Slashdot Mirror
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."
But won't this make it easier for AGW denialists to climb Everest?
We needed something to put the kegs in to stay cold.
We needed something epic.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Let me ask something slightly different. Is bacteria actually capable of changing the properties of something as huge as man? Oh wait, thats very different, my bad!
About 10k years ago, there was glacier over a mile thick right where I am sitting.
Must have been all those SUV driving woolly mammoth bastards!
When it comes to size you have to stop thinking about the Earth, 12,752km diameter, and think about the atmosphere, 90% within 50km of surface.
Could humans make an impact, yes. The CO2 increase since the start of the industrial revolution shows that.
Is that the main cause of climate change? That is what the real arguments are about.
If Humans are to blame is it too late to do anything? Don't know, don't care. Its been done.
Humanity will need to adapt to climate change or it'll die out, just like everything else on the planet.
Nepal's power is run from hydro installed by the Russians many years ago. The generators are on the rivers that contain run-off from the Himalayas. I used to live there ('99-'01) and there was enough problems with lack of water then for us to have many brown outs. But lately, friends over there have been telling me that the power has been out for weeks on end, with hospitals, etc, having to constantly run their diesel generators, increasing the already excessive amount of pollution in the air, especially around Kathmandu. They've been saying that it's because the rivers have had hardly any water in them, which is caused by the decreasing amount of ice on the mountains.
To visually compare the images properly, the color image needs to be turned into grayscale, and the two images need to be cut so that they can be properly superimposed. When this is done, the loss is a bit less impressive, but still noticeable in the valley if not on the mountains.
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
Since it's inevitable that this will devolve into a bunch of AGW/anti-AGW trolling, let's get our facts straight.
No one with any knowledge about the subject is disputing that climates change. The disputed points are that human-produced carbon dioxide is or is not a significant factor, that Al Gore does or does not have any clue what he's blabbing about, and that the green movement does or does not constitute anything more than lies and snake oil.
Anthropogenic or not, climate change is a serious issue which affects the future of our species. The people who support (or object to) AGW by chanting an entrenched position over and over, and the people selling us snake oil as a "fix" are NOT helping. In fact, they're probably selling the future of humanity off in order to make a quick buck off of people who get their science from Twitter and Fox News.
Slinging around words like "denialist" doesn't help a damn thing either. Have we forgotten Godwin's Law so quickly?
With that said, the "before and after" photo trick is extremely passe. It is good for gulling the public, but little more since you only have two data points and are doing absolutely nothing to control for any of numerous confounding factors. It doesn't tell you crap about local conditions (pollution? construction? traffic? did someone just set off dynamite as an anti-avalanche measure?). It doesn't tell you about shorter-term cycles of climate variation (what's normal? was it unusually heavy in the "before" photo? was there more or less pollution historically? what about solar cycles?). It doesn't tell you about the cause of the climate trend if any exists, and it absolutely does not tell you a single bloody thing about the global situation.
Nor is this "incontrovertible" proof all that clear. The saturation in the 1921 photo is such that it is very hard to compare the two photos directly; you would need to analyze each in detail including examining the depth in a given area, the seasonal and longer-term variations, the characteristics of the camera and film used in either photo...the list goes on. The "experts say" line is a bullshit maneuver pulled by journalists in order to make their craptastic statements of absolute truth seem like they have some authority behind them - in reality, it usually means that the journalist is aware that they don't have the means to back up what they're claiming. Three huzzahs for the terrible state of science journalism, eh? FUD and misinformation and more FUD is all you can expect.
> 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 really don't know the answer to how much of climate change is man-made. I tend to think that it's possible we have had some impact, but I can't say to what degree. However, I do have a few thoughts on the matter:
Even if our impact on climate is minimal to none, we certainly do have impact on our habitats and environments. Even if we aren't creating a greenhouse effect, I think it's a very good idea to pursue renewable resources and cleaner living so that we can prevent discomfort, health problems, and harming ecosystems (that again might have long term and indirect impacts on us all). I may doubt that a household can shit enough on their lawn in order to make it uninhabitable, but I think they can make it unpleasant and unhealthy.
You say that it is hubris to suggest we could have an impact on the environment. I say it is hubris to think that we are so smart that we won't screw things up by accident. Not only that, it's in contradiction to history. By accident (or unintentional side-effects), we have created acid rain, we have brought many species to the verge of extinction (without even including those that may be victims of climate change), we have caused diseases and birth defects, we have ruined ecosystems, and we have many small areas uninhabitable. You question whether all the industry and waste of the world in modern times combined could have a negative impact on our environment by accident, when single industrial facilities in one city have been proven to be able to greatly harm local environments by accident.
There may be a question of whether we are doing it, but I honestly do not think there is any question of whether we could. I guarantee we could (if we tried), and it's in the realm of possibility that we might without even trying.
Man has split the atom, left our planet and returned, and mapped code of life. We have imagined strange and amazing things, and then have proven them to exist millions of light years away. We are currently researching ways to not only build artificial intelligence, but even recreating the spark of life itself, and the most incredible thing is that we've gotten to the point that those possibilities don't even seem absurd anymore! Man has done great and terrible things. We will very likely continue to do so.
I don't think you give man enough credit in what we accomplish, or how badly we can botch things.
Take a respected science publication. Take "Nature" if you wish. From 2008. Count how many of the reputable, scientific publications there have been contradicted since then. 3000 pages of science without mistakes, without errors are not 3000 pages of up-to-date science. Having just two mistakes in the report is actually incredible. I am sure we will find more, this is an ongoing work. Misquotes, honest but dumb errors, happen to very good scientists. Being a top scientist doesn't mean you don't make mistake, but that you correct them when they are pointed out, even if it means questioning your basic premises.
Does the errors about glaciers ice loss question the existence of climate change ? No. Was this ever considered ? Hell yes. Actually, when one reads the actual IPCC report, you would see that it is far from alarming. I used to be a "soft denier" when I discovered that much of my claims were already there. The rise is small and slow, the link to human activity is credible but a lot of uncertainty factors are underlined, the rise being a long term natural cycle is not ruled out, etc...
The warming is not an invention. First measures apparently were a bit too high and over-estimated the rise. They have been corrected since and a rise is still present. I pity climatologists. They are trying to do good science in a very heavy political context. That must be very hard.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Since I live very close to himalayas, I can say with confidence, that things have changed quite a bit.
Is it global warming/regional warming or no warming, I dunno.
But over the past 6-7 years these changes have forced farmers to change crop cycles, modified travel plans of seasonal roads, etc., etc.,
Basically, in the Western himalayas, around November, snowfalls would start, seasonal roads would close by december, and jan feb were heavy snowfall months, with some in April and may.
Now from past few years, there is hardly any snow during December and even January, which leads to lousy apple crop.
Then in feb, it snows some, and in April may and june, well heavy snowfall in higher reaches.
This kills the standing crop.
The entire north India reels under heat wave as there is hardly any winter rain. We start getting summer in feb instead of April.
The mountains start getting snow.
So is it warming or cooling. No idea, but its a big change from what has been happening since 1900 or so(when record keeping started).
Winter rain, at the correct time, and winter snow at correct time is very important for healthy crops. all this cycle change has led to big problems.
To add to that, monsoon summer rain has also reduced. Thankfully, this year, though a bit late, monsoon is mostly adequate, but then here also instead of sustained rain over few days, most places get a cloudburst like havoc creating spell, and then its humid and dry. The dams will get filled up, but areas depending only on rain will suffer.
Such rains also lead to big landslides.
Part of the blame is on local deforestation, and micro climate change in the Himalayan region due to rapid commercialization and deforestation. Since protecting the environment is not yet a major election issue, its just a lip service on world environment day, when we switch of lights for an hour(and then get the routine 10 hour power cut due to overload of AC).
So all in all, pics or no pics, the local weather in western himalayas has changed. Hopefully, this weather pattern will stabilize, and farmers will switch there crop sowing times. But since its still too erratic, its a big problem.
As for global warming, when I see the temperature records for the region since 1900, the average temp has been rising steadily in most places, but whether this warming is caused by humans or not, I dunno. I am not a climatologist and like many people here, I will refrain from posting my theories on the changes.
All that matters to many, is that its getting hotter and drier, and rainfall patterns are shifting alarmingly.
Many glaciers in central himalayas are indeed receding, and its a fact. Not that they are warmer now, but because from past few years, there has been little winter snow in these areas.
The ski slopes of Auli, which used to be snowed out in winters, now are devoid of snow many times. Last year Auli did not get a snow season.
This year in June higher reaches of himachal got a few feet of snow. Not unusual, but definitely unusual in the peak of summer!
So the weather is changing, but who is changing it I dunno. I hope it can be fixed, because it causing a lot of food supply problems. Fruits are out of reach of many, and if this continues, even cereals will become precious.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography