Talk:Mendenhall Glacier
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Disturbance Ecology Information[edit]
 | This article was the subject of an educational assignment in 2013 Q3. Further details were available on the "Education Program:Louisiana State University/HNRS 1035:Natural Disturbances and Society" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki. |
I'm a student at LSU in a natural disturbance and society class where our focus is on the effects of natural disturbances. It is a Wikipedia Education Program course and I would like to add to this page. I plan on talking about the retreat of the Mendenhall Glacier, the positive and negative effects of this retreat, the impact that climate change has, and the impact that humans have. If anyone wants to contact me please feel free. Sklupp1 (talk) 22:45, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Propaganda?[edit]
Is this an article about the glacier itself, or a diatribe about climate change/global warming/mankind is evil?Catherinejarvis (talk) 23:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
- Given that climate change is scientifically linked to the rapid change in the glacier's rate of retreat and to other ecological changes in the vicinity... I hardly think it's inappropriate for this article to discuss climate change. Is there something specifically you're opposed to? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:13, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
- You want specifics? I do support the Education Program, but as with a lot of what they touch, this article has been gussied up more than substantially improved. Adding content about the glacier's retreat is fine, but currently it's overtaking the article. Compare the weight afforded retreat and climate change in the article with the comparative short shrift given to such things as physical characteristics and geography, geology, history and etymology. The section on the visitor center could be better suited as a more generalized section on tourism. Note that the infobox says "Juneau Borough". Is that supposed to be as opposed to "Juneau City"? Of course, they've been one and the same since 1970, but that hasn't stopped the Wikipedia invention of "Juneau" standing for "the part of town the tourists see" and forking the rest of the municipality onto obscure corners of the encyclopedia. For example, it appears that there's a concerted effort to avoiding acknowledging that the greatest concentration of Juneau's population lives within a five mile radius of the glacier. Blanking the section on human impact just because it was empty content doesn't help when it is a subtopic of great importance to the article's topic. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:52, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
- This article is about the Mendenhall Glacier, so it should discuss the Mendenhall Glacier and NOT other topics. Climate change and its anthropogenic origins should be discussed in climate change articles, NOT in this article. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a blog to express convictions, whatever they are. The general section about climate change and its anthropogenic origins is irrelevant in this article and should be removed. --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 21:09, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- Anthropogenic climate change is not a "conviction," but a scientific fact directly related to the observable rate of retreat of Mendenhall Glacier. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- While I personally believe that climate change has anthropogenic origins, I acknowledge that it is surrounded by a controversy, don't you? Among topics discussed by experts is the fraction of glacier retreat attributable to climate change (see for instance http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/919). Anyway, this article is NOT the place to discuss the anthropogenic origins of climate change, is it? --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- It's not the place to go into an extensive discussion, I agree, but it's certainly relevant to mention that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for the increased rate of Mendenhall Glacier's retreat in modern times. The "controversy" doesn't really matter; the idea that climate change isn't anthropogenic is a fringe theory as far as we're concerned and merits no space in this article. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:10, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- While I personally believe that climate change has anthropogenic origins, I acknowledge that it is surrounded by a controversy, don't you? Among topics discussed by experts is the fraction of glacier retreat attributable to climate change (see for instance http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/919). Anyway, this article is NOT the place to discuss the anthropogenic origins of climate change, is it? --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- Anthropogenic climate change is not a "conviction," but a scientific fact directly related to the observable rate of retreat of Mendenhall Glacier. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- This article is about the Mendenhall Glacier, so it should discuss the Mendenhall Glacier and NOT other topics. Climate change and its anthropogenic origins should be discussed in climate change articles, NOT in this article. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a blog to express convictions, whatever they are. The general section about climate change and its anthropogenic origins is irrelevant in this article and should be removed. --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 21:09, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- You want specifics? I do support the Education Program, but as with a lot of what they touch, this article has been gussied up more than substantially improved. Adding content about the glacier's retreat is fine, but currently it's overtaking the article. Compare the weight afforded retreat and climate change in the article with the comparative short shrift given to such things as physical characteristics and geography, geology, history and etymology. The section on the visitor center could be better suited as a more generalized section on tourism. Note that the infobox says "Juneau Borough". Is that supposed to be as opposed to "Juneau City"? Of course, they've been one and the same since 1970, but that hasn't stopped the Wikipedia invention of "Juneau" standing for "the part of town the tourists see" and forking the rest of the municipality onto obscure corners of the encyclopedia. For example, it appears that there's a concerted effort to avoiding acknowledging that the greatest concentration of Juneau's population lives within a five mile radius of the glacier. Blanking the section on human impact just because it was empty content doesn't help when it is a subtopic of great importance to the article's topic. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:52, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
As of this writing, I still see an excess of things such as climate change commentary/minutiae and inappropriate capitalization, perhaps at the expense of providing a coherent narrative which ties anything together. Here's what the state department of highways wrote in 1965 as background information for the dedication ceremony of the first Brotherhood Bridge:
Upstream from this bridge is Mendenhall Glacier, one of 16 large glaciers flowing from 1,000 square miles of the Juneau Icefield. Originally called Auk Glacier by the Tlingits, it was two miles closer in the 1700's and is now receding 90 feet yearly.
The reason I included that is to show that the glacier's retreat is of longstanding enough historical interest, something else I'm not sure is properly reflected in the article text. The section below causes me to once again wonder whether editors give more credence to The Huffington Post than to common sense when it comes to determining the content of what's supposed to an information resource, not a portal to big corporate media. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 19:31, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
Trees exposed by the receding glacier[edit]
No mention of the 1000 year old trees that have been exposed by the receding glacier? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23/mendenhall-glacier_n_3975699.html 178.250.210.5 (talk) 08:21, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
- Indeed, this is THE information I was looking for when reading this article. I had to rely on other source, such as http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html and http://juneauempire.com/outdoors/2013-09-13/ancient-trees-emerge-frozen-forest-tomb#.VD64TISJm3C --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 21:01, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
- I just created the section "Ancient forest uncovered" with excing text and added reference to above articles --Jacques de Selliers (talk) 21:46, 15 October 2014 (UTC)