Now alarmist Molnia backpedals: he's suddenly remembered "pretty dramatic" melting of many glaciers during Alaska's cold summer of 2008

Sierra Summit: Climate Change "Denial" - Alaska glaciers - Fact and fiction

So I called up Bruce Molnia, a veteran U.S. Geological Survey research geologist and author of the comprehensive new book, Glaciers of Alaska.
"More than 99 percent of the glaciers in Alaska have a long-term trend of rapid retreat, thinning and stagnation," Molnia told me. "And that 99 percent continue to retreat."
Many, though, did thicken in their upper reaches this year as a result of heavy snowfall last winter and cooler weather over the summer. "But thickening does not translate into growing," Molnia cautioned. "And this summer was still pretty dramatic in terms of the rate of melting of many glaciers."
Ironically enough, the thickening - retreating flap began with Molnia himself, in particular with comments he made about the heavy snow accumulation on some glaciers in an article in the Anchorage Daily News. Very quickly, he said, global warming skeptics - including talk radio host Rush Limbaugh - were seizing upon his comments and tweaking them to fit their own agendas.
"I saw individual phrases strategically pulled out of individual paragraphs to give the impression that glaciers were not melting and ... that we are being sold a bill of goods on climate change," he said. "I was fascinated at how aggressively this was picked up and broadly it was circulated."
"I think they are grasping for straws," Molnia said of the skeptics. "So much of the science community has come around, and even some of the more conservative Republicans have come around and said: Yes we recognize the climate is changing."
In all, Alaska has roughly 2,000 large glaciers, Molnia said. Only about a dozen - less than one percent - are advancing, largely because of heavy snowfall in the upper portions of their watersheds. The remaining 99.4 percent are retreating.
"Alaska as a whole is warming and these glaciers are accelerating their melting," Molnia said.
(For visual evidence, look at the photos of the Muir glacier in Alaska above. The first was taken by William O. Field in 1941; the second was taken by Molnia himself in 2004.)
And even though some glaciers began receding as long ago as 1750 from natural temperature increases, the driving force behind today's meltdown is global warming caused by the the build-up of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, Molnia said.
"What we're seeing is that anthropogenic effects are accelerating the rate of melting and probably have been a factor for the better part of a century," Molina said.

Bad weather was "good" for Alaskan glaciers

Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too.
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One cool summer that leaves 20 feet of new snow still sitting atop glaciers come the start of the next winter is no big deal, Molnia said.

Ten summers like that?

Well, that might mark the start of something like the Little Ice Age.
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The difference in temperature between this summer in Anchorage -- the third coldest on record -- and the norm?

About three degrees, according to the National Weather Service.