Helheim glacier, central eastern Greenland coast. Recent and historical terminations are indicated. From September 1999 (peach line) to May 2001 (orange line) the Helheim glacier advanced slightly, pushing its calving front beyond its location in 1972 (green line). A slow retreat that began in 2001 was followed by a rapid, headline-grabbing retreat from 2004 to August 2005 (black line). Thereafter, the glacier stopped receding and began advancing again. By August 2006, the calving front had advanced beyond its location in 1933 (blue line) and is again approaching its summer 2004 location.

Ultimately, Howat et al. caution:

The highly variable dynamics of outlet glaciers suggest that special care must be taken in how mass-balance estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future, because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long-term trends.

A bit further to the north of Helheim and Kangerdlugssuaq glaciers, Britannia glacier—carefully mapped out in the early 1950s by a Great Britain expedition, is shown, in recent satellite photographs to currently be larger and further reaching that when it was first visited.

Left: the current position of the Britannia glacier as captured from a satellite photo available from Yahoo Maps. Right: A detailed map of the position of the Britannia glacier produced from photographs and ground survey done in 1954 (Hamilton et al., 1956). Currently, the Britannia glacier, as well as a smaller side glacier, is advanced beyond its 1954 terminus (red circles)

The recent warm temperatures in the regions surrounding Greenland has led to a general pull back of the peripheral glaciers there. But the pullback is from the advanced positions established in the early 1990s after a 40-year period of cooling in Greenland. Previous to that, from the late 19^th to the mid-20^th century, a rapid and prolonged warming occurred over Greenland during which time a significant glacial recession occurred when most of Greenland’s outlet glaciers rapidly retreated from the Little Ice Age maxima. The glacial recession associated with the warming observed in Greenland over the past 10 to 20 years is returning the glaciers to their mid-20^th century positions. This recession is neither unusual nor unprecedented when viewed outside the context of the past 10 years and instead, within the context of the past 100 years—most of which was dominated by natural variability.

References:

Ahlmann, H. W., 1946. Researches on snow and ice, 1918-1940. The Geographical Journal, 107, 11-25.

Chylek, P., et al., 2006. Greenland warming of 1920-1930 and 1995-2005. Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L11707, doi:10.1029/2006GL026510.

Hamilton, R. A., et al., 1956. British North Greenland Expedition 1952-4: Scientific Results. The Geographical Journal, 122, 203-237.

Howat, I. M., et al., 2007. Rapid changes in ice discharge from Greenland outlet glaciers. Science, 315, 1559-1561.

Yde, J. C. And Knutsen, N. T., 2007. 20^th century glacier fluctuations on Disko Island, Greenland. Annals of Glaciology, 46, in press.

III. Arctic Sea Ice and Polar Bears

It is a little known fact that the Arctic habitat of the polar bear has been as warm as or warmer than present for the better part of the last 9,000 years. And the polar bears survived.

Polar bears, Ursus maritimus, inhabit much of the Northern Hemisphere’s arctic regions. They evolved into a separate species about 200,000 years ago. According to the website polarbearsinternational.org (http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/polar-bear-evolution/:

Scientists believe that the polar bear is a descendant of the brown bear. It is thought to be the most recent of the eight bear species.

The polar bear probably first appeared roughly 200,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene. The polar bears of that time period were much larger than they are today, as were many other species.

Scientists believe that the polar bear evolved from a group of brown bears that became isolated by glaciers in an area near Siberia. The stranded bears underwent a rapid series of evolutionary changes in order to survive on the ice. Today's polar bear is superbly adapted to life in the Arctic… [A]daptations include a longer neck, useful in keeping the polar bear's head above water when swimming; warm, thick fur; and huge paws, which help spread the bear's weight on thin ice and are useful in swimming.

While brown bears hibernate in winter, polar bears do not. During an Arctic winter, there is no shortage of food, as seals are still available.

Since becoming a separate species 200,000 years ago, polar bears have survived large climate changes from ice age cold to interglacial warmth, including two lengthy periods (lasting several thousands of years each) when Arctic temperatures were significantly warmer than today. The fact that polar bear’s exist as a species today is the strongest evidence available that warming temperatures will not lead to their ultimate demise.

But these facts don’t dissuade global warming alarmists who cry that anthropogenic climate change will push the polar bear to extinction. In fact the (fictitious) plight of a lone polar bear is featured in Al Gore’s “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth. In an animated sequence, a presumably tired-of-swimming polar bear struggles to pull himself out the water onto a small chuck of ice, which subsequently breaks apart beneath him. The scene then widens to show the poor bear in the middle of a vast iceless sea, with no land in sight, left to swim on or drown trying.

In another apparent effort to alarm the public, Gore adviser, Dr. James Hansen, incorrectly implied coming extinction of polar bears in context of the mid Pliocene warm period of about 3 million years ago in an interview for a newspaper article (March 19, 2006 ). Such claims are highly problematic because the polar bear is a fairly recent species evolving from brown bears only some 250,000-200,000 years ago.

Polar bear expert, Dr. Mitch Taylor of Canada, confirms the robust resiliency of polar bears under the wide range of climatic and ice conditions having occurred in the past 250,000 years.

“Polar bears are believed to have evolved from grizzly bears during the Pleistocene era some 200-250,000 years ago. Polar bears are well developed as a separate species by the Eemian interglacial approximately 125,000 years ago. This period was characterized by temperature fluctuations caused by entirely natural events ... Polar bears obviously adapted to the changing environment, as evidenced by their presence today. ... This fact alone is sufficient grounds to reject the petition. Clearly polar bears can adapt to climate change. They have evolved and persisted for thousands of years in a period characterized by fluctuating climate. No rational person could review this information and conclude that climate change pre-destined polar bears to extinction.”

Furthermore, alarming claims by Gore and Hansen about species extinctions in general are clearly unsupported according to a new paper by Professor Daniel Botkin and 18 colleagues in the prestigious BioScience (March 2007 issue, vol. 57, 227-236) finding that "Current projections of extinction rates are overestimate[d]".

Even further alarmism has been brought to bear on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who, despite its initial hesitation, is now considering listing the polar bear as an endangered species under the guise that global warming is going to wipe-out their sea ice habitat and thus potentially push the polar bear to the verge of extinction. While this scenario stands against historical evidence, it nevertheless plays in the hearts of sentimentalists worldwide making it a perfect climate alarmist’s tool for spreading disinformation about the impacts of anthropogenic fossil fuel use.

Here is how the Center for Biological Diversity (http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/species/polarbear/index.html) describes their efforts at forcing action at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

On February 16, 2005 — the same day the Kyoto Protocol entered into force without the participation of the United States — the Center for Biological Diversity filed a scientific petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Polar bears are at risk of extinction because global warming is causing catastrophic environmental change in the Arctic, including the rapid melting of sea ice. Because the bears are deeply dependent on the sea ice for their survival, they stand to become the first mammals in the world to lose 100 percent of their habitat to global warming.

On December 15, 2005, the Center and our partners NRDC and Greenpeace sued the Bush administration for ignoring our petition. In response, on February 9, 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a positive 90-day petition finding for polar bears, opened a 60-day comment period, and initiated a status review of the species. Finally, on December 27, 2006, the administration announced a proposed rule to list the polar bear as threatened. Comments will be accepted on the proposal until April 9, 2007, and the administration must make a final listing determination by January 9, 2008.

Because all listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act must be made on the basis of the best available science, the current rulemaking for polar bears would have to concede the severity of the global warming crisis, acknowledging the fact that a rapid, dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to prevent the extinction of the species.

Protection under the Endangered Species Act will provide concrete help to polar bears and could revolutionize American climate policy. Since U.S. resistance to curbing greenhouse gases has allowed other countries to shirk their responsibilities as well, major changes in American policy are likely to have a powerful domino effect, catalyzing change in climate policy worldwide. The polar bear’s protected status will require a new level of environmental review before oil and gas development continue in polar bear habitat in the American Arctic. Even more critically, because it is illegal to harm threatened species or jeopardize their survival, the polar bear listing could mean that all U.S. industries emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases — and requiring a federal permit to do so — will come under the purview of the Endangered Species Act. From polluting power plants in the Midwest to auto manufacturers, a vast array of industries may have to clean up their acts to give the polar bear a chance to survive.

The Center for Biological Diversity makes their ultimate goal clear, it is not about saving the polar bear, but wanting to “revolutionize American climate policy,” which is to say gain control of energy policy and choices.

Other scientists and groups are just as eager to ignore climate history and jump aboard the polar-bears-are-doomed express.

New York University’s Scienceline, a blog site written by grad students in NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (http://scienceline.org/2007/02/05/health_driscoll_polarbears/), quotes Deborah Williams, president of Alaska Conservation Solutions, an environmental organization devoted to fighting global warming, as stating “There is no evidence [polar bears] can survive on land without sea ice.” (Williams even goes as far as to suggest that global warming is leading to previously undocumented cases of cannibalism among polar bears—anything, it seems for attention)

Obviously, these individuals and organizations are willfully ignorant of what paleoclimatologists overwhelmingly tell us about the past climate of the Arctic and its polar bear denizens.