Get Out the Fur coats, Global Cooling is Coming!

Hubbard Glacier, the largest calving glacier on the North American Continent (25 percent larger than Rhode Island), advanced across the entrance to 35-mile-long Russell Fiord during June 2002, temporarily turning it into a lake. Hubbard Glacier has been advancing for more than 100 years and has twice closed the entrance to Russell Fiord during the last 16 years by squeezing and pushing submarine glacial sediments across the mouth of the fiord. Water flowing into the cutoff fiord from mountain streams and glacier melt causes the level of Russell Lake to rise.

The glacier is located in Alaska and is 25% larger than Rhode Island. It is defying the global paradigm of valley or mountain glacier shrinkage and retreat in response to global climate warming. Hubbard Glacier is the largest of eight calving glaciers in Alaska that are currently increasing in total mass and advancing. All of these glaciers calve into the sea, are at the heads of long fiords, and have undergone retreats during the last 1,000 years. The large calving glaciers that are currently advancing have not been in sync with climate-driven glacier changes (for example glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro) for a very long time. The glaciers that are currently growing and advancing in the face of global warming were retreating throughout the Little Ice Age (AD1350 or 1450 to AD1900) when most glaciers were growing.

The idea that man is so all-powerful that we can modify the natural course of fluctuations in the Earth's geo-mechanisms is not science; it could even be considered a form of religion. The idea that earth should remain as it was in some past paradise, and that we mortals can somehow keep it as such, is just not reasonable.

Why was there a little ice age in AD1350 or 1450 to AD1900? Were people causing the global cooling the a few decades back the ‘environmentalists’ were warning us about? There are natural climatic fluctuations that cause warmer temperatures. A certain percentage of recent global warming is due to long-term natural fluctuations, including effects of the sun. Volcanoes can also cause short-term cooling, but a lack of volcanism can result in warmer temperatures. From about 1400 to 1880, the Little Ice Age occurred when practically all the glaciers in the world advanced, whereas now they are receding. At times people could ice skate on the Thames River in London, whereas that is unthinkable today. The Little Ice Age was likely caused by the combination of slightly less energy from the sun and more volcanism, both of which allow the surface of the earth to cool.

The mechanisms driving natural climate variations are too poorly understood to be included accurately in computer climate models. Hence, the models risk overstating human influences.

Further evidence that natural fluctuations are significant is that during the early and mid-1970s, a cooling trend increased the amount of sea ice. This happened at a time when the buildup of carbon dioxide should have caused global warming. Has the next ice age already begun?

Get out the fur coats, global cooling is coming!