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Glacial loss


shootingstar

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27 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Your link is wacky/broken.

Of course, that doesn't matter.  It's a non-issue except for the worry warts :)  This stuff fixes itself.

No. The glaciers are lost for the next few hundred years. Sorry the link is Canadian research tv footage. Planes outfitted with laser and cameras to take accurate visual measurements. It's visually very rapid loss ...just within this year.

2021 was a bad year for glaciers in western North America — and it's about to get much worse (theconversation.com)

Alberta glacial melt about 3 times higher than average during heat wave, glaciologist estimates | CBC News

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2 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

The glaciers are lost for the next few hundred years.

In case you missed it, our grocery store shelves are practically empty.  It's really tough to worry about hype like glacier loss when we're facing REAL emergencies here! :frantics:

Trust me, you're wasting your time if you think folks want to think about glaciers.

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1 minute ago, Razors Edge said:

In case you missed it, our grocery store shelves are practically empty.  It's really tough to worry about hype like glacier loss when we're facing REAL emergencies here! :frantics:

Trust me, you're wasting your time if you think folks want to think about glaciers.

No, we worry about enough snow melt in our end...our river supplies part of our water supply ..also for farmland and into Saskatchewan next door.

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8 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

No, we worry about enough snow melt in our end...our river supplies part of our water supply ..also for farmland and into Saskatchewan next door.

From what I can tell, snow is the least of your worries up there in Canada!  

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When our Alaska cruise ship sailed up Glacier Bay in 2002, we were told we had gone much farther up the bay than just a decade previously because of how much had melted.

If I lose weight, get back into shape enough, and the pandemic ends, I'd like to do the 4-day hike to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro - after spending a few days sightseeing on the Serengeti - so I can see the summit while the "Snows of Kilimanjaro" still exist.

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44 minutes ago, Gump said:

Without a doubt we have seen glaciers and snowpacks recede in our lifetime but if 10-12,000 years ago we were in the midst of an ice age, doesn’t it make sense that the warming that ended that is continuing?

 

Don't be trying to bring logic into this  

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5 hours ago, MickinMD said:

When our Alaska cruise ship sailed up Glacier Bay in 2002, we were told we had gone much farther up the bay than just a decade previously because of how much had melted.

If I lose weight, get back into shape enough, and the pandemic ends, I'd like to do the 4-day hike to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro - after spending a few days sightseeing on the Serengeti - so I can see the summit while the "Snows of Kilimanjaro" still exist.

I understand not much, if any, is left. You could do it perhaps w/o crampons. 

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2 hours ago, Gump said:

Without a doubt we have seen glaciers and snowpacks recede in our lifetime but if 10-12,000 years ago we were in the midst of an ice age, doesn’t it make sense that the warming that ended that is continuing?

 

I'm sorry....we had a heavy rain combined with snow melt from mountain run...off in spring 2013 and resulted in major flood of  $1+ billion loss and 100,000 people evacuated including myself. Part of the problem was too much residential development by the river...this river runs through the heart of our city from  north of the famous  beautiful Lake Louise in Banff National Park.

Whether or not one even believes in/cares about climate change, the fact is the glaciers in Alberta and B.C. mountains are disappearing way faster than the researchers  anticipated. Gone forever......it is also a water source.  forever. They don't come back for hundreds of years if that.

It's ok..no point to talk to people who don't live as northern as myself....which is not northern all. But northern enough  to get some very cold winter days every winter. And also these glaciers are many in Canada, not in the U.S.  Aren't we the backwater to U.S. where probably Canadian  researchers have no  profile/not listened to by rest of world?  

How the Blob Is Warming British Columbia’s Fjords | Hakai Magazine

Canada's glacial melting 'outside the scope of normal' - Digital Journal

 Whistler's Wedgemount Glacier melting at unprecedented rate - Vancouver Is Awesome

This accelerated glacial recession is not unique to Whistler, explained University of British Columbia (UBC) professor and glaciologist Michele Koppes. She and her fellow researchers have similarly observed higher rates of ice loss in glaciers across the province, including on the Bridge Glacier along the Lillooet Icefield, as well as on the Helm Glacier in Whistler and the Place Glacier near Birken. The Geological Survey of Canada has been monitoring the latter two sites as indices of glacial melt in the region, measuring both the glaciers’ retreat and residual water flow rates since the 1970s.

“What we’ve seen is, there’s been steady retreat through the ‘80s and ‘90s, and then starting in the early 2000s, we’ve just seen an accelerated amount of retreat,” Koppes said.

While she acknowledged researchers are still awaiting final numbers from this year as the melt season continues, it’s “absolutely” possible to attribute the higher melt rate with the unprecedented temperatures the West Coast experienced earlier in the summer.

“Glaciers are kind of a storehouse of climate,” Koppes said. In picturing B.C.’s glaciers as water towers, this summer’s string of heat waves contributed to decreasing each tank’s supply, she explained: “All of these glaciers are shrinking pretty dramatically, and it has to do with the heat that happened early in the melt season, which removed all the snow on the surface of the glaciers, and then it started melting ice.”

Because the heat waves and resulting melt events came on suddenly, new water channels also opened up underneath glaciers, Koppes continued. “So the outlet streams have been higher than we’ve ever recorded before as well, and they’re kind of drawing water from underneath the glaciers faster than they were before,” she said.

For example, when Koppes’ team returned to the Lillooet Icefield this summer for the first time since they last visited in 2016, they found a glacier that “has both retreated over a kilometre, which is a huge amount, and it has lowered by 50, 60 metres, which is also an enormous amount,” she said. 

Even more striking? In the decades spanning from the 1970s to around 2012, the glacier retreated a total of about four kilometres, said Koppes. In just the past nine years, it’s already retreated more than a kilometre further.

Witnessing this ice loss firsthand brings about “a lot of grief,” Koppes said. 

“Grief that these systems are changing so dramatically, and that we’re losing these beautiful places. And it’s just kind of awe at the system—at how much humans, who are just one species among millions of species on Earth, can have such a dramatic impact on these icy places. Places that we don’t really hang out in. We don’t live right there, but we can still have this effect on these places—dramatic effects—from our behaviours far away.”

As B.C.’s ice continues to melt, the province could eventually see those dramatic effects passed along to communities downstream. The province currently depends on glacier runoff for purposes like agriculture irrigation, hydroelectricity, and regulating aquatic habitats with the cool, fresh water they need.

In sticking with the water-tower analogy, glaciers “store the water in the winter and release it in the summer melting months, which is normally the time that we don’t have a lot of rainfall—and when we have a lot of wildfire,” she explained. “As these glaciers are shrinking, they’re delivering water earlier in the season … they’re less reliable, and there [are] bigger floods that are happening that influence infrastructure.” Lost glacial mass also means faster-flowing water sources, more erosion and more sediment in local waterways, Koppes added. 

With a 2015 UBC study finding that British Columbia and Alberta could lose around 70 per cent of glacier ice by the end of the 21st century, “The thing that would be most important to consider at this point is how we adapt to these changes. How do we create resilience in our infrastructure so that when we have more floods, and more sediment downstream that we can respond to that effectively?” Koppes said.

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14 minutes ago, Dottles said:

I understand not much, if any, is left. You could do it perhaps w/o crampons. 

In Jasper National Park area, which is .... 300+ km. north of Banff National Park by the disappearing glacier (we were there 4 yrs. ago), they don't really encourage tourists to walk much. The groups are controlled. It's pretty shocking what has disappeared.

I strongly suggest that Mick make his trips...

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I wonder if people understand if there are no glaciers then there are no rivers and then we got fucking problems. It doesn’t matter why. Argue until you are blue about why. But don’t be an ignorant boob and pretend we aren’t in jeopardy. But if you are, I don’t care because I don’t have any kids and will be dead. You probably will be too. Rejoice. 

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10 minutes ago, Dottles said:

I wonder if people understand if there are no glaciers then there are no rivers and then we got fucking problems. It doesn’t matter why. Argue until you are blue about why. But don’t be an ignorant boob and pretend we aren’t in jeopardy. But if you are I don’t care because I don’t have any kids and will be dead. You probably will be too. Rejoice. 

Well the waters around B.C. if they get too warm, the salmon don't like it..... Of course there was serious mountainside  mud collapse that stopped hundreds of salmon from swimming up to spawn up the Fraser River just 2 yrs. ago. I was on a construction project for the Golden Ears road and bike bridge in Metro Vancouver. It spans the Fraser River...we had to stop construction for a few  months during fish window...for over 1 million salmon to swim upstream.

Dottles, if I hadn't lived in B.C. near such areas...I probably wouldn't feel as strongly... I regret I didn't see the salmon run that spring..the construction site was 5 km. from a provincial park..where Golden Ears Mountain is.

Even here, Alberta, one can't pretend. The water supply monitoring is shadow over our area   (not yet the same as CA)..and our river flood watches every single spring... we have  bike path gates by the river to keep people out during spring.

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2 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Well the waters around B.C. if they get too warm, the salmon don't like it..... Of course there was serious mountainside  mud collapse that stopped hundreds of salmon from swimming up to spawn up the Fraser River just 2 yrs. ago. 

Nothing to see here. These same folks will attempt to blame it on some liberal conspiracy. The same ignorant mofos that flunked junior high science. And their masters of puppets will tell them it’s all God’s plan and they’ll swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Gobble gobble and go to Heaven. Nothing to see here. 

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Meanwhile on the other side of the globe. The Thwaites glacier, a glacial mass the size of Florida, is being held on land by a weakening ice shelf. The ice shelf is melting from underneath by warmer water. When the ice shelf goes, the glacier will follow it into the sea. Predicting is hard but scientists say it could be in the next ten years at the rate it’s going. Move to higher ground people. 

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4 hours ago, Old No. 7 said:

Meanwhile on the other side of the globe. The Thwaites glacier, a glacial mass the size of Florida, is being held on land by a weakening ice shelf. The ice shelf is melting from underneath by warmer water. When the ice shelf goes, the glacier will follow it into the sea. Predicting is hard but scientists say it could be in the next ten years at the rate it’s going. Move to higher ground people. 

Climate change and/or global warming seem to tread into the P&R world, simply because there is a nice warm fuzzy feeling pretending OUR actions only have POSITIVE results.  

It must be just god(s) and Mother Nature doing their thing, and we, innocent inconsequential humans, are having no negative impact and likewise can do nothing to "fix" this (not really a) problem.  

There is nothing to see here.  Remember, 50% of scientists are average or below average!  They can't be trusted and you can know more just by going with your gut.

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22 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Climate change and/or global warming seem to tread into the P&R world, simply because there is a nice warm fuzzy feeling pretending OUR actions only have POSITIVE results.  

It must be just god(s) and Mother Nature doing their thing, and we, innocent inconsequential humans, are having no negative impact and likewise can do nothing to "fix" this (not really a) problem.  

There is nothing to see here.  Remember, 50% of scientists are average or below average!  They can't be trusted and you can know more just by going with your gut.

This is not directly related to climate change:

Meanwhile the  lst lockdown year due to covid proved in many big cities..their local air  (skies) were clearer..because less car volume on their/our roads. Of course, rural folks  wouldn't see this at  all. They wouldn't experience it  either from breathing the air.

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