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Requiem For A Glacier: Time To Say Goodbye To Lyell Glacier In Yosemite National Park?

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The shrinking Lyell Glacier/NPS photos.

Is it time to start a pool over when the Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park is no longer classified as a glacier? Or when it vanishes from the landscape? Those are good questions to ask, as the glacier, the second largest in the Sierra Nevada according to the National Park Service, is continuing to shrink.

The National Park Service's Climate Change Response team says the glacier "has thinned rapidly over just the last few years. Note (in the accompanying photo) the newly exposed bedrock on the east (left) side; it's estimated the glacier may now be only 15-20 feet thick. Currently the glacier is losing on average about three feet of thickness each year. How much longer until it's gone?"

It was back in February 2013 when word came that the Lyell Glacier had stagnated, or ceased its downhill movement, while the adjacent Maclure Glacier was still moving at its historical rate, about one inch per day.

Comments

about the park service's struggle to protect objects in its many collections.

Lee - are you arguing that there is nowhere in the NPS where artifacts are safe?


Gary, the lighthouse at CHNSRA was moved because erosion not rising sea levels. Using actual measurements, not fabricated you alarmists use,  the sea level rise currently is at ~0.466mm per year(that's like 2" per 100 years), its not significant factor.

Gary is a real AGW climate scientist, he learned it on the interweb.

 


Non warmest years?  Huh?  You're just babbling, what is a non-warmest year?  There are 37 years in a row where the global mean temperatures have exceeded the mean aveage.  Once again, prove your BELIEFS with data.  Until you have data and evidence, I will side with Lee that all you are doing is just trying to irritate me. That's all you seem to be good at on this board.  Irritating people, and just trolling.  You seem to serve no other purpose.  Adding data and intelligence to this blog?  Well that never occurs with you.  It's just mindless empty rhetoric..  I've already provided you enough data.  You obviously are infalliable to reason, so it's pointless going further with you.  Like Lee said, this forum would be so much better WITHOUT you here.  And I agree.  When you are here 24/7, I feel like its pointless having a meaningful discussion because you fail to grasp even the most basic concepts, and you hijack the thead and just turn it into garbage.  Meaningful debate does not occur much on this forum, and it's because of all the clowns that troll here.  And it's quite evidence you have zero experience in the field or on many of these topics, so your input is rather pointless, 9 times out of 10.  Maybe I need to waste my time going to realestateshills.com and rant on their blog 24/7 about real estate topics.  But then i'd really be wasting my life, and would be just like you. 


At least he's stopped the silly argument that he isn't a teabagger.


That's because you are probably one of those anti-science deniers beach with your hands in the development pockets.  Regardless, you reap what you sow.  Only idiots would buy beachfront property in today's world..


Ah Rick - we can always count on you for your personal attacks.  You have nothing else to offer.


The vast majority of climate and other scientists have done their work. Your mind is made up. No amount of arguing with you or the other deniers will do a bit of good. I contribute on positive threads, not on threads of sysyphus.


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