Chilean glaciers retreating due to global warming: report

December 8, 2008

View of the San Rafael glaciers in the Northern Patagonian Ice Field, at the Laguna San Rafael National Park, 1300 km south of Santiago, Chile, in 2007. Chile's glaciers are on the retreat, a sign of global warming but also a threat to fresh water reserves at the southern end of South America, a report has found.

Chile's glaciers are on the retreat, a sign of global warming but also a threat to fresh water reserves at the southern end of South America, a report has found.

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• MikeB - Dec 08, 2008
  • Rank: 3.5 / 5 (8)
  First, the southern hemisphere has seen almost no warming. Second, glaciers are mostly regulated by precipitation not small temperature changes.
  
  
  This from the article:
  
  "The glaciers will continue to provide fresh water for at least a hundred years. The cities and crops will expand and a time will come where the glaciers will be the population's water source," the study warned."
  
  This is a warning? It seems that a lot can happen in the next hundred years.
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• barakn - Dec 08, 2008
  • Rank: 2.1 / 5 (8)
  MikeB, the article specifically stated that rainfall has reduced and temperatures have increased in Patagonia. Sucks to be wrong, doesn't it.
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• Billybaroo - Dec 08, 2008
  • Rank: 3.9 / 5 (7)
  Hmmm! That's a huge leap based on 21 years of data and given the age of the glaciers! Were the glaciers advancing or retreating before then? I wonder what the glaciers looked like during the Medieval Warm Period. Oh, and how far away from the cities are these glaciers (any urban heat island effects)?
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• Velanarris - Dec 09, 2008
  • Rank: 4.2 / 5 (5)

  MikeB, the article specifically stated that rainfall has reduced and temperatures have increased in Patagonia. Sucks to be wrong, doesn't it.

  Rainfall being reduced is directly in line with what he's saying.
  
  Less precipitation means no building up of new ice on a glacier that's going to naturally sublimate.
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• Roach - Dec 09, 2008
  • Rank: 3.7 / 5 (6)
  Billy, eveyone knows that if you see something happen, it's never happened before and it's people's fault. It's scientific fact, just ask any AGW fanatic. The Sun came up later today than it did yesterday, caused by my car emiting carbon dioxide. Before Man came along it never rained, glaciers were stagnate, animals never died and deltaS=0(no entropy).
  
  :)
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• GrayMouser - Dec 09, 2008
  • Rank: 4.2 / 5 (5)
  Do NOT try to discuss this rationally.
  
  You are required to demand instant action by your government to stop this growing threat.
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• MikeB - Dec 15, 2008
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
  According to the satellite temperature record Chile has not warmed at all in thirty years:
  
  http://www.physor...rbig.jpg
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• lengould100 - Dec 16, 2008
  • Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
  If you simply pray hard enough you can GUARANTEE no adverse effects of anthro GHG emissions.
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• Arkaleus - Dec 16, 2008
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
  It puzzles me how archaeologists in Peru are able to excavate mummies that have been frozen for centuries. It follows reason that the ceremonial sites were not locked in ice during ancient times, yet they are today. What, pray tell, caused the ice-free conditions of the Andes those centuries ago?
  
  And what caused them to freeze? Are we to no longer consider the variations of climate as the result of processes that have nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels? http://www.pbs.or...mummies/
  
  
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