, which is the only yardstick by which we can measure the extent of the world's ice inventory.
c) For every glacier that is melting, you can find another that is growing. Glaciers melt during interglacials; that is what they are supposed to do. In that there are any glaciers growing at the very end of the present 11,500 year interglacial warmup period should be of deep concern. Pio Xi, the Southern hemisphere's largest glacier, is growing.
d) 89.81% of the world's ice inventory is on the Antarctic, 9.80% is on Greenland, 0.29% is in continental glaciers, and 0.10% is Arctic Pack Ice.
e) below 1500 feet the edges of Antarctica and Greenland are melting mostly due to warmer waters that surround them. Above 1500 feet they are growing. The overall MB of these two masses - accounting for over 99% of all the world's ice - as evidenced by the latest satellite altimetry, is growing.
f) weather stations at the South Pole are periodically and predictably buried by snow and ice. The Brits are so tired of their stations being buried they are building the next one on skiis so it can be dragged around and kept on top of the ice.
g) In 1942, two squadrons of P-38's made an emergency landing on Greenland and were abandoned. In 1992 one of the P-38's, the "Glacier Girl", was recovered under 268 feet of ice.

Instead of worrying about melting glaciers and the non-crisis of manmade global warming, I suggest everyone find a place to buy snowshoes. You will be needing them for the next 30 years or so, as we enter the next Dalton or (worse) Maunder Minima. Keep your eye on the Sun's spots, or should I say, lack of them. This is the harbinger of things to come.

What we have are natural changes in temperature and precipitation that effect glaciation. Given the fact that when one digs below the leading edge of a retreating glacier the vegetation that is found is typically less than a thousand years old it is clear that many of the glaciers have retreated further at a time when man had no material effect on climate change.

Kevin | January 8, 2009 11:26 AM --- Glaciers began to re-advance about 8000 years ago. Here is evidence from British Columbia:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fast-Melting-Glaciers-Expose-7-000-Years-Old-Fossil-Forest-69719.shtm

Brett: I live quite close to that park. In Alberta actually.
I believe I can reasure you that those glaciers in little danger.
It has become positively bitter in these parts in the last few years.

Here is a link to a site devoted to reports of growing glaciers around the world.

Quite enlightening.

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

Alec rationalizes -
Sad...likely one of the last vestiges of the Medivel Little Ice Age.

Those glaciers are really new: "The glaciers in Glacier National Park today are all geologically new having formed in the last few thousand years."

Dr Fagre mentions that the glaciers that have melted in the past decades have been there for 7,000 years.

And 70 centuries tells us their presence is not related to blips and burps in the most recent 3 -4 centuries of climate.

Folks, we are in an INTERGLACIAL Period meaning that the glaciers are acting in accordance with nature. They are melting because every hundred thousand years or so the Earth experiences a relatively brief period of warmth. This is good.

REPLY: A period of warmth??? Good??? You must me joking. LOL!!! In all seriouslness though, tell it to our politically motivated panic monger friends. The are the ones who need this reality check. But then again, nothing will get them to stop their agenda of leveling the playing field.

I'd rather Sweat & Swelter, than Shovel, Shiver, Slip, Slide, Scrape, Salt, and Slop! I WISH WE HAD GL