Chilean glaciers retreating due to global warming: report

December 8, 2008
View of the San Rafael glaciers in the Northern Patagonian Ice Field

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.
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.
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)?
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.
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).

:)
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.
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
lengould100
Dec 16, 2008

Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
If you simply pray hard enough you can GUARANTEE no adverse effects of anthro GHG emissions.
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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