Talking About Climate Change in 1827

Talking about climate change in the early 1800s? This was something of a surprise to me at first. Then I realized that this piece was written only a decade after the Year Without a Summer, during what is known as the Little Ice Age.
In that context, the theories become quite interesting.

In the discussion of cold weather in North America and Europe, you’ll notice no mention of a volcanic eruption. And can you imagine 19th century naval vessels trying to move glaciers?*

Credit goes to QT3.14 for creating this post...

Other historic gems:

January 10, 1871: Pall Mall Gazette – “Imaginary Change of Climate”
“…a plentiful crop of speculation from weather prophets and projectors, and half-
instructed meteorologists…We have often noticed…every season is sure to be
‘extraordinary,’ almost every month one of the driest or wettest, or windiest, coldest
or hottest ever known. Much observation, which ought to correct a tendency to
exaggerate, seems in some minds to have rather a tendency to increase it.”
1902: Los Angeles Times
Glaciers are undergoing ‘their final annihilation’ due to warming.
1923: Chicago Tribune (Front page)
“Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada”
May 15, 1932: New York Times (Special supplement May)
Continuing end of the last ice age, not human activity cause of warming trend.
Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents
May 23, 1969: New York Times
“Worrying About a New Ice Age.”
April 22, 1970 (Lenin’s birthday): First Earth Day event presentation
George Wald, Harvard Biologist –
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against
problems facing mankind.”
1970’s: Science, Science Digest, Newsweek, etc.
Global cooling – ice age.
June 24, 1974: Time
“Another Ice Age?”
June 30, 1989: San Jose Mercury News
Noel Brown, senior UN environment official –
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if
global warming is not reversed by 2000.
1997:
U.S. Senate voted 95-0 that the U.S. should not sign on to the Kyoto protocols.
2006:
Al Gore [alleged climate expert and Grand Klimatologist of the Klimate Klux Klan] –
10 years to solve the global-warming problem.
2007:
Chief of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) –
“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late.”
December 2008:
Al Gore [alleged climate expert and Grand Klimatologist of the Klimate Klux Klan] tells German audience –
“…the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”
January 19, 2009:
James Hansen, [alleged] climate expert and past head of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies –
President Obama has only four years to save the Earth.
December 2009:
Al Gore [alleged climate expert and Grand Klimatologist of the Klimate Klux Klan] @ Copenhagen UN climate summit –
75% chance Arctic Ocean ice-free in several years.
November 10, 2013: Mother Jones article –
“Climate deniers like to point to the so-called global warming ‘hiatus’ [17 years without warming].”
Note: In the article below, the IPCC omits this fact!
April 13, 2014:USA Today
(IPCC states), “…global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases have accelerated to unprecedented levels…”

In high school in the mid 1970s I had science teacher that led his more intrepid students on a fairly long hike every summer up to the Carbon Glacier on Mount Rainier. It is the lowest, thickest, longest and biggest glacier in the United States outside of Alaska. It was a long hike back then. Unfortunately, it is a much longer hike these days because the road that we departed from was washed out nearly ten years ago and never repaired.

We brought survey equipment with us and each year we measured where the snout was located and also measurements of the size of the glacier. We also took photographs. Then we hiked further up the mountain and went out on the glacier and took more measurements. When we returned to our classroom we made graphs using our measurements and photographs.

At that time of course the concern was global cooling and the glacier did not disappoint because our measurements showed that it had been getting larger and slowly progressing down the hill when compared to pictures and measurements from other classes. One would think that this being the largest, longest and lowest glacier in the lower United States that there would be lots of interest in it by people concerned about global warming and receding glaciers.

My guess is that if the glacier was playing ball with the global warming alarmists that seem to control the Mt. Rainier National Park these days... they would probably not only repair the road that brought us to the trailhead back in the 1970s, but lengthen it so that everyone could take a look at the incredible shrinking glacier. Instead the road closure makes it very difficult to make it to the glacier and back without spending the night.

I have tried to find out if the glacier is still growing, shrinking, or staying about the same using internet searches. Looking at recent pictures, Google Maps, etc... I really cannot tell for sure. I went up there once in the late 1980s and nothing had really changed. To me recent pictures look nearly the same as the last time that I saw it... same location, same size, everything, just harder to get to. Some how I have a sneaking suspicion, if the largest, longest, and lowest glacier in the lower 48 states was shrinking that we would be hearing a lot about it. I looked through a lot of search results and found nothing to contradict my observation that the glacier hasn’t changed much in the 40 years since I first saw it up close and personal. I also have been corresponding with a person who retired after working nearly his entire career at Mt. Rainier National Park and he also felt that the glacier had not changed much in the last 40 years.

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