8 Jul 2007

But the glaciers are not melting!


Click here to see if this is true, dramatic pictures.


I think that if greens look superficial and we just stick with a vague appeal for virtue then we face difficult times indeed.

Simply being for 'virtue' is not enough and in a consumerist society the danger is that even the environment becomes a means for the advancement of a few at the expense of the many.

So we need to be talking about science and ecology, as well as looking at the hard facts of society and of course look pretty hard at eco careerists, the power hungry, etc.

As I mentioned Grist Mill has a whole resource on arguing with climate deniers, the deniers are finding it more difficult to say climate change will not occur they are now moving on to, it doesn't matter, we can't do anything, the costs are too great...so we are debating with a moving opponent(s).

The other day I came across the glaciers are not melting argument....here is the grist take, I am sure like all things this isn't perfect but it looks like a bloody good start to me on a scientific debate, which as a non scientist I need to learn more about.

The full article is here
with lots of links to technical data, very useful.


Objection: Sure, some glaciers are melting. But if you look at the studies, most of those for which we have data are growing.

Answer: This is simply not true, rumors on "the internets" aside. The National Snow and Ice Data Centre and their State of the Cryosphere division, on their Glacial Balance page, report an overall accelerating rate of glacial mass loss. The World Glacier Monitoring Service has similar findings, the most recent data coming from 2004.


While there surely are some growing glaciers, studies like these are designed to determine a global trend by ensuring glaciers from all regions of the globe are assessed. There are 67,000 glaciers in the World Glacier Inventory. Not all, or even most, have quality data for many decades, but there are enough with adequate data, located in enough regions of the globe, to know the average trend.

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