Just the Facts, Ma’am

It is sometimes difficult to separate fact from fiction when it comes to global warming. However, I just returned from a week of hiking in Glacier National Park in Montana and faced the facts firsthand.

Glacier was declared a national park in 1910, and at the time had nearly 150 glaciers. Today there are only about 25 remaining and those are meager compared to their former majesty. On the final day of my vacation, I completed a twelve mile hike to Grinnell Glacier on the east side of the continental divide. It was named for the man most responsible for Glacier’s designation as a national park, and it is still an impressive natural wonder. But I was dismayed when our guide showed us a series of five photographs of Grinnell Glacier, each taken from the same vantage point, but about 20 years apart. They revealed that Grinnell has lost more than 90% of its mass since the park was founded, and is now receding at an alarming rate. Scientists predict that at the current rate of melting, there will be no more glaciers whatsoever in the park within 20 years!

While climatologists acknowledge that the globe is probably in a natural cycle of warming, they broadly condemn man’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions which has artificially accelerated the rate of that warming.

Those are the facts.