World's Largest Tropical Glacier Vanishing

Socguy wrote with a link to a CBC article about the rapidly disappearing Peruvian glacier known as the Quelccaya ice cap. The world's largest tropical glacier was a hot topic this past Thursday at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, and a team of Ohio state scientists, produced the stunning news that Quelccaya and similar formations are melting at a rate of some 60 metres per year. While polar ice caps have commanded attention in the discussion of global warming to date, these tropical caps are crucial to the well-being of ecosystems relying on an influx of mountain stream fresh water.

Comments

Re:When will the denials stop?

[Max Littlemore]

De Niles, both de Blue and de White Niles, will only stop after de big lake Victoria dries up, and it's gonna haf to get a bit warmer for dat. But dat is in Africa and dis is in Peru, Sout America. Mod de parent -1 Offtopic.

Re:When will the denials stop?

[sumdumass]

I cannot believe that people would mark something like this as 'informative.' First of all, this view is only partially relevant when talking about America and perhaps Western Europe. If you look at other nations, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, hunger is a problem now, even without drastic climate change, because there isn't enough food produced for all the people there. Imagine if climate change caused the desert of the Sahara to shift south, or if longer rainy seasons destroyed fragile ecosystems, causing crops to fail. The entire continent could starve, and little could be done about it.

lol.. Well I asumed the conversation was about america when the topic of katrina came up. But even with africa and such, It still won't be as bad as you think. They will adapt and other countries will step in to help like they have when anything like this has happened before. This wouldn't be the first time some country has had drought or famine. It won't be the last either. The good part about being global in comunication is that the prolem won't go as long before being notice like it has in the past.

Looking back at the United States, particularly at Katrina, it is unfair to say that only the local government was to blame. Other areas are not as bad off as New Orleans because New Orleans is an urban area, with a much higher population density and less sturdy construction, in addition to being below sea-level, allowing it to flood. Furthermore, state emergence planning for catastrophes is based on what might be called a good-neighbor policy. If one parish or community is destroyed by a natural disaster, others nearby are supposed to come to its aid. In the case of Katrina, the entire area surrounding New Orleans was devastated, so of course the state was unable to respond. In such a situation, it is the obligation of the Federal government to step in and provide the necessary aid. Even with some delay in calling for FEMA, FEMA should have had a more realistic view of what was going on and been better prepared to handle this particular emergency, which many people have predicted for decades.

I didn't say the local governments were the only ones to blame, but they deserve a good portion of it. And this idea of relying on neighbors as a disaster plan is BS. Quit making excuses for them. They had a disaster plan and didn't follow it. And what made New Orleans such a disaster had nothing to do with being an urban area or poor construction. They had the means to evacuate and the means to safley house the people. The storm shifted direction and the evacuation was canceled. This is what left a good portion of the people in the area! And getting them out when the flooding started instead of sitting on your ass because your didn't read the disaster plan that was never followed would have made everthing much better. And sure the feds were slow to kick in, But a lot of that was because the situartion went from one level that everyone was prepared for to several levels higher that needed aditional support. And I don't understand how anyone can think that flooding of an area is worse then entire town disapearing. Except the fact that the people in the towns that disapeared followed the plan and most everyone got out were in New Orleans they didn't.

New Orleans was a breakdown with attitudes and problems everywhere. If the state and city would have had it togetherm it wouldn't have been near as bad! The mayor even tried to sidestep the rescue and recovery efforts by telling people they could go back and answered to the objections from FEMA and DHS that another storm was comming with "admiral fatty pants". This guy is the same one who called the 9/11 site a hole in the ground and critisized NY that it has "taken them over 5 years to fill it".

Goto the wikki page in it and look at the failings of the state and local governments and then look at