[at-l] [OT] Antarctic Ice

[jbkramer@afn.org (Bryan Kramer)]

The World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, in a paper
published in Science in 1989, noted that between 1926 and 1960 more than
70 percent of 625 mountain glaciers in the [mid-latitude] United States,
Soviet Union, Iceland, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy were retreating.
After 1980, however, 55 percent of these same glaciers were advancing. 

If recession was initially rapid and then slowed, then it is very likely
the result of the rapid rise in temperature between 1860 and 1940 as the
Earth recovered from the Little Ice Age--and not from any global warming
due to higher concentrations of CO2

As glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer of the University of Alaska's
Geophysical Institute noted in September 1997 ( when Vice President
Albert Gore made an issue of glacier recession in Glacier National
Park): "To make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the
problem is global warming, is very hard to do. The physics are very
complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response."
Echelmeyer pointed out that, in Alaska, some large glaciers continue to
advance in the very same areas where most are retreating. (See SEPP
press release at www.sepp.org/pressrel/goreglac.html) 

Bryan

> 
>      As for the data concerning the antarctic ice cap's 
> health, I would 
> simply suggest going to any of the worlds glaciers that have 
> long been 
> recognized as undergoing a major recession in the last century. World 
> resource depletion and unsustainable overpopulation are two 
> uglies I myself 
> would not try to work encouraging figures for. The CIA has 
> publicly said that 
> future wars will be fought over water. There simply isn't 
> enough for the 
> numbers we are heading for. If we change rain patterns that 
> will only worsen 
> the situation.     
> 
> 
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