Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply 421
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a story that may repeat itself in all mountainous areas dependent on glaciers for their water supply, the glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range are melting so quickly (PDF) that the water they supply to the arid region is being threatened 20-30 years earlier than expected. Of the time needed for the region to adapt to the coming water shortages, previously thought to be decades, researchers now believe, 'those years don't exist.'"
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oddly enough, there is a pretty sizable intersection between people who don't care about global warming, or have no interest in mitigating it, and those people who are staunchly against open borders.
The big hot thing in the sky (Score:0, Insightful)
It's the sun, stupid.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically the projections were wrong, but the culprit is the evil consumer who does not recycle his soup can, not the guy who made the projections in the first place.
Unless God himself gave the schedule for those glaciers to melt, the notion of having them melting "earlier than expected" is a joke.
I don't find this to be a joke. This just emphasizes how little we know about how the earth's systems will react to global warming. My fear is we won't listen to scientists until it is too late and we have killed off the majority of the organisms that help us counter the CO2 we are pumping into the air or the other effects, e.g. ocean acidification.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
These are people who lived in places with water. And that water is going to go away, suddenly, as could happen to literally any source of water other than desalinated ocean.
The history of the human race has involved a great deal of migration. Unfortunately, the earth is now full, and there is no place to migrate to anymore which is not already oversubscribed. Migration from now on means war.
Re:criminal (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate change denial is an act of treason against life on Earth.
Now let's not get hasty. Life on Earth will do just fine, it'll be just another mass extinction from which new life will spring forth, as it always has.
Now act of treason against humanity, that might fit...
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically the projections were wrong, but the culprit is the evil consumer who does not recycle his soup can, not the guy who made the projections in the first place.
Unless God himself gave the schedule for those glaciers to melt, the notion of having them melting "earlier than expected" is a joke.
We have consistently discovered that the IPCC's reports on GW are too conservative. Everything is happening faster than the "alarmists" have been predicting.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is this: are the estimated figures (which the scientists initially used to base their predictions) wrong due to accelerated climate change - things like mean and maximum temperatures? Or were the scientists wrong simply because they didn't understand the model well enough, or had a bad model on which they based their predictions?
Understanding why the estimation was off by decades might be important information to know, and all that. I am personally highly skeptical that an average temperature change in the region of a tenth of a degree or whatever it has been over the past decade could be responsible for this.
It's also possible that the size of the glaciers was initially wrong, too. Or maybe the rate or amount of melt was improperly estimated.
Is it possible this is just more reactionary knee-jerk fear-mongering bullshit due to a larger-than-normal rainfall in Peru this past year? That couldn't possibly be it, could it? I happen to know there are other places in the world which have had lower than average rainfalls this past year. (A more likely explanation may be that Peru has been stealing all of the clouds...)
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:0, Insightful)
At what cost? Cosmic irony would be that wealth is used to save the lost rather than gain the stars.
Re:So many questions (Score:4, Insightful)
What was their original model / projection? Has anyone else verified it? And if so, what measures will they be taking to supplement their water supply?
They weren't projecting. Scientists were projecting glacier melt rate worldwide. They're all melting.
Verification so far is watching the glaciers melt faster.
What measures will a mountain dwelling people take to supplement their loss of glacial water supply? They will lose their way of life, same as anyone else in a permanent drought, say in an extreme example Texas continues it's drought pattern. All it will take is a few more years to destroy life there as they know it.
But they can always hope rains will return. People dependent on glaciers that vanished have no such hope. Their total ancestral way of life will also have vanished.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I was about to say. Nothing more ignorant and simplistic said on /. in awhile.
"Like just move"
That's worked out real well for the Ethiopians. The animals that are too "stupid" to move, well sucks to be them I guess.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the parent marked Troll? Closed borders are exactly why people can't move en-mass from one area of the planet to another... And countries that are upset by such serious issues and cannot sustain broad migration are not suitable for internal migration.
In fact, it seems a perfectly logical response to the post it was referencing...
GrpA
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:2, Insightful)
My fear is we won't listen to scientists until it is too late and we have killed off the majority of the organisms that help us counter the CO2 we are pumping into the air or the other effects, e.g. ocean acidification.
You mean listen to the scientists that were wrong in their predictions regarding this glacier melt in the first place?
Yeah, that sounds like it'll turn out well.
This just emphasizes how little we know about how the earth's systems will react to global warming.
If we, by your own admission, know so little about the Earth's climate system, why in $DEITY's name would anyone think it's a good idea to engage in attempting to modify the behavior of a system we don't understand and can't predict, particularly when such proposed attempts come at great cost, suffering, and death to huge numbers of people?
Strat
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientists, when they made those projections, were being conservative, just including the factors they were sure of and discounting factors that were not well characterized yet. How much ridicule would you be heaping on them if they had overstated their projections?
Re:This story is a waste of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
slashdotters are by far the stupidest people I've ever conversed with on the topic of climate change and global warming.
Really? I've never found any other place (other than, say, a climatologist convention) where a reasonable number of people have even read the IPCC report. Here there are a lot of people who actually do understand the science, at least large parts of it. Seriously, even on climatologist blogs it just breaks down into blogger-worshipers and angry people who came from another blog. Here you can post something that you've been reading about climatology and get some reasonable (if at times rude) responses, that give you things to think about.
it's all fuzzy, intuited 'science' from physicists and programmers with zero understanding of ecology
Maybe you just say this because people disagree with you? I've seen LOTS of people give sources for their statements, not everyone, but vastly more than on any other site. Especially if you ask them.
Re:criminal (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's be realistic. Man will not go back to being a caveman. Population may shrink, but unless something truly horrifying happens mankind will go on. We'll probably innovate in different ways but we'll go on.
Of course humanity will survive, we're like cockroaches, but there's no reason (except profit) to make life harder for everyone. Otherwise, why not just nuke everything?
For heaven's sake, sometimes I think that the reason we have so many problems around the world today is what appears to be an incredibly cynical, doomsday view of everything. I could blame it on pervasive media (negative headlines are the best headlines), but that feels cliche.
Media sells entertainment, only a fool would take them seriously. Still, if you trust climatologists over uneducated opinions you know there's a very good chance that we're fucked.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong in that they *underestimated* how bad the problem is. And for you, this is reason to further ignore them? Now just to prove to us that you can't even maintain internal logical coherence across 2 simple sentences, we have:
Exactly the point: we need to stop fucking with it.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Good news. You managed to show absolute ignorance in only 4 important areas (that's 1 per sentence) with that brilliant comment. Those being: meteorology, geography, South American history, and USA history. You might benefit from knowing that the Incas were the native people of Peru (the Mayans being more central America), and that reasonably accurate records of rainfall exist wherever farming is important, and that "Union soldiers" were combatants in the American Civil War several thousand miles away - although, probably by pure chance, the timing would be roughly right in this context.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
You misunderstand evolution. Any adaptation that allows for survival in a given environmental condition is *already* there when that given environmental condition appears. It just so happens that everyone that *doesn't* have that adaptation dies off. Natural *selection* picks for traits that have already existed. An organism doesn't observe the environment and suddenly tries to "evolve".
Re:Bogus Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, and as always, wattsupwiththat does nothing to deal with the basic claims, but instead has a lot of snark about whitewashing and how history shows that the projections are completely wrong. And as always, Watt's will not publish his own studies demonstrating his claims, or if he does, he will be laughed out of the science room.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cosmic irony would be that wealth is used to save the lost rather than gain the stars.
I love space opera as much as the next gnerd, but unless Einstein was seriously wrong we're never going to gain the stars.
A life-long one-way trip to the nearest neighbors may be feasible, but it's not likely that anyone will every want to pay for it, and even less likely that there will be anywhere to live once we got there.
Re:Ooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Must stop using electricity and save the planet before man made global warming frees us from this ice age we're in.
By some accounts, GW is in fact counteracting the onset of an ice age. Unfortunately, according to these analyses, GW's forcing is much stronger the IA's forcing, so it's not keeping us in a stable state. (Hence the melting glaciers, shifting habitats, etc.)
If we could cut our GW's forcing back to a small fraction of what it is, we might be able to apply it as some practical terraforming, to extend the duration of the paradise that our species grew up in.
But most people just invoke "ice age" as an excuse to avoid doing something that will cost a lot of money in the short run.
And an *enormous* amount of money in the long run. Politicians like to fall down and kick their feet over the public debt that our descendants will inherit, but those same clowns don't care a fig if we leave them a foobar planet to live in.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
You misunderstand evolution. Well, at least your comprehension of it isn't as absolute as you seem to think. The scenario you put forth is one possible example of evolution, but not the only possible one. A more likely scenario is one in which the environmental change is fairly gradual and, during the transition, a variation occurs making some subset of organisms more able to survive in the conditions the environment is transitioning to. The case where the environment shifts overnight is almost certainly less common and, even when it does occur, it's still more likely that the mutated subset of organisms that take over the niche don't come from the affected region, but repopulate it from nearby areas unaffected by the environmental change.
In any case, the kind of changes that require rapid adaptation by a population generally aren't very pleasant for the population. They're usually mostly, or absolutely destructive to the local population. Humans, as a species, or in smaller groupings, can survive all kinds of things. That doesn't mean that big changes don't cause all kinds of suffering and death on the individual level, however. This is something that some people seem to misunderstand (or callously dismiss when it doesn't affect them directly) leading to statements like "Don't live in places without water, stupid".
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
[quote]Unfortunately, the earth is now full[/quote]
Actually, it's not.
http://persquaremile.com/2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population-lived-in-one-city/
http://true-progress.com/the-earth-can-feed-clothe-and-house-12-billion-people-306.htm
One problem is big ass North Americans taking too much food and space.
Re:Ooo (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This story is a waste of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's flame wars and there's truth - climate is changing, and unexpectedly fast. Much faster than we expected. And at this point I actually don't care anymore it is fault of capitalists, libertarians, commies, or what else. How we could expect to get our shit together if we even can't agree that change is happening? How we gonna *survive*?
This is fault of uneducated crowd making political decisions, t.i. electing populist leaders who won't say anything unpleasant to them. You can be pro-business and pro-capital and still capable to deliver harsh news *and* a plan how to deal with a problem. Unfortunately, there is serious shortage of such people (I don't even talk about politicians).
In nutshell, people don't like bad news and they do anything in their power to avoid them (also group thinking in our capitalist society pushing them to avoid take a blame) - that's human nature. Be that flame wars, denials, demolition of the messenger - whatever. Also your whining is part of the "I don't wanna listen because no one here is expert and I don't wanna hear that we have screwed up everything" crowd.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
The earth is in no way full, there is plenty of space for everybody.. Probably what you meant to say is that the earth is now fully claimed and the folk wallowing in luxury don't really want to share with poverty stricken peruvians.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I give an outline of a scientific argument. You give sneering insults. It is only technobabble to someone with no background in geology. My outline of topics is basic sedimentology. Smaller sedimentary particles take longer to settle than larger particles. Faster water picks up more and larger particles than slower water. Seasonal patterns in sediment deposition give delineation of years. In this way, past precipitation patterns may be inferred. As to rivulets, you should read about how we infer the past existence of liquid water on Mars. Your agressive and content free reply betrays the insecurity of ignorance.
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your premise is that you need less people I think statistics indicate that helping people in need would be your best bet (in addition to sounding, as you put it, less bad). As I understand the general mechanism, people tend to compensate for uncertainty regarding the survival of their offspring by having more children. With access to for example better medication, the argument goes, parents can afford to have fewer babies.
Re:Ooo (Score:3, Insightful)
For example the system rolled out in Australia is an incredible economic reform and some say it will cost the nation over $1trillion in GDP over the next 38 years.
You ask for a source for his claim, then throw that out there in the same post without any hint of a source? (And Andrew Bolt isn't a source. Indeed, he's an anti-Source. He (and his ilk) suck the validity out of any claim they make.)
The Carbon Credit scheme is supposedly revenue negative, that is, the amount of "compensation" and tax cuts exceeds the amount of carbon tax added. It will have a minimal effect on long term revenue, and therefore a minimal effect on the GDP. How would it somehow cost us $26 billion per year?
But think about, it's just moving taxes from one part of the economy to another, even with a small net change (positive or negative), how could it have any greater effect on GDP than any other future policy change? Or than major policy changes in the past, like floating the dollar, bank deregulation, the GST, or the Resources Super-Profits Tax? So how does someone come up with such a general number (a trillion) over such a specific timeframe (exactly 38 years, not 35, not 40, 38!) Doesn't any of it ring your bullshit alarm? Mine's going like a firehouse choir.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:4, Insightful)
The environment changes, the organisms change. The universe loves organisms, and she'll never stop springing them up in places you'd never think you'd find them.
I don't think anyone is seriously afraid for life on earth as a whole. But the changing environment may well be very, very unfriendly to some current species. Such as Homo Sapiens. And that is worth worrying about.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is quite a bit of unused land in Detroit right now. Seriously people generally don't seem to like cities, and from what I see only live in them when they have no other viable alternative, Humans seem more likely "Village People" than "City People". Even when people do live in cities, they self-organize into neighborhoods, when can be likened to "villages" inside the cities.
Um, wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are some places in which the population currently exceeds its carrying capacity. It's foolish to extrapolate that to the entire planet.
The problem is not having enough food--there is more than enough food on Earth to feed every person on the planet. The problem is distribution--and economics, politics, etc. The problem is getting the food to the people who need it.
The real problem is corruption and greed and just plain evil in governments, and in some places, in the society and culture as well. The real problem is people who don't work together as a community or a nation but instead play "every man for himself", seeking not the common good but to gratify oneself.
We don't need less people--we need fewer evil people. We need more good people.
Your suggesting that we need a global population reduction is a dehumanizing proposition, devaluing the lives of billions of real human beings. It is people like you who are the problem, people wanting to selfishly "cut off the dead weight" for the sake of themselves--people who think they are more important than everyone else. Shame on you.
Re:"Earlier than expected"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, please try to understand this. People _live_ there. There are important mining interests there. It's a desert. Knowing about rainfall in the area is important for a number of reasons. For example, if there's a heavy wet season every ten years ago in an otherwise dry area, you get mudslides. You hear about that sort of thing in the news all the time where unexpected heavy rains have just killed hundreds or thousands of people in a typically dry region. Your childish dismissal of an entire, important, field of study as an example of "the least optimally spent money" is pathetic. The people who study these things and tell people "don't build your homes there or you'll be killed by mudslide/flood/earthquake/fire/etc. within 20 years" are doing a very important job, not wasting money, and saving people's lives. They're also too frequently not listened too.
You're clearly a judgemental guy. I'm sure you've watched flood victims on TV frequently and sneered at what morons they are and told anyone who would listen that they deserved it for living in a flood plain in the first place. Given that, do you think that research into what the 100-year flood level is (and into how that level will change due to all the human construction with it's well-engineered drainage systems) is wasted?