Posted on 02/16/2007 6:08:30 AM PST by Abathar
The principal glacier of the world’s biggest tropical ice-cap could disappear within five years as a result of global warming, one of the world’s leading glaciologists predicted yesterday.
The imminent demise of the Qori Kalis glacier, the main component of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Peruvian Andes, offers the starkest evidence yet of the effects of climate change, according to Lonnie Thompson, of Ohio State University.
Although scientists have known for decades that Qori Kalis and the other Quelccaya glaciers are melting, new observations indicate that the rate of retreat is increasing, Professor Thompson said. When he visits this summer, he expects to find that the glacier has halved in size since last year, and he believes that Qori Kalis will be gone within five years.
“This widespread retreat of mountain glaciers may be our clearest evidence of global warming as they integrate many climate variables,” Professor Thompson told the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco. “Most importantly, they have no political agenda.”
The Quelccaya ice-cap, covering 17 square miles (44 sq km) in the Cordillera Oriental region of the Peruvian Andes, is the world’s largest tropical ice mass. Qori Kalis, its biggest glacier, has receded by at least 0.6 miles (1.1km) since 1963, when the first formal measurements were made from aerial photographs. The rate of retreat has increased: between 1963 and 1978, it shrank by 6.5 yards (6m) a year, a rate that has now risen tenfold to 65 yards annually.
Professor Thompson predicted six years ago that the celebrated snows of Kilimanjaro would be gone from Africa’s highest mountain by 2015, and he now thinks that that estimate may have been too conservative. He said: “Tropical glaciers are the canaries in the coalmine for our global climate system, as they integrate and respond to most of the key climatological variables — temperature, precipitation, cloudiness, humidity and radiation.”
A critical piece of evidence from almost fifty scientific expeditions to seven shrinking tropical ice-caps points to global warming as the reason for their decline. In all but one case, snowfall has increased as ice volume has fallen. More snow should mean advancing glaciers, unless rising temperatures are melting the extra precipitation and the ice tongues themselves.
Yep. If you look at most Liberal positions they use the "static" model to prove why everybody besides them is wrong. They do it with economic issues, social issues, you name it. It is the underlying folly of virtually every argument they make. I can't for the life of me figure out why the 'Pubbies have such a hard time debating Liberals. It should be a logical slam dunk......
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Maybe if Greenpeace surrounded the glacier with boats, it won't melt. |
So the United States is responsible for what happens climatologically in Peru?
Dang! I am going to have to change my vacation plans for 2013.
Good point!
I for one have no regrets over melting ice!
Ditter, I've been waiting for you to fess up. Your carbon footprint's probably responsible for the ozone hole. ;^)
I don't know, but Greenland is getting icier and the glaciers in the western US are getting bigger.
Yes, they think that we are that stupid. Here's something from Opinion Journal that exposes the fallacy of the science on global warming as concerns Antarctia:
An Ohio State University press release, meanwhile, says that temperatures in Antarctica during the late 20th century "did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models":
It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.
But David Bromwich, a professor of atmospheric sciences at OSU, "said the disagreement between climate model predictions and the snowfall and temperature records doesn't necessarily mean that the models are wrong." The important thing is that they work in theory, not in practice.
It is an unusually cold day where I am now. Snow in the foothills surrounding the city. Nothing strange to you in the North, but in Santiago Chile! It is suppose to be like a California August. Go to www.emol.com and see a photo of folks in the snow in the hills. What have we done to Gaia to offend her?
Absolutely ! "Lynch all soccer moms !"
Or suppose the UN had insisted in 1979 that all countries band together to cover glaciers with soot to make them melt ?
Do you suppose they'd have taken the blame 30 years later for rising sea levels ?
Hey, maybe they did, and they are just trying to scapegoat CO2 for the melting.
The United States is responsible for anything that goes wrong in the entire world. Didn't you get the memo ?
That's why I've always favored taking over. If we're going to get the blame, we may as well be in charge.
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