Here's what's happening to glaciers, as reported in recent news:

October 20, 1008

SACBEE.COM: Yosemite glacier on thin ice

"As melting water gushed off the ice in a tinseled maze of rivulets and tumbled through a gaping chasm, the hikers watched, wondered and worried. Unlike most backcountry travelers who pitch their tents along the John Muir Trail in the upper reaches of the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River, these visitors had not pushed on to scale the summit of Mount Lyell – Yosemite's highest peak. Instead, they scrambled up a ridge of rose-tinted granite and over a mound of dark, unstable boulders to tromp across this less well-known corner of the national park, a silvery-white sheet of ice fast becoming one of the first California landmarks to succumb to climate change. Later in the day, Pete Devine, a veteran glacier observer who manages educational programs for the nonprofit Yosemite Association, sat on a log and opened a notebook. "Gaunt remnant of what I saw 10, 20 years ago," he wrote in his journal. "Lots of large boulders dot the surface. Lots of melt water flow." As signals of climate change begin to come into focus in the Sierra Nevada, its melting glaciers spell trouble in bold font. Not only are they in-your-face barometers of global warming, they also reflect what scientists are beginning to uncover: that the Sierra snowpack – the source of 65 percent of California's water – is dwindling, too. More of the Sierra's precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow, studies show, and the snow that blankets the range in winter is running off earlier in the spring. And snow in the Sierra touches everything. Take it away and droughts deepen, ski areas go bust and fire seasons rage longer. Some glaciers already have melted away, including the first Sierra glacier discovered in Yosemite by John Muir in 1871. Today, the remaining 100 or so are withering, including Lyell, the second-largest, which could be gone inside a century....."

October 16, 1008

MSNBC.COM: 'Dramatic evidence' of Arctic melt, experts warn

"Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record highs, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday. "Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter" to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card for the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "There continues to be widespread and, in some cases, dramatic evidence of an overall warming of the Arctic system," the experts stated in their report. Compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, the report looks at six areas in the Arctic: atmosphere, sea ice, Greenland, ocean, biology and land. It found a "warming" trend in the first three signals and "mixed" signals in the latter three. The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere...."

October 6, 2008

MSNBC.COM: 99 percent of Alaska glaciers in decline

"Most of Alaska's glaciers are retreating or thinning or both, a new book by the U.S. Geological Survey reports. About 5 percent of Alaska's area is covered by more than 100,000 glaciers — that's about 29,000 square miles (75,000 square kilometers), or more than the entire state of West Virginia. While a few of Alaska's large glaciers are advancing, 99 percent are retreating, the book, "Glaciers in Alaska," states. The book was written by USGS research geologist Bruce Molina. A USGS project to photograph the glaciers of Montana's Glacier National Park also showed significant retreat. Based on these photos and glacier recession rates, scientists predicted the park could lose its namesakes by 2030. Greenland, which is covered by more ice than anywhere else in the world outside Antarctica, has also seen significant melt of its glaciers in recent decades. The new book on Alaska's glaciers used satellite images, aerial photos, maps and other studies to document the retreat of the glaciers, which began as early as the mid-19th century. Some glaciers have even disappeared since being mapped in the mid-20th century, the report found...."

September 21, 2008

SEATTLE TIMES: North Cascades glaciers victims of climate change

"Lyman Glacier, sitting just below 8,459-foot Chiwawa Peak, is dying. Nearby, Spider Glacier is already gone. The scientist who pronounced it dead three years ago thinks one-third of the glaciers in the North Cascades — including Lyman — are doomed. Mauri Pelto says the other two-thirds may have a chance, if the world does something to stop climate change. Pelto is an environmental-science professor at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass., and has studied glaciers for more than two decades. In August, he completed his 25th hiking trip to several North Cascade glaciers. He's been watching and measuring the great slabs of moving ice every year since 1984. It is the largest study of glaciers in the North Cascades, home to one-third of all glaciers in the Lower 48 states. He visits 10 glaciers every year for in-depth measurements, and monitors 37 others with less-regular trips. Five of them have already died, and all of the glaciers he's studying are now retreating. They've lost 20 to 40 percent of their volume. Pelto says when he first learned about climate change as a graduate student at the University of Maine, before he started this study, he was skeptical...."

September 19, 2008

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Melting Ice Brings Competition for Resources

"Bo Madsen, a climate researcher, is plagued by a simple question: How heavy is the world's largest island? More importantly, Madsen wants to know how quickly its weight is changing. "This is no academic question," the Dane yells over the whipping of the rotor blades. "The answer will determine the fate of millions of people." Greenland's majestic landscape glides by beneath the helicopter. A mottled gray-and-white glacier tongue winds its way down a series of mountain slopes. Farther up, the jagged terrain gives way to a smooth, seemingly endless expanse of white, capped by a glistening aura that makes it difficult to distinguish between the sky and the surface of the ice cap. The scientists have spent the last two hours flying over the edge of the inland ice in their Super Puma helicopter. The gigantic ice cap is close to three kilometers (1.86 miles) thick. If it were to melt, sea levels worldwide would rise by seven meters (23 feet), spelling the end for many coastal cities.... How does one measure the recession of an ice cap? A lone mountain peak protrudes from the glacier ice. This is where the Danish and American geophysicists plan to set up their measuring equipment. Their project, called GNET, will be part of a formidable scientific observation network, an early warning system of measuring stations and satellites designed to monitor the Greenland ice cap...." 

September 17, 2008

IRIN: Melting glaciers threaten livelihoods

"The number of glaciers in Kyrgyzstan has dropped by 15 percent over the past 30 years, according to Kyrgyz environmental experts, because of climate change. "The process of melting glaciers is a very serious problem for Kyrgyzstan because the main water resources are connected first of all with the glaciers," Anna Kirilenko, with the BIOM environmental NGO, told IRIN in the capital, Bishkek. Kirilenko believed the melting glaciers threatened water supplies. "It turns out that today we have much water, tomorrow we have little. There will be certain imbalances; the behavior of rivers will be changing. All ecosystems that are located next to mountain ranges will be subject to certain changes," she said. According to the International Fund to Save the Aral Sea, an inter-governmental organization established by Central Asian states, 4,2 percent of Kyrgyzstan's territory or about 8,400 sq km, is covered with glaciers. A study by T Bolch from the Institute of Cartography, Technical University of Dresden, on glacier retreat and climate change in Northern Tien Shan on the border of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, stated that the melting glaciers in the area corresponded closely with temperature changes...."

September 16, 2008

LIVE SCIENCE: Biggest Melt Comes From Smallest Glaciers

"The big glaciers of Greenland get most of the attention in terms of global warming's impact on melting and rising sea levels, but it's actually the little glaciers that count the most, a new study finds. Satellite observations of the Greenland Ice Sheet indicate that nearly 75 percent of the ice lost there actually comes from the island’s small coastal glaciers. The study's authors say that this finding means small glaciers should be better-observed than they currently are in order to get a better handle on potential contributions to sea level rise. The team's measurements of melt agree more with the lower end of the range of predictions, on the order of 100 Gigatons of ice melting, versus 200 Gigatons. Study team member Ian Howat of Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center said the higher estimates were made with methods that are still not completely reliable. Outside of Antarctica, Greenland has more ice than anywhere else on Earth. Its ice cap covers four-fifths of the island's surface and is 1,491 miles (2,400 kilometers) long, 683 miles (1,100 km) wide, and can reach almost 2 miles (3 km) in thickness at its thickest point...."

September 15, 2008

MIAMI HERALD: Peru's potato farmers adapt to climate change

"For the first half of his life, Gregorio Huanuco farmed to a rhythm that dictated the survival of his grandparents and ancestors for thousands of years. He waited for the rains to fall on his small parcel of land in this village at 11,000 feet in the Cordillera Blanca, or White Range, of the Andes in central Peru, and planted native varieties of potatoes as well as cereal crops like quinoa. When the crops ripened, Huanuco, 45, harvested what he needed and sold what he didn't in the city of Huaraz several hundred feet below in the valley. Climatologists say global warming's impact was first documented in the Peruvian Andes in 1970, but 1990 is the year Huanuco says he began to notice disruptions, first in small, bizarre, anomalous forms: a battering hailstorm, two months without rain, a warm winter. Then the quirky weather became more consistent and other oddities began to appear: rats nibbling away at his cereal crops and a fungus, known as late blight, blanketing his potatoes. ''Before, we planted all year long, any month we wanted to,'' Huanuco said, dubiously eyeing his tiny plot, recently sown with potato seed. ``Now we only get water a few times a year and so we cannot plant as much, and the pests and diseases keep coming....'' But increasingly, farmers like Huanuco, who depend heavily on a predictable climate, are finding themselves vulnerable and ill-prepared to handle new pests and diseases that have materialized as temperature and rainfall patterns have shifted. Climate change is creating new challenges that may threaten the potato's chance to become a key export product unless farmers learn to adapt...." 

3NEWS.CO.NZ: NZ glaciers continue to shrink

"New Zealand's glaciers are continuing to shrink and are showing the lowest total ice mass on record. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) said the Southern Alps glaciers had lost 2.2 billion tonnes of permanent ice from April 2007 to March this year, the fourth-highest annual loss since monitoring started. iwa has been surveying 50 glaciers in the Southern Alps for the past 32 years to record the height of the snow line at the end of summer. Niwa principal scientist Jim Salinger said that because of the La Nina weather system over New Zealand, more easterly winds and warmer than normal temperatures during the period, there was less snow in the Southern Alps and more snowmelt. Snow fed the glaciers, he said. "The higher the snow line, the more snow is lost to feed the glacier. On average, the snow line this year was about 130m above where it would need to be to keep the ice mass constant," Dr Salinger said. He said that worldwide, most glaciers were retreating...."

September 10, 2008

SCIENCE DAILY: As Andean Glacier Retreats, Tiny Lifeforms Swiftly Move In

"A University of Colorado at Boulder team working at 16,400 feet in the Peruvian Andes has discovered how barren soils uncovered by retreating glacier ice can swiftly establish a thriving community of microbes, setting the table for lichens, mosses and alpine plants. The discovery is the first to reveal how microbial life becomes established and flourishes in one of the most extreme environments on Earth and has implications for how life may have once flourished on Mars, said Professor Steve Schmidt of CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department. The study also provides new insights into how microorganisms are adapting to global warming in cold ecosystems on Earth...."

MONTANA KAIMIN: Montana glaciers affect rising seas researcher says

"What does the rise in sea level have to do with Montana? Most Montanans would say nothing, but Professor Joel Harper, a glaciologist at the University of Montana, knows that there is a connection. According to Harper, the melting glaciers in the Northern Rocky Mountains - like the ones in Glacier National Park - not only provide an enormous amount of water during Montana’s dry season, but also affect the level of sea rise, which is inevitable due to climate change. Harper said Montana’s glaciers, part of 300,000 or so glaciers around the world, are responsible for 60 percent of any sea level rise. Harper said most people don’t understand that floating sea ice, like the ice shelves that break off from Antarctica and Greenland, doesn’t affect sea level rise. “That ice is already in the ocean, and the water is already displaced,” Harper said.  “It’s the ice that’s sitting on land that changes the sea level.” Water from inland glaciers ultimately winds up in the ocean. Melt water from the surface of glaciers with outlets to the ocean causes ice motion —referred to as “ice dynamics.” This lubrication increases the glacial rate of speed to the sea, where they break off - a process called “calving” - and adds to ocean ice, raising the sea level...."

September 9, 2008

FRESNO BEE: Melting global ice likely to reveal yet more mummified secrets from the past

"Two bodies found in a Sierra Nevada glacier are the first ice mummies recovered in the lower 48 states. But people around the world have been finding frozen bodies for decades. These discoveries inspire both scientific interest and morbid curiosity: Who were these mummies? How did they die? How tall were they? What were they wearing? How did they wind up in the ice that preserved them for ages? As the climate warms, and glaciers melt, there probably will be more of these creepy but fascinating stories, experts say. "I'm sure more bodies are going to be found," said forensic anthropologist Paul Emanovsky, who examines remains for the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii. Since the early 1990s, frozen bodies have been found in Europe, South America and Asia -- including, in 1999, that of George Mallory on Mount Everest. Mallory is the English explorer who died climbing Everest in the 1920s. Such ice mummies usually are created by accident: Someone dies in a place where extreme cold prevents bacteria and fungi from destroying the corpse -- often a glacier or an ice sheet. The body is slowly engulfed in ice. In the process, it dries out quickly in the thin, arid air at high elevations. Bacteria and fungi, which cause decay, can't grow where there is no water. And the tiny organisms do not survive at subfreezing temperatures...."

September 8, 2008

LIVE SCIENCE: Pyrenees Glaciers Disappearing

"The crisp, white glaciers of the Pyrenees, the mountain range along the border between France and Spain, have substantially receded in the past 15 years and could disappear by 2050 due to global warming, a new study suggests. The retreat of glaciers in Greenland and areas like Glacier National Park have been well-documented, but less well-studied are the situations of alpine glaciers around the world. Researchers at the University of Cantabria, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Valladolid compiled data from current and historic studies of the glaciers in the high mountain regions of the Iberian Peninsula to gauge how climate change has affected these icy behemoths. "High mountains are particularly sensitive areas to climate and environmental changes, and how glaciers evolve there in response to climate change is one of the most effective indicators of current global warming," said study leader Juan José González Trueba. González Trueba and his colleagues found that the steady increase in temperature — a total of 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since 1890 — in Spain's northern mountains indicated that the Pyrenean glaciers would disappear before 2050...."

DISCOVER MAGAZINE: The Ground Zero of Climate Change

"A profound feeling of isolation sets in as the plane departs. Propellers roar. The twin-engine Basler, vintage 1942, bounces on skis over the wind-pocked ice, bobs into the air, and shrinks to a dot in the sky. Then it’s just the four of us standing here, a pile of boxes and bags, and flat, white horizon in every direction. We’re on our own in Antarctica for the next few weeks, in the middle of a million square miles of empty ice about 380 miles from the South Pole. Aside from a few invisible bacteria, we’re the only living things for hundreds of miles in any direction. We pause to let it sink in; then we grab our tent bags and set to work. It’s a typical summer afternoon on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A wind blows from the south, scouring the ice free of loose snow so it resembles weathered sandstone. We stand atop one of the largest hunks of ice on earth. You might call this place ground zero in the effort to predict climate change, sea level rise, and the fate of coastal cities around the world. With a volume of more than 700,000 cubic miles and an average thickness of 4,000 feet, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) holds enough water to raise sea levels by 15 to 20 feet—and it is already sweating off 130 billion tons of ice per year. Satellites have helped to monitor the changes in the region, but there are some things you simply have to come here and explore in person. Ice sheets aren’t the static scabs of frost that scientists once imagined, but rather complex structures with many moving parts. In the WAIS, massive conveyor belts of ice (called ice streams) up to 100 miles across and hundreds of miles long ooze toward the ocean, where they splinter into icebergs. Guiding their movement is an array of unseen forces, including mountains, valleys, and lakes—and maybe even smoldering volcanoes—hidden beneath the ice. We cannot predict how the ice will respond to warming without understanding those forces...."

AFP: Melting Swiss glacier yields Neolithic trove, climate secrets

"Some 5,000 years ago a prehistoric person trod high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows. The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists but it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier. So far, 300 objects dating as far back as the Neolithic or New Stone Age -- about 4,000 BC in Europe -- to the later Bronze and Iron Ages and the Medieval era have been found in the site's former icefields. We know now that the discoveries on Schnidejoch are the oldest of this kind ever made in the Alps," said Albert Hafner, an expert with the archaeology service in Bern canton." They have allowed researchers not only to piece together snapshots of life way back when, but also to shed light on climate fluctuations in the past 6,500 years -- and hopefully shed light on what is happening now. "For us, the site itself is the most important find because we have this correlation between climate change and archaeological objects," Hafner said...."

September 5, 2008

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: A Deep Thaw: How Much Will Vanishing Glaciers Raise Sea Levels?

"Greenland, the world's largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet (seven meters). Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more than 200 feet (60 meters). Satellite measurements from space and speed measurements on land confirm that Greenland's glaciers are melting and on the move. And although the picture is less clear in Antarctica, the global warming seems to be having an impact there, too. So the question is: How much—and how soon—will sea level rise? New research from glaciologist Tad Pfeffer of the University of Colorado at Boulder and colleagues published in Science attempts to better estimate the possible sea level rise over the next century by measuring the speed at which the world's glaciers—in Greenland and Antarctica but also the many mountain ice sheets throughout the globe—are actually speeding to the sea as well as how swiftly they may melt. What would the flow velocities of the ocean-ending outlet glaciers have to be," if Greenland alone was to raise sea level by just six feet (two meters)? "The answer turned out to be huge: about 49 kilometers [30 miles] per year, 70 times faster than those glaciers move today," Pfeffer says, "and three times faster than we've ever observed an outlet glacier to move." Given that Greenland's glaciers are not presently moving anywhere close to that pace—Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, the fastest, reached speeds above nine miles (14 kilometers) per year in 2005—the researchers also looked at ice that could contribute from the rest of the world. Assuming that the largest remaining ice shelves in East Antarctica—Filchner-Ronne and Ross—will remain intact, sea level rise from all other melting ice and the expansion of seawater as the weather gets warmer over the next century would be somewhere between 2.6 feet (0.8 meter) and six feet (two meters)—or nearly twice as much as projected last year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)...."

IPP: Of Mt. Kilimanjaro ice waving us good-bye due to deforestation

"The recent scientific theory linking the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro to increased deforestation on the mountain's foothills is more than sad news as far as the welfare of the mountain's biodiversity is concerned. The theory is highlighted in a recent study report compiled by two researchers from Britain's Portsmouth University -Nicholas Pepin and Martin Schaefer, who took eleven days to survey the mountain's glaciers. The researchers, who revealed their findings at a news conference in Dar es Salaam recently, said the mountain's glacier surface had shrunk from 20 kilometers in 1880 to two kilometers in 2000. They said the development was caused more by local than regional factors. Pepin believes that deforestation which is mainly due to extensive farming is the major cause. ``Deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the most likely culprit because without forests there is too much evaporation of humidity into outer space. The result is that moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests have become drier and drier,`` he explained. This revelation is another reminder of the catastrophic effects that deforestation can cause to the environment. Try to imagine the fate of the whole range of biodiversity that depend on flow of water resulting from the normal melting of the mountain's ice such as forests, animals (both wild and domesticated) and other living organisms...."

September 4, 2008

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Shrinking Arctic Ocean sea ice signals climate change

"Key portions of Earth’s cryosphere are in deep trouble. So far this summer, Arctic Ocean sea ice has shrunk to its second-lowest extent on record as ice shelves along Canada’s northernmost islands are disintegrating at a rapid pace. A new report from the United Nations Environment Program and the World Glacier Monitoring Service notes that the melt rate for glaciers the service uses as reference sites appears to have doubled since 2000. The resulting increase in open water is expected to have a wide-ranging impact on global warming. “These are huge areas that are changing,” says Luke Copland, who heads the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa, referring to the ice declines in the Arctic. People can debate the causes behind what’s happening in the Arctic, he says, “but what we can’t debate is the fact that things are changing, and they’re changing really fast.” Moreover, the changes are irreversible under today’s climate regime, adds Derek Mueller, a polar scientist at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. On Tuesday, Dr. Mueller and his colleagues reported that in early August, the 19-square-mile Markham Ice Shelf broke free of its moorings on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. It’s now an ice island nearly the size of Manhattan floating freely in the Arctic Ocean. Another of Canada’s four remaining ice shelves has lost 60 percent of its extent, while a third shelf continues to disintegrate. The accumulated loss for the summer amounts to an area of ice more than three times the size of Manhattan, or some 23 percent of the area that existed heading into summer...."

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Climate Change: Ice Chunk the Size of Manhattan Splits from Canadian Glacier

"There's another island the size of Manhattan, but this one is a newly broken ice sheath off the Arctic circle. The Markham Ice Shelf separated from Canada's Ellesmere Island last month, Bloomberg News reports. The split of the 4,500-year-old, 10-story-tall ice shelf, which borders Greenland, dismayed scientists concerned that global warming was the culprit. "It was a complete shock,'' Luke Copeland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa, told the newswire. "What was really amazing is that we lose it all in such a short period of time, within just a few days.'' The news comes just a week after the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported near-record melting of sea ice in the Arctic. The Serson Ice Shelf is 60 percent smaller now that a combined 47 square miles (122 square kilometers) of ice have broken off, and the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf -- the largest of the remaining four -- also is disintegrating, Reuters notes. "

September 3, 2008

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER: Global warming: Western U.S. feels the heat

"As pilot Bruce Gordon lifts up from the local airport, the distant perspective of the Teton Range raises the spirits, but the unfolding sight of dying forests sears the soul. High-elevation white bark pines, which have endured droughts and lightning and insect attacks in life spans as long as 1,000 years, are being killed by a tiny beetle whose numbers were once limited by a bitter winter climate. "What you are seeing is a natural process on steroids: All these trees will be toast unless the pace of global warming is drastically slowed," said Diana Tombeck, a University of Colorado-Denver professor. She studies white bark pine and calls it "a foundation species." Later, in the Wind River Range, on a tour sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, we cut open a 1,000- year-old white bark pine to see pine beetles feeding inside the tree. In the 1920s and the 1970s -- and for centuries before -- this pine had survived beetle attacks. This year, the tree's defenses have been overwhelmed. "It's a zombie tree: It's dead but doesn't know it," said Jesse Logan, a retired U.S. Forest Service scientist. "It took everything that nature could throw at it, but not what we have caused to happen." The perspective from this place in the Rockies is particularly angering. The 13,770-foot Grand Teton is where presidents, at least Bush Sr. and Clinton, have come to tout their "green" credentials. It's America's best photo backdrop....."

September 2, 2008

CHIEF ENGINEER: Scientists Study Effect Of Rainier Glacier Melt

"A slurry of rocks and mud sounded like a freight train when it ripped through a popular Mount Rainier hiking destination in 2001 and scared some television viewers who believed their homes were in the path. As it turned out, the debris flow at Comet Falls proved less dangerous than initially believed, but it gave scientists insights into a phenomenon that continues to mystify. Such a debris flow likely added damage to Mount Rainier National Park when a flood sparked by nearly 18 inches of rain in two days shut it down in November 2006. Experts are concerned that the level of flood danger is increasing as sediment builds in glacier-fed waters like the Nisqually River. Scientists suspect that climate change - specifically, shrinking glaciers that leave unstable rock behind - is adding to the risk of debris flows that help clog river channels downstream. This summer, a team of researchers is gathering information at Mount Rainier that could help provide answers. One of the leading scientists is Gordon Grant, a U.S. Forest Service hydrologist and Oregon State University professor of geosciences....."

September 1, 2008

EARTH2TECH: Controversial Globe-Changing Measures Could Be the Only Answer to Climate Change

"...Researchers Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge have published a series of papers in the UK’s Royal Society that call for a serious look at a variety of extreme measures to stabilize global warming, like seeding the oceans with iron, injecting sulphur into the upper atmosphere and creating fake clouds over the sea. The researchers say there have been very few measures put in place to meet carbon emission reductions, and the targets that have been put in place could fall far short. On top of that the researchers say there is new evidence that the Earth’s climate is even more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously thought. This all leads the scientists to conclude that geoengineering techniques — which have long been considered extreme, last resort measures — should be studied and reviewed as possible options to combat climate change.... 

Here’s our Top 10 List Of Most Controversial Ways to Save the Planet, which we published last November:

1. Ocean seeding: More iron causes more plankton blooms; plankton eat carbon and when they die sink to the bottom of the ocean, thereby sequestering it.
2. Re-ice the Arctic: A University of Alberta scientist proposes a fleet of 8,000 barges to re-ice the Arctic with salty ice, thereby cooling the water and keeping the conveyor belt moving.
3. Sulfur solar shield: Inject sulfur into the upper atmosphere, thereby creating a reflective shield that would keep the Earth cool.
4. Ocean-cooling pipes: An ocean-cooling pipe that would cool the ocean in front of approaching hurricanes, as well as causing plankton blooms that could act as a CO2 sink.
5. Cloud seeding: Shooting various things into the clouds to stimulate them into action to create a reflective, cooling cover.
6. Genetically Modified CO2-Eating Trees: While all trees scrub CO2 from the air and produce the oxygen that we breathe, scientists are looking into genetically modifying trees’ ability to “eat” carbon dioxide.
7. Fake Plastic CO2-Eating Trees: Modeled on trees’ ability to suck in CO2, these machines would pump air “through a chamber containing sodium hydroxide, which reacts with the CO2 to form sodium carbonate.” After a few more reactions, there’d be pure CO2, which could be injected into the ground like a regular old carbon storage system.
8. Space mirrors: Using mirrors to reflect sun rays back into space. The problem is that they’d have to be huge and there would have to be a lot of them, and launch costs could be in the thousands of dollars per pound.
9. Reflective space mesh: Proposed by Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, this reflective mesh would be placed out in space, about a million miles between the sun and the Earth.
10. Glacier Blankets: Blanket glaciers with a special material designed to protect high-value Alps skiing territory...."

AFP: World's glaciers facing huge threat: UN

"The United Nations said Monday that swathes of mountain ranges worldwide risk losing their glaciers by the end of the century if global warming continues at its projected rate. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report that whilst nature has always observed a certain periodic rate of deglaciation, the current trends observed from the Arctic to Central Europe and South America are of a different order. "The ongoing trend of worldwide and rapid, if not accelerating, glacier shrinkage on the century time scale is most likely to be of a non-periodic nature, and may lead to the deglaciation of large parts of many mountain ranges by the end of the 21st century," the report warned. The report said that glaciers lost on average a mass of more than half a meter water equivalent in the period 1996-2005, which is twice the ice loss of the previous decade (1986-95) and over four times the rate of the period 1976-85. The UNEP report comes shortly after scientists warned that they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet, which could see much of the world's coastline drowned by rising seas...."