Ice Ice...Maybe
Glacier National Park could be due for a name change

Photographs like these might soon be all that's left of Grinnell Glacier, seen at left in 1938 and at right in 2005, globally the hottest year on record. The 7,000-year-old ice monolith, located in Montana's Glacier National Park, has shrunk by 70 percent in the past century or so. "Virtually all the glaciers of the world are retreating," says ecologist Daniel Fagre of the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, stationed in the park. "It's clear evidence of global climate change. They don’t retreat for any other reason." If temperatures continue to climb at current rates, the last of the park’s glaciers will vanish by 2030. Visitors, Fagre says, are conscious of the deadline: "We hear more often that people want to come see the glaciers before they disappear."