Glaciers on Thin Ice

 

Glaciers provide a buffer

     to human capacity—overreaching its mark.

Ice melts upside down, drips into the universe,

     a snow cone in July.

 

         In the November 18, 2002 issue of the L.A. Times, Times staff writer Usha Lee McFarling presented upsetting statistics regarding the effect of global warming on Glacier National Park in Montana. Just one century ago, one hundred and fifty glaciers graced the park's jagged mountain peaks. Today, only thirty-five remain. Moreover, they're disintegrating so fast that it's estimated that within a mere thirty years, every single one will be gone. The famed Boulder Glacier disappeared in 1998 while the beloved Grinnell Glacier has only 10% of the mass that existed in 1850, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. As Ms. McFarling so eloquently points out, "The dwindling glaciers, amid the deeply chiseled landscape of Glacier National Park, offer the clearest and most visible sign of climatic change in America. It's an omen even a child can grasp in an instant: Ice that has lasted in these high alpine valleys since the end of the Stone Age will soon vanish."

         The thermally induced melting of our glaciers is not restricted to those in Glacier National Park. It's been documented throughout the world, "from the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to the ice fields beneath Mt. Everest in the Himalayas. Experts predict that glaciers in the high Andes, the Swiss Alps and even Iceland could disappear in the coming decades as well." Even the great polar caps of the Arctic and Antarctic circles are threatened. But who cares? No one apparently. Only a small fraction of the human population lives in these frozen wastelands anyway. And maybe underneath the ice we'll find fertile soil that'll sustain our ever-expanding human population.

         It's now well documented that the polar caps and massive glaciers absorb the majority of the heat resulting from human promoted global warming. "Vanishing ice" is most dramatically observed in the Arctic and Antarctic circles where few people reside, so the changes are less obvious. However, 40% of the Arctic ice is gone, and melting ice fields the size of the state of Massachusetts have broken off from the Antarctic cap, floating out to sea. The higher temperatures caused by man's activities within the last 150 years are destroying the temperature buffer that took over 20,000 years to create. What will happen when this buffer is gone? The answer is simple. Atmospheric temperatures will increase at rates that far exceed any we've experienced to date, and this increase will continue even if we don't burn any more fossil fuels and forests. Oceans and forests will continue to provide some buffering capacity, but this too will have its limits.

         As the polar caps and glaciers disintegrate, temperatures will skyrocket at rates that no subsequent corrective approach will be able to counter. Both the development of research methods and the implementation of yet to be developed technologies that might result from this research will take far more time than will be available to us. We might solve the problem if we could suddenly remove the hundreds of billions of tons of CO₂ that will soon be in the Earth's atmosphere, thanks to our activities. Or we could change the Earth's orbit in a well-controlled fashion, so that as the CO₂ concentration increases, the amount of sunlight that enters the atmosphere will decrease. Unfortunately, we don't have the foggiest notion as to how to remove the vast amount of CO₂ we're putting into the air, and we don't know how to bring about a change in the Earth's orbit, let alone control such a process. It seems clear that the only practical solution is to take a preventative approach.

         The glaciers in Glacier National Park will unfortunately be gone before most of us die, and other ice fields on the planet will similarly disappear. This is not a problem we want to ignore and leave to our children or grandchildren. We must try to find a solution ourselves. The problem is not one that can be solved easily. As long as the human population is in excess of the Earth's capacity to accommodate it, and until we abandon technologies that emit greenhouse gases, we will continue to aggravate the problem, diminishing our hopes that a solution will ever be found.

         Historically, when we solve a scientific problem or implement a new technology, we create a host of unforeseen problems that subsequently need to be addressed. By unwittingly causing the destruction of the world's glaciers and ice fields, we disturb the ecology of the entire planet, and the ultimate consequences to the biosphere are unpredictable. We know that ocean levels are rising as the ice and snow are melting, and that thousands of animal and plant species are being driven to extinction. It's clear that the world our grandchildren will inherit will be drastically different from the one we've come to know and love. The world is loosing much of its beauty and diversity.

         Realizing the effects of our activities on the massive but universally dwindling glaciers found in Glacier National Park, the Sierra Nevada's and Alaska is shocking and overwhelmingly upsetting. Although it's only been within the last 25 years that we've observed significant increases in atmospheric temperatures, the effects of greenhouse gas pollution had already exerted a pronounced effect on the world's glaciers before any of us were born. And these effects of global warming are increasing exponentially as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere. Climatic change is not some distant, far off threat. It is here and now, and the consequences have already been well documented.

We humans currently add 6-12 billion tons of CO₂ to our atmosphere every year, and the United States, representing only 5% of the world's population, is contributing approximately 35% of the atmospheric greenhouse gases. That means that per person, we're adding about 7 times as much CO₂ to the atmosphere as is the average world citizen. However if 5% of the world's population is contributing 35% of the CO₂, then 95% of the population is contributing only 65%. Going through the calculation, then, US citizens are, on the average, contributing 12-times as much CO₂ to the atmosphere as the average non-US world citizen. There is obviously tremendous room for improvement. How callous we are not to take future generations into account when driving our gas-guzzling vans and automobiles down the freeway at 70-80 mph, knowing that we're burning fossil fuels that produce the CO₂ that causes global warming.

Why don't more of us choose to use non-polluting forms of transportation such as walking, jogging, skateboarding, and cycling? If we did, we'd find ourselves healthier and happier, and we'd be doing less damage to our environment. Again, why don't more of us opt for solar heating? Why do we want to ignore the consequences of our industrialized lifestyles? The answers are clear: such changes either take our time or are costly; we value convenience and live primarily for the moment - not for the future.

In a previous essay entitled "Our Precarious Planet," I went through a quick calculation to extrapolate the recent global temperature increases to the year 2100. The calculations led to the estimate that in a mere 100 years, atmospheric temperatures should be up at least 10º F. However, this calculation didn't take into account the loss of our "temperature buffer" due to the melting of ice caps and glaciers. When these ice reservoirs are no longer available to absorb the heat, one can anticipate that the atmospheric temperature increase will be much greater than previously projected. Taking this fact into account, we can expect a 20º to 30º increase over the next 100 years instead of the calculated 10º increase. And if we continue to burn fossil fuels and forests, the value could easily be far greater! All of man's science and technology will be unable to deal with global warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution. The total photosynthetic potential of the planet can only remove 1% of the CO₂ we put into the atmosphere each year. What a legacy we're handing down to our children and grandchildren. And our great grandchildren may not be able to survive.

My recommendation? If we're not willing to restrict the birthrate and our use of fossil fuels, then I suggest you sell your house and buy property, preferably mountainous property, in the Arctic Circle. Your grandchildren will appreciate having access to a climate with temperatures below 120º F. However, don't have illusions that you're providing your descendants with a permanent solution. It'll only be a matter of time before human life on the surface of planet Earth is impossible.