Frozen in Memories, but Melting Before Their Eyes

[cal04]

To hear the locals tell it, you would think they were referring to a loved family member declining in old age.

"It hurts, it hurts,” Philipp Carlen said of his feeling toward the vast Rhone glacier, which once came to the edge of his hotel, but now has receded several hundred yards. The glacier, whose soft contours and dirty gray surface make it resemble some huge sea creature, a whale perhaps, is rapidly shrinking, in the mild autumn weather, by 12 to 15 feet a day.

Eight thousand years ago, Mr. Carlen said, the glacier was the largest in Europe, with arms that reached all the way to Lyon, in France. Indeed, it remains the source of the Rhone River, which flows westward into France and from there into the Mediterranean. Now, however, it is only the fifth largest glacier in Switzerland, and experts foresee the day, probably in this century, when the glacier, all six miles of it, will melt away to nothing.

(snip)
The glacier’s suffering is not unique. All of Switzerland’s glaciers — and there are more than a hundred, large and small, experts say — have lost about 15 percent of their surface in just the past two decades. The experts say global warming is the reason, though particularly hot summers, which might have happened anyway, also played a role.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/europe/24swiss.html?hp&ex=1161748800&en=fd914061629a6d98&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[liberal N proud]

1. Yet the governments of the world ignore Global Warming

[rodeodance]

2. very little. local govs. try but this is a case where you need the world!