The BBC has a very intriguing and well done piece on the state of glaciers in the Himalayas. Glaciers have drawn much attention from climatologists and other scientists since, worldwide, they have been rapidly shrinking. Some glaciers, tens of thousands of years old, have even completely melted away due to a rise in global temperatures.
Glaciers are often used as a measuring gauge of how rapidly the world is warming and how rapidly the warming is affecting the global environment and climate. For those who watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, you can probably remember him pointing to satellite images of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, showing decreasing snow coverage, and then boldly stating that in a certain time frame that there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. This is real and startling evidence of global warming and the effects on the planet are more than just losing pretty masses of ice and snow. With the loss of glaciers comes rising waters (both fresh and seawater), flooded villages and destroyed towns (as the risk is pointed out in the BBC article), and the complete change of an area's ecosystem.
Indeed, glaciers, ice shelves, and the poles are the warning voices to us, the human race, that our planet is warming. They are telling us that not only is the climate changing, but the face of the planet is changing. That affects all of us. The evidence and facts point to us as the cause, there can be no real challenge to that, for those are the scientifically gathered facts over many years and many experiments. This is why we need both stronger emissions regulations and a stepped-up program to move completely to clean, renewable energy production. Until we see it reflected in the ice, we haven't done enough. We may still lose much of the Earth's glaciers and other ice features, but we should not stop in our effort to reverse the damage our energy consumption has done. We must press forward, leaning heavily on our elected officials until they see the wisdom of the science and change that is needed, as well as using the media to help convince the masses who remain unconvinced because of terrible media coverage. We must take control of the story and we must not let it go. We must all do our part and do it well.
Glaciers are often used as a measuring gauge of how rapidly the world is warming and how rapidly the warming is affecting the global environment and climate. For those who watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, you can probably remember him pointing to satellite images of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, showing decreasing snow coverage, and then boldly stating that in a certain time frame that there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. This is real and startling evidence of global warming and the effects on the planet are more than just losing pretty masses of ice and snow. With the loss of glaciers comes rising waters (both fresh and seawater), flooded villages and destroyed towns (as the risk is pointed out in the BBC article), and the complete change of an area's ecosystem.
Indeed, glaciers, ice shelves, and the poles are the warning voices to us, the human race, that our planet is warming. They are telling us that not only is the climate changing, but the face of the planet is changing. That affects all of us. The evidence and facts point to us as the cause, there can be no real challenge to that, for those are the scientifically gathered facts over many years and many experiments. This is why we need both stronger emissions regulations and a stepped-up program to move completely to clean, renewable energy production. Until we see it reflected in the ice, we haven't done enough. We may still lose much of the Earth's glaciers and other ice features, but we should not stop in our effort to reverse the damage our energy consumption has done. We must press forward, leaning heavily on our elected officials until they see the wisdom of the science and change that is needed, as well as using the media to help convince the masses who remain unconvinced because of terrible media coverage. We must take control of the story and we must not let it go. We must all do our part and do it well.
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