http://www.remineralize.org May I also point out that we are fooling
ourselves if we assume that increased surface heating of parts of the
Earth from "global" warming can not increase severe weather of all kinds
including tornadoes (2004 shattered previous record), blizzards, frosts
and freezes (year-round) and EXTENDED cold spells and, "paradoxically,"
the differential heating and cooling imbalance can quite plausibly help
iniatiate the transition from interglacial to glacial periods, if the
soils of the Gaiasphere are seriously demineralized/acidified, as at
present (typical late-interglacial ecological conditions, yet further
depleted by 6 billion "takers").
Are any of you still not aware of the free books by John Hamaker and
myself at http://www.remineralize.org You may go there and read the synopses and
decide if you'd like to download the books. At the least I think you will
find they can help us all think more holistically...
For Life and Earth Regeneration,
Don Weaver
---
Don't be fooled by this weekend's cold spell (in the Midwest). Global
warming is still
alive and growing stronger.
Mike Neuman
No political affiliations
http://www.madison.com/communities/preserveourclimate/events
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.geocities.com/mtneuman/tribute_flag.html
SCIENCE: Photos prove that glaciers are dwindling
NED ROZELL
ALASKA SCIENCE
(Published: January 9, 2005)
SAN FRANCISCO -- People picked up their newspapers on thousands of
doorsteps in this city recently and saw two pictures of Glacier Bay on
the front page, under the headline "Alaska's retreating glaciers seen as
evidence Earth is warming."
One photo provided by glaciologist Bruce Molnia showed Muir Glacier in
1941. Molnia compared it to a photo he took in 2004 that shows Muir
Glacier's retreat out of the picture in 60 years.
About 15 national reporters attended a press conference on the
disappearing glaciers and other changes in Alaska's landscape at the
American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco, which this
year attracted more than 11,000 scientists. Joining Molnia as a speaker
were Matt Nolan of UAF's Water and Environmental Research Center and Ken
Tape of the Geophysical Institute. Nolan showed his photos of shrinking
McCall Glacier in the Brooks Range and Tape showed photos of how the
Arctic has gotten shrubbier from the 1940s to the present.
Reporters scribbled notes as they looked at the images, which show how
quickly the North has warmed in the last century, especially the last 50
years.
"When you put pictures in front of somebody, you don't have to say
anything," said Molnia, who works for USGS in Reston, Va., but has a
home
in Fairbanks. Molnia spent the summer of 2004 traveling to Glacier Bay
and Kenai Fjords, trying to find the exact spots where earlier
photographers captured glaciers on film. Sometimes finding the cairns
(rock piles) of glaciologists who took photographs from the spots
decades
earlier, Molnia snapped new photos, including the color one of Muir and
Riggs glaciers that appeared on the front page of the Dec. 17, 2004, San
Francisco Chronicle and accompanied a story about Alaska's melting
glaciers by David Perlman.
Nolan showed his comparison of McCall Glacier, featuring a photo taken
by
glaciologist Austin Post in 1958 along with a photo Nolan snapped with
his pocket-size digital camera in 2003.
"All the glaciers in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are retreating
from their most extended positions thousands of years ago, and the only
scientific explanation is climate change," said Nolan, as quoted by
Perlman in the Chronicle article.
Tape took the laser pointer and displayed several pairs of photos of
Alaska's North Slope that show the encroachment of shrubs. A government
photographer took the huge-negative, Ansel-Adams style black and white
originals in the 1940s, and Tape duplicated them with a digital camera
in
recent years. He explained how shrubs make the North Slope warmer by
absorbing more sunlight and how shrubs along riverbanks have restricted
river channels and perhaps attracted more moose north over the Brooks
Range. The changes he has detailed along with Matt Sturm and Charles
Racine of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory have all
happened in about 60 years, "a blink of an eye in geological time," Tape
said.
The use of photographs to document change in the North is a technique
more scientists are using, enough that it merited a poster session on
the
subject at the conference. Molnia said his future work includes
revisiting about 100 of the places in Denali National Park that
mountaineer and photographer Brad Washburn photographed in the 1930s and
1940s to compare changes from then until now. Molnia tried to duplicate
them in the summer of 2004, but the air was too smoky. Along with
documenting changes in Alaska Range glaciers, Molnia will also benefit
from changes in technology since Washburn climbed the peaks.
"Brad used 60-pound cameras for his work," Molnia said. "We'll do a lot
of our stuff with digital cameras."
Ned Rozell is a science writer at the Geophysical Institute, University
of Alaska Fairbanks. He can be reached by e-mail at
nrozell@gi.alaska.edu.
Original Article and Photo's:
http://www.adn.com/life/story/6001027p-5895569c.html
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1731.html
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