Disappearing namesake may make pristine wilderness symbol of climate change
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
Watch an aerial tour of Glacier National Park
WEST GLACIER - The tourists huddled in a shivering pack amid what should have been the heat of July, crowding around Laura Kloeck while she explained a bit about climate change.
“There is definitely a frightening side to global warming,” Kloeck told them, “but there is hope, too.”
Hope hip-deep, white and wintry and piled high in mid-July atop Glacier National Park's popular Logan Pass. Here, where trails remained buried beneath snowpack well into summer's season, Kloeck talked on about a warming world.
A young mountain goat perches on a rock near the popular pullout below Mount Oberlin on Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. Some biologists are concerned about a lack of baseline data that would indicate if warmer weather associated with climate change is forcing animals like goats and pikas upward into ever-higher and ever-shrinking habitat. Photo by TOM BAUER/Missoulian
Her hat was flat - as park rangers' are - but her delivery was sharp and pointed. The lingering snowfield you see here, she explained, is weather, not climate, and weather is unpredictable. Weather is what pushed temperatures just east of here 100 degrees - from 44 above to 56 below - in less than 24 hours back on Jan. 23, 1916. Weather is wild.
Climate, on the other hand, can be tracked over time, can be measured and modeled, even predicted.
The trend lines, Kloeck told her chilly crowd, are clear. The world is warming.
Here in Glacier National Park, that means the glaciers will be gone in just a couple of decades. In Joshua Tree National Park in California, it means no more Joshua trees. In Florida's Everglades, it likely means no more glades.
“The national parks in general, and Glacier Park in particular, have become the poster child for climate change, and that means they really are stepping up as leaders in both research and education.”
So said Leigh Welling, newly named climate change coordinator for the National Park Service. Before taking that post, she headed the scientific research and education center here in Glacier, and before that she was a paleo-oceanographer whose job it was to reconstruct past environments.
That's what many others have been doing in Glacier Park for decades now. Scientists from dozens of different disciplines have come to measure the ice, and the moisture, and the tree rings and soil and water, and the plants and animals and skies themselves. They look back millennia, far into the atmospheric past, and there they read stories from deep time.
And here's the thing - all those scientists, from all those fields, with all those different approaches, they all now find their results converging into one uniform narrative.
Summertime temperatures are up several degrees. The ice is nearly gone, and going faster than expected. The hottest years are the most recent years.
It is a consistent story of a changing climate driven to extremes, and at extreme speeds, pushed in part by the choices people have made and continue to make.
“What's clear,” Welling said, “is we're going to have to make new choices. This is huge and rapid change, far faster than we can account for through natural cycles, and it leaves the mountain ecosystem very vulnerable.”
The climate warms and seasons shift. Migration schedules become out of whack. Powerful storms sweep through, unleashing avalanches and landslides and floods. Green-up comes earlier, cool-down later, wildfire season lasts longer, and waters warm then trickle out.
In Glacier National Park - which perches astride the intersection of four climatic transition zones - some species will win, and some will lose.
“We're just beginning to see the tangible manifestations,” Welling said, “and it's prompting the park to step up and lead by example.”
Which explains Kloeck's daily talks, seven times a day, up there on Logan Pass.
“It's called ‘Goodbye to Glaciers,' ” said Sherry Forbes, the park's chief of interpretation and education. “And it's part of a much broader effort.”
There are new wayside signs explaining climate change, and new handouts at the visitor centers. There are new climate change pages in the Junior Ranger booklet, and in the park newsletter, too. There are campfire programs and PowerPoint presentations for interested travelers.
It's a popular effort; visitors, Forbes said, actually ask for the talks.
And so now there are plans to take the message beyond park boundaries, into the community and perhaps to the schools, right out onto the Web.
“Visitor interest is certainly growing,” Forbes said. “People want to know when the glaciers will finally disappear.”
The answer is sometime in the coming two decades, but it just leads to more questions. Why does it matter? What can I do?
“These are things people are asking,” Welling said. “But if the park's going to be an educator, and not just the evidence, then man, they'd better have their own house in order before they take on that role.”
And so Glacier cleaned house.
The park's historic motor coaches were revamped in 2001 to run on propane. The entire fleet of park vehicles was put on a biodiesel diet. Bikes were supplied for employees making short trips around the headquarters compound. A new public shuttle began operation on Going-to-the-Sun Road, replacing tens of thousands of private vehicles.
Raft guides started talking climate change with clients on the Flathead River.
In fact, every division in Glacier Park's administrative hierarchy has been touched by a changing business climate.
The interpretive staff has those “Goodbye to Glaciers” talks.
The facility management folk now build - and remodel - with energy efficiency in mind.
The accountants over at purchasing now shop “green.”
The scientists are eyeing research programs geared to gather baseline data and monitor change, in terms of both individual species and the broader ecosystem.
There's a green team, and staff has been carpooling, recycling, finding ways to lower their “carbon footprint.”
That footprint already was pretty low, compared to most places. Scientists conducted a cursory survey of the park's greenhouse gas emissions, and discovered that the million-acre park produces less than 1 percent of Montana's total emissions.
About 85 percent of park output (about 6,000 metric tons of carbon equivalent) comes in the form of vehicle exhaust - thus the bikes and shuttles and redesigned motor coaches.
Over on the other side of the equation, Glacier's sprawling forests sequester some 79,000 metric tons of carbon equivalent a year, making the park a carbon sink, not a source. Forests and soils store another 46 million MCTE, further offsetting the park's slight contribution.
These numbers, all agree, are more than a little shaky, not much more than guesstimates, but they provide at least a rough yardstick by which to measure gains.
Run the biodiesel and it's like reducing the fleet by 24 vehicles.
Ride the shuttle and you take yet more vehicles off the road.
The yardstick, rough as it is, has become a rallying point.
In 2010, Glacier Park celebrates its 100th birthday, “and climate change is very high on our radar,” said centennial coordinator Kass Hardy. “We're definitely on the forefront in terms of education
in the parks.”
In fact, Glacier was the second within the national park system to be named a “Climate-Friendly Park.” The park came up with an inventory, crafted a plan, and began educating both staff and visitors.
Then it joined with the National Parks Conservation Association at a place called www.doyourpartparks.org, where participants calculate their personal footprint, learn ways to reduce it, and pledge those reductions to a particular national park.
Glacier's goal is a 7-million-pound reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and already pledges have arrived for about 37,000 pounds.
People get a tune-up, inflate their tires, turn down the heat, replace their lightbulbs and weatherproof their windows, then clock their collective progress through the park's gains.
“Climate change is the biggest challenge our land management agencies have ever faced,” the National Parks Conservation Association's Will Hammerquist said. “And Glacier has become a real leader. There are some really visionary thinkers in the Park Service, and the hub for that thinking is Glacier Park.”
The hub, in fact, is ranger Kloeck's wide-brimmed hat, as another crowd revolves around her atop Logan Pass. Together, they say goodbye to the glaciers, then talk about what the park's been doing to curb further change.
And then, when it comes time to talk about what individuals can do, what tourists can take home with them, Kloeck offers this:
“No beginning is too small, and every individual makes a difference. The problem we have now is that no single snowflake ever feels responsible for the avalanche.”
It is encouraging and warm advice she offers, here in the chill of summer.
Reach reporter Michael Jamison at 1-800-366-7186 or by e-mail at mjamison@missoulian.com. Reach photographer Tom Bauer at (406) 523-5270 or by e-mail at tbauer@missoulian.com.
