The Abominable Snow Men

Wikki Says:

Bolam etc: ...In 2002, scientists made the first detailed survey of Mount Shasta's glaciers in 50 years. They found that seven of the glaciers have grown over the period 1951-2002, with the Hotlum and Wintun nearly doubling, the Bolam increasing by half, and the Whitney and Konwakiton Glaciers growing by a third.^{[5] [6] [7]}

Ok, that is pretty clear, but look how it is handled

A growing glacier

Mount Shasta bucks global trend, and researchers cite warming phenomena

Story appeared on Page A3 of The Bee

Jonathan Kirshner, 28, hikes a crevasse in July at Mount Shasta's Whitney Glacier, the only glacier in the world that's now larger than it was in 1890, according to the California Academy of Sciences. Global warming may explain why, say some scientists, because warmer winter air can carry more moisture, increasing snowfall at higher elevations. Sacramento Bee/Kevin German

See additional images

WASHINGTON -- Whitney Glacier on Mount Shasta is growing, and scientists think global warming in Northern California is the reason.

This is not the way global warming works in most parts of the world.

In the Arctic and the Antarctic, and all along the West Coast north of the California border, temperatures are rising and glaciers are melting. (Ed- the hysteria goes too far, Antarctica is cooling and glaciers increasing.) Nisqually Glacier on Mount Rainier on the northern end of the Cascades, for example, has retreated by nearly a mile in the past century and continues to shrink.

But Whitney Glacier, on the southern end of the Cascades? "It's still growing," said Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

According to an article last summer in California Wild, a journal of the California Academy of Sciences, Whitney Glacier is the only ice river in the world that is larger today than in 1890.

Tulaczyk and his team, who began studying the glacier in 2002 and now have expanded their work to the high peaks of the Sierra Nevada, link the advancing frozen mass to the unique way California is being affected by global warming. ( Ed - This gibberish passes by the choir to children in school.)

While in the short term it means more snow, their findings also contain a dire forecast: High-altitude snowpack, a steady source of water for the state as the snow melts during the summer, is probably doomed.

Tulaczyk said he and his team reviewed records dating back five decades collected from monitoring stations that measure the snowpack and its moisture content.

By comparing those statistics against temperature trends, certain conclusions can be drawn. A key conclusion is that global warming is not just about rising temperatures, but about the capacity of warmer air to carry moisture...

I find such reports breathless, just make new conclusions when the facts reject your position. We have lost our ability to read and reason.

No mind, let us use the current logic and have a vote of Glaciers. If more than half shank, then there is global warming, regardless if a few others doubled. You see, global warming is mysterious and not as simple as previously thought, but "scientists" now understand it.

By the way, Shasta is a puppy when compared with Mr. Rainier; however,

Between the 14th century and A.D. 1850, many of the glaciers on Mount Rainier advanced to their farthest extent down valley since the last ice age. Many advances of this sort occurred worldwide during this time period known to geologists as the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the Nisqually Glacier advanced to a position 650 feet to 800 feet downvalley from the site of the Glacier Bridge, Tahoma and South Tahoma Glaciers merged at the base of Glacier Island, and the terminus of Emmons Glacier reached within 1.2 miles of the White River Campground.

Retreat of the Little Ice Age glaciers was slow until about 1920 when retreat became more rapid. Between the height of the Little Ice Age and 1950, Mount Rainier's glaciers lost about one-quarter of their length. Beginning in 1950 and continuing through the early 1980's, however, many of the major glaciers advanced in response to relatively cooler temperatures of the mid-century. The Carbon, Cowlitz, Emmons, and Nisqually Glaciers advanced during the late 1970's and early 1980's as a result of high snowfalls during the 1960's and 1970's. Since the early-1980's and through 1992, however, many glaciers have been thinning and retreating and some advances have slowed, perhaps in response to drier conditions that have prevailed at Mount Rainier since 1977.

Well, glaciers grow and shrink, clearly a problem. Some speed up and some contract, at the same time! This can't happen.

I think it is global drying.

Look to the other side of the world, at another glacier I know:

(Fanz Joef Glacier)...The glacier is currently 12 km long and terminates 19 km from the Tasman Sea. Fed by a 20 sqm large snowfield^[5] at high altitude, it exhibits a cyclic pattern of advance and retreat, driven by differences between the volume of meltwater at the foot of the glacier and volume of snowfall feeding the névé. Due to strong snowfall it is one of the few glaciers in New Zealand which is still growing as of 2007, while others, mostly on the eastern side of the Southern Alps, have been shrinking heavily, a process attributed to global warming.^[6]

Having retreated several kilometres between the 1940s and 1980s, the glacier entered an advancing phase in 1984 and at times has advanced at the phenomenal (by glacial standards) rate of 70 cm a day. The flow rate is about 10 times that of typical glaciers. Over the longer term, the glacier has retreated since the last ice age, and it is believed that it extended into the sea some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

{OK, gobal warming is causing the Southern Alps to shrink "heavily" so, but the same logic, it is causing the "phenomenal" advancement of Franz Jesef. Must be the global drying.} I looked up the Southern Alps:

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Geologically, the Southern Alps lie along a plate boundary, part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Alpine Fault developed 25-30 million years ago, with the Indo-Australian Plate in the west pushing northwestward, the Pacific Plate to the east being subducted beneath it.^[4] The mountains that form the Alps continue to be uplifted due to tectonic pressure, causing earthquakes on the Alpine Fault, but are eroded at approximately the same rate.

Perhaps, the active plate boundary is affected by global volcanoes. Australias NIWA says, "Research released by the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (NIWA) today shows that the volume of ice in the Southern Alps has reduced by about 5.8 cubic kilometres, or almost 11%, in the past 30 years."

They claim warmer temperatures caused the Alps to shrink and, perhaps, disappear forever. No data was released in the report I saw to support any of this fortune telling. Anyway, the last 30 years saw the shrinking, back in the New Zealand global warming of 1980.

At the left is a NIWA graph. The pink line is temperature to 2001. I can't seem to get a good copy into the blog, but still you can see ominous global warming has by-passed New Zealand. So, I guess the next theory is that global warming somewhere outside of New Zealand is causing glacial melt in Southern New Zealand and growth in Franz Joseph.

Isn't it obvious?