~ ~ ~ BEgin letter to DAvid Furlow
Fascinating. The depth of history in China… The White Crane Ridge and observation area beneath Three Gorges, wow. Little Ice Age famine makes sense, and the Irish Potato Famine at the very end. I am working on an article to help clarify what the cause of and the reason for the end of Little Ice Age. Very commonly, it is understood to be a simple cold anomaly, similar to the Medieval Warm period preceding it. I have a number of papers though, that suggest it was much more, that it was the beginning of the next solar cycle ice age, and that it’s end was not the result of the end of this natural climate anomaly, but was brought about by human-caused warming. In other words, the Little Ice Age didn’t just end, it was ended.
One of the discontinuities in human caused climate warming is the date of its beginning. The standard assumption being it began at the beginning of the industrial revolution when greenhouse gas emissions from coal (and peat) became excessive. Deeper thought shows us however that it was the beginning of agriculture, the cutting of forest for ag, and quite specifically, rice cultivation in the East that ushered in human-caused climate change five to six thousand years ago.
William Ruddiman published on this topic in 2003 on the early anthropogenic hypothesis, and again in 2007 with challenges and responses to his 2003 work. I think we may have talked about this before and his book, Plagues, Plows and Petroleum, 2005.
I decided this was an important topic because of some recent additions of repeat glacial photography in USGS collection, and based on several years of reading John Muir, discoverer of Glacier Bay. Muir, and the rest of science, tells us that glacier recession is not new, that globally there is a trend of glacier recession since the end of the Little Ice Age. Recently we have seen a strengthening of this trend, but it has existed since at least the mid-1800s (ish). It is common to hear George Vancouver “discovered” Glacier Bay in his famous HMS Discovery expedition when he mapped his way up the inside passage of what is now the Panhandle of Alaska in 1794. But his charting shows no Glacier Bay, the glacier completely filled what is now the bay and there was literally nothing to discover except a massive ice wall. It wasn’t until 1879 that another “white man” Muir, visited the area and reported upon it. If you have not read his Travels in Alaska, it’s a good one.
So, you know how I am with images and an article showing glacial recession beginning after the Little Ice Age, where human-caused warming ended the Little Ice Age, I think has learning value. And, the repeat photography is epic. https://www.nps.gov/glba/learn/nature/time-lapse-sliders.htm I have two of my own comparisons to add, the Bear Glacier at the southern tip of the Alaska Panhandle, and the Matanuska near Anchorage.
Happy turkey time ~ ~ ~
B
Ruddiman The anthropogenic Greenhouse era began thousands of years ago, Climatic Change vol 61, 2003.
https://sjmulder.nl/dl/pdf/climate-papers/2003-ruddiman-era.pdf
Ruddiman, The early anthropogenic hypothesis – Challenges and responses, Reviews of Geophysics, October 31, 2007.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006RG000207
~ ~ ~ End email to David Furlow
Reanimated mosses —
Melton, Unprecedented in the Arctic: Warmer Now Than 44,000 to 120,000 Years Ago, ClimateDiscovery.org, October 27, 2013.
https://climatediscovery.org/2046/
Miller et al., Unprecedented recent summer warmth in Arctic Canada, Geophysical Research Letters, October 2013.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GL057188/abstract
Few places exhibit greater glacier retreat than Glacier Bay, Alaska.
Glacier in Muir Inlet, Glacier Bay, by G.D. Hazard, 1880.
The photograph above, “Glacier in Muir Inlet, G.D. Hazard, 1880,” was taken at the terminus of the main glacier filling Glacier Bay about 30 milers from the mouth of the bay.
The image above is Glacier Bay in 1880, the year after John Muir discovered it in 1879. It was first charted by white people in 1794 by Captain George Vancouver of the historic H.M.S. Discovery Mission. When Vancouver sailed past Glacier Bay in 1794, it was entirely filled with ice and not noted on his charts.
Muir inlet, Glacier Bay, by Bruce Molina, USGS, today.