World’s third largest ice store vanishing!

Vanishing glaciers jolt smokestack China

AS an expedition from Chinese state television worked its way across the remote Tibetan plateau earlier this year, the explorers were amazed by what they found.

The plateau has been called the world’s third largest ice store after the North and South Poles. Yet according to Chinese scientists, the “third pole” is warming up faster than anywhere else on earth.

The TV team found bare rock where glaciers had retreated. Lakes had dried up. Lush grassland had turned to desert. The livestock was dead, the farmers impoverished.

They brought back a visual lesson in global warming so stark that censors allowed the programme makers to broadcast a frank exposé. Their film attracted the attention of the Communist party’s leaders and has put climate change at the centre of a remarkably open debate in China ahead of a summit on the issue in Copenhagen next month.

More...

The article continues:

The speed and scale of change on the Tibetan plateau have made Chinese leaders react to something they understand — a potential threat to the future of China itself.

...

The plateau’s 36,000 glaciers, which once extended for 18,000 square miles, could vanish before mid-century if present rates of warming persist. More than 80% of them are in retreat. The overall area has shrunk by 4.5% in the past 20 years.

Most ominous of all, in the area that Chinese know as Sanjiangyuan, where three mighty rivers rise — the Yangtze, the Yellow and the Mekong — the headwaters run shallow and weak, threatening the water supplies for hundreds of millions of people.

And more...

In the past 30 years the thawing of permafrost, a layer of soil that is usually frozen all the year round, has changed the landscape profoundly.

“There were 4,077 lakes and now 3,000 of them have disappeared,” said Xin Hongyuan, a geologist in Qinghai...

...

“The snow is thawing and the snowline has risen from 4,600 metres to 5,300 metres. The Jianggendiru glacier, which is the main water supply of the Yangtze, has been degenerating fast since 1970, and when the glaciers shrink there will be a water crisis in the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.”

The Yellow river, for example, supplies water to a fifth of China’s 1.3 billion population and serves 50 big cities along its 3,395 miles.

In recent years it has sometimes slowed to a trickle. Once it virtually stopped flowing for 226 days, causing urban waterpipes to run dry and confronting downstream provinces with huge financial losses...

I would say all of this sounds rather bad...

Slow train wreck, anyone?

Whatever you believe about how we got to this point, the situation does not look good for the near term. Is there any question humanity is in for some very difficult times?



[edit on 8-11-2009 by loam]

Haven't you heard? The Americans have decided global warming is a hoax and the Earth is actually cooling. If the American public has something to say about science, surely it must be true!

If all the ice on the planet disappeared over night, global warming would still be viewed as a leftist conspiracy in the only country that can lead the rest of the developed world by example.

Take a good look at those glaciers, or what's left of them, we're the last generation to lay eyes on them.

Sigh

This condition has been observed for at least a year or more...

Here are some other source articles:

Trouble at Third Pole
Glaciers In China And Tibet Fading Fast
Tibetan Glaciers Melting at Stunning Rate

reply to post by ZombieOctopus


Well lets all go back to the 16th century because some f'ing ice melted. There may well be global warming, but can you prove it is going to be any better or worse for humans than the temp 50 years ago.

Truth is the whole solar system has shown signs of warming, so maybe it has to do with Sun activity and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it, except embrace change and get a nice tan in places where we couldn't before.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by HotSauce]

reply to post by HotSauce

and die of heatstroke and dehydration.
you forgot death by heatstroke and dehydration.

reply to post by ELECTRICkoolaidZOMBIEtest


Oh yeah, sorry I forgot. Enjoy your heatstroke and dehydration along with your suntan and your ALLEGED global warming. Thanks for pointing that out Zombie.

reply to post by HotSauce

Originally posted by HotSauce
Well lets all go back to the 16th century because some f'ing ice melted.
There may well be global warming, but can you prove it is going to be any better or worse for humans than the temp 50 years ago.

I dunno...

...nearly a billion people living in South Asia in peril of losing their water supply...

Sounds a tad inconvenient, don't you think?

Originally posted by HotSauce
...your ALLEGED global warming....

Global warming or not....gone is gone. And the glaciers clearly seem to be going.

Does that disturb you in the slightest?


[edit on 8-11-2009 by loam]

sigh...

if the snow is melting and lakes are drying up, where the hell is the water supposed to be going?

do you even comprehend the volume of water that has supposedly disappeared?? there is such a thing as the law of conservation. that water has to go some where. it cannot just vanish. and it is very highly unlikeley that it has been taken to the sea in rain clouds considering the effects of orographic lifting and the mechanisms involved with moisture interaction with terrain.

we would be hearing of massive flooding along major rivers if there was really that much water being transferred.

reply to post by loam


Not for me it doesn't. I don't live in Asia. We have plenty of water where I live. So maybe we can get a little cash back from the Chinese by selling them overpriced lead tainted water.

Plus, you need to prove to me that it is caused by C02 and not solar activity. Also, you need to explain why the Earths average temp has dropped for the last 10years. For all I know we could be heading to an ice age.

There is about as much proof that there is going to be massive global warmng as there is that Nibiru is going to come crashing into earth on a particular date and time determined by a bunch of savages thousands of years ago.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by HotSauce]

reply to post by HotSauce


Let me lend you a hand buddy
dsc.discovery.com...
or
www.foxnews.com...
uh oh that 2nd one is from FOX news so it's probably right wing propaganda

so
www.treehugger.com...
3 to 1 we win!

reply to post by genius/idoit


Thanks genius.

Well there you have it. "Scientific" proof that we are headed for a new ice age. We better tax the hell out of everyone so the governments can by equipment to produce more carbon in the atmosphere before we all freeze to death.

reply to post by HotSauce


Hey, HotSauce. In case you hadn't noticed, this thread really isn't intended to be another 'causation' thread. We already have plenty of those on ATS. I'm sure you can find a suitable one to debate that subject, if you wish.

What I am pointing out is a seemingly objective and profound change in our environment-- however it occurs.

Originally posted by HotSauce
Not for me it doesn't. I don't live in Asia. We have plenty of water where I live.

You're not a long-range thinker, I see.

Out of curiosity, when the very livelihood of a billion people comes into jeopardy, and you have a lot of what they need, what do you think is likely to happen????

Hope you have really big guns.

[edit on 8-11-2009 by loam]

reply to post by HotSauce


a star for a laugh I think I got the better of the deal!
By the way sshhh...don't give pelosi/frank/obama any ideas.

Originally posted by HotSauce

Well lets all go back to the 16th century because some f'ing ice melted.

You can if you want, I'd rather develop and deploy already existing technologies to work towards a sustainable solution. The only people that will "suffer" will be those involved with non-renewable energy, the same people that most here consider to be our biggest problem anyway.

I'd rather encourage new energy technologies, transportation technologies and infrastructure improvement... but, you know, your ideas sounds neat too.

Look the way I see it is the day I wake up gasping for oxygen and the earth is so hot that just walking to my car makes me spontaneously combust... then maybe, just maybe, I would be willing to pay extra money for global warming. But I would still have to sit down and think about it.

reply to post by loam

You're not a long-range thinker, I see...

Out of curiosity, when the very livelihood of a billion people comes into jeopardy, and you have a lot of what they need, what do you think is likely to happen????

Hope you have big guns.

Well since you bring it up. I happen to have been blessed to be born in a nation full of rabid rednecks that collect guns like Frenchmen collect girls panties to parade around in.

Plus, I live in a nation that is so paranoid that we spend more on national defense every year that it is more than the GDP of most countries on earth.

So I say come and try to take our water. I wish you luck!

reply to post by loam


But isn't espousing a theory based on one event a little short sighted?It took me 3 minutes to find and type up those links.Who is the one propagating doom and gloom?Certainly not Hot Sauce

What I am pointing out is a seemingly objective and profound change in our environment-- however it occurs.

reply to post by HotSauce

Originally posted by HotSauce
Look the way I see it is the day I wake up gasping for oxygen and the earth is so hot that just walking to my car makes me spontaneously combust... then maybe, just maybe, I would be willing to pay extra money for global warming. But I would still have to sit down and think about it.

I'm fascinated by your response. Drop the politics for a moment.

Do you deny the disappearance of this ice or the effects this will have on one billion people?

I'd like to understand you better.

Originally posted by HotSauce
Look the way I see it is the day I wake up gasping for oxygen and the earth is so hot that just walking to my car makes me spontaneously combust... then maybe, just maybe, I would be willing to pay extra money for global warming. But I would still have to sit down and think about it.

here is the thing. people want to save the environment form an impending disaster. if you really really feel that humans are the cause of this, then stop breeding. there is no plausible solution that can decling human pollution faster than human population growth.

and paying carbon taxes dont do a damn bit of good for anything other than lining the pockest of a few people. and those friggin people are STILL flying around in private jets and taking more money from companies who are creating this so called crisis.

unless you want government to start sialing the high ses via canvas and roaming the countryside via horse and carriage again... like THAT will ever happen

reply to post by ZombieOctopus


What if all the things you want to do to help(which I find commendable)are based on misinformation?