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Rising Temperatures Could Melt Most Himalayan Glaciers By 2100 (nationalgeographic.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cause-and-effect dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world's tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region's glaciers by the end of the century (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) even if the world's most ambitious climate change targets are met, according to a report released Monday. If those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to the report, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Under those more dire circumstances, the Himalayas could heat up by 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius) by century's end, bringing radical disruptions to food and water supplies, and mass population displacement. Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region, which spans over 2,000 miles of Asia, provide water resources to around a quarter of the world's population. One of the most complete studies on mountain warming, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment was put together over five years by 210 authors. The report includes input from more than 350 researchers and policymakers from 22 countries.

2 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's a lot of people involved by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good predictive science is about making the best extrapolations you can with the data and theory you have.

    Except that is not what they did. Taking a ruler and drawing a tangent to a curve is drafting not science.

    Nothing is linear over an 80 year timeframe. If you look at CO2 emissions, they are rising overall. But they are falling in some developed countries, and have reach an inflection point in many more. The technology that has made this possible will spread, as it always does, to the rest of the world.

    If instead of a simple linear projection, the first derivative and (especially) second derivative, are taken into account, the projection looks very different. But not as scary, which was the whole point.

  2. Liberal = Dictatorship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since Trump got elected, I've been waiting for liberals to call for ending elections since they aren't winning.

    In my lifetime, liberals have turned against...
    Free speech
    Right to own firearms to defend yourself
    Right to privacy (See FISA abuses under Obama)
    Now they are starting to talk about getting rid of elections

    Yep, you are going full dictatorship, and I'll be here to point it out so other people don't join you.