I first heard of Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) in my beginning geology courses. A Pleistocene lake, Lake Agassiz, which covered parts of Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Minnesota, was named after Agassiz posthumously because of Agassiz’s research on glaciers in the Swiss Alps.

Aggasiz was born in Switzerland and educated there and in Germany, receiving a PhD. in 1829 in natural science, and a Doctorate in surgery and medicine in 1830, the later to please his Calvinist father.

In 1846 he moved to America where he became a professor of Zoology at Harvard, founded the Anderson School of Natural History near Cap Cod (one of the first coed colleges) that eventually became Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Agassiz was a passionate collector and established what would become the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He advertized far and wide for specimens, living or dead.

According to Irmsher, Agassiz was a complex man, a great friend to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and an arch-rival to Charles Darwin. He was a passionate scientist and part P.T. Barnum. And he had a dark side.

Irmsher writes that Agassiz’s story is “riven with the contradictions of a man who wanted to come across as both rigorously professional and unrelentingly popular, a man who believed that science practiced with due diligence could clear up not only the little problems that confounded the specialists but also the whole cosmic puzzle itself. Agassiz was one of the first to establish science as a collective enterprise. Yet he insisted on putting his own personal stamp on anything that came out of the museum he had founded and forbade his assistants to claim credit for any part of their own research done on company time. He was an ardent advocate of abolition, yet he also believed in the racial inferiority of blacks.”

Agassiz’s study of glaciers and fossils lead him to reject Darwin’s new theory of evolution. Rather, Agassiz was somewhat of a Creationist, but not as the term is currently used. Agassiz believed not in continuous evolution, but a series of creation events, in “oscillations,” where ice ages killed off everything and God created and recreated life anew.

Agassiz published over 400 books and scientific articles and was one of the first to propose that Europe and North America were once covered by glaciers. He was, however, a great proponent of field work, “study nature, not books.” He was also the consummate lecturer and his lectures were not confined to the classroom. His “popularity in America transcended class as well as regional boundaries.”

Irmsher spins an interesting story of a complex man based largely upon abundant correspondence from Agassiz, his contemporaries, and his wife and sister.

One of Agassiz’s great strengths was his ability to explain science to the layman. Irmsher writes in the epilogue, “as Louis Agassiz drifts into the sunset of this narrative, it is worth remembering how his struggles, problems, and aspirations are still with us. Yes, we haven’t moved beyond his biases and blindnesses as much as much as we would like to think we have, but that isn’t all. In my view, Louis Agassiz was never more provocative than when he argued science ought to be part of the general fabric of society.” I agree. More emphasis on science is needed in general education.

If you are interested in the history of science, its development and its characters, you will be interested in the story of Louis Agassiz.

The book is available is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and is available at Amazon as a hardcover book (to be released Feb. 5) and a Kindle edition. It is also available from Barnes & Noble.

The great circle airline route from Los Angeles to London passes over Hudson Bay (very icy on June 10, 2012), and southern Greenland. The photos below, taken from our flight to London at an altitude of 39,000 feet show the terrain near the southern coast of Greenland. The coastal area is not covered by the continental glacier of central Greenland. The sea, within a few miles of the coast contained hundreds of icebergs.

The first photo shows the general terrain of coastal Greenland. From 39,000 feet you can see the curvature of the earth, look at the horizon.

The next photo shows a small, snow-covered glacier near the center of the picture, along with a terminal moraine (pile of rocks) spilling into an estuary.

Ice caps and glaciers wax and wane in response to many cycles. In this post I examine recent research on the state of the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps, and glaciers in the Himalayas.

Himalayas

Satellite measurement of glaciers in the Himalayas revealed that these mountains lost only one-tenth the ice between 2003 and 2010 compared to the loss reported in previous estimates. (Source). The Guardian (U.K.) reports that Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber said: “The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero.”

This study period is very short and the results could be an artifact of the variable monsoons. The results could also reflect the difference between extrapolation from a few ground stations and more complete measurement by satellites. Satellite measurement is based on gravity, a method that is capable of giving a detailed picture. Gravity measurements are also used in mineral exploration.

Antarctica

A new surface mass balance (SMB) map of Antarctic shows no significant trend for the period 1979-2010. Note that this is a modeling study, but the authors claim it is in good agreement with 750 surface measuring stations. See full paper and graphics here.

Greenland

During the mid-2000s, Greenland received much publicity because of the rapid melting of outlet glaciers in the western and southern part of the island. A new study shows that this melting is part of a cycle that produced rapid melting in the 1930s as well. The study authors attribute the melting “with a relatively strong influence of Atlantic water and a lower influence of polar water on the shelf off Greenland, as well as with warm summers and the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation. (Source). The study was based on analysis of sedimentary deposits. Here is their graph of relative melting.

Rutgers University keeps track of snow cover around the world. Their data show as slight, but steadily increasing snow cover in Greenland since 1966. See graphs for the northern hemisphere as a whole here. There is a slightly increasing trend.

Two of the studies cited above give short-term glimpses of what is happening. They do not necessarily reflect long-term trends. But CAGW proponents and the press are quick to cite such studies when the trends go their way. And, even the short-term studies suggest that natural forces easily overwhelm any alleged influence of carbon dioxide emissions.

For the story on Sea ice see Arctic sea ice reaches seasonal low.

See also:

Ice Ages and Glacial Epochs

When Antarctica Freezes Over

Arctic tipping point, will there be an ice-free Arctic