Money finally allocated to replace signs at Glacier that say glaciers to vanish by 2020

Having gotten the budget to do so, the National Park Service is finally proceeding with removing the absurd signs at Glacier National Park that claim the glaciers would be gone by either 2020 or 2030.

They had announced the decision to fix these silly signs back in June, but didn’t yet have the budget until now.

When I visited the park with Diane in 2017, I reported on these ridiculous signs, which provided a great illustration of the routinely bad predictions of the global warming advocacy crowd. Not only were the predictions absurd and certain to be wrong, the park couldn’t make up its mind, posting signs that either predicted 2020 or 2030 as the moment when all the glaciers would be gone.

The new signs are still pretty bad, stating “When they [the glaciers] will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

This is poppy-cock. How we act is almost certainly not a factor in whether the glaciers shrink or grow, and to say this proves once again how the park service is pushing human-caused global warming, a hypothesis that remains unproven and has in fact failed in every prediction it has made.

Moreover, it is not certain that “the glaciers in the park are shrinking.” Research from 2010 to 2014 indicated that the shrinkage had ceased. I have not seen an update since, but the fact that no measurable shrinkage occurred so recently suggests that nothing is “consistent” or certain here.

Park Service removes signs saying glaciers to be gone by 2020 and 2030

The National Park Service has finally recognized reality and removed or changed its displays at Glacier National Park that as recently September 2018 had said that the glaciers would be gone by either 2020 and 2030.

At the same time, the park service is still clinging, quite bitterly if you ask me, to its religious faith in global warming, even though the glaciers in the park have not been shrinking at all in recent years.

The National Park Service (NPS) quietly removed a visitor center sign saying the glaciers at Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 due to climate change.

As it turns out, higher-than-average snowfall in recent years upended computer model projections from the early 2000s that NPS based its claim glaciers “will all be gone by the year 2020,” federal officials said.

“Glacier retreat in Glacier National Park speeds up and slows down with fluctuations in the local climate,” the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors Glacier National Park, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Those signs were based on the observation prior to 2010 that glaciers were shrinking more quickly than a computer model predicted they would,” USGS said. “Subsequently, larger than average snowfall over several winters slowed down that retreat rate and the 2020 date used in the NPS display does not apply anymore.”

NPS updated signs at the St. Mary Visitor Center glacier exhibit over the winter. Sign changes meant the display warning glaciers would all disappear by 2020 now says: “When they completely disappear, however, will depend on how and when we act.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text illustrates the political agenda of the park service, something they have no mandate to have.

If you want to see how stupid the signage was, read my report when Diane and I visited Glacier in summer of 2017. As I wrote then,

The park’s sloppiness and political posturing here however does serve to produce one good, though certainly unintended, result. It helps to discredit the National Park Service’s global-warming activism, which hasn’t been based on good science for quite awhile. It will also help to raise the skepticism of ordinary park visitors, who will either notice the contradictions, or laugh at the absurdity of the prediction that the glaciers will vanish only three years hence.

I guess the park service finally got tired of dealing with the ridicule.

Global warming and Glacier National Park

One of the main activities for almost everyone visiting Glacier National Park is to drive across the park on Going-to-the-Sun Road, which crosses the mountains and probably has some of the most spectacular scenery of any road in the United States. During our visit this week we entered the park from the west side, spent several days there hiking trails, then took this road across to the east side, where we did more hiking.

The highest point on Going-to-the-Sun Road is Logan Pass. The park service has built a visitor center there, where everyone stops to do a short hike and admire the views. The trail head for the more challenging Highline Trail, which we did soon after arrival, is also here.

Outside the Logan Pass visitor center are a variety of displays. One focused on the changing environment at Glacier, and not surprisingly, it made a point of talking about the documented shrinkage of the glaciers during the past century. Below is an image of the pertinent quote from that display:

Display outside Logan Pass visiter center

When I saw this I was quite amused. The glaciers in the park are expected to be gone in only three more years, by 2020? Not a chance. I thought, they are going to have to change this sign soon. In fact, based on my experience with past failed global warming predictions, I was actually surprised they had let this display stay there this long, and hadn’t already made it vanish to be replaced with a new doomsday prediction that was far enough in the future that they could use if for awhile to generate new fear (and funding) before it too turned out to be wrong.

Anyway, in driving east and down from Logan Point, Diane and I eventually reached the east entrance to the park, where there was another visitor center. Like Logan Pass, this center also had a collection of outdoor displays, with one display once again focused on the park’s changing environment. Below is the pertinent quote from that display:
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Glacier: Why I am not posting this week

The picture below will help explain why I am not posting much this week. My wife Diane and I are in Glacier National Park, and today we did a 12 mile hike on the Highline Trail, considered by many to be one of the best trails in the U.S. I’ve done a lot of hiking in my life, and I have to agree.

I hope good internet access will return next week, and I will be able to post regularly again. Until then, make sure you look real close at the picture. On the right, at the end of the trail line, is a person. This will give you a sense of the scale here.

Highline Trail

For the past four years the glaciers in Glacier National Park have stopped shrinking.

The uncertainty of science: For the past four years the glaciers in Glacier National Park have stopped shrinking.

“We had this sort of pause,” Fagre said of shrinking at Sperry Glacier and, by extrapolation, other glaciers. “They pretty much got as much snow as they needed.” Sperry covered 0.86 square kilometers in 2005, 0.83 in 2009 and 0.82 in 2013, illustrating the “pause” in its retreat as there was a 0.03 square kilometer loss from 2005 to 2009, but only 0.01 in the last four years, from 2009 to 2013, Fagre said.

The article spends a lot of time talking about how the shrinkage is about to resume and the glaciers are certain to disappear, but this pause in glacier shrinkage corresponds nicely with the 17 plus year pause in warming that has been going on.

And then there’s this: Great moments in climate forecasting.

And this, also from Steve Goddard: In 1971 the world’s top climate scientists said fossil fuels would cause an ice age by 2020.

I especially like the quote from the last article, where these experts say that there is “no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere.” These are the same experts who have have spent the past three decades since 1988 telling us that CO2-caused global warming was going to kill us all.