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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:29pm PT
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In Patagonia, at the same distance to the equator, glaciers flow right into the sea..
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:30pm PT
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Hey, Nature, I am not a denier in any way. I'm a geologist and a sober free-thinker. Everything I just speculated on is likely true. The time frame I was talking about was tens of thousands of years, unless man's tinkerings actually screw up things even worse than we thought and make global cooling a reality in thousands rather than tens of thousands of years.
The short term threat; let's see., us, our children, our grandchildren, their children, their children's children, ...is global warming, no doubt.
An interesting side note is that there is a compelling case that the very rapid changes in climate, e.g., relatively short periods (on the order of thousands - tens of thousands of years) of global warming followed by similarly short periods of global cooling, that is characteristic (almost a definition of, really) of the Pleistocene, is ultimately responsible for our rapid development of large brains. The hypothesis is that only the smart ones survived. Devastating culling events are often responsible for rapid evolutionary jumps.
Of course, if your evolutionary strategy is to use your good looks instead of your survivability, maybe you don't concern yourself so much with climactic issues. Doing deep knee bends regularly and coming up with plausible bullshit about yourself may be a better use of your time - evolutionarily, I mean.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:39pm PT
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Donini, in general northern hemisphere is considered warmer then the southern hemislphere for various reasons. But local climate and geographic conditions are the biggest factor so one would have to study the particular region for other factors.
see http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:153364
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 10, 2016 - 04:59pm PT
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The more I look at that obvious glacier in the center of that last photo, the more I want to independently follow it through time. It's is so distinct. You could do useful analysis with free tools.
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Mandobob
Trad climber
CO
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Mar 10, 2016 - 06:02pm PT
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5 million years of cooling
The last five million years of climate change is shown in the next graph based on work by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 [2] . It shows our planet has a dynamic temperature history, and over the last three million years, we have had a continuous series of ice ages (now about 90,000 years each) and interglacial warm periods (about 10,000 years each). There are 13 (count ‘em) ice ages on a 100,000 year cycle (from 1.25 million years ago to the present, and 33 ice ages on a 41,000 year cycle (between 2.6 million and 1.25 million years ago). Since Earth is on a multi-million-year cooling trend, we are currently lucky to be living during an interglacial warm period, but we are at the end of our normal 10,000 year warm interglacial period.
OOPS graph won't reproduce. I'll try later
Better yet see:
https://mandobob.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/282/
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 10, 2016 - 08:55pm PT
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@ another nickname. No, it's not a joke. If you've ever been on Rainier you'd have noticed the retreat of the glaciers. If you live in the Northwest you'd be aware of the snowfall in the mountains and, maybe, you'd wonder if the glacial retreat that is so obvious might, just might, not be inevitable. We've had a lot of snow snow this year and I wondered if, despite increasing temperatures, the snowfall at higher elevations might more than compensate for increased melt rates. Clear enough? I like glaciers.
There are some pretty smart people here on Supertopo and they might have some professional and profound opinions.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mar 10, 2016 - 09:30pm PT
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It's thought that the glacier retreat in the Himalayas is not just a factor of warmer air but also of the amount of particle pollution in the air. Microscopic bits of carbon from diesel burning in particular darken the snow and cause it to melt faster. Likewise, sand being blown from the Gobi desert. Still, that would seem minor in the Rainier region though it might be possible that Mt. St. Helens had some kind of effect?
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couchmaster
climber
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Mar 10, 2016 - 09:59pm PT
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Sure Spiney, here is the best link to start your search: http://bfy.tw/4hEW
Regarding Spineys request, quote: "That is an interesting claim. So interesting, that I think it requires some documentation. " Anything else you need, let me know, I'm yer bitch. I actually downplayed it, it wasn't "global cooling" soon to occur, it was actually "RUN FOR THE F*#KING HILLS THE NEXT ICE AGE WILL SOON BE UPON US FOR F*#KS SAKE." Of course, I'm paraphrasing.
Some other decent links to get you started:
Title "Global Cooling is Here Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades"
http://www.newsweek.com/mini-ice-age-bogus-global-cooling-climate-change-354632
Title "GLOBAL COOLING: Decade long ice age predicted as sun 'hibernates'"
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/616937/GLOBAL-COOLING-Decade-long-ice-age-predicted-as-sun-hibernates
Title "Diminishing solar activity may bring new Ice Age by 2030"
http://astronomynow.com/2015/07/17/diminishing-solar-activity-may-bring-new-ice-age-by-2030/
The science is really unsettled, for instance:
Title" "Are we heading into global cooling? What the science says...
https://www.skepticalscience.com/future-global-cooling.htm
Which after examining many scientific claims concludes: "Summary:
There appear to be very few examples of climate scientists predicting imminent global cooling on this list. Perhaps that's because climate scientists understand that humans are and will continue to be causing rapid global warming for the foreseeable future. The few scientists who are predicting cooling have generally been doing so for several years, and are going against a very large body of scientific evidence that the planet will continue to warm rapidly."
So who can really say? We can all agree that the 10,000 year trend is clear. No Woolly Mammoths, Sloths, or Dire Wolves in the US for example.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 10, 2016 - 10:10pm PT
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That's pretty damn funny, couch! HaHaHaha!
Jan, I don't think St Helens had but a one year effect and, for all I know,
maybe the ash provided insulation from the sun? Just mentally speculating,
as Werner would say. All I know is 'my route' on St Helens is gone. <sniff> ;-)
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couchmaster
climber
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Mar 10, 2016 - 10:12pm PT
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Haha, thanks Reilly. I hope it doesn't piss Spiney Norman off too much. I was just joking around and teasing, didn't mean to be malicious. Actually, I was surprised to read about the Global Cooling hitting the earth at first, and did a search on the science. Went out and bought a season lift ticket at the ski resort right after, which has been working out pretty nice.
ps, that view on top of St Helens is seriously nad shrinking and seriously contemplative these days.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 11, 2016 - 01:47am PT
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Time is relative. Days, months and years for most of us, thousands or millions of years for geologists and billions of years for cosmologists.
We know for sure that climate cycles hot and cold, the questions are more around triggers, tipping points, and [time scale] resolution. Personally I'd say we've been doing a fabulous job on data acquisition and integration and with modeling overall now that we have the storage and cpu cycles to do it.
From my perspective the questions around how disruptive our behavior is and its impact on the current cycle are mostly lifestyle issues for our children and their progeny. But that we are having an impact is undeniable at this point; claiming otherwise is on par with saying humans aren't driving the current extinction event.
It still all circles back to unrestrained population growth, something we as species will eventually pay dearly for and that should be way more frightening to people than climate change or things like nuclear war, meteor strikes and supervolcanoes.
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 11, 2016 - 05:58am PT
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Reilly, I understand your shock see how Rainier had changed. This photo is from a couple of years ago and shows why I have concerns. This is the south face from Mildred Point looking at the (retreating) Kautz glacier.
Edit: It really IS a pile of rock.
Edit to add: Amazingly, this used to be filled with ice in the not too distant past. The Nisqually glacier used to come down almost to the road, IIRC.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 11, 2016 - 07:27am PT
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Geez, that is really shocking. Here's yer humble servant high on the Kautz BITD.
I recall this was July and I was able to ski all the way to the parking lot.
Speaking of glaciers shrinking check out this vid (in Pata, Jim!)
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35779031
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Mar 11, 2016 - 07:53am PT
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Couch discovers there's not much support and quite a bit of hilarity in the 'cooling in our lifetime' claim.
Valentina Zharkova is not even a climate scientist and the media overhyped her paper.
The sun's effect on the climate is well studied by climate scientists. It's change in forcing is tiny compared to CO2 forcing change, mainly because it's output varies very little from it's average.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Mar 11, 2016 - 12:28pm PT
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Monolith I am well aware of the differences between the two hemispheres. The main reason is Anarctica, which is much, much colder than the Arctic. The South Pole sits at nearly 10,000 ft. while the North Pole is at sea level. Anarctica also has 90% of all of the ice on the planet.
When it comes to Patagonia the very cold Humboldt Current is a major reason the Patagonia Ice Caps can exist at such low latitudes. The opposite is seen with the warming effect of the Gulf Stream on Europe. Great Britain is quite mild yet 95% of it lies further north than the Canadian border.
Another point to ponder...the coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere was -90F. In Siberia. At Vostok, the Russian research base in Eastern Anarctica, the AVERAGE low temperature for the entire month of August is -90F.
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 11, 2016 - 02:08pm PT
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Grug - I wasn't actually referring to your post. We're on the same page.
I am not a denier in any way. I'm a geologist and a sober free-thinker
How come we've never had good campfire talk on this subject? oh, cuz of the sober part. We probably did - I just don't remember ;)
Will there be global cooling - yes. There's been about 22 glacial/interglacial cycles in the Pleistocene. It will continue. Will we see it in our lifetime. Nope. In fact, if we really want to be serious about AGCC we'd give up on trying to fix the problem and starting dealing with how we'll mitigate it. We're f*#ked in the next five years f*#ked.
The global cooling "thinkers" are the ones trying to point out that at the moment the we're not heating up but cooling down. There's zero mainstream science to suggest this and thus i view them as mouth breathing deniers.
My grad teacher (geology) told me I should be able to flip over a bar napkin and draw the climate curve for at least the last 250K and have a discussion on it for hours. Which I can. My graduate work field area was Owens Valley where I looked at late-pleistocene desiccation of Owens lake where I chased the exposed (inter-glacial) dust around and tried to determine how it influence soil development on alluvial fans and in particular glacial moraines. Soils are used as a relative dating tool for the eastern Sierra Nevada glacial sequence (Tahoe, Tenaya, etc.).
One of the things that makes me really laugh is the uneducated trying to point out that climate has always changed and use that as a way of saying what is happening is natural. What they clearly fail to understand is there is not a main-stream scientist working on the issue that disagrees with the fact we've had 1.9 to 2.1 million years of changing climate - glacial/inter-glacial sequences. It's that understanding, the processes and rates associated with it, and the evidence from things mentioned above like the ice cores that are the core of the AGCC science. Or there's the real dumbasses that point out it was hot when dinosaurs existed. Like... no sh#t sherlocks... exothermic life much?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 12, 2016 - 12:43am PT
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Pretty cool that Charlie Porter spent the later part of his career facilitating climate change research by helping folks study the glaciers down that way.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Mar 12, 2016 - 02:19am PT
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smaller glaciers on Rainer will mean less flooding in downtown Olympia after the peak blows it's top,
bad news is the price of Rainer Ale just went up due to lack of glacial water used in the brewing process,
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kpinwalla2
Social climber
WA
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Mar 12, 2016 - 07:21am PT
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It's pretty simple really. Glaciers advance when the rate of snow accumulation in the winter exceeds the rate of ablation (melting) in the summer. Can glaciers advance (ratio of snow accumulation vs melting increase) in a warming climate? Perhaps, if the conditions are right. Warmer air and sea surface temperatures promote more evaporation from the sea surface. Warmer air can "hold" more water. If the air temperature rises in the winter but is still below freezing, warmer oceans could provide more moisture to air that can hold more of it, resulting in heavier snowfalls. Places where this might occur would be high latitude coastal mountains with prevailing onshore winds, e.g. SE Alaska. Enhanced cloudiness in the summer due to higher rates of evaporation could also inhibit melting in the summer. However, speaking as a Washingtonian who experienced last summer's record warmth, it seems unlikely that Rainier's glaciers are likely to expand under this scenario. Spring seems to be coming earlier and recent summers have hotter, not cloudier. Some wine grapevines in Washington are already budding out this year - a month earlier than normal.
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