Oops – Those Montana glaciers were supposed to be gone! Wha’ happened?

Instead, they appear to be growing.
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The National Park Service removes all “glaciers gone by 2020” signs at Glacier National Park, Montana, after “larger-than-average snowfall over several winters), reads the headline.

Following years of heavy snowfall, the National Park Service (NPS) is quietly removing all visitor center signs that declare the glaciers at Glacier National Park, located in Montana’s Rocky Mountains, would be gone by the year 2020 due to climate change.

However, the computer models the NPS relied upon from the early 2000s, which convincingly foretold an unending glacial retreat, turned out to be catastrophically inaccurate.

“Almost everywhere, the Park’s specific claims of impending glacier disappearance have been replaced with more nuanced messaging,” wrote Roger I. Roots, J.D., Ph.D.

“The Park Service is scrambling to remove the signs without their visitors noticing,” Roots posted on his Facebook wall, along with a video showing the sign changes.

Roots first reported the signage change in 2019 in an article for Watts Up With That.

The glaciers appear to be growing

Rather than melting, the glaciers appear to be growing, Roots said.

Teams from Lysander Spooner University (of which Roots is the founder) visiting the Park each September have noted that GNP’s most famous glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier and the Jackson Glacier appear to have been growing—not shrinking—since about 2010. (The Jackson Glacier—easily seen from the Going-To-The-Sun Highway—may have grown as much as 25% or more over the past decade.) As much as 25 percent!

A viral video published on Wattsupwiththat.com showed that the Grinnell Glacier appears to be slightly larger than in 2009.

Here’s that video: