Everest ice forest melting due to global warming, says Greenpeace
In the UK the Guardian is reporting Everest ice forest melting due to global warming, says Greenpeace.
One of the world’s most spectacular ice formations - the towering serac forest near Mount Everest’s base camp - is rapidly shrinking as a result of global warming, Greenpeace said today.
Before and after photographs released by the environmental group show how the past 40 years of climate change are transforming the Himalayan landscape as ancient glaciers melt and retreat higher up the slopes.
The Himalayan glaciers are the very source of the drinking water for most of Asia, so their rapid retreat is certain to have devastating direct impacts on the lives of almost 2 billion people. These people are not likely to just sit there watching their fresh drinking water evaporate either. Diminishing fresh water supplies will lead directly to increased conflict, mass migration, over and above the obvious ecological catastrophe. We humans have an incredibly urgent moral imperative to act now and to act decisively to cease and desist pouring our filth into the skies. We must stop using our air as a free sewerage system and work together to remove the CO2 we’ve already dumped there. Anything else makes us guilty of a sort of genocide-by-numbers. — DS
Technorati Tags: climate change, disrupted nature, Everest, glaciers, global warming, Greenpeace, ice, ice caps, meltdown
