Green Daily

Places with Glaciers

If you've ever seen an actual glacier, you'll know that they're even weirder and more majestic than you would think. The only ones I've ever seen up close were in Alaska, on the Kenai Peninsula, and the strangest thing about them was that parts of them are a deep, bright turquoise blue. The second strangest thing about them was that they are getting smaller, and nobody seems to want to talk about it. The Portage Glacier Ranger Station in the Chugach National Forest, off of Seward Highway, which is where I got closest to one, had a ton of information about glaciers in general, but didn't discuss the fact that the glacier in question had definitely receded beyond where the builders of the station had predicted that it would be.That's going to be the case at many vacation spots that rely on big, icy masses as part of their attraction. Glacier National Park, in Montana, may lose all of its glaciers by 2030, according to the Sierra Club. That Sierra Club webpage has an animated feature which showcases changes in particular glaciers in the park over time. In 1932, human figures are dwarfed by an ice mass; in 1988, the same scene is barren and empty of anything except rocks. Iceland's glaciers are diminishing as well, and the winters are now often rainy instead of snowy. And let's not even talk about Antarctica, because in 2005 scientists found that 87% of its glaciers had receded in the past fifty years.
AP
Apr 7th 2008 @ 1:39PM