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GENEVA (AFP) – Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants that had been absorbed by the ice for decades. They warned in a study abstract published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that it could have a "dire environmental impact" on "pristine mountain areas" as global warming accelerates. Much of the pollution was dumped on Europe's biggest mountain range by atmospheric currents from further afield, according to the researchers at three Swiss scientific institutes. Their study of layers of sediment from an Alpine lake formed by a...

September, 2009 satellite images released by NASA's Earth Observatory. This satellite image shows several small glaciers spilling into a mostly dry valley in western Greenland. The image was captured on August 29, 2009. The Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite acquired this natural-color image. This image shows most of the valley and the image below is a close-up of two glacier snouts. Image credit NASA / Earth Observatory. Image Information: Multiple glaciers frequently flow into straight valleys in Greenland. The valleys result from earlier glaciations that carved the bedrock. The smaller glaciers that flow into the valley may...

Junk Science: The EPA may be considering closing the watchdog office that exposed the flimsy evidence of man-caused warming. So much for the administration's promise to "restore science to its rightful place."Recently we commented on the plight of Dr. Allen Carlin, the EPA senior research analyst at the National Center for Environmental Economics who dared to say, in essence, that emperor Al Gore and his environmental sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency wore no clothes. The EPA had been working on an "endangerment finding" that would say carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, was...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

Two South American glaciers are displaying strange behavior for the times: They're growing. Most of the 50 massive glaciers draped over the spine of the Patagonian Andes are shrinking in response to a global warming, said Andrés Rivera, a glaciologist at the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. But the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina and Pio XI glacier in Chile are taking on ice, instead of shedding it. "What is happening … is not well understood," Rivera said. Theories center on the geography and topography of the glaciers; the depth and temperature of the waters where the glaciers...

May 5, 2009 -- Perched on the soaring Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They're growing. Throughout much of the Tibetan Plateau, high-altitude glaciers are dwindling in the face of rising temperatures. The situation is potentially dire for the hundreds of millions of people living in China, India and throughout southeast Asia who depend on the glaciers for their water supply. But in the rugged western corner of the plateau, the story is different, according to a new study. Among legendary peaks of Mt. Everest like K2 and...

Mima Mounds: Scientists say new laser maps suggest glaciers as the architects of the mysterious humps, but one gopher proponent holds firm. From goofy to erudite, more than three dozen theories have attempted to explain the origins of grassy mounds that dot the prairies of Southwest Washington. The latest twist won't settle the debate, but it casts the mysterious hummocks in a different light. Laser light, that is. Scientists used airborne laser surveys to create topographic maps that reveal new details about the so-called Mima Mounds scattered across lowlands south of Olympia and Tacoma. The technique fires 23,000 pulses a...

GENEVA – Antarctic glaciers are melting faster across a much wider area than previously thought, scientists said Wednesday — a development that could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels. A report by thousands of scientists for the 2007-2008 International Polar Year concluded that the western part of the continent is warming up, not just the Antarctic Peninsula. Previously most of the warming was thought to occur on the narrow stretch pointing toward South America, said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and a member of International Polar Year's steering committee. But satellite...

Eco-warriors and media hype aside, the fact is, as we head into 2009, that the world's ice mass has been expanding not contracting. Which will surprise evening news junkies fed a diet of polar bears floating about on ice floes and snow shelves falling into the oceans. But if a whole series of reports on ice growth in the Arctic, the Antarctic and among glaciers are right, then it is truth in the mainstream media (MSM) that's in meltdown not the polar ice caps. The problem for the MSM is that it long ago nailed its colors to the climate...

This past week, I was sent this article by Craig Medred of McClatchy Newspapers. The polar bears were elated! 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 abnormally chilly 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...

Challenged to probe under Greenland's glaciers, NASA robotics expert Alberto Behar wondered what mechanism might endure sub-zero cold, the pressure of mile-thick ice and currents that sometimes exceed the flow rate of Niagara Falls. As Dr. Behar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory soon discovered, though, there isn't much money for global-warming experiments in Greenland... Unfazed, he thought of one device that might survive such extremes at a cost his field expedition could readily afford — a two-dollar rubber duck. Each duck was imprinted with an e-mail address and, in three languages, the offer of a reward.

It's Green Week again at NBC, time for more global warming scare-mongering by the network. During half-time of last night's Sunday Night Football game, Meredith Vieira helped, uh, kick things off with a bit of alarmism that would put Al Gore to shame. The Today show co-host raised the spectre of the oceans rising . . . at least 200 feet! [H/t reader Mick L.] Readers will recall that Al Gore's claim, propagated in An Inconvenient Truth, of a Manhattan-drowning 20-foot sea-level rise has been widely rejected as so much alarmist hooey. But compared to her apocalyptic vision, Vieira made...

OK, this one might be tough. Where is this? (Click for full size)

The recent dramatic melting and breakup of a few huge Greenland glaciers have fueled public concerns over the impact of global climate change, but that isn't the island's biggest problem. A new study shows that the dozens of much smaller outflow glaciers dotting Greenland's coast together account for three times more loss from the island's ice sheet than the amount coming from their huge relatives. In a study just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists at Ohio State University reported that nearly 75 percent of the loss of Greenland ice can be traced back to small coastal glaciers....

<p>MOUNT SHASTA, Calif. — Global warming is shrinking glaciers all over the world, but the seven tongues of ice creeping down Mount Shasta's flanks are a rare exception: They are the only known glaciers in the continental U.S. that are growing.</p>

Tsunami or melting glaciers: What caused ancient Atlit to sink? By Ofri Ilani At the bottom of the sea, some 300 meters west of the Atlit fortress, lies one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of the Mediterranean basin. About 20 years ago, archaeologists discovered a complex of ancient buildings and ancient graves with dozens of skeletons at the underwater site of Atlit-Yam. The team of marine archaeologists that excavated the site, headed by Dr. Ehud Galili of the Israel Antiquities Authority, came to the consclusion that an ancient settlement once existed there, but sank beneath the surface of the sea...

Decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are now trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers. The change means Adélie penguins have recently been exposed to the chemical, according to a new study. The trace levels found will not harm the birds, but the presence of the chemical could be an indication that other frozen pollutants will be released because of climate change, says Heidi Geisz, a marine biologist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester in the US. She led a team that sampled DDT levels in the penguins. She worries that glaciers could...

I'll be on vacation next week, so here's two. First, a new shot of the mountain used for "The Spy Who Loved Me" ski-parachute jump, Mt. Asgard on Baffin Island, Canada. Continuing our theme of Norse mythology in geology, here's a shot of the Jotunheimen mountains of Norway. Part of the range is a national park. The image below is half-size: click for the BIG full-size.

Canadian geologists say they can shed light on how a vast lake, trapped under the ice sheet that once smothered much of North America, drained into the sea, an event that cooled Earth's climate for hundreds of years. During the last ice age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet once covered most of Canada and parts of the northern United States with a frozen crust that in some places was three kilometres (two miles) thick. As the temperature gradually rose some 10,000 years ago, the ice receded, gouging out the hollows that would be called the Great Lakes. Beneath the ice's thinning...

New Zealand's largest glaciers are retreating fast in the face of global warming and could disappear altogether, scientists said Monday. 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. The glaciers have passed a threshold, causing the ice to collapse and creating large lakes at their base, the report said. "The 12...

MOUNT ST. HELENS – Standing on Mount St. Helen’s southern rim, Cynthia Gardner sees much more than a smoldering volcano. Like her colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey, Gardner sees an enormous gift basket packed with scientific marvels. She finds the ongoing eruption and burgeoning lava dome fascinating enough, but she sounds almost giddy when she talks about the crater’s glacier. “The glacier is mind-bogglingly cool,” said Gardner, a USGS geologist, “maybe even more interesting than the eruption.” Ever since St. Helens rumbled back to life in 2004, geologists have curiously watched the dichotomy of fire and ice play out....

Just when you're wondering what to post for the Geology Picture of the Week, something new pops up. IN this case, some aerial shots of volcanoes in Alaska. The link above goes to the site; three examples below. Augustine volcano (foreground), Iliamna on horizon Fourpeaked Volcano's glacier descends to Cook Inlet Shishaldin, Fuji of the Aleutians

ACCORDING TO ROBERT FELIX, 90% of the world's glaciers are growing. He is convinced we are heading to an ice age. On CoasttoCoastAM with fruitcake George Noury, he says that more scientists are beginning to agree with him. NOTE: GO TO THE SITE FOR THE HOT LINKS ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Not by Fire but by IceTHE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW! Discover What Killed the Dinosaurs . . . and Why it Could Soon Kill Us Updated 9 October 07  .      Sea levels are falling in      Tuvalu (the Pacific Ocean)     See Pacific sea level falling       Sea levels are...

Mount Shasta Glaciers Defy Global Warming, Grow  John Iander Reporting (CBS13) MOUNT SHASTA The debate over global warming has taken a pretty odd twist in Northern California. Up on Mount Shasta, the glaciers are not behaving like you'd expect. Big mountains often produce their own weather patterns. Mount Shasta, at 14,162 feet seems to have a mind of its own these days. Shasta has seven glaciers. The biggest is the one on the middle, Whitney Glacier. What has surprised scientists about the glacier is that if the theories about global warming are true, the glacier ought to be shrinking,...

Glaciers Growing in France, Switzerland, and Washington: Will Media Care?Posted by Noel Sheppard One of the pet peeves of anthropogenic global warming skeptics is how the media and climate change alarmists like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore only address events supporting that which they conflate and abuse data to prove.A perfect example is the discussion concerning receding glaciers, as these folks will either ignore when such recession began, or the other possible environmental issues that many scientists believe to be responsible.Maybe even worse, the media alarmists will always ignore information that might throw a monkey wrench into the position they’re trying to...

Followers of the weekly Geopic will know that Iceland has quite a few picturesque waterfalls. But this one just makes my eyes widen a bit. Two pictures for demonstration. The first is a reduced-size desktop; click for full size. I guess they won't mind advertising.

Some experts have questioned the alarmists theory on global warming leading to shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. VK Raina, a leading glaciologist and former ADG of GSI is one among them. He feels that the research on Indian glaciers is negligible. Nothing but the remote sensing data forms the basis of these alarmists observations and not on the spot research. Raina told the Hindustan Times that out of 9,575 glaciers in India, till date, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers. It is simple....

Greenland’s Glaciers Take a Breather By John Tierney  Tags: climate change, glaciers, Greenland, ice, sea level Helheim Glacier in southeast Greenland, pictured in 2005, is one of the two glaciers that have slowed down in their flow to the sea. (Photo: NASA/Wallops) Greenland isn’t melting as fast as we feared.It was big news when the rate of melting suddenly doubled in 2004 as ice sheets began moving more quickly into the sea. That inspired predictions of the imminent demise of Greenland’s ice — and a catastrophic rise in sea level. But a paper published online this afternoon by Science...

New data released Monday shows that the melting of mountain glaciers worldwide is accelerating, a clear sign that climate change is also picking up, the UN environmental agency and scientists said. Thirty reference glaciers monitored by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service lost about 66 centimetres (two feet) in thickness on average in 2005, the UN Environment Programme said in a statement. "The new data confirms the trend in accelerated loss during the past two and a half decades," it added. The set of glaciers located around the world have thinned by about 10.5 metres (34.6 feet) on average since...

VIENNA, Austria - Most glaciers will disappear from the Alps by 2050, scientists told a conference on climate change Monday, basing their bleak outlook on evidence of slow but steady melting of the region's continental ice sheets. Glaciers in western Austria's Alpine province of Tyrol have been shrinking by about 3 percent a year, meaning their mass decreases annually by roughly 3 feet, said Roland Psenner of the University of Innsbruck's Institute for Ecology. The average density of glaciers in the Alps is 100 feet, "so it seems rather certain that there won't be any more glaciers in the year...

A mixed bag this week. Leading off with a view of the lava pond in Pu'u O'o, churning away: click for full-size Number two; it's Mars geology, new images from the ultra high-resolution HiRise camera on the new Mars orbiter. Web site: HiRise Transition Phase Imaging (watch out for big image sizes if you want to download any) This is full-resolution; the smallest features are 5 cm. This image is entitled "Terra Sirenum Gullied Crater". And finally, the world's largest pothole (hole in bedrock formed by rock gouging in a glacial stream). I didn't know there was a winner in...

Warmer climes have led to more rain and less snow falling in the Western U.S., a shift that could increase the risk of flooding and affect water supplies, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey. Researchers found that warmer weather in the last half century has led to an average decline in snowfall of about 20% in the 11 Western mountain states -- much of it falling instead in the form of rain. During that period, the average temperature in the region has risen by about one degree Celsius. Two years ago, a separate group of scientists at...

There is a new August 31, 2006 paper on the climate of Mount Kilimanjaro (Thanks to Timo Hämeranta and Koni Steffen for bringing this peer-reviewed contribution to my attention). The Geophysical Research Letters article is entitled “Kilimanjaro Glaciers: Recent areal extent from satellite data and new interpretation of observed 20th century retreat rates” (subscription required) and is authored by Nicolas J.Cullen, Thomas Mölg, Georg Kaser, Khalid Hussein, Konrad Steffen, and Douglas R. Hardy. The abstract of the paper reads, “Recent and long term variations in ice extent on Kilimanjaro are investigated in the context of 20th century climate change in...

Greenland's glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming. Danish researchers from Aarhus University studied glaciers on Disko island, in western Greenland in the Atlantic, from the end of the 19th century until the present day. "This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland's glaciers," glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, told AFP. Using maps from the 19th century and current...

The mountains in Europe are growing taller and melting glaciers are partly responsible, scientists say. Heavy glaciers cause the Earth's crust to flex inward slightly. When glaciers disappear, the crust springs back and the overlaying mountains are thrust skyward, albeit slowly. The European Alps have been growing since the end of the last little Ice Age in 1850 when glaciers began shrinking as temperatures warmed, but the rate of uplift has accelerated in recent decades because global warming has sped up the rate of glacier melt, the researchers say.

Imagine the surface of Earth as a giant trampoline that accumulated a slab of ice over the winter, and you can get a sense of what a growing number of scientists say is in store for the planet as glaciers keep melting. Once the trampoline's ice turns to water that drips over the edges in the warm days of spring, the concave elastic slowly rebounds to its original flat shape. That's how Earth responds as glaciers retreat, and the consequences promise to be ... interesting. The reason is that one cubic meter of ice weighs just over a ton, and...

WASHINGTON - Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports. Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues, the researchers report in this week's online edition of Geophysical Research Letters. The researchers blamed an increase in air temperatures in recent decades for contributing to the decline of the ice fields. "Recession of these tropical glaciers sends an unambiguous message of a changing climate in this region of the...

Global warming alarmists marked the Kyoto Protocol’s first anniversary in subdued fashion this week. The treaty so far has been a failure and its future doesn’t appear much brighter. As tallied up at JunkScience.com courtesy of the global warmers’ own data, Kyoto is estimated to have cost about $150 billion so far, while only hypothetically reducing the average global temperature by 0.0015 degrees Centigrade. At that rate, it would take 667 years and cost $100 trillion to hypothetically avert just 1 degree Centigrade of global warming.

Considerable fanfare was recently accorded the study of Rignot and Kanagaratnam (2005), when "using satellite radar interferometry observations of Greenland," they detected "widespread glacier acceleration." Calculating that this phenomenon had led to a doubling of "the ice sheet mass deficit in the last decade" and, therefore, a comparable increase in Greenland's contribution to rising sea levels, they went on to claim that "as more glaciers accelerate … the contribution of Greenland to sea-level rise will continue to increase." With respect to these contentions, we have no problem with what the two researchers have observed with respect to Greenland's glaciers; but...

ANOTHER week, another global warming scare. And another case of doomsayers telling you only half the story. This time the news was that Greenland, home of 8 per cent of the world's ice, was melting twice as fast as first feared. Evacuate St Kilda now. If all the ice in Greenland slips into the sea, the oceans will rise 7m. The headlines from Moscow to Melbourne were predictably alarmist: "Flooding fears as glaciers melt faster", "Island nations at risk from melting glaciers", "Greenland's glaciers are speeding to the ocean" and so scarily on. There was not a word of doubt...

ST. LOUIS Feb 17, 2006 (AP)— Warmer temperatures over the past decade have sped up the march of Greenland's southern glaciers to the Atlantic Ocean, where the ice and water they spill contribute more to the global rise in sea levels than previously thought. Those faster-moving glaciers now dump in a year twice as much ice into the Atlantic as they did in 1996, researchers said Thursday. The resulting icebergs, along with increased melting of Greenland's ice sheet, could account for nearly 17 percent of the estimated one-tenth of an inch annual rise in global sea levels, or twice what...

Five years after warning that the famed ice fields on Tanzania 's Mount Kilimanjaro may melt, Ohio State University researchers have sadly found that their prediction is coming true. And the impact of the loss of that ice atop Africa 's highest peak – disregarding the loss of tourism that will follow the vanishing ice – could add to the heavy drought burden already facing those living near that mountain. For Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences, his third expedition to the summit of Kilimanjaro was all too much like visiting a sick friend in failing health. In 2002, Thompson...

(CNN) -- The war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic enters its fifth tedious year Sunday, and though international interest in the tribunal has waned, it has proved a useful tool in educating Serbs. "Its greatest reverberation is in Serbia itself," where regional media have brought the crimes to center stage by airing and reporting on the proceedings, said Edgar Chen of the Coalition for International Justice, a group that supports war crimes tribunals. Milosevic is charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in last decade's bloody Balkans conflict, and for four years, he has dragged out judicial...

A quick vanity to all... I am beginning to plan a 1-week or so family vaction (experienced cyclists / hikers) "Up North" next summer to get out of Arizona heat. We are looking primarily at Alaska, Glacier National Park (Montana), Yellowstone. We are looking at hiking, kayaking/rafting, bicycling, horseback riding; and prefer camping to hotel stays. Does anyone have any recommendations as to the best tour company or ones to avoid? Could anyone give pointers on dumb things to avoid or things which really added to their experience? Cheers!

The coldest period of the current interglacial or Holocene was likely the Little Ice Age, when land-based glaciers around the world achieved their maximum extensions and ice volumes. Once the planet was safely on its way to recovering from this unprecedented multi-century cold spell, however, they began to lose mass and recede. In Norway and New Zealand, "as in many other glacier regions," in the words of Chin et al. (2005), this recession was most strongly expressed in "the middle of the 20th century," which they describe as "a period of spectacular retreat as the glaciers responded to climate warming...

Greenland's ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, a team of scientists said on Thursday. The 3,000-meter (9,842-feet) thick ice-cap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 meters. And a runaway thaw might slow the Gulf Stream that keeps the North Atlantic region warm. But satellite measurements showed that more snowfall was falling and thickening the ice-cap, especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science. Glaciers at sea level have been retreating...

BANGKOK, Thailand, September 6, 2005 (ENS) - The mountains of Asia, including the towering Himalayas, are facing accelerating threats from a rapid rise in roads, settlements, overgrazing and deforestation, experts are warning in a new report. New calculations by experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences indicate that China’s highland glaciers are shrinking by an amount equivalent to all the water in the giant Yellow River each year.There is concern that the region’s water supplies, fed by glaciers and the monsoons and vital for around half the world’s population, may be harmed alongside the area’s abundant and rich wildlife. "Mountain...

Swiss authorities are planning to wrap mountain glaciers with tin foil this summer in an effort to stop them melting. Carlo Danioth, head of mountain rescue services in Andermatt, said: "We will initially cover around 30,000 square feet on the upper Gurschen glacier at the beginning of May as a test." Scientists hope that the high-tech foil will prevent the sun's rays from melting the ice in popular ski resorts during the summer months. Glacier expert Martin Funk said: "The foil reflects almost all the sun's rays. That will sharply reduce the rate of melting." And other resorts like Saas-Fee...

Always dreamed of skiing in the Alps? Better do it quick. Rising global temperatures are bringing shorter winters to Europe and increasing difficulties for its famous ski resorts. Many resorts are already suffering and some winter-sport regions are already beginning to plan for a life, aprés ski. ... Oddly, many scientists believe that global warming may, in fact, eventually lead to a radical cooling of Europe. Continuing melting of the polar ice caps -- already well under way -- could severely disrupt the Gulf Stream which brings warm water from the South Atlantic to the coasts of Europe thus ensuring...

HUMANS may have unwittingly saved themselves from a looming ice age by interfering with the Earth's climate, according to a new study. The findings from a team of American climate experts suggest that were it not for greenhouse gases produced by humans, the world would be well on the way to a frozen Armageddon. Scientists have traditionally viewed the relative stability of the Earth's climate since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago as being due to natural causes, but there is evidence that changes in solar radiation and greenhouse gas concentrations should have driven the Earth...