New photos vs old: comparisons show dramatic Swiss glacier retreat

By Denis Balibouse

 

A handout picture of the Trient Glacier taken in 1891 and released by ETH Library Zurich, is seen displayed at the same location on August 26, 2019. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse and Glaziologische Kommission der Akademie der Naturwissenschaften Schweiz/ETH Library Zurich/Handout via REUTERS

 

THE FURKA PASS, Switzerland (Reuters) - On the hairpin bend of a Swiss mountain pass, a Victorian-era hotel built for tourists to admire the Rhone Glacier has been abandoned now that the ice has retreated nearly 2 km (1.2 miles) uphill.

 

Where mighty glaciers once spilled into Swiss valleys like frozen rivers of ice, a residue of gray scree and boulders remains, spliced through with raging streams.

 

A Reuters montage of images - showing photos of modern-day mountain landscapes next to archive shots of the same scenes decades earlier - reveals the dramatic change.

 

More than 500 Swiss glaciers have already vanished, and the government says 90% of the remaining 1,500 will go by the end of the century if nothing is done to cut emissions.

 

A combination picture shows the Eiger, Guggi and Giesen Glaciers photographed near the Jungfrau between 1890 and 1900 (top) in Wengen, Switzerland and on August 27, 2019 (bottom). Library of Congress/Handout via REUTERS (top) and REUTERS/Denis Balibouse (bottom)

 

Their retreat is expected to have a major impact on water levels - possibly raising them initially as the ice melts but depleting them long term. Officials fear the changes could trigger rockfalls and other hazards and affect the economy.

 

The Belvedere Hotel, built in the 1880s during a surge in Alpine tourists, was an early victim of the decline. Once the scene of wild parties, it features in a James Bond car chase in "Goldfinger".

 

Visitors can still walk into a cave carved into the glacier. But the ice above is now draped with huge white sheets to reflect the sun's heat. Despite such efforts, melt waters have formed a green lake.

 

Down the valley, a mid 19th century photograph shows the glacier's bulging snout more than 100 meters thick. Now, animals graze and a river meanders on the same spot.

 

In another archive photograph taken in the late 19th century in front of the Aletsch glacier - the largest in the Alps - a man sits on a boulder in front of a huge ice channel that merges with the main ice stream below. Today, they no longer join.

 

Landlocked Switzerland is warming at twice the global rate and over the last year its glaciers have lost 2% of volume, said Mathias Huss, who heads Switzerland's glacier monitoring institute GLAMOS which has data stretching back 150 years.

 

"We have never seen such a fast rate of glacial decline since the measurements have started," he said.

 

Some hope that politics can make a difference, especially after the Greens surged in an October election. The "Glacier Initiative" calling for more climate measures collected more than the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a referendum and will be sent to Bern this week.

 

But the glaciers will keep shrinking, scientists say. "The Alps will still be beautiful in my opinion, but they will be different," Huss said.

 

(Writing and additional reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-11-26

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Well it got warmer, that's what happens to ice. The time period of those pictures is the coldest period of the last few hundred years. Those glaciers would likely have also been gone in the year 1000, when it was warmer than now.

Poor  "Furka"????

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

Well it got warmer, that's what happens to ice. The time period of those pictures is the coldest period of the last few hundred years. Those glaciers would likely have also been gone in the year 1000, when it was warmer than now.

"Landlocked Switzerland is warming at twice the global rate and over the last year its glaciers have lost 2% of volume, said Mathias Huss, who heads Switzerland's glacier monitoring institute GLAMOS which has data stretching back 150 years.

 

"We have never seen such a fast rate of glacial decline since the measurements have started," he said."

Troll post reported and removed.  

 

1 hour ago, bristolboy said:

"Landlocked Switzerland is warming at twice the global rate and over the last year its glaciers have lost 2% of volume, said Mathias Huss, who heads Switzerland's glacier monitoring institute GLAMOS which has data stretching back 150 years.

 

"We have never seen such a fast rate of glacial decline since the measurements have started," he said."

Yeah, it got hotter.

Just shows causation, not correlation. Just alarmism. The climate changes whether we are here or not. And warmer is better.

But we have had this conversation eh?

10 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Yeah, it got hotter.

Just shows causation, not correlation. Just alarmism. The climate changes whether we are here or not. And warmer is better.

But we have had this conversation eh?

"Yeah, it got hotter.

Just shows causation, not correlation."

I agree with that part, not with the rest. You call it alarmism, I call it sticking your head in the sand and stop using your brains.

42 minutes ago, stevenl said:

You call it alarmism, I call it sticking your head in the sand and stop using your brains.

Same thing. Sticking your head in the sand and stopping using your brains is exactly the same as alarmism, in this situation.

 

Or you could say that the first causes the second.

 

Either way, promoting the silly alarmist ideas of entities like Extinction Rebellion or Greta Thunberg and her entourage is about the worst way one can devise to deal with whatever the climate might throw at us. It's utterly counter-productive.

Didn't we have this story before?

A sign was put up saying glaciers will be gone in 10 years, then quietly removed when the glacier didn't go.

https://glacierhub.org/2019/08/20/new-signage-at-glacier-national-park-raises-climate-change-uncertainties/

19 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

Same thing. Sticking your head in the sand and stopping using your brains is exactly the same as alarmism, in this situation.

 

Or you could say that the first causes the second.

 

Either way, promoting the silly alarmist ideas of entities like Extinction Rebellion or Greta Thunberg and her entourage is about the worst way one can devise to deal with whatever the climate might throw at us. It's utterly counter-productive.

Sorry, I believe the general consensus of the scientific community, not some anonymous posters on here.

 

And yes, I use my brains, and I look around me and see what mankind is doing. And it ain't good for the environment.

 

The only thing counter productive is people who are denying what is happening before our eyes.

1 hour ago, BritManToo said:

Didn't we have this story before?

A sign was put up saying glaciers will be gone in 10 years, then quietly removed when the glacier didn't go.

https://glacierhub.org/2019/08/20/new-signage-at-glacier-national-park-raises-climate-change-uncertainties/

Like apocalypse predictions, if it doesn't happen when you believe, you just reset the date.

1 hour ago, stevenl said:

The only thing counter productive is people who are denying what is happening before our eyes.

More counter-productive is believing only what you want to believe.

 

Fine. The Swiss glaciers are receding.

 

On the other hand, the best-known Greenland glacier is growing again after a period of decline, according to NASA. The Greenland ice sheet is also accruing mass, says the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has stated that 53 NZ glaciers grew over a 25-year period. They sure can't fit that into a theory of catastrophic global warming.

 

Believing half the story is worse than knowing nothing at all, and that is precisely what activists do.

5 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

More counter-productive is believing only what you want to believe.

 

Fine. The Swiss glaciers are receding.

 

On the other hand, the best-known Greenland glacier is growing again after a period of decline, according to NASA. The Greenland ice sheet is also accruing mass, says the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has stated that 53 NZ glaciers grew over a 25-year period. They sure can't fit that into a theory of catastrophic global warming.

 

Believing half the story is worse than knowing nothing at all, and that is precisely what activists do.

Yes. Some glaciers are growing. But overwhelmingly the total global  ice mass of glaciers is shrinking rapidly.

Regional cooling caused recent New Zealand glacier advances in a period of global warming

Glaciers experienced worldwide retreat during the twentieth and early twenty first centuries, and the negative trend in global glacier mass balance since the early 1990s is predominantly a response to anthropogenic climate warming. The exceptional terminus advance of some glaciers during recent global warming is thought to relate to locally specific climate conditions, such as increased precipitation. In New Zealand, at least 58 glaciers advanced between 1983 and 2008, and Franz Josef and Fox glaciers advanced nearly continuously during this time.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14202

Your line of reasoning is analogous to claiming that because there are still record cold temperatures being set in some locales, that proves that overall the earth isn't warming. 

9 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

Your line of reasoning is analogous to claiming that because there are still record cold temperatures being set in some locales, that proves that overall the earth isn't warming.

I'm not making that argument. That's just something you made up.

 

I'm saying that activists get hysterical about any phenomenon which appears to point to global warming, and ignore any events which either do not support that narrative, or raise uncertainty as to its magnitude and trajectory.

 

Nothing, to the activists, must be allowed to mar the perfect narrative of climate catastrophe, as laid out by Greta Thunberg and other climate experts like Leonardo di Caprio, Prince Charles and Bob Geldof.

36 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

I'm not making that argument. That's just something you made up.

 

 

Oh really? So you didn't write this:

"They sure can't fit that into a theory of catastrophic global warming."

Because a small percentage of glaciers are growing?

7 hours ago, webfact said:

dramatic Swiss glacier retreat

For billions of years the earth has gone through glacial and interglacial periods.  We are in an interglacial period at the present time.  There are several causes most pronounced is that the orbit around the sun is not precisely the same.  At times the earth loops further out and it is colder.  Also the earth's revolution is like a top and it bobbles.  The more it bobbles over centuries, the closer the poles move towards the sun and they get warmer.  So this current interglacial period is not anything the earth has not seen before and when the next glacier period hits it will be far far more devastating than any warming. 

2 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

For billions of years the earth has gone through glacial and interglacial periods.  We are in an interglacial period at the present time.  There are several causes most pronounced is that the orbit around the sun is not precisely the same.  At times the earth loops further out and it is colder.  Also the earth's revolution is like a top and it bobbles.  The more it bobbles over centuries, the closer the poles move towards the sun and they get warmer.  So this current interglacial period is not anything the earth has not seen before and when the next glacier period hits it will be far far more devastating than any warming. 

 

Why do you reach that conclusion over that of the scientific consensus of manmade global warming? Something to do with an inconvenient truth maybe?

15 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

Oh really? So you didn't write this:

"They sure can't fit that into a theory of catastrophic global warming."

Because a small percentage of glaciers are growing?

That's what the NIWA scientists said. They explained the increase in glaciers as being because "reduced temperature affected the entire New Zealand region, and they were significant enough for the glaciers to re-advance in spite of human-induced climate change.”

 

Exactly why that widespread cooling occurred, and what that portends, they weren't able to accurately say. That does not fit with the precious narrative of the "settled science" predicting catastrophic global warming.

 

If we don't know why New Zealand cooled (with 7 consecutive years cooler than average in the 1990s) and we don't know why the Greenland ice mass is increasing, plus a whole host of other phenomena worldwide, then it is simply hubris (or bad faith) to claim that science proves that catastrophe definitely looms.

52 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

I'm not making that argument. That's just something you made up.

 

I'm saying that activists get hysterical about any phenomenon which appears to point to global warming, and ignore any events which either do not support that narrative, or raise uncertainty as to its magnitude and trajectory.

 

Nothing, to the activists, must be allowed to mar the perfect narrative of climate catastrophe, as laid out by Greta Thunberg and other climate experts like Leonardo di Caprio, Prince Charles and Bob Geldof.

The world is too complex of a creation for people at this stage to understand it's workings.  But it doesn't prevent alarmists, mostly driven by irrational fear, to pretend that they do.  Their beliefs not only filter information and mould it to fit their beliefs, their beliefs cause them to ignore or discount information which does not fit their beliefs.  Full stop.  End of story.

 

Little do they even understand beliefs, what they are and how they operate, if they are even at all aware of the beliefs they hold.   So they live in a self created fantasy world, unfortunately a fearful one no less, and have little regard for true reality.

3 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Why do you reach that conclusion over that of the scientific consensus of manmade global warming? Something to do with an inconvenient truth maybe?

StevenL it is documented that there have been 11 interglacial periods Mr. "inconvenient truth" Gore and many others have a financial interest in selling global warming.  Gore personally pocketed millions selling carbon credits front running on the "green energy" legislation that he prodded.  One way or another, even if human carbon burning contributes, we can't do anything to limit the major polluters which are China and India.  Further unless you know a way to stop volcanoes which emit far more particulate or control the orbit of the earth around the sun, you will not be able to stop global warming or for that matter global cooling. 

9 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

StevenL it is documented that there have been 11 interglacial periods Mr. "inconvenient truth" Gore and many others have a financial interest in selling global warming.  Gore personally pocketed millions selling carbon credits front running on the "green energy" legislation that he prodded.  One way or another, even if human carbon burning contributes, we can't do anything to limit the major polluters which are China and India.  Further unless you know a way to stop volcanoes which emit far more particulate or control the orbit of the earth around the sun, you will not be able to stop global warming or for that matter global cooling. 

 

 

Thanks, I can google myself. I stand by the scientific consensus, not by someone who uses google because he doesn't like the truth.

And last week Austria had 4 times more snow than usual.

Could some smart scientists - or even a "consensus" - kindly tell us what the ideal average global temperature should be in order for us all to survive and prosper.

 

Is it something akin to that of the Medieval Warm Period, when mankind flourished as never before. Or that which ushered in the Little Ice Age which unexpectedly followed, with low temperatures, famine and, ultimately, a much-reduced human population?

 

Or something, perhaps, between the two?

 

Unless and until we know exactly what we are after, the global warming/climatechange debate is, frankly, just a lot of - well, hot air. 

7 hours ago, webfact said:

The Alps will still be beautiful in my opinion

Indeed, who want to look at a lump of ice?

9 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Thanks, I can google myself. I stand by the scientific consensus, not by someone who uses google because he doesn't like the truth.

StevenL  thats ok the fact you don't like the scientific consensus of documented interglacial and glacial periods which are well documented shows you certainly don't like the truth because it varies with your preconceived bias. 

 

18 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Thanks, I can google myself.

You still trust google ????

You have to go pretty deep to get away from the nonsense they direct you too! 

26 minutes ago, stevenl said:

Thanks, I can google myself. I stand by the scientific consensus, not by someone who uses google because he doesn't like the truth.

Consensus does not equate to truth.

1 minute ago, Tippaporn said:

Consensus does not equate to truth.

Tippaporn you are correct.  I can recall when scientists were writing about the population explosion and the fact that we would not have enough to eat.  In 1991 only 60% of scientists thought there was even any global warming at all.  However, lets assume for the sake of argument that yes we have global warming and yes it is man made.  First, is that bad?  With warmer temperatures more land suddenly becomes available to farm.  Now, lets assume it is bad.  What can be done about it?  Even if all of Europe and North America abides by strict carbon emission controls, the developing world heading by China and India is still increasing its carbon output.  Any decrease in U.S. carbon production in one year, is thought to be undone by an increase in carbon output by China in one day.  I can tell you, in the USA they have all but shut down the coal generation facilities, yet coal production increases annually.  Why? Because the USA sells the coal to China.  Which makes more sense? Having increased production of goods by the USA and Europe with strict pollution controls, or limiting the West's production and then allowing India, China, and Vietnam to produce the product.

The consensus is only a consensus of people picked from a list of people who publish specific claims about climate change.

They are the club of catastrophic ACC, and they all make money pushing fear.

There are quite a few scientists that aren't on that list disagree.

So the consensus is only a fan club and has no value whatsoever.

2 hours ago, RickBradford said:

More counter-productive is believing only what you want to believe.

 

 

You do realise that the above can apply equally to both sides, Right?

 

Putting aside all the graphs charts  and research, all the other articles that show pollution ruining the world, in so many different ways,  (plastic everywhere, oil spills, garbage islands, sea life washing on beaches full of plastic,cant breath in thailand because of fires.. etc etc

Put all that away and consider the following.

If we are wrong , maybe we lose some money, but we end up with a cleaner environment.

If you are wrong , suffering and death, but on the bright side the fat cats get fatter.