“Summer skiers now sweep by a patch of white polyethylene as big as a football field against the backdrop of majestic jagged peaks.. It works like a picnic cooler, deflecting the sun while keeping the contents cool.” (Seattle Times/AP)
“Most of Austria’s 925 glaciers have been receding under decades of global warming, prompting researchers and ski-lift operators to seek novel solutions. Here, in the Tyrol region of western Austria, they’re fighting the melt by covering the weak spots with blankets of white plastic or foil that keep the cold in and the heat out.” […]
Older people in Neustift im Stubaital, the Austrian village below Eisgrat, remember their grandparents sending their priest up into the mountains to appeal to God to stop the encroaching glacier. Now they pray for an end to the melt that threatens the jobs of about 1.2 million Tyroleans linked in some way to glacier skiing.
Older people in Neustift im Stubaital, the Austrian village below Eisgrat, remember their grandparents sending their priest up into the mountains to appeal to God to stop the encroaching glacier. Now they pray for an end to the melt that threatens the jobs of about 1.2 million Tyroleans linked in some way to glacier skiing.
Well, they DID ask!
It was 98F in the Arctic yesterday. No lie.
Yet another reason to sign on to Kyoto.
it’s all in our head — or so says ExxonMobil… we we can trust them over trusting our own eyes, skin and numerous scientists… (yeah riiiiight)
Great write up on Global Warming and the “climate of denial” in Mother Jones last issue. ExxonMobil is shelling out some big money to 40 different think tanks to downplay and misdirect any attention on global warming. The bastards.
Thanks Susan!
It is pretty amazing (in a negative sort of way). Courtesy of growing up in Geneva with hiking/climbing/skiing mad parents I’ve been spending time in the Alps on a regular basis for a quarter century now. I find the glacier retreat most obvious in Chamonix where the glaciers previously stretched down to a very low altitude. On my last visit a couple weeks ago I couldn’t help but stare at those big swathes of barren dirt and rock where glaciers stretched just a few years ago.
The retreat also makes the glaciers more dangerous for hikers and climbers since the old easy and safe routes across are now riddled with crevasses and the risk of serac falls.
It’s happening everywhere. Mt.Everest and the Himilayas, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa (pardon the uncertain spelling), Glacier National Park in the U.S.
There have been stories on visible glacier retreat in all these places over the past several months.
We’re not even doing the easy part yet, which is admitting the reality of global heating, admitting it’s a very serious phenomenon. The really hard parts come later, like understanding that it’s going to keep happening for a long time no matter what we do, because these are effects of what we’ve done to the planet already.
We can only work together to mitigate damage, and save the planet for a future we’ll never see.
As far as I can tell, almost nobody is facing this.
Does anyone know what Iceland is experiencing? When I lived there between 82 and 84, we had one of the hottest days they could remember in June 83…60-something F. I wonder what they are experiencing now, let alone the geographic changes.