[joker]

[Jake Neiffer]

Joker- I see what Bernardo is saying. It seems weird that the hiatus was, as far as I can tell, widely accepted, and theories have been proposed on its cause, but now apparently it didn't really happen? In any case I have little doubt that warming will continue, but this seems strange.

[joker]

Well, yeah. You know what they say - "lies, damn lies, and statistics..." But of course that can cut either way here - perhaps the new work is just flaky, or perhaps the authors truly did find a better tool for looking at the time series data than had been previously applied. I don't have the expertise to evaluate this on my own. I believe that if the work I referenced is bad science that works backwards to the solution that the authors hoped for, their supposed contribution to the field will be forgotten as anything more than an obscure asterisk. As the Science article you reference suggests (and worth noting that Science is generally praised for very high standards for choice of what to publish), there has been a lot of work invested in understanding what to make of the temperature trends since ~'98. So a result such as the one in this paper is sure to get plenty of scrutiny. For folks who look beyond sound bites about science, individual papers should not do much to harm credibility of an entire field of work.

[peltoms]

There has been no hiatus in glacier retreat with each decade having a doubling of mass loss from the 1980's, 1900's to the 2000's. 2014 State of the Climate-Alpine Glaciers This despite having already lost the lowest elevation areas. On Mount Baker and Mount Rainier all major glaciers had advanced from 1950-1980 with the peak occurring earlier on Mount Rainier.

[CC]

[Jake Neiffer]

[Dalekz]

These are from a paper from Joel T. Harper (WWU) Arctic and Alpine Research Vol 25-332 (Available from JSTOR) Glacier Terminus Fluctuations on Mount Baker, Washington, U.S.A., 1940-1990, and Climatic Variations

Easton

Baker glaciers 1940-1990

[albrightmd]

In other words, if peltoms had arrived on the local seen just 30 years earlier in 1954, instead of 1984, he might very well have been concerned about the coming of the next ice age after 30 years of field work. It is worth recalling that this 30 year period of glacial advance was a time of steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. One things for sure, if the glaciers were to advance southward across Seattle again to a depth of 3000 ft, that would indeed constitute a real and profound disaster.

[drm]

[albrightmd]

[drm]

[albrightmd]

This note on the recent history of glaciers on Mt Baker appeared earlier this week: http://iceagenow.info/2015/09/glaciers-advancing-in-washington-state/

[CC]

[cefire]

[drm]

And the headline of the article is "Glaciers advancing in Washington State." While Easterbrook presumably does not control the headline of the article, I have not seen any complaints here about such a misleading headline, and that clearly suggests that they are advancing now, not that they had greater extent a few decades ago, as the article's content describes.