ON THE BOGUS GLOBAL WARMING FRONT IN EUROPE COMES THIS:

The Observer Newspaper apparently has a double page spread on the fact that scientists report that 30 glaciers are showing signs of accelerated melting. The consequences are the usual chorus: sea levels will rise, water supplies dry up and millions will starve. Reported on the BBC the implication was made to suggest this would happen very soon. What were the facts? The 30 glaciers showed an increase of melting from around 20cm per year to about 100cm (1m) per year in recent years. To put this in some sort of context. Assuming this higher rate of melting continues for the next 1000 years, an average glacier would retreat by about 1 km. Most glaciers are far longer than that, so even after 1000 years of melting there would still be plenty left. Sea levels: will only be very slowly affected by this melt - as with the Pine Island Glacier - mailing 24/2/08. Melt water does indeed provide the water for many millions of people, but even after 1000 years there would be plenty of melt water flowing. Indeed if the rate of melting stays at this new level, there would be *more* water available, not less, for the next thousand years. All this assumes that temperatures will not reverse in the next 1000 years - most unlikely scenario as over the last 1000 years glaciers have both retreated (more than today) and advanced and then retreated again in recent years. There are thousands of glaciers on Earth, perhaps a few hundred are monitored, of these it is true that quite a number are retreating - possibly due to the slight global rise in temperature (0.6C) or perhaps because of local conditions, as is true of the Antarctic peninsular (a mere 2% of the Antarctic continent). But some glaciers are advancing: those in Iceland being a case in point. I repeat a point made a while back. Ask any farmer or resident in the Alps which he prefers: advancing or retreating glaciers? -- Dr. Philip Foster 1 Barnfield, Common Lane, Hemingford Abbots, Cambridgeshire PE28 9AX 01480 399098 Also SMP Ltd.