[HN Gopher] Venezuela is first Andean country to lose all of its...
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Venezuela is first Andean country to lose all of its glaciers
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 102 points
Date : 2024-07-01 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Kilimanjaro will soon lose its glacier too.
| getoj wrote:
| Venezuelan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, who grew up around
| these glaciers, wrote a poignant lament[1] in anticipation of
| this day. The gist is that at this point the only thing to do is
| to grieve for the world we have already lost. I don't think
| there's anything else to say.
|
| _Y cuando el momento llegue, honremos nuestras heridas /
| Celebremos la belleza que se aleja hacia otras vidas / Y aunque
| la pena nos hiera, que no nos desampare / Y que encontremos la
| manera de despedir a los glaciares_
|
| (When the moment comes, let us honor our wounds / celebrate the
| beauty that goes off to other lives / and although the sorrow
| stings, I hope it will remain / and that we find a way to say
| goodbye to the glaciers)
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNsFF_eaXBU
| swayvil wrote:
| Jorge is one hard-hitting poet. Dang.
| jaimebuelta wrote:
| Not to take away the poetry, but Jorge Drexler is from Uruguay
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Drexler
| nullwriter wrote:
| In a way, I'm happy its not Venezuela. Although still sad
| that this is happening
| brezelgoring wrote:
| Hi! Jorge Drexler is not Venezuelan but from Uruguay [1].
|
| I should know, I'm from there as well and he is one of our few
| cultural exports aside from Football.
|
| [1] - https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Drexler
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > the only thing to do is to grieve for the world we have
| already lost
|
| Tears won't put a glacier back.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I don't really have words for this. It's hard to contemplate why
| have done this to our home.
|
| We're like a group of vandals just breaking things for the hell
| of it.
|
| Such beauty and the home to many species, wiped out...
| nickburns wrote:
| "Scientists believe its disappearance makes Venezuela the _first
| country in the Americas -- and the first country in modern
| history_ -- to lose all its glaciers [emphasis added]. "
|
| Title inaccurate. This goes well beyond only 'Andean countries.'
|
| EDIT: To the 4+ dol--I mean, people who have now downvoted this
| comment: 'the Americas' is commonly geographically understood to
| mean the land masses of both North and South America. There are
| glaciers present in both 'Americas.' The Andean mountains are
| only present in South America. Jesus, this place is stupid today.
| RONROC wrote:
| Climate change is real but its effects are overblown. Weeping for
| a glacier that would of melted a few years later regardless of
| public opinion seems insufficient
| ljsprague wrote:
| Agreed. I'm much more concerned about deforestation in the
| Amazon.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I'm open to listening to Climate Scientist that considers
| Astrophysics as a factor. The rest can keep their pseudoscience
| to themselves as far as I'm concerned.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Sorry, best we can do are celebrities wagging their fingers
| at you.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| And yet, in the US, CO2 emissions are about where they were in
| 1990 (which is better than 2005, but very far from where it
| should be) https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| What are the emissions when we account for goods manufactured
| overseas? In 1990, much more of our manufactured goods were
| included in US emissions. Now most of our manufactured goods
| have their emissions in other countries.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Really good point; that's why we have to look at global
| emissions; I just pointed to US ones as I couldn't find
| global ones more recent than 2021 (which are here:
| https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-
| tools/greenhous...
|
| The picture is bleak; globally we are rapidly approaching 2x
| 1990 levels
| cchance wrote:
| Ya notice how energy has gone down, but industry based co2
| production has doubled lol
| philipkglass wrote:
| The term for this is "consumption based emissions." You can
| find charts for it at Our World In Data. Here's the chart for
| the US along with an explanation of the methodology:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-
| capit...
|
| The US is improving even after accounting for imports.
| Consumption-based emissions were 20.3 tons per capita in 1990
| and peaked in 2005 at 22.7 tons per capita, declining to 14.9
| tons per capita as of 2022. Of course present emissions per
| capita are not as low as if imports had no CO2 footprint.
| cchance wrote:
| Isn't this just "ENERGY" related emissions... it doesn't
| account for CO2 as a whole emissions just those in relation to
| production of energy, farming etc, aren't accounted for nor all
| the CO2 sources we technically just shipped overseas as we
| reduced local production but increased imports.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > Between 1952 and 2019 alone, Venezuela's glacier surface went
| from 2,317 square kilometers to just 0.046 square kilometers,
| according to a 2020 study.
|
| Checked the study because those numbers seemed suspect. That's
| 2.3 square kilometers, not 2300.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Could that be from confusion between the use of comma as
| decimal symbol and periods to denote thousands? (German
| practice)
| margalabargala wrote:
| I'm familiar with the practice, but it must be quite the
| confusion to mix both in the same sentence.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Many countries use comma as the decimal separator, in fact,
| using comma is more common than using a dot if you go by the
| number of countries. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator
| moralestapia wrote:
| Any countries that use both?
|
| Because they also wrote "0.046".
| MaulingMonkey wrote:
| They usually do not _mix_ decimal seperators _in the same
| sentence_ however, and as leading zeros are generally avoided
| on integers, "0.046" is pretty clearly using a period as the
| decimal seperator.
| harlanlewis wrote:
| This may be the study:
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15230430.2020.1...
|
| Quote from the abstract:
|
| > In Venezuela, glacial area has decreased 98 percent between
| 1952 and 2019 (from 2.317 km2 to 0.046 km2).
|
| So it appears you are correct. I looked it up because I was
| skeptical of your skepticism - Washington state is at a very
| different latitude, but at 1/5 the area of Venezuela has ~450
| sq km of glaciers. Mt Rainier alone has 90 sq km.
|
| https://glaciers.us/glaciers.research.pdx.edu/Glaciers-Washi...
|
| There's no arguing against extreme glacial retreat (I started
| this by fact-checking your downplay), but this article does
| feel pretty sensational about a place that didn't really have
| glaciers to begin with.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I did not mean to downplay severity. I live in an area with a
| few dozen glaciers, and I've spent the last decade watching
| them become smaller and smaller with each passing year.
|
| The article being off by three orders of magnitude annoyed me
| because the loss of that quantity of ice in one location in
| just 70 years would be catastrophic; if we assume 40 meter
| thickness, that's 58 cubic kilometers of water added into the
| local watershed.
|
| As it stands, the statistic is "just" depressing.
| beeandapenguin wrote:
| A related article from NASA Earth Observatory has a slider to
| compare satellite images of the glacier.
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152893/humboldt-gla...
| p51-remorse wrote:
| So, we're all onboard for nuclear, right? And we're all going to
| vote for anyone who will fast track building nuclear plants and
| cut through some regulatory crap?
|
| If this is an emergency, and it looks like it is, let's start
| treating it that way. Clean energy is a solved problem.
| lanstin wrote:
| If only your post were from 2001 instead of a time when solar +
| batteries is so much faster to deploy and cheaper to build than
| nuclear. Tho, of course, there is a good amount of funding for
| nuclear in Biden's climate change law. It kept us in California
| from moth-balling a nuclear plant, but the new money seems to
| be for industrial sized battery plants.
| flykespice wrote:
| Can it be reversed?
| goldname wrote:
| dont worry theyll grow back
| bluedino wrote:
| At the risk of sounding completely ignorant, haven't the glaciers
| been disappearing since the ice age? Didn't some sort of glacial
| period last end about 10,000 years ago?
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