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General discussion

Mountaineers testify to warming's effect

Apr 7, 2007 3:21PM PDT


BEND, Ore. - Mountaineers are bringing back firsthand accounts of vanishing glaciers, melting ice routes, crumbling rock formations and flood-prone lakes where glaciers once rose.

The observations are transforming a growing number of alpine and ice climbers, some of whom have scientific training, into eyewitnesses of global warming. Increasingly, they are deciding not to leave it to scientists to tell the entire story.

"I personally have done a bunch of ice climbs around the world that no longer exist," said Yvon Chouinard, a renowned climber and surfer and founder of Patagonia, Inc., an outdoor clothing and gear company that champions the environment. "I mean, I was aghast at the change."

Chouinard pointed to recent trips where the ice had all but disappeared on the famous Diamond Couloir of 16,897-foot Mount Kenya, and snow was absent at low elevations on 4,409-foot Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak, in the Highlands of northwest Scotland. He sees a role for climbers in debating climate change, even if their chronicles are unscientific.

"Most people don't care whether the ice goes or not, the kind of ice that we climb on and stuff," he said. But climbers' stories, he added, can "make it personal, instead of just scientists talking about it. Telling personal stories might hit home to some people."

Alpine climbers are worrying about the loss of classic routes and potential new lines up mountains that are melting, from the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest and the Alps in Europe to the Andes in South America and the Himalaya in Asia.

Their anecdotes often reflect what science is finding, but with stories and pictures from places where most scientists aren't able to reach.

"As climbers we see these places, we go all over the world," Mark Bowen, a climber and physicist who wrote a book on climate and mountains, told the American Alpine Club at its annual meeting last week in Bend.

"We're in touch with the natural world like few people are. We can see the changes better than most people can," he said.

Scientists and diplomats at an international conference in Belgium predicted on Friday that global warming would turn many glaciers to lakes and cause rock avalanches because of frozen ground melting up high. People living in mountain areas can expect more risk of floods by glacial lakes.

Already, Switzerland's Matterhorn had to be closed to some climbing at times because of recent summer rockfall attributed to global warming and its Great Aletsch Glacier ? Europe's largest ? has retreated a couple miles from its peak of 14 miles in length in 1860. The Swiss Alps' icy soil that glues its rock faces together is thawing, causing instability.

At Montana's Glacier National Park, glaciers are vanishing like the storied snows of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. In South America, the great ice fields of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile are shrinking; Bolivia hopes to keep its only ski area open by using artificial snow as the Chacaltaya Glacier fades.

The glacier from which Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made their first ascent of 29,035-foot Mount Everest in 1953 has retreated so much that mountaineers now walk hours longer to reach it. A mile-long lake replaced the glacier at 20,305-foot Island Peak in Nepal's Everest region.

Japanese mountaineer and explorer Tomatsu Nakamura, editor of the Japanese Alpine News, said climbers are seeing more melting and less snow and ice in the mountains of the eastern Himalaya, Tibet and Bhutan, home to many of the highest unclimbed peaks in the world.

Since the 1940s, when geologist Maynard Miller began conducting research on Alaska's vast Juneau Icefield, he has seen how global warming has affected glaciers studied in the longest continuous research program of any icefield system.

"We're going to be in one heck of a mess, I can guarantee that. We have mucked up the world's climate," said Miller, who was part of the 1963 expedition that got the first Americans to the summit of Mount Everest.

"Everything is changing, minute after minute, nothing is the same," he said. "Glaciers are extraordinarily sensitive indicators of climate change."

Discussion is locked

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I did thyat...
Apr 30, 2007 8:52PM PDT

It does NOT show that he is funded by any oil company. He is "affiliated" with certain groups that might have received money from oil companies. Probably the same could be said fore any scientist on either "side" of the debate. You did NOT prove your case.

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These are the kind of guys who want to protect their own
Apr 8, 2007 3:37AM PDT

personal perks. If something impinges on their own, personal experience, they're against it. I would not look to a bunch of rich, pampered guys for an accurate reading of the world's weather system.

Obviously, there are some who are doing just that. It's kind of like looking to PETA for guidance on how to manage cattle.

BTW, it's not 'a few days of weather' as someone claimed. It looks like Colorado has had a fairly heavy snow year which reverses the trend of the last few years. I guess that there are a few inconvenient truths that the Gore crowd would like to ignore.

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How does that make them different...
Apr 8, 2007 1:49PM PDT

... from any other businessman then?

I guess your implication is only rich outdoors men are self interested... of course where does that leave **** Cheney?

Your mention of PETA is inappropriate in this conversation. A radical fringes group has nothing in common with a group of successful corporate business men.

Now, can we get past the hyperbole and exaggerations both from you and me and discuss the one thing you mentioned that may be pertinent?

As far as a heavy winter in Colorado? Was this large amount of precipitation experienced up and down the western continental divide? A state versus the western seaboard getting a lot of snow is quite a large contrast and may be a better indicator of weather trends.

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Someone might listen to businessmen speaking about business.
Apr 8, 2007 4:35PM PDT

Businessmen analyzing climate? Give me a break!

You want to listen to rich guys who visit a few peaks when you like what they are saying. When you don't like the message, even the entire state of Colorado isn't enough. I'll bet the snow stopped at the Colorado border. Right?

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"I'll bet the snow stopped at the Colorado border. "
Apr 8, 2007 9:07PM PDT

I believe that is exactly what I just asked you? Your the one who said Colorado was significant so tell us why?

As far as myself or anyone else not liking the message? That is exactly what I haver been asking in regards to how some can say that only a select few minority of scientists who say man has no impact on global temperature can be right when the majority say man does have an impact. Seems like this is science based on political popularity. The very same bias that is claimed for the "man is responsible" crowd.

I personally think this issue has been too politicized already for any reasonable consideration to be made in the public arena. Thus any politician categorically claiming to know the truth is doing so for self serving reasons... the average business man too. The thing I would put forth about Chouinard and his ilk is that these folks are not the average business men. That is precisely why I pointed him out... because he backs up his viewpoint with the way he runs his own business.

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duh! say whut!!
Apr 8, 2007 7:32PM PDT

These are the kind of guys who want to protect their own personal perks. If something impinges on their own, personal experience, they're against it. I would not look to a bunch of rich, pampered guys for an accurate reading of the world's weather system

since when have the everest, kilimanjaro and other international landmarks been 'personal perks'?

these guys probably spend more days per year experiencing "the world's weather system" than your average "expert" spends hours....


.,

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You don't get it.
Apr 23, 2007 10:30PM PDT

Global warming is real, not a myth. All that's debatable are the causes. The ice caps are melting on Mars the same as they are here but all the global warming crowd wants to believe in is man made causes. I'll ask again, is the global warming on Mars a man made problem too? What about all the tropical environments of the past during the dinosaur eras, was that a man-made problem too?

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you have to look at much large cycles of weather
Apr 24, 2007 3:40AM PDT

to blame man for global warming, not 10 years, not 100 years, not even 1000 years but 10,000 and greater, unless of course you don't believe the earth is that old.

Maybe the global warming that is occurring is mother earths natural cycle.

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Not to pile on, but...
Apr 24, 2007 3:58AM PDT

not just the last day or two. Coldest winter in 13 years.

And it's not a matter of whether global warming is a myth or not, it's a matter of knowing what the causes and consequences are and what, if anything we can or should do about it.

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The area I live in used tgo be covered in glaciewrs...
Apr 8, 2007 1:06AM PDT

the evidence is all around. Now the glaciers are all gone. They melted/receded long long ago. Why? The climate changed. Climate is always changing. Even glaciers are not eternal. No one denies this.

The question is why, and what, if anything can we or should we do about it?

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Did those glaciers melt in 20 years time?
Apr 8, 2007 1:27AM PDT

No one questions if ice melts... but if your ice cubes are melting ion your drink because the house is on fire, then you better darn well be more concerned with putting out the fire than wondering how much ice you can afford to lose.

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Don' t know. Maybe...
Apr 8, 2007 1:45AM PDT

Do you know? Glaciers can go fast.

Are you sure the house is on fire? Or is it just warm out? Do you KNOW?

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And...
Apr 8, 2007 2:04AM PDT
Already, Switzerland's Matterhorn had to be closed to some climbing at times because of recent summer rockfall attributed to global warming and its Great Aletsch Glacier ? Europe's largest ? has retreated a couple miles from its peak of 14 miles in length in 1860. The Swiss Alps' icy soil that glues its rock faces together is thawing, causing instability.

Is that 20 years time? Or are you making an apple-orange cocktail? Seems to me that's about on the right timescale for the glaciers to have receded from my little corner of New Hampshire.
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The glaciers you speak of in NH...
Apr 8, 2007 1:35PM PDT

... traveled down here to WV and ground off a plateau from the original Appalachian mountains that once stood here. That took awhile to accomplish. Those same glaciers were weighty enough to depress the Earths' crust in a little place we now call the Great Lakes region.

Glaciers form from layers of snow built up over millennia ... long enough in time to build up Ice sheets that measure in some places tens of thousands of feet deep. It takes a lot of heat to melt that much ice over a long period of time.

As a point of reference in time lets look at the Iceman of the italian alps...

Otzi the Iceman (also spelled Oetzi and known also as Frozen Fritz) is the modern nickname of a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC, found in 1991 in a glacier of the Otztal Alps, near the border between Austria and Italy.

The guy was in the deep freeze for over 5000 years in Europe's back yard. Just what caused him to float to the surface?

Ed, you can keep saying "what if" about everything and create a debate that goes on and on and on. I do find it ironic that your other post makes a case for trusting one scientist over another... especially since it just happens to be a scientist making a case for what You want to hear. I give it to you that your points of discussion are just as valid as mine.

But...

... as I have pointed out once already. If the global warming Chicken Little's are correct and nothing is done, it will cost your kids and your grandkids a lot more than an economic downturn.

If the corporate Chicken Little's are correct then they end up spending a lot of money to make their operations more efficient and less polluting. Strikes me that they are going to have to do that sooner or later anyway.


The bottom line of the corporate crowd is simply this... They are asking for permission to pollute the world a little more before they inevitably have to clean up their act. They just want to mess the planet up now and let latter generations clean up. Just like with social security, the national debt, and medicare/medicade... they want to make paying for fixing these problems someone else's responsibility.

Your favorite quote on many occasions has been TANSTAAFL{/b], yet this is exactly what the global corporations are asking for. They are trying to dine and dash and leave the bill for your kids and mine.

Question in my mind is "why do you hate your grandkids?"

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And...
Apr 8, 2007 9:35PM PDT
The bottom line of the corporate crowd is simply this... They are asking for permission to pollute the world a little more before they inevitably have to clean up their act. They just want to mess the planet up now and let latter generations clean up. Just like with social security, the national debt, and medicare/medicade... they want to make paying for fixing these problems someone else's responsibility.

Sorry, Grim, that just sounds like boilerplate out of the lefty/green handbook. I can't take it seriously at all, maaaan.

Peace out.
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Assigning a label to it makes it less true?
Apr 9, 2007 6:06AM PDT

A convenient way of looking at things to say the least.

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What I'm saying is...
Apr 9, 2007 6:12AM PDT

it's a mindless cliche, that's all. It's a bunch of baloney. Not buying it.

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for someone who ain't buying it
Apr 9, 2007 6:16AM PDT

you sure do seem to want to put a price on it


.,

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That made no sense...
Apr 9, 2007 6:32AM PDT

again.

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So the Earth is warming in some places
Apr 8, 2007 3:42AM PDT

This detail is not in debate... and many Global Warming Believers attempt to frame the debate this way to make skeptics look foolish.

Skeptics usually doubt the magnitude of the change (Which is still debated even among the GW belivers)... and more importantly, skeptics doubt the cause given.

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GORE'S GLACIAL fib
Apr 9, 2007 5:06AM PDT

An interesting footnote and one of the major lies in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" is that Mr. Gore and Co. show the Perito Moreno Glacier in So. Argentina as an example of the result of global warming. In fact my wife Marjorie and I have visited this glacier 3 times. First in 1973 and again in 2004 and 2006. It is growing. It is visibly larger and pushing further across Lago Argentina.

They used this in the movie twice all the while misrepresenting its growth and in fact stating it is shrinking showing a huge chunk falling off as it does every 30 minutes or so. It is a dramatic glacier that yields tremendous photo ops to just about anyone who visits it, which I must presume is why it was used

See the below and you may recognize it from the movie.
My wife and I proceeded after Argentina into Chile in 1973 not knowing that our around the world tour then 2 years and counting would be extended as involuntary guests for 4 months of the Allende administration until 10 days before the coup on 9-11-73 when we were thrown out. That is another story for another time.

We met many years ago at a function at Silverado for then candidate for Congress, Frank Riggs, a good friend of ours, now living in AZ. You were the lead in speaker followed by Newt Gingrich. Our daughter was assisting all of you at the podium. I do not expect you to remember this just thought I would mention passing ships.

If you ever need to get away from Marin we are 1.5 hours up the road and have naturally carbonated warm "Vichy" baths, the same as in Vichy, France. Come be our guest sometime. And no we do not participate in the local alternative "agricultural" business either as growers or consumers.

Gilbert Ashoff

Proprietor

http://www.savage-productions.com/gore_glacial_lie.html

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(NT) not retreating, just getting smaller
Apr 9, 2007 5:32AM PDT
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NO!! It's getting bigger!
Apr 9, 2007 6:15AM PDT

Read the article!

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go do your homework
Apr 9, 2007 6:20AM PDT

on the subject, you're starting to look lost ed....

pssssssstttt...i'll give you a clue..terminus.....


.,


.,

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Again with the clues..
Apr 9, 2007 6:27AM PDT

Are you saying the writer is lying? I don't feel like playing another childish game. You got a point, let's see it.

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just curious
Apr 9, 2007 5:43AM PDT

how do you differentiate between a lie and a fib.....


.,

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jonah whats the
Apr 9, 2007 9:34AM PDT

difference between retreating and growing?its not shrinking suggest reread article

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I won't be happy till....
Apr 23, 2007 10:55PM PDT

...I can grow palm trees in Maryland and know they will survive the winters. Just think of how we can use less fossil fuels too for keeping warm in winters. The energy use might even decline and fewer "greenhouse" gases be produced. To compensate and keep the globe warmed up, maybe we can find some other way to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to maintain the paradise earth that results.