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Someone alert Al Gore! Heck, alert Roland Emmerich! Global warming is implicated in the destruction of the Alps, which is happening right now — a rock on Eiger Mountain the size of two Empire State Buildings is threatening to collapse and fall nearly 700 feet to the ground because the glacier ice that supports it is melting. More from the article:
- A rockslide of over 1 million cubic meters — officially called a landslide by geologists — on average happens every 20 to 50 years in Switzerland.
- In 1806, a chunk of mountain 20 times the size of the rock now coming off Eiger, killed 457 people in a valley near the Rigi mountain, wiping the entire village of Goldau off the map in one of Switzerland’s worst disasters.
- Glaciers in the Alps may have lost up to a tenth of their volume in the hot 2003 summer alone, researchers at Zurich university have said, and the ice now only occupies between half and a third of its volume in 1850.
All of this makes the landslide in the Manbearpig episode of South Park look a little less funny, doesn’t it?
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The evidence seems inconclusive to point out global warming as an immediate culprit. If a landslide took place in 1850 that was even more devastating how can we say that this occurrence is not just a natural fluctuation with the mountain range? I am not trying to suggest that global warming is not a threat but as of now I feel it is a phantom menace. Evidence is far too shallow to scream the sky is falling just yet, and when I see yahoo and ABC.com asking the public for evidence and examples of global warming something hints that there is a tad of fluff and spin at work.
posted by Jarred hanson on 8-9-2006 at 4:45 pm