Year 2, Month 8, Day 17: Slippery When Wet.

Tuscon Citizen for August 1 ran a USA Today squib on the world’s melting glaciers:

Two of three Himalayan glaciers — both in humid areas of eastern Nepal — could disappear if present climate change patterns continue, a study released today predicts.

The Rikha Samba glacier, in a relatively arid area of western Nepal, showed little shrinkage in the past decade compared with the two prior decades, but the other two glaciers, known as Yala and AX010, show accelerated wastage over the last decade, according to the study.

The researchers say glaciers in humid environments can exist at lower altitudes, leaving them vulnerable to warming. They say that if climate trends observed since the 1990s continue, these two glaciers may disappear because ice masses will probably not receive enough snow to replenish the shrinkage.

After writing the letter I found they had no LTE mechanism at all…so I just left the beautifully crafted 150-word piece as a comment. The hell with it. Web comments don’t usually count as letters in my book, but I’m too tired to care at the moment. Posted August 1:

One of the most alarming aspects of the news that the world’s glaciers are dwindling rapidly under the onslaught of global climate change is that so few Americans are paying attention. Perhaps glaciers are too far away and unfamiliar, or the year of their projected final disappearance from the planet is still too remote. Perhaps people have more pressing concerns: jobs, the economy, healthcare. But ultimately there’s no greater issue than the survival of the environment; politicians’ attempts to frame it as an either/or debate are extremely misleading. Our aspirations to economic growth disregard the fact that we live on a finite world; continued expansion beyond the capacity of Earth’s natural systems is a fatally flawed aspiration. The melting glaciers are one of many indicators that the planet’s resources are failing. If Americans don’t pay attention now, we’re in for a series of very unpleasant surprises in the coming decades.

Warren Senders