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To: cogitator; Thickman
The article below conflicts with the prior information received. New Zealand glaciers retreat due to global warming: scientists

Typical Cherry Picked fraudulent study.

Here's the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers

Despite their consistent retreat throughout most of the 20th Century, they have advanced over 1 km since 1985.

So where's the big blue dot over New Zealand?

Your study of course picks a time before the advance and just draws a straight line to the present ignoring the 23 year current trend.

So please by all means, explain how Global warming can cause a glacier to first retreat then later advance?

Your other links are similarly cherry picked

Antarctica, yeah we know the Western Peninsula is shrinking, but it's only a small part of the continent (and a volcanically active one at that), while the rest of Antarctica has been rapidly gaining ice.

74 posted on 07/10/2008 8:08:31 PM PDT by qam1 (There's been a huge party. All plates and the bottles are empty, all that's left is the bill to pay)
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To: qam1
From the article I linked to:

"A report by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said the volume of ice in New Zealand's Southern Alps had shrunk almost 11 percent in the past 30 years. ... More than 90 percent of this loss was because the 12 largest glaciers in the mountain range were melting due to rising temperatures, NIWA said."

So first I wonder what happened to the glaciers from 1970-1985; then I note that the New Zealand circle on the plot is consistent with the above report; then I answer:

So please by all means, explain how Global warming can cause a glacier to first retreat then later advance?

Glacial retreat and advance is a balance of accretion in the accumulation zone and melt in the ablation zone. Furthermore, glaciers integrate climate processes over long periods of time (the bigger the glacier, the longer the period) so what a glacier is doing in present time is a response to the changing balance of accretion and melt occurring over a period of time prior to the present. So... a glacier might first retreat due to faster melting while in the accumulation zone more snowfall is occurring; and in response to that, cease retreating and advance for awhile even though melting is still enhanced over the earlier rate in the ablation zone. As they even noted for the Shasta glaciers, if it keeps warming, eventually the warming will "win" over the force causing the advance.

Antarctica, yeah we know the Western Peninsula is shrinking, but it's only a small part of the continent (and a volcanically active one at that), while the rest of Antarctica has been rapidly gaining ice.

I assume that you've read this, then:

Ozone Hole Recovery May Reshape Southern Hemisphere Climate Change And Amplify Antarctic Warming

I don't remember reading anything about the continent of Antarctica "rapidly" gaining ice; sea ice around the continent has been increasing, for which there are two separate research papers indicating this is a consequence of global warming. (I'm not kidding.)

Warmer Air May Cause Increased Antarctic Sea Ice Cover

Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice under Warming Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions

I grabbed the latter from a previous post of mine on this thread:

A New Record for Antarctic Total Ice Extent?

75 posted on 07/10/2008 10:30:56 PM PDT by cogitator
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