I was surprised to find a story in the Daily Caller today about Montana’s Glacier National Park, but loved the exposé of how the National Park Service is quietly backpedaling away from its previous climate hysteria.
I’ve been countering that hysteria for years, pointing out in numerous columns that Glacier National Park is named not after the few dozen small alpine glaciers located within the park, but for the fact that millions of years ago, continental glaciers carved the landscape that formed much of the magnificent terrain of the park.
The panicked terror of eco-freaks that they won’t be able to hike on a glacier in the park because of global warming has never concerned me as much as the possibility of returning to the Pleistocene ice age when this part of Montana was under a couple thousand feet of ice. The Pleistocene ended a mere 12,000 years ago, unless you believe — as many scientists do — that it didn’t end at all, but just entered a warm period that could end any day. In either case, today’s glaciers are pikers in comparison, dating back just 7,000 years and in fact shrinking in size not since Al Gore discovered them, but rather since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-1800s.
Anyway, the Park Service — especially during the Obama years — took to playing Henny Penny for the climate terror brigade and has been trumpeting the pending disappearance of the alpine glaciers as a marketing tool to encourage visitation (while at the same time using the rise in visitation as a bargaining chip to ask for more funding).
But not anymore.
The Daily Caller reports that signs in the park that were perilously close to being inaccurate have themselves now disappeared.
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 yearsupended 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.”
Interestingly it was Libertarian politicians Roger Roots who first brought the disappearing signage to the public’s attention. Roots posted the news on his Facebook page on June 3. (See his picture of the original sign below.) According to the Daily Caller, Roots also “put up a $5,000 bet that Glacier National Park would still have glaciers in 2030.”
Roots has run for statewide office in Montana several times over the last few years, but without success. Most recently he ran in 2018 for clerk of the Supreme Court.
Frank Miele writes from Kalispell, Montana, at www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com and is a columnist at Real Clear Politics. To read more of my columns about the Dishonest Media, the Deep Swamp, the failed presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and Trump’s war to restore American greatness, read my “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy or “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?”. They are available at Amazon in paperback or Kindle editions.
Also visit Heartland Diary on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1FmrOF2TF-njRznqoU4yjA
I should have known when I forwarded the June 7 Rush Limbaugh piece on this subject to Frank, that it was old news to my old friend. Kudos and keep it up, the world needs a whole lot more of what Kalispell had for years.
Thanks Gerald! Wish life was still simple like in the old days!