August 22, 2006
WARMING UP GLACIALLY
Glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years (International Observer Online, August 22nd, 2006)
Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study published on Monday, suggesting that the ice-melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming.Danish researchers from Aarhus University studied glaciers on Disko island, in western Greenland in the Atlantic, from the end of the 19th century until the present day.
"This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland's glaciers," glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, told AFP.
Using maps from the 19th century and current satellite observations, the scientists were able to conclude that "70 percent of the glaciers have been shrinking regularly since the end of the 1880s at a rate of around eight metres per year", Yde said.
"We studied 95 percent of the area covered by glaciers in Disko and everything indicates that our results are also valid for the glaciers along the coasts of the rest of Greenland," he said.
In contrast, the panicked popular conviction that melting glaciers are an unnatural and terrible thing is a very recent phenomenon.
Posted by Peter Burnet at August 22, 2006 7:24 PMWhen was it named 'Greenland'?
Posted by: Tom C.,Stamford,Ct. at August 22, 2006 7:33 PMIf you live in Illinois you can visit Moraine Hills Park:
"Moraine Hills derives its name from a geologic formation known as a moraine, which is an accumulation of boulders, stones and other debris deposited by a glacier. As glacial ice melted here following the Wisconsin glaciation period..."
You can see the gouges that the glaciers left all over Illinois and Wisconsin. So the glaciers have been shrinking for several thousand years.
Posted by: ray at August 22, 2006 8:14 PMThis study is just a ploy by those Danes in their ongoing campaign to recreate the days of their former VIking Glory and to wrest Hans Island from its Canadian Imperial occupation.
Some other features those glaciers formed by their retreat: Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Long Island, Cape Cod, Puget Sound,, the Columbia Plateau, the Yosemite Valley, and the Great Salt Lake.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at August 22, 2006 8:54 PMTake a tour across Staten Island and the New York City part of Long Island, and you can see exactly where the southern border of the last glacier advance during the ice age ended -- a diagonal running from near the southern tip of Staten Island, and then across the narrows into Brooklyn and Queens. Then, for some reason, it globally warmed and the glaciers disappeared (though it is worth noting, I suppose, that the glaciers were too cowardly to enter central New Jersey or Bensonhurst in Brooklyn and may have simply been scared back into Canada).
Posted by: John at August 22, 2006 11:21 PM
Tom C.:
When Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland in 960/62 (convicted of manslaughter...now what viking would ever commit such an act against a fellow human being) he took his family, supporters and servants ant went west. They named their settlement Greenland in order to attract other settlers.
Still, on balance, the world would be more habitable to a greater number of its current human inhabitants if the climate cooled slightly rather than continuing to warm. So why aren't our anthropogenic efforts focused in that direction? I question the timing. Albeit by a thousand years or so, but still...
Posted by: HT at August 23, 2006 1:48 AM