Some interesting news from the Anchorage Daily News:
Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008.
Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August.
"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.
"In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years."
Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too.
So the glaciers in Alaska have been shrinking for 200 years? Shiver me timbers, but I don't think we had SUVs and coal-fired power plants 200 years ago.
The article also mentions other climate fluctuations in the past:
During the Little Ice Age -- roughly the 16th century to the 19th -- Muir Glacier filled Glacier Bay and the people of Europe struggled to survive because of difficult conditions for agriculture. Some of them fled for America in the first wave of white immigration.
The Pilgrims established the Plymouth Colony in December 1620. By spring, a bitterly cold winter had played a key role in helping kill half of them. Hindered by a chilly climate, the white colonization of North America through the 1600s and 1700s was slow.
Could it be that warming and cooling on planet earth is a cyclic phenomena?
Nah. Much more fun to blame SUVs and capitalism. Too much common sense, facts and truth could really cast an unpleasant pall over Obama's Socialism Train.
Note to "mainstream" media: be sure to ignore this.
HT to Newsbusters.
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