Franz Josef Glacier

Fox, Franz Josef glaciers defy trend
New Zealand's two best-known glaciers
still on the march
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31 Jan 07- Guides say the Franz Josef and the Fox glaciers continued advancing down their valleys in the past year and may soon be close to positions reached 40 years ago.

That (supposedly) contrasts sharply with the plight of many glaciers elsewhere on the planet, which are (supposedly) shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).

The Swiss organization maintains a constant watch of 30 mountain glaciers and said yesterday its latest survey, of 2005 conditions, showed the glaciers had become on average 60cm to 70cm (25 inches to 27 inches) thinner, which it blamed on climate change.

          Thirty glaciers? Out of the literally millions of square miles
          of glacier, they’re basing their doomsday prognostications
          on only 30 glaciers?

          Twenty-five inches? How about the fact that the Nisqually
          Glacier on Washington’s Mt. Rainier is growing thicker at
          the rate of 18 feet per year? How about the fact that all
          seven glaciers on California’s Mount Shasta are growing?
          Some of Mount Shasta's glaciers have doubled in size in
          just the last 50 years. And we’re supposed to be worried
          about 25 inches of melting ice on a handful of glaciers?

WGMS director Wilfried Haeberli said with many mountain glaciers only tens of meters thick, they would disappear in decades if the trend continued.

If ... Did you catch that word? ... If.

"We can say there were times during the warmer periods of the last 10,000 years when glaciers have been comparable to what they are now," he told the BBC.

Oh really? Wouldn’t this mean that it has been just as warm
at other times during the past 10,000 years?

Franz Josef Glacier Guides base manager Tom Arnold estimated the Franz Josef and the Fox had advanced hundreds of meters in the past year.

See full story at: http://www.stuff.co.nz/3945761a7693.html
Thanks to Clay Olson for this info

THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!