'Roof of the world' melting fast

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=90e15e74dfb25c86&cat=89d96798a39564bd

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Glaciers covering China's Qinghai-Tibet plateau are shrinking by 7 percent a year due to global warming and the environmental consequences may be dire, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

Rising temperatures that have accelerated the melting of glaciers across the "roof of the world" will eventually turn tundra that spans Tibet and surrounding high country into desert, the agency quoted Professor Dong Guangrong with the Chinese Academy of Sciences as saying.

Dong warned the deterioration of the plateau may trigger more droughts and increase sandstorms that lash western and northern China. He reached his conclusions after analyzing four decades of data from China's 681 weather stations.

Han Yongxiang of China's National Meteorological Bureau said average temperatures in Tibet had risen 0.9 centigrade since the 1980s, accelerating the melting of glaciers and frozen tundra across the plateau
more...
Huge dust storms Glaciers melting... China should BEG the Dalai Llama to comeback... Karma strikes...

[gordianot]

1. Someday totalitarians such as China and the USA will admit warming.

But that is someday.

[Oversea Visitor]

2. At least they

they dont go beating round a bush.

[lovuian]

3. Shrinking Alpine glacier points to snowless future

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=57633bd3d588b7d5&cat=89d96798a39564bd

ON THE ALETSCH GLACIER, Switzerland (AP) -- It's cold in the snow up at 6,500 feet, even with sunshine pouring down from almost cloudless skies.

Skiers schuss their way down for well-earned lunches and there's a smile on almost every face in this winter wonderland.

Yet looking over the colossal sweep of the Aletsch glacier, a remnant of the last Ice Age snaking down through a deep valley below the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the picture appears far different -- and warmer.

The river of ice has retreated 2.1 miles since peaking at a length of 14 miles in 1860, estimates Hanspeter Holzhauser, a geographer at the University of Zurich who studies the Aletsch glacier region. Not quite half of the shrinkage has happened just since 1950.

A bare expanse of jumbled rocks and boulders stretches where the tongue of ice mass used to be. And the glacier will shrink more -- even if temperatures should stay at current levels -- because the warming of the last few decades has yet to take full effect, Holzhauser said.

The Aletsch was once seen as a threat, adding ice and threatening to encroach on inhabited areas. A large wooden cross testifies to villagers who gave thanks their homes were spared. These days, the glacier is more of a threat from its melting ice worsening valley floods.

more...
Flooding who'd guess!!!

[Hissyspit]

4. kick

[benburch]

5. How long before the height of Mt. Everest is reduced?

You know part of that is the snowcap...

[Triana]

6. China, meanwhile is building numerous...

coal-powered power plants. These will release even more CO2 into the atmosphere. The US, of course, will do nothing to stop them. But, unless we have buy-in from China and India to reduce CO2, we won't get far.

Not that the current cabal is interested in reducing it, but if they do not, the overall temperature of many areas may increase 3 - 8 degrees farenheit by about 2030-2040. (well, that's the East Coast of the US anyway...the climate of NC for instance on a day like today will be more like that of Florida - about 8 degrees warmer - to give just one example).

China is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in the next eight years. India could add 213 such plants; the US, 72.

The rapid industrialization of China and to a lesser extent India, rising natural gas prices, concerns about energy security, and large coal reserves in the United States and China are all driving the shift toward the construction of electricity generators that burn coal.

It is worth noting that the Kyoto treaty does NOT place any CO2 emissions restrictions on India or China.

Without the development and deployment of CO2 sequestration technology these coal plants alone will boost world CO2 emissions by 14% in a mere 8 years.

(do you think the bu$hit admin is interested in any technology to deal with this problem - even though it will affect us ALL? NOPE...)

[pinniped]

7. The glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro are also melting.

.

[Minstrel Boy]

8. Canadian arctic anticpating "King of Heat" summer

Will the summer of 2006 be the hottest ever?

This past winter may have been warm, with many places in Nunavut breaking long-standing temperature records, but the summer of 2006 will be the “King of Heat,” according to Wayne Davidson, a long-time observer of the sun in Resolute Bay.

”The summer should be warmer than last year, and last year was the warmest year in the northern hemisphere since records began,” said Davidson, who is able to cannily predict the weather by looking at the sun’s shape.

...

“That should be shocking. If that was happening in Toronto, plus 40 (celsius) in the middle of January, they would pay attention,” he said. “The changes in the North are big, they’re massive... we see them, we feel them and there is hardly an audience.”

...

“I know it’s faster than they were expecting it,” he said. “It’s going to be extremely warm. When the boats come here, 100 a day, Canada will be a different country. Even Canada will change if that happens.”

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/climate/60428_01.html

[roguevalley]

9. it has been 40 up to fifty lately here in alaska. the chinese are real

dicks with their environment and they are pushing their people to the wall. There will be revolution soon. count on it.

[mom cat]

10. Blame the multi national corps who moved to China to exploit it,

pollute it and turn its people into modern day slaves. All of us who luxuriate in cheap goods from China share in the guilt. The multi nationals are calling the tune here and all they care about is the next quarter's profit.

[Lisa]

11. there goes their water supply

Lots of places far away from the snowcaps in Tibet, and elsewhere in the Himalayas -- and in the Andes and Rockies too, for that matter -- depend on meltwater for their summer river flow. The effects on natural ecosystems, and agriculture, will be devastating.