Glaciers - Record Shrinkage?

I read about this trend recently in a couple of newspaper articles but the data seemed to be very selective and put out by a green group. No articles that I read referred to any real research.

Glaciers are melting. They have been doing that for 11,300 years and will continue to do so until this intergacial period ends.

The last valid research I saw on glaciers showed that out of the 16,000 identified glaciers (can't remember the exact figure) about 11,000 are getting bigger or remain static.

Certainly a number of equatorial glaciers are shrinking but most of those started to do so around 150 to 180 years ago due to mostly local climate changes. Kilimanjaro is a famous example. The area around it was overgrazed around 200 years ago changing the area around the mountain to a much drier climate and it then started to melt. 80% of the melt occurred before 1900. That cannot be blamed on global warming other than coming out of the LIA and in the case of many of the equatorial glaciers you cannot even blame that.

Glacier size is greatly affected by land use around the glacier. For instance, Greenland have been trying very hard for more than 30 years to make small areas of land agriculturally productive. Without arguing whether this had anything to do with glacier shrinkage, the fact is that in these areas glaciers have shrunk a lot and the land use is now changing much more rapidly. The Greenland people couldn't be happier.

This post is an experiment because I was asked to return to this site. I'll see how it goes. Play nice and I'll be happy to contribute to the limited capacity I am able.

If there is specific research in relation to the "record shrinkage" happy to have someone point me to it.

For those that have been around for a couple of years on this site, you might remember that I suggested that a great deal would change starting near the end of 2007 because of solar activity and my guess that an Al Nina was forming. By September, my guess wasn't a guess any more and the Al Nina truly had arrived. Now we are in a full blown, very large, Al Nina and this WILL cause world cooling and have a dampening effect on world climate for a min of 8 years even if the Al Nina stops now and it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

I feel sorry for those in Mid West US. Big Al Ninas like this one mean big tornados and lots of them. It also means very dry western US and terrible wildfires. Once again this effect should be for at least eight years. If you notice any mention of "extreme weather" further proving global warming and tornadoes are mentioned perhaps you could pause to think about the Al Nina that is around, or better yet, actually do a bit of study on the El Nino / Al Nina phenominum.

From September 2007 the world's SAT has dropped. That is typical of an Al Nina. What is strange about an Al Nina is that its effects last years after it stops. El Ninos maybe very powerful and the hottest year this century caused by a one in a century El Nino in the not too distant past shows just how powerful the effect can be but El Ninos don't continue to influence the world's climate the second they stop. So this Al Nina, especially coupled with the solar activity drop, is going to prove extremely difficult to counter with global warming arguments in general.

Oh and just a little comment about rain in the Arctic. Big deal. It does happen. I was in the Artic and really copped a rain storm. Believe me they are amazing to watch but deadly to be out in because they are much colder than snow falling.


Regards


Richard

Sane=fits in. Unreasonable=world needs to fit to him. All Progress requires unreasonableness