"The first thing we noticed was the blue ice melting."

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16963


My husband and I traveled to the Pacific Northwest last month, and one day found ourselves standing on top of a huge mountain of frozen cold, the Athabasca Glacier. Underneath our feet was a 1,000-foot-high pile of pressurized crystal, just one of many glaciers stretching out, like solid rivers of white, from the vast Columbia Icefield in Alberta, Canada.

What were we hearing as we stood on that ice roof? The sound of melting, as the purest substance known to humankind transformed from ice to liquid in rivulets all around us. We wandered along a luminescent blue creek that had formed right there on the glacier and tasted its waters. The sun was bright, despite the cold that emanated off the ice field, and the whole scene had an unworldly, make-believe quality to it, like something straight out of J.R.R. Tolkien's elf village of Rivendell.

But the melting was not make-believe. It was real and was not supposed to happening like that. Not at that rate. Not then and not for a very long time. Still, there it was taking place before our own eyes.

-snip-

Part of me wanted to come home and tell people what I'd seen on that glacier. I wanted to urge people to buy clean cars and use their consumer clout to convince automakers to sell vehicles that get decent gas mileage. I wanted to shake the politicians by the shoulders and tell them to wake up, get smart and attack this problem. I wanted to go around quoting two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist E.O. Wilson, who has said that the forces that are destroying the Earth and the people who can save it "have arrived together at this crossroads in history."

I wanted to believe something could halt the warming. I wanted to believe it wasn't too late.
---------------------------------

It's too late

[onebigbadwulf]

1. WRONG!

Silly hippie liberal, global warming doesn't exist!
- *:eyes:

[hatrack]

2. Drip, drip, drip . . . .

But this dripping sound doesn't seem to get nearly as much attention as the political dribbling of those in power.

[papau]

3. Athabasca Glacier is always melting - not a new item - but the rate

may well have increased.

I believe the folks going up there in the summer a hundred years ago had a drink of the run off.

I know I did 40 years ago. But it was not a fast run of water - just a continous drip that in about a minute filled a small take you meds type cup.

By the way - that is one of the special places in the World: Jasper to Banff - God's gift!

:-)

[TrogL]

6. The rate is definitely increasing

I've been there. They put up signs indicating where the glacier was in various years. You can see it increase its rate of withdrawal in high pollution years.

[AmandaRuth]

4. I Live very close to Mt. Rainier

and this past summer there was glacier melt like never before. In September you could see the whole side of the mountain right up to the tip, along with the three sisters. Never in all my life did the mighty mountain look like that. My daughter asked me when the mountain top blew off, it looked so strange. Mr. luvamerica and I go way up on the logging roads for camping and hiking all the time, and I do mean at least twice a month, so I know what I am talking about. It is frightening, but more so when you realize no one cares, no one is talking about it, and if they do, they immediately get shouted down as "antigrowth"

[dfong63]

5. the glaciers in montana's "glacier national park" will be gone by ~2020,

according to an article in the oct 4 2003 issue of science news.

the same article says that meltwater from glaciers is contributing 0.4mm per year to the rise in sea levels. ``Most of the remaining {75-80% of the current annual rise} stems from the thermal expansion of seawater in response to the globe's rising average temperatures.''