Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Glaciers Melting in Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park has some spectacular sights: Going-to-the-Sun Road, Saint Mary Lake, and for now at least some glaciers. According to this story in the travel section of the New York Times reports, you might want to make your reservations sooner rather than later:
I was in northwest Montana for the hikes and the huckleberries, but most of all to experience the namesake glaciers, which, I had recently learned, might be around for only another decade or so. Given that a century and a half ago there were 150 and now there are 25, the trip makes me an enlistee in the practice known by a somewhat prickly term: last-chance tourism.
Glaciers are a pretty good indicator of the earth’s thermal equilibrium. They are big enough to not be affected by a single summer’s heat wave or a winter’s cold snap. Changes in glaciers indicate long term trends. If the atmosphere is getting cooler, glaciers grow; if it’s getting warmer, glaciers shrink.

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