Swiss Glaciers Lose 10% of Their Volume in Two Years (theguardian.com) 65
Swiss glaciers have lost 10% of their volume in just two years, a report has found. From a report: Scientists have said climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of unusually hot summers and winters with very low snow volume, which have caused the accelerating melts. The volume lost during the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 is the same as that lost between 1960 and 1990. The analysis by the Swiss Academy of Sciences found 4% of Switzerland's total glacier volume vanished this year, the second-biggest annual decline on record. The largest decline was in 2022, when there was a 6% drop, the biggest thaw since measurements began. Experts have stopped measuring the ice on some glaciers as there is essentially none left. Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (Glamos), which monitors 176 glaciers, recently halted measurements at the St Annafirn glacier in the central Swiss canton of Uri since it had mostly melted.
Reservoir systems (Score:2)
Time for the locals to start looking into expanded reservoirs, assuming that their yearly rainfall still allows them to make up for the deficit. Some places rely on yearly glacier melt as a water supply for agriculture etc.
Re:Reservoir systems (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't really know much about agriculture in Switzerland, but it's not like California where snow melt derived irrigation allows the desert to be turned into productive farmland. Some quick googling tells me that Switzerland's agriculture happens mostly in a relatively temperate area that receives plenty of rain, kind of like the productive farmland of the Midwest. Another quick google told me that 8% of Swiss water goes to agriculture, while 80% of American water goes to agriculture.
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Over 90% of California water goes to agriculture. Takes a lot of water to farm water heavy crops in a desert.
Re:Reservoir systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Takes a lot of water to farm water heavy crops in a desert.
Okay look. I hate California like the next person. Especially San Fransisco. But we've got to fucking stop this shit of "California = desert". The Köppen climate classification puts the majority of California as either Hot-summer Mediterranean (Csa) to Warm-summer Mediterranean (Csb) which are ideal conditions for growing many of the types of food they grow. Most of California is NOT a desert. San Bernardino County (20057 sq mi), Riverside County(7206 sq mi), Imperial County(4482 sq mi), and Inyo County(10181 sq mi) are pretty much it for parts of California that are "technically" a desert, out of the 155,959 square miles of land in California. Meaning that about 27% of California is what one would technically call desert and the vast majority of it, around 70%, being some combination of Mediterranean. The remainder is between Dry-Summer Subarctic (Dsc) and Tundra (ET) classification and sprinkles of Oceanic (Cfb) and Warm-summer Mediterranean continental (Dsb) classifications.
California crosses a lot of latitude, there's a lot of various climate in the State and there are states that have WAY MORE land in technical classifications of desert than California.
Now that said. Should they be growing some of the plants they do out there? Probably not, but if we weren't growing it there, we'd be getting it from Mexico so pick your poison I guess. However, the way we do food in the United States to begin with is insane everywhere, so I mean California is just the easiest to pick on but everyone is farming pretty unsustainable. Too much food is not grown local and that's a major problem with modern industrial farming.
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Yes, it's a big state, so?
The huge central part where they farm all the water (and other) crops would be dry as a fucking bone if they didn't pour a zillion gallons of water on it every day.
California would be a mass food importer, not exporter without that huge water expense. It's just math. It has nothing to do with hating or loving California.
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If you overlay a rainfall map for California with a satellite image of the state, you'll see that where the rainfall map says there's 10 inches of rain each year, the satellite map shows green fields. Even some more northern parts of the Central Valley receive adequate rainfall for some agriculture, but the rain doesn't fall during the summertime, which again necessitates heavy irrigation to grow the kinds of fruits and vegetables that are produced there. I don't think anyone is claiming that California i
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Yeah looks like they have a lot of rainfall and groundwater. Snowmelt probably affects some watersheds but it won't mess with the Swiss too much if their glaciers recede.
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Instead of a quick Google you could look on a map ...
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I blame FATCA.
Lies (Score:2, Funny)
The Republicans told me this is all lies and I have no reason to disbelieve them.
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Virtue signal +5.
Lots of people think "virtue signalling" is bad. You've just signaled to all those people how upstanding you are for hating it.
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Yes, vice signalling is a thing as well.
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https://www.urbandictionary.co... [urbandictionary.com]
Maybe false self righteousness to show off how morally superior you are is a good thing in your country.
If you think that's good, more power to you.
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Maybe false self righteousness to show off how morally superior you are is a good thing in your country.
I think the self-righteousness with which you showed how morally superior you are for hating "virtue signalling" is 100% real.
If you think that's good, more power to you.
If you think it's not good, then why are you doing it?
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Omg you are so clever turning that around! "I know you are but what am I?" is something children in my country stop doing by early grade school around age 8.
What country are you from where (alleged) adults still do that?
I know you're not serious. You just follow me around attacking me like a rabid dog without ever making a point because I must have corrected you one too many times. Here, ill apologize:
"I am sorry if anything I have ever said has triggered your sensitive and overly fragile ego which is in
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Omg you are so clever
Glad you finally recognise that!
You just follow me around
I was here when you were still in nappies. If you post stupid shit on a public forum, expect to get crap from the regulars. Or act like a whiny delicate snowflake and cry about it. Your choice.
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"Calling it out" is just a fact, like 2+2=4. It is what it is.
Of course I expected to be modded down by the mindless mobs for stating the obvious. You can't call out a leftist extremist here without being modded down and of course the virtue signaler was modded up. As expected.
It's all easily predicted and consistent. It is just like math.
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Personally I'm torn between blaming this on Obama or Biden.
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Re:Lies (Score:4, Informative)
They may have told you it has very little to do with the burning of fossil fuels, which is actually the dominant position among actual climate scientists
Global warming is due to the burning of fossil fuels.
The consensus among scientists [wikipedia.org] is overwhelming.
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Consensus? Try publishing your research results if they go against the narrative.You'll be censored and lose your job and you will be unable to find another job ever again. So, all scientists who find results going against the narrative now keep those results for themselves and people are kept in ignorance. I personally know some of them and they are the ones who told me that.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
Consensus? Try publishing your research results if they go against the narrative.You'll be censored and lose your job and you will be unable to find another job ever again.
Yes, because you'd be wrong about some very easy science and you'll be feeding the denialists.
CO2 in the air isn't difficult to understand.
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“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.” George R.R.
There is a reason why they
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Yea, OK. Now it's written down I see your point. All the Republicans who didn't "follow the consensus" are now ex-Repulicans.
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Yeesh, I can see why you post as AC, I'd be embarrassed to have my name associated with a statement that dumb too.
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I simply don't believe you know actual climate scientists who don't believe in AGW. I can believe you know botanists or maybe some geologists who don't, but they are no more familiar with climate scientist than a herring is. I can also believe you might know TV weather forecasters who don't, but they're still not climatologists or indeed scientists.
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If the research results are able to be replicated and don't have errors in them, then they are likely to have a strong and secure career ahead of them. The only time people are censored (or did you mean censured?) is when they accept a large amount of money from someone to produce 'research' which creates a specific desired result, don't declare it, and get found out.
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There you have it folks, an iron clad reason not to believe that humans are causing the Earth to warm up faster than it ever has in the past. Gee, maybe you could tell the scientists this, I'm sure they'd never think of it on their own.
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Re:miocene (Score:4, Insightful)
And how long did it take for them to melt? Tens of thousands of years, not a few decades.
One of these things is not like the other.
Obvious to some, but .... (Score:4)
I think it's still a point the "general public" doesn't understand at all, that glaciers aren't just made of ice.
"Experts have stopped measuring the ice on some glaciers as there is essentially none left."
If all the ice melts off of a glacier, it's likely to still be a huge structure made of rock and sediment, with a lot of trapped water within all of that.
I think most people envision glaciers as made entirely of ice, and think climate change is causing these to completely melt down to nothing, created huge floods of water. (And honestly, I can't help but feel like the climate change activists are encouraging that false understanding because it creates more fear.)
Re:Obvious to some, but .... (Score:4, Insightful)
In reality, when the glaciers are gone, the rivers and meltwater in the spring and summer cease, which will drastically change biomes. The rich grassland can easily turn into brown savanna or less productive uses. Forests wilt and become vulnerable to forest fires.
Glaciers are a good thing, as they provide useful water, and if they melt completely, it also hastens soil erosion.
Plus this is Switzerland we are talking about, one of the few countries that is considered the pinnacle of civilization and human welfare. Other countries can turn to desert, and it may not matter to them, but Switzerland is a wonder of the world.
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That may be but they were not considered to upright during WWII. They are still the place to go if you want to launder dirty money.
Re:Obvious to some, but .... (Score:5, Interesting)
They are still the place to go if you want to launder dirty money.
Actually that hasn't been the case for decades. The US is the world's largest money laundry by far, we process well over a Trillion (yes, with a T) dollars in dirty money every year, half of it from drugs and the rest from the whole laundry list of fraud, weapons sales, tax evasion, etc. The large money laundries like CitiCorp and First Boston charge 10-15% in fees for largely automatic transactions which may cascade cash through half a dozen countries in a few minutes. $1 Trillion * 10% = $100 billion in almost pure profit every year. This more than any other reason is why drug policy in the US is so fucked up, the financial industry loves the situation and they ensure that their pet congresscritters maintain the status quo.
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The glaciers are gone from Wisconsin, but is still plenty of melt water every spring. There was no rich grassland until after the glaciers departed, and the forest moved in after that.
Now in Nevada, Lake Lahontan did dry up after the glaciers retreated. The salt flats that were left behind really didn't grow anything, but limited forests grew on the mountains that were tall enough to scrape some water from the sky. And since it snows in the mountains there is meltwater in the spring.
In Washington the retrea
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That's got nothing to do with whether glaciers are 100% water. The important thing is that glaciers are sitting on land, not floating on water.
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The moraines are much smaller than the glacier that made them.
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I think it's still a point the "general public" doesn't understand at all, that glaciers aren't just made of ice.
The NSIDC reckons that a glacier is an accumulation of ice and snow that slowly flows over land.
The climate reality is (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can't ski on rocks. Ski resorts are closing up because the ski season is too short now.
Easy-peasy. Invent skis that work on rocks! Problem solved!
But you can still find a stranger in the Alps.
Well, obviously you're not a golfer.
That rug really tied the room together.
So what you're telling me... (Score:2, Insightful)
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An F scenario would be everything to the horizon is on fire and a microsecond from exploding....
So Their Ice Is Like Their Cheese (Score:2)
Full of holes.
Glaciers (Score:2)
"It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is."