Glacial Time Scales and the Things Stuck in Them

I think there probably isn't enough distinction made concerning the non-homogeneity of weather patterns. It is entirely possible for ice to be growing in one area and receding in another. It is also entirely possible that global average temperature falls while net ice coverage falls.

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It is pretty cold here in the US right now. In Australia record high temperatures have recently been set.

"If something got left behind on a glacier in 1914 and it just popped back out of the ice now doesn't that sort of suggest that where whatever it was is at is where the surface of the glacier was back then in 1914?"

No. Ice flows. Downhill. It's not a true solid.

I have to go run an errand for the boss. More at 9:00PM.

Lyn's correct.

Apart from responding to gravitational forces and flowing downhill, ice sheets respond to pressures above them from the deposition of further snow and its conversion in turn, to solid ice.

For example, Antarctica's ice sheets are flowing towards the edge of that continent. Their steady migration lowers any structures founded on them (such as the USA South Pole Station).

http://www.showscience.com/index.php?showimage=51

Mark

They were probably on the surface originally, but glaciers are notorious for their fissures, many of them hidden by subsequent snowfalls and sometimes they'll form suddenly right out from under you (this happened to two friends exploring an Alaskan glacier in the 1970s They lived through it, thank goodness). Glaciers are dangerous to traverse by any measure, and riddled with cracks and fissures throughout.

I think Lyn has the right idea. These are often things that got imbedded in the glacier near the 'top' and then years later after it flows downhill, then the ice melts (at a lower latitude) and the stuff re-appears.

...lower altitude; not latitude... duh

Well, the lower latitudes are warmer.

Not right now--Alaska is balmier than the Dakotas and even further south.

Yikes, you're right.

You live in a "banana belt. Not unlike Deadwood S.D. which my wife visited repeatedly in prior years. (for work)

Lyn, then I must too, when Anchorage Ak is warmer than Houston Texas, there is something wrong with that picture...

Thats was just her excuse Lyn ...

With these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes.

Richard Ben Sapir's novel "The Far Arena" uses a scenario something like this. Highly recommended.

Ask Otzi
You can also ask hime if that bow he had with him was a work in progress or finished.
Del

Does glalcial memory work in FIFO or FILO? Didn't Otzi show up years before the WWI guys were found?

Otsi was not IN a glacier, he was in a depression which snowed over, melted, snowed over again, and melted and so forth. He was found when some hikers walked over him, and reported the body to police. They argued over jurisdiction, expecailly after they found he was older than all the other bodies they recover every year.

So Otsi has NO RELATION to either global warming or glaciers.

And I think the WW1 regiment was a hoax. But I will check on that. Seems it was a April Fools prank a few years ago.

Oh wait.... there was one battle. The White War. Makes my minus 24 weather here in Ottawa pretty tame.

tcmtech-

Several years ago I saw a tv show about the highly technical recovery of a fighter plane from within a glacier. It was lost in 1942. After recovery the P-38 was then restored and eventually finished its original trip to England:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_Girl

Another one, a cargo plane, was lost near Fairbanks, Alaska. It also was found in a glacier.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/colony-glacier-melting-alaska_n_3572489.html

Hope these help.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Another detail of the Lockheed P-38 Lightnings is the depth from which they were excavated. In 50 years the whole squadron was buried 250ft (75m) under the Greenland icesheet. This slightly cocks up the assumed snowfall rate, upon which the current ice-core theories are based.

Some objects can be carried down with the glacier flow, whereas some can only be revealed when a melt occurs. Which sort of leads on to the mystery of the instant ice-up that froze mammoths and woolly rhinos, etc where they stood, still eating grass. That was no normal chill, more of a very sudden global catastrophe, I would say.

First of all you are missing a single coherent sentence. Things don't get stuck in geologic glacial time scales either, they are frozen into the ice not frozen in time. WW1 did not leave too many airplanes crashed in or on glaciers, maybe horses and oxcarts. Not all glaciers are advancing, some are retreating so the original positions vary.

If some 1000 year old ice is exposed and buried by current snow and ice then the following year's melt off contains last year's remnants and that from 1000 years ago. Some areas are protected from melt off due to geography or other factors such as a net gain due to weather patterns. Therefore, the ice is carbon dated and perhaps further compared by sources protected by weather.

1- More conformation the earth is warming

2- Ice does not melt uniformly around the globe

Remember the 'Ice man' who died over 5,000 years ago was uncovered over 20 years ago. Ice is added and melts non-uniformly. None of this should be very confusing to you.

except for that bit about there has been no observable warming in decades.... and antarctic sea ice is larger than ever this year, DURING SUMMER, trapping "climate scientists" is so much sea ice that it took icebreakers from three different countries to rescue them.... Ya Know, small things like that....

You take a backward view of reality if you base ANY climate change on a single year's (or decade's) WEATHER events.

It's views like yours that remind me there are still many living in fantasy land!

actual REAL global temperatures (vs those massaged in order that scientists can milk governments for grant money) have been fairly steady since the 1930's which encompasses the lion's share of the industrial development on this planet. They are now starting to fall now that the sun has entered what appears to be a new "maunder minimum" phase. I do not deny the climate changes over geologic timescales, I deny that the cause is under human control to any great degree.

Global warming is a fact, not a theory. Early panicked studies blaming CO2 emissions has been surpassed by reality. Scientists in many disciplines, forever looking for truth, went over all the data in many disciplines. The warming could not be completely explained away by the rise in CO2 concentration in our air. While many scientist squabbled more took up the challenge to uncover the truth. We are near the end of the warming cycle of an ice age. When you went to school, you were taught the ice age was over. Well that was extremely ignorant and ignored the world around us. The rising sea level has slowed down in the last millennia but has not stopped. Global warming has slowed down since we are almost at the top of the hot cycle. That slowing down fooled sloppy science. During the last peak most of the USA was tropical. MN is not very warm yet so we still have a way to go.

In the last 30 days I have seen studies on what the direction of a dog's tail wag means or what value women place on a man's penis size and you think studying global warming is a waste of money! I suspect most of the work was accomplished non-gratis. Smart people just re-examined old data and put 2 and 2 together. Did you know the Angles walked to England? Not that long ago the sea level was so low that England wasn't an island. Now ships sail over what was once dry land. Just TRY to explain that one away!

And how precisely can any of that be tied to manmade CO2? There is no warming that can be reliably measured in industrial times. Mann manipulated or outright fabricated the numbers he used to justify his grants and then used his position and his friends to attack anyone who pointed his lies out this is documented in the Anglia emails. even the IPCC has backed way the hell off of their prior claims.... believe what you like, but don't call it fact.

further reading:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/28/no-new-continent-hottest-temperature-records-since-1978/

The OP's question had NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING.

Open a new topic if you have to. I am tired of this one.

OK

If we're subject to "galactic" influences on weather, I assert that it is an either/or possibility: either life IS possible on this planet, or it ISN'T. All life. Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere screen out matter and energy that would otherwise kill everything.

An analogy: a submarine passes through an oil slick: all inhabitants are fine. Same submarine "passes through" a seamount: all inhabitants perish.

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I postulate that the most significant factor is friction. The ice flows downhill, with internal as well as exterior movement. As it moves over the ground, the ice in contact with the ground will move slower. Thus objects that are picked up move slower than the glacier, and older ice flows around them.

BTW, is anyone aware of a glacier of ice sheet that shows advancement or growth over the last 10, 20, 50 or 100 years?

Looks like this thread picked up a pair of OT trolls.

I fixed what I could.

Anyway. What I was wondering about was pretty well covered so far I know when glaciers receded they don't actual'y slide back up from where they came but are just melting faster than the move down and away from their source.

What I was wondering about was when they claim a particular glacier had receded to it's point it it was thousands of years ago how items that were lost or left behind only in the last century or two are only now being exposed.

Now as the AGW Vs natural climate change debate goes based on glacial time scale data references go by all means feel free to go at it guns blazing!

May the most logical and rational side win!

BTW I just went to Fargo and back with my wife and was pointing out our local glacially formed landmarks along highway 52 and I- 94 which have not been here all that long. ~10,000 years or less in my parts.

Sounds reasonable.

Good answer

I have positive proof that global warming does exist. Where I live, in upstate NY, is the northern shoreline of Lake Iroquois of glacial melt time. Directly next to my house is a drumlin. They ain't no ice here now. Although I constantly ask ecopeople about this, none can tell me why the ice melted 15,000 years ago. Man made or influenced warming trend. BS

Good thinking. Off topic, but still, good thinking. Did you know that the ground is rising under the great lakes? There used to be one of them...now there are five. What would push the rocky earth down so far? Could it be...a glacier? A mile thick glacier?

It is pretty well determined that the last ice age was about (what you said) about 20 to 15 thousand years ago. And we are about due for another. Thank goodness for global warming because it may well be staving off another ice age. For awhile anyway.

The reason for the ice ages has to do with permutations of the earth's axis, It did not always point to the north star! (Furthermore, the distance from the sun due to the fact that Earth's orbit is NOT circular, but rather eliptical. This results in "ice ages" and "great summers" depending on which of the two support or cancel each other. We are fortunate to be in a "great summer" (though the outside air temp today might argue the summer part) but we are due for another ice age. (Then the minus 24 outside today will seem balmy! )

Though we have a lot of summer to go through. We are only half way through it...then it will get colder again. So we don't have much to worry about for about 10 thousand years. A lot can happen in ten thousand years. We might be able to build an electric car which sells!

Read those links...you will find them much better than my poor musings.

I personally believe that the reason there has not been real changes in temp for a few hundred years is because we are in the middle of the "great summer". It will continue to get a little warmer for a thousand years or so, and then we are going to look at a cooling trend. Hope we don't see the "snowball earth" which happened, what 200 thousand years ago.

The snow on glaciers is lain down layer by layer,with the newest layers near the topmost layers.As the layers are exposed, most recent entrapped articles will appear first.When they receed, it is from the downhill side of the glacier upwards,hence the term "receed".

If they find older objects on top of younger objects, it is because the glacier "tumbles" somewhat as layers melt and refreeze as the move downhill.