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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Global warming hits Everest |
Current rating: 0 |
by M&M
(No verified email address) |
07 Jun 2002
Modified: 10:57:55 PM |
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GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- A glacier from which Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set out to conquer Mount Everest nearly 50 years ago has retreated three miles up the mountain due to global warming, a U.N. body says. |
Team of climbers contributed to U.N. report
June 6, 2002 Posted: 10:48 AM EDT (1448 GMT)
Mount Everest as seen from Mount Pumori in Nepal.
A team of climbers, backed by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), reported after their two-week visit last month that the impact of rising temperatures was everywhere to be seen.
The landscape bears the scars of sudden glacial retreat, while glacial lakes are swollen by melted ice, UNEP spokesman Michael Williams told Reuters Thursday.
During their visit, the team of climbers from the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA) spoke to the head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, Tashi Jangbu Sherpa, who told them that the ice fields had seen rapid change over the past 20 years.
"He told us that Hillary and Tenzing would now have to walk two hours to find the edge of the glacier which was close to their original base camp," Williams quoted UIAA president Ian McNaught-Davis as saying.
In 1953, New Zealander Hillary and Tenzing, a native of Nepal, became the first climbers to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain.
UNEP recently warned that more than 40 Himalayan glacial lakes were dangerously close to bursting, threatening the lives of thousands of people, because of ice melt caused by global warming.
According to some scientists, the average global temperature could rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years unless governments take action to cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. |
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$#^$^^$ |
by )(*(&*^&*%^@#@#
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Jun 2002
Modified: 10:49:20 PM |
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CONCERNED |
by CONCERNED
WWW.PUTACORKINIT.ORG (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
07 Jun 2002
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WORD ON THE STREET SAYS ITS ALL THE HOT AIR ML EMITS THATS BEHIND ALL THIS ICE MELTING |
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Threatened coasts |
by STOP FARTING ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Jun 2002
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In the United States alone such a rise could drown some 17,000 square km (6,630 square miles) of coastal areas -- approximately the size of Connecticut and New Jersey combined.
Overfishing is threatening many of world's key fishing grounds
In China such a rise could affect over 70 million people, 60 percent of the population of Bangladesh and the Netherlands, 15 percent of the people and 50 percent of the industry in Japan and 10 percent of the population of Egypt, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which led the initiative said.
In low-lying countries like the Maldives or the Marshall Islands, the entire population would be at risk.
"The oceans play a crucial role in sustaining life on earth," said Jacques Diouf, director general of the FAO.
"This important new tool ... will help coordinate and harmonize the work underway in various parts of the U.N. and in national agencies, academic institutions and other organizations, and will serve a major role in moving the world toward the sustainable use of oceans for food security and human development," he said.
The launch of the ocean atlas comes as Australia announced it would not ratify the Kyoto climate change treaty aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Changing weather
Gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are blamed for rising temperatures and changing weather patterns across the globe.
Coastal communities around the planet are under threat from rising seas
Fifty-five nations producing 55 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions must ratify the pact before it becomes binding.
Japan ratified the treaty this week and urged nations like Russia and the United States, the world's biggest polluter, to sign up.
In a U.S. government report issued Friday, the administration acknowledged for the first time that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would increase significantly over the next two decades, due mainly to human activities.
It forecast that U.S. total greenhouse gas emissions would increase 43 percent between 2000 and 2020. |
