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New Photos Show 'Devastating' Ice Loss On Everest
Simmeh writes "The BBC reports on new photos of the Himalayas taken from exactly the same position as ones from 1929 and compares the ice coverage. The Asia Society, which did the groundwork, are quoted as saying, 'If the present rate of melting continues, many of these glaciers will be severely diminished by the middle of this century.' I guess the previous claim wasn't too unrealistic."
Conspiracy theories and scientific hypes aside, is man actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as planet Earth?
Or, in other words, can we stop this even if we want to? Earth will continue changing as it will continue rotating, and we might as well take our minds off what we cannot change and work a little bit more on what we can, i.e. the misery of mankind.
You say that like you're thinking of "one man" affecting an entire planet.
Think of it this way, the surface area of the planet is 5.1x10E8 km^2, but there are 6.75 billion people alive today.
The real question is, can "one man" have an impact on their own personal share of 0.07556 km^2? That's only 7.6 hectares per person, of which only 2.2 hectares is 'land', which includes mountains, desert, and ice. This leaves about 1 hectare of productive land for each human being.
So the better question to ask is:
Are men capable of changing the properties of something as huge as 1 hectare each?
I'd say: YES
> From the article it sounds as if the issue in questions is water supply and how changing the normal rate of glacial melt could change how people live.
They may be able to fix that:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4932332-indian-engineer-builds-glaciers-to-fight-climate-change
Quote: As of this year he has built 10 artificial glaciers, using a simple system of pipes and stone dams to pool and direct streams of water into heavily shaded parts of valleys above a given village. During winter the pools become thick ice masses - frozen water tanks for farmers who need reliable summer flows as a hedge against changing weather patterns.
Some people have done glacier growing for a long time:
http://www.umb.no/statisk/noragric/publications/master/2007_ingvar_tveiten.pdf
Quote:
People in the districts of Baltistan and Gilgit practice 'glacier growing' with the intention of
making glaciers that will enhance water availability. This is done by carrying glacier ice from
a naturally occurring glacier up to elevations over 4000 m a.s.l., where it is placed in a dug
out cave in a scree-slope. Apart from the ice, gourds containing water are also added to
interior of the cave. Then a layer of charcoal, and sawdust or wheat husks is put on top of the
ice. The workers close off the cave by piling up rocks to cover the entrance.
Lastly, by growing many glaciers, you can affect the albedo of a mountain, or even a mountainous region and thus affect local climate. Darker mountains absorb more heat and thus lose ice faster, reverse that by making more glaciers and other glaciers could appear without you having to make them directly.
I've seen a lot of proposals that could help against climate change, but I've never seen one that would turn people into peasants; quite the contrary, they usually involve a ton of technological progress. The countries who would mainly lose out are the ones that are basing their economy on oil—and those people are often already mostly peasants.
The biggest problem with people who deny the massive amounts of evidence pointing towards a significant human effect on global warming tend to be those who are financially benefiting from the alleged destruction of our environment .
Out of 3,146 scientists surveyed as to if they believed human activity to be of significant contribution to the increase in global temperatures since the 1800's, 82 percent said they did. Interestingly out of the petroleum geologists asked in this survey (who's job is oil exploration) only 47 percent believed.
(source:http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/19/eco.globalwarmingsurvey/index.html)
Ice melt is one of the worst indicators imaginable of antropogenous warming. Glaciers, snow and ice are more influenced by the dust we produce than by temperature.
Up to as recent as the 80-es the industrialized countries have been producing immense amounts of soot from buring coal, diesel, etc.The developing nations (including India) are now the main polluters and they are producing more and more of it. I am not surprised that Asian glaciers are retreating. Considering the complete lack of pollution control in India and China I would be surprised if they were not.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Yup most sane people understand that recycling at home is useless (in the separate your crap containers to feel good about yourself) Recycling in general IS effective. Lead recycling is hugely successful and has significantly reduced the need for mining new lead. Steel and metals recycling is hugely sucessful, almost all foundries use scrap metal in their furnaces. Plastics recycling makes us that horribly overpriced plastic decking that the rich people use to feel good on their new 6800 sq foot 8 bedroom home for 2, but there are other things that are real uses like fleece.. just don't get it near open flame as that crap goes up faster than gasoline soaked rags...
Composting at home is recycling that does work well.
Recycling works, it is that feel good, separate your trash, recycling at the curb that is fake. In fact more could be done to help the environment by having these feel good yuppie environmentalists STOP drinking bottled water. Bottled water is really bad for the environment as most bottling plants destroy the aquifer for the area they tap into for the real spring water.... The rest is just city water put in plastic bottles that are not recycled if you don't take the cap and ring off. because the makers are too stupid to make the cap and bottle out of the same plastic. Well not too stupid, it's on purpose... Cheapest price is far more important that recyclability.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.