Posted on 05/08/2009 4:46:04 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Bolivia’s Chacaltaya Glacier, once known as the world’s highest ski run at 17,388 feet, has completely melted away, serving as a vivid example of the effects of climate change on the glaciers around the globe.
“Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists.” - Dr. Edson Ramirez, Institute of Hydraulics and Hydrology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres
In 1999, Ramirez, the head of a team of researchers studying the glacier since 1991, believed that the glacier would continue to exist until 2015, but the rate of melting tripled in the last ten years, and the once popular tourist destination is now completely gone.
Only a handful of dedicated skiers and tourists now visit Chacaltaya, which does have a tiny area to ski on snowy days (a run of maybe 600 feet) just down from the location of the former glacier. Alfredo Martinez, a founder of the Club Andino de Bolivia, says ”Very few come to ski now.”
The Chacaltaya glacier is part of Bolivia’s Tuni Condoriri glaciated mountain system, which has lost a third of its ice since 1983. The best guess from researchers is that Tuni and Condoriri, the two largest glaciers in the system, will not last more than 20 to 30 years. Illimani, a 21,200 foot mountain looming over La Paz, is home to several glaciers, which may melt completely within 30 years, said Ramirez.
“It’s very probable that other glaciers are disappearing faster than we thought.” - Ramirez
Ramirez sees the disappearance of Chacaltaya as an example of the effects of greenhouse gas accumulation and an increase in average temperatures worldwide, but says that the controversies over the validity of global warming are irrelevant, because the effects are apparent in the Andean glaciers.
(Excerpt) Read more at ecoworldly.com ...
I blame cow farts.
the question is why?... to jump to the conclusion of global warming?... what does it look like today?
It’s winter so it will come right back ... It looks like the snow that is left over in the high Rockies. Some years it blocked the trails, other years it was all gone. Live with it.
I'm guilty on both counts.
So instead of dying when it was 1,953,456 years old, it died when it was 1,953,451 years old. The thing was shrinking and melting naturally.
In the largeness of geologic time, glaciers come and glaciers go. There was once one right on top of my Kansas farm. But, idiots, that’s another matter. Idiots are forever and that’s what the AGW cultists most certainly are.
BARF ALERT PLEASE
So, turn it into the tallest mountain bike downhill and quit your whining.
Has there been deforestation nearby?
Let's hope more glaciers melt!
...4 questions, yea? and? so? what?...
While glaciation expands elsewhere? Another blind man describing the elephant.
I'm just going to go to Baskin Robbins and think glacial thoughts over some rocky road instead.
("Think globally, act glacially?")
No way a peak at 17,388 feet is above 32 degrees. I blame the clean air act meaning more sunlight (sublimation) and less precipitation due to deforestation.
My guess would be that it formed during the last ice age, roughly 20,000 years ago.
The last ice age started to end about 20,000 years ago, but it started over 100,000. My number was an order of magnitude off though, lol.
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