Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards
Democracy. NOTE: Thanks to Rick Davis for this; its catalog of
this season's Extreme Weather Events helps us understand how quickly
we're losing our ability to grow food outdoors on this planet. --
kl, pp
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020327,00.html
Record heatwave closes Mont Blanc to tourists
Dramatic proof of global warming as peaks begin to crumble in high
temperatures and snowline retreats
David Rose
Sunday August 17, 2003
The Observer
It figured as a stop on adventurous young men's nineteenth-century
Grand Tour, and in summer 300 people might climb it in a single day.
This year, for the first time since its conquest in 1786, the
heatwave has made western Europe's highest peak too dangerous to
climb.
Mont Blanc is closed.
The conditions have been so extreme, say glaciologists and climate
experts, and the retreat of the Alps' eternal snows and glaciers so
pronounced, that the range - and its multi-billion-pound tourist
industry - may never fully recover. The freak weather, with no
substantial snowfall since February, means pylons holding up
ski-lifts and cable cars may be too dangerous to use next winter,
while the transformation of shining mountains into heaps of grey
scree and rubble is unlikely to persuade tourists there this summer
to return.
From the streets of Chamonix, the bustling resort at its base, Mont
Blanc and its outlying peaks, the Aiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc du
Tacul and Mont Maudit, rise in a giant curtain usually filling half
the sky with dazzling whiteness. This year they are grey with old,
dirty ice from which the overlying snow has long melted, while their
slopes are being raked by regular fusillades of rocks, some the size
of cars, dislodged as the ice surrounding them melts in the heat.
In some areas it is too dangerous to follow paths that would normally
be used by thousands of ramblers.
From Chamonix, three routes suited to guided climbers of modest
ability lead to the summit of Mont Blanc, almost 16,000 feet above
sea level. Two of these routes, the so-called Grands Mulets and the
'three summits' path via Mont Blanc du Tacul, have been turned into
death traps of open crevasses, unstable, overhanging ice cliffs and
vertical icy walls, where normally there would be a pleasant, albeit
strenuous, track through the snow.
The third route, the Gouter Ridge, is one of the worst spots for
rockfalls. After two climbers died merely trying to reach the
restaurant near the start of the route last week, Chamonix guides
announced that using this path was 'strongly ill-advised'. A guides'
spokeswoman said: 'We are not taking bookings for Mont Blanc by any
route. For this year, it is finished.'
'No one has ever seen a year like this,' said a spokesman for
Chamonix's Office de Haute Montagne. 'There has been occasional rain
in the valley, which would normally fall as snow in the high
mountains. But after a very warm and dry spring, the freezing level
has mostly been above 13,000 feet since the beginning of June.'
Those who know the mountains have been astonished to see no snow on
the summit of Mont Blanc's subsidiary summit, the Dome de Gouter -
almost 15,000 feet high.
Famous peaks are disintegrating before Chamoniards' eyes. Patricia
Rafaelli, a ski instructor, was in her office at the Chamonix golf
club watching the Dru, a granite spire, which bears some of the
world's hardest rock climbs, falling apart as the ice holding it
together melted. 'I'm sitting here and every hour or so there is
another rockfall, with boulders thundering down through the forests
below the mountain and filling the sky with dust,' she said.
Glaciologists estimate it will take 30-40 metres of snow, which would
normally take several harsh winters to fall, to make good the deficit
of snow and ice that has melted this summer.
Dr Jonathan Bamber, reader in glaciology at Bristol University, said
it is likely that, unless global warming unexpectedly goes into
reverse, the damage to the Alpine environment and to the tourism that
depends upon it can never be repaired.
He said: 'People don't seem prepared to take real notice of [global
warming] and start to press for something to be done until it affects
their own backyard and livelihood. What's happened to the Alps this
year, coming after a long run of very warm years, is almost an
allegory for the kind of events that may take place elsewhere.'
Bamber, an experienced mountaineer, described the effective closure
of Mont Blanc as historic: 'Climbing Mont Blanc from Chamonix with a
guide is something people have done for over 200 years.
'This is a major wake-up call, and no way is a normal winter going to
put this back. You're looking at something that is going to have a
serious long-term impact.'
Bamber said that the melting of the layer of permafrost that holds
the peaks together, said to have occurred this year to a depth of
seven feet, will make ski facilities, such as lifts and cable-car
pylons unstable, costing millions to repair. 'I wouldn't be buying
shares in the ski industry right now,' he said.
While the lower resorts do not rely on the permafrost for their
lifts, they are already at risk from the steady rise in the winter
snowline. A Unesco report last year quoted Swiss glaciologist Bruno
Messerli from the University of Bern, who said that within 20 years
low-level ski stations would be forced to close.
'Big banks will no longer give loans for new ski industry
constructions,' he said, adding that from 1850 to 1980 Alpine
glaciers lost half their volume, and in the 20 years from 1980 to
2000, another quarter of what was left was also lost.
Bamber said the effect on summer tourism would be disastrous. 'Who
wants to come and see a pile of stones? This isn't why people visit
the Alps,' he said.
He warned that the disappearance of snow could intensify global
warming and damage to the mountains, because once snow is replaced by
darker, matt surfaces, such as grey ice and rubble, heat and light
once reflected into space are absorbed. 'You get a very strong
positive feedback at both the poles and in mountain ranges when this
happens,' he said.
Bamber is leading a team working on the consequences for the whole
Northern Hemisphere and its climate of the fact that by 2050 it is
likely there will be no sea ice at all in summer in the Arctic: 'This
will have very profound consequences, with the likelihood of much
more precipitation and violent storms,' he said.
Doug Scott, one of Britain's greatest mountaineers, said he was glad
he had done his Alpine mountaineering in the 1960s and 70s.
'It's a tragedy,' he said. 'Here is the most dramatic and visible
proof that the climate is changing, and still the Americans won't
sign the Kyoto Agreement restricting greenhouse gas emissions.'
FIRE, DROUGHT AND FLOODS WORLDWIDE:
Average temperatures across Europe have been 5C warmer for the past
two months. Drought is costing billions of euros in crop damage.
In India, temperatures have reached 49C, resulting in more than 1,500 deaths.
Heatwaves and flooding have killed 569 people so far in China.
A state of emergency has been declared in British Columbia after the
worst fires in 50 years.
Pakistan's heatwave followed by rains has left hundreds of thousands
homeless and damaged 45 per cent of crops in some states.
In Russia, hundreds of fires have devastated swaths of Siberia.
Croatia has lost 12,300 acres of forests and olive groves.
A national disaster has been declared in Portugal after fires killed
11 and destroyed 100,000 acres of forest.
In Germany, record temperatures continue with the Rhine drying up in
parts and farmers unable to feed their cattle.