My wife and I go to Montana almost every year to visit family, and we always make at least one trip into Glacier National Park. It is truly magnificent, and if you are in the area, I highly recommend that you visit it. However, be aware that global warming hysteria is presented nearly everywhere in the park. You can’t go into a visitor’s center (or even look at some of the trash cans) without being told that global warming is destroying the glaciers.
While I never noticed the silly sign pictured above, it was apparently in the visitor’s center at St. Mary Valley for several years, but this winter, it was quietly removed. It should be obvious why. The sign says that computer models indicate the glaciers will be gone by next year. However, it’s clear that isn’t going to happen, so they had to do something. Rather than owning up to their mistake and discussing the uncertainties related to global warming, they simply changed the sign. Apparently, it now says that the glaciers will be gone at some unknown time in the future, unless we act quickly to stop global warming.
Now, of course, you might wonder if this was just a mistake. Perhaps a couple of signs got made incorrectly. After all, some signs in Glacier National Park say the glaciers will be gone in 2030. I haven’t heard whether or not those signs have been changed as well. However, we know that it was more than just a couple of signs. It was a sermon preached by at least one of the rangers. Ginna Kelly writes:
During my stay, I talked with Park Ranger Jim Muhlhausen about why the glaciers are disappearing. The reason is climate change. Jim talked about what he sees on a daily basis. “It’s disturbing. You can directly see the effects. The change in vegetation, the reduction in habitat, and the melting of the glaciers.”
The evidence that the glaciers are melting speaks for itself. When the park was founded in 1910, there were 150 glaciers. Today, 25 exist. By 2020, none will exist.
The same nonsense has been reported by other news outlets, such as USA Today.
Of course, the glaciers in Glacier National Park are melting. They have been melting since the end of the Little Ice Age, which was around 1850. Whether or not this is because of natural cycles that have occurred throughout earth’s history, current human activity, or some combination of the two, nobody knows for sure. Thus, it is impossible to give dates for when they will disappear. In fact, it is impossible to know whether or not they will ever disappear. Indeed, my own observations of the glaciers in Glacier National Park (I see it roughly the same time every year) indicate that they have been growing over the past five years, but I am certainly no glaciologist.
What I can say for sure is this: As more nonsensical predictions like this one are made, the less people will actually believe that human-induced global warming is happening. Indeed, past nonsensical predictions could be part of the reason that only a few people rank a candidate’s position on global warming as a major issue when deciding how to vote.
Not long ago, I wrote a post about ignorant people claiming that others are rejecting science. Well, if this is what passes for science these days, I can understand why some reject it!
It has been over 25 years since I visited Glacier. While I reject the hysteria of global warming I can say that comparing my personal photographs of Grinnell Glacier taken back then and images taken recently show a distinct reduction in size. Normal climatic changes — probably.
I cannot forget, watching An Inconvenient Truth, when Al Gore narrates over the image of ice melting in a cup of icewater: the water level is clearly below the top of the cup, and the ice is clearly floating in the water, but when the ice melts the cup overflows.
Gore isn’t the only scaremonger to fake experiments. Bill Nye was caught narrating a faked one:
http://blog.drwile.com/more-anti-science-behavior-from-bill-nye/
I’m subscribed to Avaaz (a petition organization) because occasionally they do support good causes, but their climate causes are just ridiculous.
Here is their latest, apparently Europe is going to completely end carbon pollution:
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/climate_emergency_loc/
Wow. Do the signers know how many people will die as a result of such a misguided practice?
Obviously they don’t, especially because all the wording in the petition makes it seem like if we don’t stop carbon pollution now, that is what will kill people:
“To European leaders: Scientists warn us that climate change is accelerating beyond our control, threatening our survival and everything we love. We call on you to deliver emergency plans to keep global temperature rise under the unacceptably dangerous level of 1.5 degrees C. That means taking action to halve global carbon pollution by 2030 and reach zero before 2050, by rapidly shifting our societies and economies to 100% clean energy. Do this fairly, with support to the most vulnerable among us. Our world is worth saving and now is our moment to rise to our responsibility.”
And people are signing this every few seconds!!!