The Truth About Glaciers

April 20, 2024 8:45pm

I visited the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska today. It is one of many major glaciers that connect to the vast Juneau Ice Field, a 1500 square mile expanse of rock, snow and ice that is a remnant of the last ice age.

While the glacier is large and impressive, climate change propagandists are quick to point out that it used to be much larger. And of course, they blame you and your use of fossil fuels for its shrinkage. But like most claims of anthropogenic climate change, the facts tell a different story. The truth is that, worldwide, some glaciers are melting. Some glaciers are growing. And glaciologists do not know why. To blame glacial retreat on human-induced climate change is irresponsible and dishonest.

In 1794, Captain George Vancouver sailed into Alaska's Icy Strait. What would become Glacier Bay was barely noticeable because it was full of ice. Its Grand Pacific Glacier was 3900 feet tall, 20 miles wide, and more than 100 miles long extending all the way up to the St. Elias Mountain Range.

Eighty five years later, in 1879, John Muir found that the glacier had retreated 48 miles up Glacier Bay. By 1916 it had retreated 65 miles. Due to glacial retreat, Glacier Bay now has about 950 square miles of navigable waters, and the tallest of its eleven tidewater glaciers is only 350 feet tall.

Whose gas-guzzling SUV or electric air conditioner caused that? Nobody's. Glaciers have been receding and growing and receding and growing for millennia. Even today, some glaciers are expanding in the same areas that other glaciers are shrinking. But the climate change alarmists only tell you about the shrinking glaciers. And they blame it on your use of fossil fuels. Their dishonesty is disgusting. And dangerous.